作者：Michael Bitton

Cinco Barnes是游戏行业元老及Spacetime Studios开发者，他在MMORPG.com的采访中提到了对MMO手机游戏发展前景的一些看法，以下是其访谈内容：

为何认为现在是开发者进入手机MMO游戏领域的绝佳时机？

因为这是我们（Spacetime Studios）现在应该做的事。早在2005年，我们稍微尝试着创造了大规模的PC MMO，但那时候我们的发展情况却并不理想，这有点浪费我们对MO游戏的满腔热情以及我们所具备的游戏开发技术。在2009年，当我们发现iPhone平台拥有广阔的发展前景时，我们便决定花一些时间去开发iPhone游戏。我们的主要技术人员Rick Delashmit（游戏邦注：他也是《Ultima Online》主程序员以及《Star Wars Galaxies》主要技术人员），最先说道：“为什么我们不做一些自己擅长的事？让我们的成员都去尝试创造手机MMO。”所以我们便抓紧脚步，开始创造手机MMO游戏。面对如此多强大的手机设备，我们知道，我们拥有广阔的空间能够开发出优秀的休闲MMO游戏，所以便义无反顾地前进了。

pocket Lengend 1(from mmorpg)

Spacetime Studios开发了手机MMO《口袋传奇》。你能否跟我说说在创造MMO游戏体验时你们遇到了哪些技术和设计方面的挑战？

那时候我们认为第一件事便是，不要急于行事，而是先评估创造一款MMO必须具备的基本要素。因为我们已经非常熟悉MMO游戏，所以对我们来说首要挑战便是尽可能地回到初始阶段，寻找我们能够依赖的核心游戏设置。加之，我们工作室并未投资上百万巨资去开发游戏，我们发行MMO游戏只是看到了它的发展前景，并且我们希望借此制作出一款稳定且有趣的游戏，能够形成长期活跃的游戏社区。而事实也证明我们这么做是对的，这比起我们满怀期望并投入所有精力去制作一款“完美”游戏，然后再发布内容更有效。

你们团队从《口袋传奇》的开发中吸取了何种经验，你们要如何利用这些经验继续完善这款游戏并开发更多优秀的手机MMO游戏？

我们从《口袋传奇》中获得的宝贵经验是，一方面，我们知道要尽量保持游戏内容简单，并且让游戏拥有继续发展的空间。另一方面，我们发现自己低估了MMO玩家对于游戏的强烈欲望。我们总是很容易沉浸于PC MMO游戏中，不分昼夜地探索与挑战。但是作为一个设计团队以及游戏开发者，我们却低估了手机用户对于MMO游戏类型以及游戏深度和时间的需求。我们除了赋予游戏休闲性，还应该让玩家能够一直进行挑战与冒险，保持MMO游戏的深度，较为复杂的核心机制，让玩家能够感受到与PC MMO相同的深度游戏体验。所以对于我们来说，这真的是非常宝贵的经验，而MMO玩家总是会期待能够尝试一款好游戏，即使我们提供的是一款小规模的游戏，他们也会坚持玩游戏并希望在不断深入时体验到更多复杂的内容。

pocket Lengend (from mmorpg)

我们都知道，手机游戏都是一些休闲的小型游戏，所以很多人便怀疑MMO游戏是否适用于智能手机。你如何看待这一点？

我想我们没有必要担心这个问题。当《Star Wars Galaxies》和《Guild Wars》发行时，我们也听到有人说此类游戏不能作为MMO游戏。当然了，我这里所说的是一些制作早前开放世界游戏的保守派的观点，而且我也不知道他们的这个态度是对还是错，但是我在MMO上的游戏体验的确是与好友有关。当我们进入一款游戏中，不论是《EVE Online》中穿梭在银河的游戏机制还是在《Guild Wars》所感受到的乐趣，我都能够与好友一起进行体验。而《口袋传奇》的游戏机制和特性也是为了培养玩家之间的这种关系。MMO游戏中必须具有一些特殊功能，而不应该局限于某些刻板规则，这是开发者在创造一款优秀游戏时必须注意的一点。

我们希望通过手机平台更好地推广优秀的游戏类型，而不是跟手机用户说“嘿，你们想不想尝试一款非常有深度且能够让你与好友一起挑战的游戏？”我们热爱MMO游戏，而将它带到手机市场则意味着我们希望能够让《愤怒的小鸟》以及《Ragdoll Blasters》玩家感受到这种类型游戏的乐趣。而现在，我们接收到的很多反馈表明，《口袋传奇》是大多数人接触到的第一款多人合作游戏，但是与其它游戏的不同之处是，《口袋传奇》既体现了休闲游戏的易用性，也带有PC MMO游戏的复杂性，除此之外，这款游戏也让玩家能够与自己熟识的人一起游戏，而对于我来说，这就是真正的MMO游戏。

最后，你认为手机MMO在未来5年里能够取得何种发展？

这真的是一个好问题。我真心认为，具有深度与休闲的多人游戏体验，如《口袋传奇》等将继续快速发展，但这只是第一个层次，除此之外，我们还希望在手机MMO游戏中能够出现更多具有深度和丰富内容的游戏机制，并且带有社交性和物理性，而这也是PC MMO所不具备的。

你必须清楚，为了创造出更优秀的手机游戏，你就必须赋予它们更多突出特性，使其不同于PlayStation、XBOX或者PC上的游戏。我认为手机游戏能够继续重塑人们对于传统MMO游戏的定义，创造出更加有趣的内容，这些游戏之所以能够存活下来，是因为它们能够创造出一些你在《魔兽世界》中体验不到的新内容，或者它们能够引出一些你在《Rift》等游戏中感受不到的新体验，手机游戏必须更加努力地突显自己的特色方有望获得成功。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2011年2月25日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（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）

Pocket Legends Interviews: Cinco Barnes Talks Mobile MMOs

By Michael Bitton on February 25, 2011

MMORPG.com:You’ll be speaking at GDC 2011 next week on bringing MMOs to the mobile space. Can you give us a preview of what you’ll be discussing?

Cinco Barnes:Yeah, the nature of my talk out at GDC is gonna be about how we essentially adapted our favorite large scale pc game type for mobile devices. First for the iOS and then later for Android and I’ll be talking about some of the major design challenges that we ran into, dealing with crushing something of large scale down to something that’s ultimately pretty small and portable, and some of the stuff we’ve discovered, A. about how MMO audiences are really the same whether they’re playing on PC or whether they’re playing on mobile in some ways. And then some of the key differences, some really key differences about how to approach this that we found after developing Pocket Legends that may not be obvious to folks who are just starting down the path of building multiplayer content on the new mobile devices, so that’s sort of the high level, I guess.

MMORPG.com:Why do you feel now is the right time for developers to get into the mobile MMO space?

Cinco Barnes:Well, it was the right thing for us at Spacetime Studios because back in 2005 we sort of started down the road of making a really large scale PC MMO, but as things went for us we weren’t going to be able to continue, and it seemed like kind of a waste of a bunch of folks who love MMOs and have the technology to build MMOs. We had spent a little bit of time developing some games for the iPhone, which we fell in love with right around 2009 and had some development bandwidth to play around with it. One of our chief technologists, Rick Delashmit, who was lead programmer of Ultima Online and was one of the chief technology guys behind Star Wars Galaxies, it was his idea originally to say, “Hey, why don’t we take what we can do, take our stuff and make a mobile MMO.” And sort of from there, the speed really caught on with us, and we love it, it makes a lot of sense. Very powerful devices, all connected to the internet, we’re able to do real time social gameplay, I don’t know, the doors just seemed to open once we headed down the path of making the game.

MMORPG.com:Spacetime Studios are of course the developers behind the mobile MMO Pocket Legends. What challenges, both technical and in design, did you face when bringing the MMO experience to mobile users?

Cinco Barnes:Well, I think the number one thing was for us to sit back and assess what it is that fundamentally makes an MMO. I mean, being someone like yourself who is obviously so close to the MMO community, I’m sure if you were to pull a random person, they’ll have a random feature at the top of their list that is going to define what the MMO experience is for them. For us, really, the number one challenge was to step back for enough so that we could see a core nugget of gameplay that we could build on. Plus, we’re also a studio that didn’t invest like hundreds of millions of dollars in a game that had to succeed, we launched a game fully aware that MMOs grow, and so we just wanted to put out something that was super solid and really fun, that over time would grow with an active community. That turned out to work really well, a lot better, in my experience, than putting a whole lot of effort into a game that is supposed to be perfectly complete when it launches, ‘cause that’s significantly harder to do than what we do with Pocket Legends.

MMORPG.com:What lessons have you and your team learned in developing Pocket Legends and how do you intend to apply them to the continued development of Pocket Legends as well as any future projects in the mobile MMO space?

Cinco Barnes:Well we are working on some new mobile MMO content and new games that will be coming out, I’ll be showing some cool stuff from our new game that’s coming out. And some of the big lessons I think we learned were to A. we were right to keep it simple, and to put out something that we could grow, that was dead on. But some of the things on the other side, we underestimated just how intense and ravenous an MMO player can really get. We know how obsessive we get when we’re into a game and how the hours turn into days, and how we get so deeply involved with the lore and the progress with our quests. And I think we as a design team, as developers, really kind of underestimated how the mobile audiences are going to adopt that MMO style of play, and really demand deep, long gameplay.

Keep a casual surface, where you can continue to advance, where you can continue to get cool adventures and find cool stuff like that, but there still has to be this deeper, even harder core that goes along with it, that dedicated fans can bite into it deeply just as they would other comparably larger products on the PC. So, that was a really interesting lesson, and MMO players like a good game. Even if we give them a small one, they’ll stick with it and demand that it gets bigger over time.

MMORPG.com:Mobile gaming is generally considered to be a casual, bite-sized affair, and so there are undoubtedly some people who are skeptical about the idea of MMOs on their smartphones. What would you say to those skeptics?

Cinco Barnes: I say, don’t sweat it, we’re cool. I was there when Star Wars Galaxies, when Guild Wars came out, and I was around a lot of very articulate and deep thinking people who said that an instanced based game can’t be an MMO. Of course, I’m talking about some old school folks who made some original open-world games, and I don’t know if that attitude is really correct, because ultimately I think my experience in MMOs is really defined by my friends. And when we really get into a game, whether it’s the very extensive real-world sort of travel mechanisms of going all the way across the galaxy in something like EVE Online, or popping into an instance for a bit of quick fun in something like Guild Wars, it all sort of comes down to the fact I’m experiencing this with some of the closest people in my life. And we feel like in Pocket Legends the mechanics of the gameplay and the specifics of the game are in and of themselves really just there to foster a really good relationship between people, and I think saying that you have to have a particular list of features in order for it to be considered an MMO on a sort of a dogma basis, I think that’s a little bit limiting, and that’s probably not a concept that a developer who wants to do really good business is going to be thinking.

We’re going to be looking at mobile as an opportunity to introduce what we know to be a really cool style of gameplay, as opposed to asking the mobile community, “Hey, you guys want to play a really extremely deep game that gets you involved with relationships with other people?” They might not know. We love it, and so bringing it to the mobile market means that we spark that interest among the Angry Birds crowd and among the Ragdoll Blasters of the world. And now we’re hearing from a lot of people that Pocket Legends is the first multiplayer cooperative experience that they’ve really ever had, and to see the contrast when they feedback to us, the differences between Pocket Legends’ casual accessibility and the difficulty of some of the PC MMOs that are out there on the market, the one consistent factor is they can still play with people that they care about, and that to me, that’s the MMO.

MMORPG.com:Finally, where do you see the mobile MMO space in five years?

Cinco Barnes:I think it’s an excellent question. I think from my perspective I really really earnestly believe that deep but casual multiplayer experiences like the Pocket Legends MMO and other MMOs that Spacetime will be developing, this is obviously going to be considered the first tier, and then beyond, what we expect is much more deeper and richer game mechanisms, game mechanisms that probably reach out in a social fashion, in a physical fashion, in ways that the PC really just simply cannot.

You have to realize that in order for mobile games to be effective they need to do things differently and in some cases better when they can when compared to the really awesome experiences you have by default on say a PlayStation or an XBOX or your PC. And so my expectation is that things on mobile will continue to challenge what you conceive of as an MMO, and it’s gonna do it in some pretty interesting fashions, because these products that survive will survive because they pull it off, because they do something you are not experiencing in World of Warcraft, or they pull off something that you wouldn’t expect in a game like Rift, or in a game like DCU, all of them great games, but the mobile stuff is still going to have to do some different stuff in order to be noticed and in order to be successful.（source:mmorpg）