游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

创建工作室需找对成员和摸准游戏创意

发布时间:2011-06-28 18:15:26 Tags:,,,

作者:Tomas Rawlings

过去数年间,互联网的连通性、Flash或UDK等简单可用的开发工具以及iPhone和Android之类新生平台逐渐融合,使得制作和发行游戏变得格外简单。某些人通过《愤怒的小鸟》或《Minecraft》等简单却流行的游戏想法获得巨额财富,此类故事层出不穷。据称每个人心中至少都有个新颖的想法,那么能否也能将其转变成游戏呢?我将在下文中讨论如何将脑中那些游戏想法提炼成可以分享甚至出售的可玩性体验。

idea(from justmeans.com)

idea(from justmeans.com)

本文关注的是开发过程中的创意层面,即想法和灵感。毫无疑问,制作游戏是个艰苦的工作,从游戏中盈利也很困难。然而,如果看到其他人从游戏中获得乐趣,再艰辛的付出也是值得的。

游戏制作有三个组成部分:游戏设计;呈现设计的图片和音效;将前两者融合起来的编程。目前Red Wasp Design有一个程序员、一个艺术师和一个设计师(游戏邦注:作者是Red Wasp Design的联合创始人,任工作室设计师一职),我们将音效设计外包。公司中每人身兼多职,程序员也可以做设计,但最终我们需要各职位人员密切配合才能将游戏制作出来。

理想情况是,你单个人便可以完成至少一个职位的所有工作。如若不然,就需要找更多人来帮助你。我觉得让其他合作者加入会带来极大的好处,因为这样便有人分担你的职责,而且他们也能给你提供想法和建议。如果你无法胜任上述职位之一,那就想想自己能为项目提供何种帮助。有些非核心职位可能造就一个工作室,比如营销或财务负责人。训练自己成为可担当上述职位之一的人或许也有价值,这样你就能在会议上更好地表达自己的想法。

要去哪里寻找此等冒险行为的合作者呢?如果你正在学习某游戏或技术课程,那么就在周围找找看。大学通常也会开设艺术、编程或设计课程。张贴布告,让志同道合的人与你联系。你也可以参加mod或开源开发群体聚会,志趣相投的人会为现有游戏或新游戏制作内容,这是个获得经验和面见同龄同趣人士的绝妙方法。

组建起开发团队后,下一步就需要决定制作游戏的类型。在考虑游戏制作之前,你首先需要的是某些出色的游戏想法。通常来讲,你不应采用那些其他人已经广泛采用的游戏想法。目前有大量开发商正在制作《FarmVille》式的游戏,该题材也有很多发展机遇。然而,除非你是此类游戏的狂热粉丝,否则很难有足够的灵感来制作出某些特别且能够脱颖而出游戏。坚持做目前已较为熟悉的方向,专注于设计那些玩家会购买的游戏。

在社交场合中,他人必然会询问“何以维持生计?”这个问题,当我表示自己是个游戏设计师时,时常会有人在后续的讨论中向我阐述他们的奇妙游戏想法。然而,只有少数能真正称得上游戏创意,多数充其量只是可在其中设置游戏的叙事背景而已。如果你觉得故事最为重要的话,我不认为你是站在游戏制作的角度思考问题,因为它也可以被拍摄成电影。尽管游戏中可以承载故事而且能够从故事中获益,但许多游戏并不真正依赖于故事,缺乏故事也不会影响到那些游戏巨作。《俄罗斯方块》中有什么故事?那些方块因何从天而降?没有人关心这个问题,但它依然是众人喜爱的益智游戏。《现代战争2》这部游戏巨作的故事连贯性不是很好,但丝毫不影响我付费购买光盘一遍遍地玩。《潜龙谍影》的故事不甚明了,我跳过剧情和对话直接体验极具吸引力的内容——游戏可玩性。

idea(from candobizmag.wordpress.com)

idea(from candobizmag.wordpress.com)

或许听起来有点匪夷所思,但萌生精妙游戏想法的关键在于思考游戏的核心机制。核心机制可比作游戏的心脏,指的是玩家在游戏世界中控制的东西以及此类控制的含义。《愤怒的小鸟》的核心机制是弹射物体以击中目标。作为玩家,我需要控制的是弹射的力度和角度,这便是核心机制。在《星球大战:霍斯战役》中,当敌人变得越发强大且开始反击时,玩家可以放置的单位种类也随之增多。我们还要注意次级游戏机制这个层次,这些构建于整体体验之上的机制会增加游戏的可玩性。次级机制需要起到补充作用,不可损害到核心机制。在《愤怒的小鸟》中,与某些鸟类功能的互动属于次级机制。我们也在《星球大战:霍斯战役》中添加了资源搜集部分和单位的AI控制。

尽管对好游戏而言想法至关重要,但这也是整个开发过程中最简单的环节。产生新想法很简单,灵光一闪有时只需数秒时间。想法的执行却要麻烦得多,可能要花上数个月时间。因而你完全可以自由处理自己的想法,将它们共享、记录、丢弃或融合均可。只要有想法产生,我就会把它记下来,我在iPod上留了个便签页面记录游戏想法。记录往往只需要数秒钟时间,但足以让我回想起自己的想法。这意味着,我随时都有大量可拓展的想法。我知道许多想法都不怎么样,但我希望在这个列表中总有些可以构建出游戏的精华。

你也应该将想法与团队成员分享,听听其他游戏开发者的意见,将自负心抛到九霄云外。想法是否采纳的主要评判标准不是该想法出自何人,而是想法有多好。留心你以及团队表达想法所采用的系统,在游戏项目开发过程
中,你需要将更多想法融入游戏中。

最后,扩大灵感来源的深度和广度。玩大量游戏固然没有错,但还应该注意其他艺术、文学、电视、电影和日常生活,这些都有可能给你带来灵感。游戏想法可能随时在随处出现,做好捕捉这些想法的准备正是你的工作!(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

How to Start a Games Development Studio

Tomas Rawlings

Over the last few years a combination of the connectivity offered by the Internet, easily available development tools such as Flash or UDK, and a proliferation of new platforms such as iPhone and Android has meant that making and publishing games has never been easier. Stories abound of a handful of people who have made their fortunes from simple yet popular games ideas such as Angry Birds or Minecraft. It has been said that we all have at least one novel inside us – does that translate to games too? I am going to take a look at how we might extract those games ideas from your head into playable experiences you can share or sell.

This blog article looks at the creative side of the process, about the ideas and inspiration. The next article I’ll be contributing is about the business side of starting a new studio. Neither is an exhaustive list of all the issues nor a fool-proof guide to making it. Make no mistake; making games is hard work, and making money from games is tough. However the reward of seeing other people getting pleasure from your game and giving them a slice of fun makes the hard slog feel worth it.

Games are made from a combination of a design for the game, artwork and sounds that represent that design and programming to bring it together. Currently at Red Wasp Design we have one programmer, one artist and one designer (me!) and we’re outsourcing the sound design. One person can have multiple roles. For example, a programmer might also do the design, but ultimately you need all of these roles covered to make your game happen.

Ideally you’ll be in a position to do at least one of the roles. If not, you need to find more people to join you. For that you’ll either need to hire them or get them to join you at the start as a partner in the project. In many ways I think it’s a huge advantage to have others join you as partners in this sort of venture, as it shares the responsibility around and gives you others to bounce ideas and suggestions off of. If you’re not in a position to do at least one of the roles; then ask yourself what are you offering? There are other non-core roles that can still make or break a studio such as marketing or finance. It might also be worth training up to be able to do one of these roles, so you are better able to represent your ideas around the table.

Where can you find partners for this venture? If you’re a student on a games or technology course, then look around you. Universities and the like will often have arts, programming or design courses. Stick some posters up asking for like minded people to contact you. You can also get involved in the mod scene or the open source development scene, where like-minded people meet to make content for existing games or indeed new games – it’s a great way to get experience and meet fellow enthusiasts.

Assuming you’ve been able to assemble a team of people, next you need to know what sort of a game you wish to make. Before you can consider making games, you need to have some great ideas for games. In general I think you should avoid ideas for games that are following where everyone else is going. Currently lots of developers are making FarmVille-type games and there is lots of opportunity in that genre. However unless you’re a huge fan of them, you’ll struggle to be inspired enough to make something really special that will stand out. Stick to what you know for now and worry about making the sort of games you would buy.

One of the most common conversations I have in social situations after I’ve had the inevitable “what do you do for a living?” question and I’ve answered, “I’m a games designer,” is the follow up discussion where they tell me about their amazing idea for a game. However very rarely is it an idea for a game, more often than not it is a narrative setting in which you might place a game. But it could also be a film, and if you’re thinking story first a foremost, I’m not sure you’re in the right place to be making games. This is not meant to be mean – it’s just that while games can have a story and can benefit from a story, many games don’t need them nor fail to be great games without them. What is the story in Tetris? Why are these blocks falling from the sky? Nobody cares, because it’s an amazing puzzle game. Modern Warfare 2; amazing game but the story was a little disconnected. That didn’t stop me from paying cold hard cash for a copy and playing it over and over. Metal Gear Solid; what is the story there? I have no idea. I lost the plot ages ago and skipped the dialogue to get to the good stuff; the gameplay.

This might sound off the point, but key to generating a great game idea is to be thinking of the game’s core mechanic. The core mechanic is the thing at the heart of the game that we as the player get to control and what that control means in the game world. In Angry Birds the core mechanic is flinging objects to take out targets. As the player I get to control the strength and angle of the flinging. That’s the core mechanic. In Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth I can place objects in the landscape that shoot to stop other target units from routing between two points. As a player I get to control the type and position of the objects I place. This placement strategy forms the core mechanic.

Once you’ve got the core mechanic, you then start to add variation to this. So in Angry Birds it starts to vary the type and function of the Birds while making the targets stronger and more complex. In Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth, the player gets more types of units to place while the enemy gets stronger and starts to shoot back. Then we can look to layer in secondary game mechanics; these are additional gameplay devices that build on the overall experience. Secondary mechanics need to complement and not detract from the core mechanic. In Angry Birds, it is about adding an interaction to the functionality of the additional bird types. In Star Wars: Battle for Hoth we added a resource collection component and also AI controls for the units.

Ideas, while vital to good games, are in many ways the easiest of the whole process. It’s easy to think of new ideas, taking only seconds to have a light-bulb moment. Implementing the idea is the tough bit, and that can take months. So be free with your ideas, share them, write them down, drop them, remix them. Whenever I have an idea, I jot it down; I keep a note page on my iPod with games ideas on. Just a few words on each, but enough to remind me of what I was thinking about. This means I’ve always got lots of ideas handy to tap into (mine has 40 odd ideas on it currently). I know lots of them will be rubbish, but within that list I hope there are some uncut gems we can build upon.

Ideas should also be a shared resource with the team, listening to your fellow games developers’ own ideas and pushing your ego into the background so that the main criteria for the adoption of an idea is not who generated it, but how good it is. Take note of the systems you and your team are generating to arrive at an idea; as a game development project progresses, you’ll need more ideas within that game. The same process you’re developing here should serve you well at these other points too.

Finally, draw deep and wide for inspiration. Yes, play lots of games but also look to art, literature, TV, films and everyday life to inspire you. A brilliant idea can come from anywhere and at any time – it’s your job to be ready to catch it! (Source: Gamasutra)


上一篇:

下一篇: