作者：Tom Curtis

据Kixeye首席执行官Will Harbin所言，Facebook存在着一个严重的问题：传统玩家没有游戏可玩。Harbin认为游戏类型能够有所突破，Facebook可以也应该成为甚至是最硬核的游戏平台。

然而，面对平台上的大量休闲经营类游戏，Harbin认为开发商面临着一场“向玩家证明Facebook是一个可行的游戏平台”的硬战。

Kixeye（原名Casual Collective）公司截止年初，已经在Facebook发布了不少传统策略游戏，例如《Backyard Monsters》和《 Battle Pirates》。Kixeye希望这些游戏能集传统的RTS元素和基于网络在线平台的可用性和持久性于一体。

在最近的媒体采访中，Harbin解释了他认为Facebook游戏不能吸引传统玩家的原因，号召开发商为该平台创造更多种类丰富、品质上乘的游戏。以下是游戏邦编译的访谈内容：

Will Harbin(from kixeye.com)

为何决定转战Facebook平台的硬核游戏领域？你怎么知道时机已经成熟？

因为我在Facebook上找不到想玩的游戏。两年以前，Facebook兴起，Zynga也崛起了，我就去玩《FarmVille》，那款游戏很精致，是很有趣的小型社交应用。但我不会称之为游戏，虽然它集中了大量社交资源，并且Flash在玩家的浏览器上的传输表现也更强了。首先，我最喜欢的游戏类型是RTS，比如《命令与征服》、《沙丘魔堡2》、《星际争霸》等等。然而，在Facebook上还没有人尝试过这类游戏。

但我们对这个主题还是有一点没信心，因为没有人做过Facebook的RTS。我们做《Backyard Monsters》这款游戏时，虽然它一有些硬核游戏机制，但主题被我们和谐了，所以风格上就比较中性。之后我们意识到自己错了。我们慢慢地把《Backyard Monsters》往硬核游戏方向靠——更加血腥、更多怪物。我们甚至一度在游戏中引入完全非卖的装饰性物品，引起了玩家的争夺竞争。《Battle Pirates》发布已有一阵子，它的表现更加突出。这款游戏的吸引力非常强。受到它的驱动，我们想做出Facebook没有但我们却想玩的好游戏。那就是我们的重要目标。

我每天都要在Facebook泡上若干小时，那些玩游戏的人不断地在我的留言板上张贴一些蠢话。虽然讲了些东西，但没有什么实质性的内容吸引我。

Facebook上确实有很多传统游戏玩家，但谁知道究竟有多少人已经将Facebook视为一个准游戏平台呢。

那是因为这些用户在Facebook找不到可玩的游戏！纵观电子游戏的发展史，哪个可靠的平台上不曾有过大量高品质的内容？平台的可行性总是由游戏和内容证明的，对吧？我们得向玩家证明Facebook是一个可行的游戏平台。这是一场硬战。

对我们而言，这场硬战更多地是与易用性有关。我们想让每个人都能很容易地接触到好游戏，无论是在Facebook上，还是其他社交网站，这都没关系——我们追求的是平台的易用性。

鉴于大多数社交游戏社交网站更迎合休闲玩家的事实，你们打算怎么鼓励这些硬核玩家进入社交领域？

一是公共关系，二是口碑。我的意思是，我们看到不少人因为《Backyard Monsters》而首次注册Facebook帐号来玩这款游戏，可见某些策略有起色了。虽然慕名而来的人算不上成千上万，但至少也是成百上千啦。所以我认为刺激硬核玩家的策略就是公共关系加口碑营销的结合体。

总是有那么个最先吃螃蟹的人说：“哇，太酷了，我要告诉我的伙伴们，让他们也来玩。”我们的游戏就是这样走红的。这款游戏有些扩散性，但它的扩散性不像你所见识到的《CityVille》那么快就爆发出来，《CityVille》的用户群体比我们庞大得多，种菜的玩家都在Facebook玩得非常舒服。我们的情况就很不同了，但我们认为这只是时间的问题。只要我们不断发布这类游戏，假以时日，群众雪亮的目光肯定能瞄到它。

Backyard-monsters(from juztimage)

听起来你们好像主要是锁定了不同于“农场”玩家的群体。是吗？

是的，确实是一种截然不同的玩家类型。

为什么不打算追寻那些早就扎堆于Facebook的“农场”类游戏粉丝？

呃，在Facebook上容易分布、容易获得信息量、容易接触到社交资源。有时候Facebook确实受到非议，但我对它的态度很积极。我认为它是一个很不错的合作伙伴。他们希望看到我们的成功，而我们自己也希望有一番作为——这对双方来说是共赢的发展理念。我认为Facebook也想成为一个向许多不同应用开放的优秀平台，而游戏现在就处于领先地位。男性用户在Facebook游戏玩家中并不占优势，所以我们认为该平台值得一试。目前为止，我们的回报不错。

你们的游戏显然继承了传统策略游戏的一些精髓。但你们所做的Facebook游戏与传统策略游戏有什么不同吗？它们在传统RTS游戏表现不济的方面有何突破？

我们的所做所为是确保自己的游戏是一个持久的世界。我的意思是，我对RTS类游戏的期望是制作出根本的战争游戏，创造一个持续的游戏世界。所以，我们需要有真正的玩家在玩游戏——它就是一款MMORTS。《Battle Pirates 》是真正的MMORTS——完全的同步性、持久性、任何时段都有成千上万的玩家在线，并且每个人都在一张虚拟地图上。如果没有Facebook，这一切都将难以实现，因为通过Facebook才能这么轻易得到用户，并让他们为这款游戏而注册帐号。

但阻碍了RTS类型发展的正是的缺乏持续性。我认为RTS就是战略与街机的结合体，它沿袭了《沙丘魔堡》和《命令与征服》等游戏的紧张感。我们竭尽所能地捕捉并传递这种游戏所带来的乐趣，并将它与其他平台的游戏体验合为一体。

是否认为特定的游戏类型特别适合Facebook平台？

我不认为有任何游戏可以在任何平台上顺利发展。你会这么问，因为你看到一大堆人在做Facebook平台的所谓的战略游戏——流行，没有任何风险。但真正的问题是，这对产业的发展带来了恶劣的影响。我们需要其他人来做好游戏，使游戏多样化发展，这样我们才能证明这个平台的可行性。

不幸的是，我们的竞争对手听闻一些谣传，如我们挣得盆满钵满、我们留住了不可计数的玩家等等。然后这些人就说：“哇天呐，我们得模仿！”你知道，我们的《Backyard Monsters》并没有效仿任何游戏——我们只是努力做一款原创的、体现RTS风格的游戏，然后把它投放到Facebook。

我希望当下的其他竞争对手能够明白，能够意识到我们的工作不容易，他们应该在原创内容上多花点精力，而不仅仅是一次又一次地抄袭竞争对手的游戏，或者复制自己的游戏。这种做法对行业发展并无好处。坦白地说，这不是一个良好的长期经营策略。我认为依赖剽窃的项目最终只会走向灭亡。

为何认为游戏产业的“复制文化”是由来已久的现象？

因为这种文化根植于绩效营销和缺乏创意的咨询背景。回首过去，我们目睹了Zynga的蜕变。当越来越多的传统游戏人像新鲜的血液一样注入Zynga，越来越多的原创游戏诞生了。《CityVille》是一个好应用，是一款优秀的游戏！它完美融合了《模拟城市》的趣味和《FarmVille》的收获机制。当Zynga发行这款游戏时，我确实震惊了——他们的努力成果比我想像得好太多了。

我认为他们是在更正自己的市场营销，过去他们也受到不少遣责——因为他们的早期发展策略也和模仿有关。但现在，他们在做的是原创游戏，我为他们叫好。新来的游戏从业者们应该传承这种约定。然而，咨询背景出身的人、或者只看市场绩效的人仍然只关心套现，不知进取。这些人会做的事只有分析然后模仿——这就是他们骨子里的基因。他们算不上游戏设计师，也并不是游戏玩家。趁早把这些人清除出列，游戏行业的发展才会越来越好。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Q&A: Kixeye CEO On Facebook’s ‘Uphill Battle’ To Win Over Core Gamers

by Tom Curtis

According to Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, Facebook has a serious problem: there are no games for traditional players. Harbin thinks things could be different, that Facebook can and should be a platform for even the most core-focused genres and games.

Considering the platform’s historical abundance of casual, management-focused titles, however, he says developers face “an uphill battle to prove to gamers that Facebook is a viable game platform.”

Kixeye, previously known as Casual Collective until earlier this year, has set out to bring more traditional titles to Facebook with strategy games like Backyard Monsters and Battle Pirates. With these titles, Kixeye hopes to merge traditional RTS elements with the accessibility and persistence of a web-based online platform.

In the following interview, Kixeye’s Harbin explains why he thinks Facebook games don’t appeal to traditional players, and issues a call to arms for developers to create more diverse, quality content on the platform.

What made you decide that you wanted to switch into developing more hardcore games for Facebook? What told you the time was right to start developing these kinds of games on that platform?

WH: Because there were no games that I wanted to play on Facebook. Two years ago Facebook is taking off, Zynga’s taking off, and I go and play FarmVille, and it’s polished, it’s an interesting little social app, but I wouldn’t call it a game. But looking at the platform, there’s this huge social graph, and Flash is more than capable of delivering good experiences on everybody’s browser. And first and foremost, my favorite genre has really been real time strategy — like Command & Conquer, the original Dune II, StarCraft, Warcraft, etc. — and nobody had come close to doing anything that was cool on Facebook.

But we were also a bit insecure about themes, because nobody was doing games for them on Facebook. When we did Backyard Monsters, it had some core game mechanics to it, but we made the theme more simple to make it gender neutral. And then we realized we made a mistake with that. We slowly over time made Backyard Monsters more hardcore — with more blood, more monsters. We even introduced at one point decorative items in the game that didn’t sell at all. So people want competition and things like that. And Battle Pirates launched about a little while ago, and it’s doing super well, it’s very sticky in terms the users that are playing. That game was really driven by us wanting to make cool games that we wanted to play that aren’t on Facebook. That’s the bottom line.

I’m on Facebook hours a day, and all these people are playing games are putting stupid crap on my wall. There’s something to this, but there’s no content that appeals specifically to me.

Yeah, it’s interesting. There are certainly a lot of traditional gamers on Facebook, but who knows how many think of it as a go-to game platform.

WH: That’s because there are no games for them! Look at history of video gaming — what platform has really worked that didn’t have a lot of good quality content? It’s always the games and the content that prove out platform, right? We have a bit of an uphill battle to prove to gamers that Facebook is a viable game platform.

For us, it’s more about browser accessibility. We want to make good games that are super accessible to everybody. Whether it’s on Facebook, or another social network sites, it doesn’t matter; accessibility is the point that we’re after.

How do you guys plan to incentivize these hardcore players to jump in to the social space, considering the majority of these social game communities cater towards more casual audiences?

WH: Part of it is PR, part of it is just word of mouth. I mean with Backyard Monsters, we saw a ton of people creating Facebook accounts for the first time to play the game, so something is working. I mean they’re not coming by the tens of millions, but they’re certainly are coming by the hundreds of thousands to play the game. So I think it is a combination of PR, it’s a combination of word of mouth,

There’s always going to be an early adopter who’ll play the game and say, “Oh, this is pretty cool, I’m going to tell my gamer buddies and hey you guys should come and play.” That’s kind of what happened for us. There is some virality going on with the game, I mean it’s not runaway virality like you might see with CityVille because the addressable market is much larger and those players all on Facebook and they’re very comfortable with playing games there. It’s a lot different for us, but I think it’s just a matter of time. As long as we continue to deliver kind of quality titles, people will find out about it and check it out.

So it sounds like you are primarily targeting a different audience than those playing things like FarmVille and CityVille. Is that right?

WH: Yeah, it’s the exact opposite audience.

Why did you decide not to pursue the fans of FarmVille-esque games, who are already on Facebook?

WH: Well, it’s just easier to distribute on Facebook, and it’s easier to acquire traffic on Facebook; it’s easy to access the social graph. You know, I think Facebook does get a bit of flak sometimes, but we’ve had a very positive experience with Facebook. I think they’re great partners to have. They want to see us grow into a big gaming company; we want to grow into a big company, you know, it’s a win-win for both of us. I think Facebook gets it, and that they want to be a good open platform for lots of different kinds of apps, and games are in the front seat right now. And the male demographic in terms of gamers are severely underrepresented on Facebook, so we thought it was worth a shot. And so far, it’s paid off pretty well.

Your games are obviously reminiscent of sort of traditional strategy games. What sort of things do you do differently considering you’re on Facebook? What do these games have to offer that say, a traditional RTS doesn’t?

WH: Well it’s nothing inherent in the Facebook platform, but what we do is make sure things are in a persistent world. I mean my goal within the RTS genre is making the ultimate war game that you can possibly make, and to do that you have to have a persistent world, you need to have real people playing; it’s an MMORTS. And Battle Pirates is a true MMORTS — it’s fully synchronous, it’s persistent, there are thousands and thousands of players online at any given time, and everyone’s on a virtual map. And it’d be really hard to do that off of Facebook, because it’s just easier to get users and have them grow and register for the game.

But really the thing that’s kept back the RTS genre is the lack of persistence. With RTS, I think it’s always been a merger between strategy and arcade; there’s always been that twitchy arcade feel that came with Dune II and Command & Conquer and so on. We’re doing our best to capture that fun, that feel that those games can deliver, but also combine it with kind of some of the drawn out experiences that you see in games on open platforms.

Do you think there are specific genres or game types that work particularly well on Facebook?

WH: No, I think any good game will work anywhere. You’re probably asking about it because you see a bunch of people doing what they consider strategy games on Facebook. It’s because they’re popular, they’re taking no risk whatsoever. But the problem is that approach is very bad for the industry — we need other people creating good games, and diverse games, so that we can prove out the platform.

Unfortunately, we have competitors that hear rumors about how well you’re monetizing, or how well you’re retaining users, and they say, “Oh my god, we need to go copy that!” And you know, we didn’t copy anybody with Backyard Monsters on Facebook — we just try to do an original title with our own take on the RTS genre and put it online.

I’m hoping that other competitors come out there and get the message and realize that it’s not easy to do exactly what we do, and they should spend more energy and effort on doing more original content, rather than just re-skinning competitor’s titles or even re-skinning their own titles over and over again. It’s not good for the industry, and frankly it’s not a good long-term business strategy. I think that those businesses who are relying on those sorts of tactics will eventually fail.

Why do you think that culture of emulating successful titles has persisted for so long?

WH: It’s because they’re all from performance marketing and consulting backgrounds. They’re inherently from backgrounds where they lack creativity, and they’re not from the gaming business. If you look a little while back, you saw a shift at Zynga. When more of the traditional game guys came into Zynga, you started seeing more original titles. CityVille is a good app, it’s a good game! They kind of took like the interesting parts of, say SimCity, combining with the harvesting mechanics of FarmVille. I was pretty surprised when Zynga launched that game; it was a lot better than I expected of what they could do.

I think they’re doing their market justice, they’ve gotten a lot of flak — because in the early days of their history they were doing some copying. But now they’re doing more original titles and I applaud them for that, and I think it’s a testament to some of the new people that they’ve hired on board. But unfortunately, other people that have jumped on the bandwagon, they’re from consulting backgrounds, or they’re from performance marketing backgrounds. The only thing that they know how to do is analyze and copy — that’s just in their DNA, that’s what they do. They’re not game designers and they’re not gamers. So the sooner they get weeded out and put out of business the better. (source:gamasutra）