作者：Matthew Lynley

在本周的Zynga Unleashed发布会上，Zynga发布最新“Ville”系列作品《CastleVille》。《CastleVille》似乎比其他作品更雄心勃勃（游戏邦注：游戏比Zynga其他作品画面更优，游戏音效来自75人的管弦乐队）。

castle from venturebeat.com

《CastleVille》创意总监Bill Jackson日前接受采访，谈论游戏设计理念。

能否描述下这款游戏的规模？游戏规模相比《CityVille》情况如何？

我们在《CastleVille》中着眼3点内容。这是Ville系列的第4款作品，所以我们是站在巨人的肩膀。每款作品都有融入新元素，我们希望这款游戏能够通过我们添加的元素完美呈现。我们希望瞄准探险内容。我们希望将故事和叙述带入新高度。这一部分也是为了提高游戏的制作价值，因为我们需要让角色更具粘性和更加丰富，我们投入大把时间，将角色塑造得活灵活现。

我们最先的焦点是将社交性带入新高度，我们实现方式并非抛弃先前游戏的经验教训，而通过完善游戏情景，提出新创意。就是诸如声誉机制之类的简单内容，我们已在系列Ville游戏中融入此元素，这款游戏同样也融入这一元素，这是获得奖励的渠道，此元素贯穿于整个游戏设计。

《CastleVille》的团队规模有多大？

我们不想公开达拉斯Zynga的规模或《CastleVille》的制作团队。我们最初只是个规模很小的构思团队，开发工作完全由这个小团队承担，随着项目的进展，游戏越来越具规模，我们逐步在团队中添加新成员。

《CastleVille》看起来比其他Zynga作品更杰出，但游戏在配置一般的电脑上可行吗？

这是我们的关注焦点之一。我们一直希望所有用户都能体验这款游戏。在测试过程中，尤其是《CastleVille》这款精美的游戏，我们在各种电脑上进行试验，旨在确保游戏能够稳定运作（游戏邦注：Bill觉得很多人都忽略或放弃这点）。

可以谈谈游戏背后的艺术方向吗？

我们受到许多元素的启发，这款游戏的许多灵感都来自传统动画。DreamWorks的《怪物史瑞克》是我们的灵感来源之一。游戏的某些艺术风格也遵循我们艺术总监一贯的风格。随着项目的进展，我们开始面对各种不同任务，也曾遇到危急时刻，但你会发现我们最终收获的是优质画面，我们对此非常自豪。

你们期望用户每天体验《CastleVille》多久？

我们反复谈到用户的15分钟体验，这就是你所拥有的时间。当然若你想要在游戏中投入更多时间，也是可以的。这完全取决于玩家。我们开会讨论时真正关心的是游戏能够配合玩家的时间，你可以利用休息时间体验，游戏给人的感觉像是正餐，而不是点心。

游戏是否比《CityVille》复杂？或者你们试图将其简化？

我们在确保游戏通俗性方面下了很大功夫，这最终由大家判定。游戏通俗易懂，创建自己的城堡非常有趣，我们希望玩家能够以自己喜欢的方式创建城堡。玩家可以创造篱笆迷宫，或者其他有趣内容，我们只是努力确保游戏的简单和通俗性。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Zynga’s Shrek-inspired CastleVille is ‘building on the shoulders of giants’ (Q&A)

By Matthew Lynley

Amid a host other game announcements, Zynga unveiled its newest “Ville” game, CastleVille, at the Zynga Unleashed event this week. CastleVille certainly seems more ambitious than other games — it has better graphics than Zynga’s other titles and the soundtrack features a 75-person orchestra.

I got a chance to chat with Bill Jackson, creative director of CastleVille, to find out just how much work went into the game.

VB: Can you give me a sense of the scale? How big is this game compared to, say, CityVille?

BJ: There are three things we focus on with CastleVille. It’s the fourth installment in the Ville franchise, so we’re building upon the shoulders of giants. There are elements we each bring to the franchise, and we wanted them to sit there nicely with our own elements. We wanted to focus on exploration. We wanted to bring Story and narrative to the next level. That’s part of the push on production values in the game, because we need the characters to be engaging and rich and we spent a lot of time bringing them to life.

We first focused on taking social to a new level, the way we want to do that is not by forgetting the lessons from old games but improving on areas and providing new twists. something as simple as the reputation system, we’ve had that in a few Ville games, but in our game it also serves as a way to unlock rewards and it permeates the entire design.

VB: How big is the team that worked on CastleVille?

BJ: We aren’t disclosing how big Zynga Dallas is or the size of the CastleVille team. We start with a really small concept team, completely develop in that small team, and as we progress and create a much larger game, we add more people to the team.

VB: CastleVille certainly looks much better than other Zynga games, but will I be able to run it on a weaker computer?

BJ: One of the things we really focus on, and we say this a lot, is everyone should be able to play the game. When we test these games, particularly CastleVille which is beautiful, we test it on a wide variety of computers to make sure it’s stable. Not a lot of people notice or keep track of that.

VB: Can you tell me a little bit about the art direction behind the game?

BJ: We’re inspired by a lot of places, there’s a lot of traditional animation we’re inspired by in this game. DreamWorks has done Shrek — that was an inspiration for us. Part of it is also evolution of an art style that our art directors have been working on their entire lives. It’s progressing and progressing, we do different things, we’ve worked on some really serious stuff, but if you look you can see a progression toward this art style that’s really beautiful and we’re really proud of it.

VB: How long do you expect people to play CastleVille each day?

BJ: We talk a lot about the fifteen minute window where people have time for us, and it’s all about as much time as you have. There’s a corollary too, if you want to spend as much time with the game, we make sure that’s possible. It’s relaly up to the player. When we’re talking around the design table, we really care that it’s on your time, you can play it on your coffee break and it feels like a meal — not just a snack.

VB: Is the game any more complex than, say, CityVille? Or are you guys trying to keep it simple?

BJ: We work very hard to make sure the game is accessible, it comes back to the everyone comment. It’s accessible, building your castle is fun and rewarding. Building walls in this game is fantastic and fun and we want to make sure you can build it however you want. You can build hedge mazes or anything crazy like that, we just make sure it’s super simple and super accessible.（Source：venturebeat）