作者：Vlad Micu

Playfish伦敦工作室总监Jeferson Valadares及其团队肩负沉重使命。他们的任务是：理清社交游戏的未来发展方向。在Valadares看来，这意味着他们需在游戏中融入更多社交情 感和故事元素。Valadares表示，“第一代游戏主要关乎竞争和排行榜元素，我们正在观察这类游戏的未来发展态势及要如何充分利用Facebook有 所变化的用户体验。”Valadares在某次采访中谈及如何将团队视作企业单位进行管理，分析社交游戏领域的下步发展，及要如何在全球范围内经营公司文化。

Jeferson Valadares from gamesauce.org

团队管理

Valadares表示，“我们投入众多时间试验自己的上线游戏。每周游戏都会呈现新元素。发行过众多作品及拥有庞大用户基础的优点是你可以在不同游戏中试验这些内容，查看其运作情况。”各Playfish团队都将项目视作小型企业进行管理，此过程让他们得以轻松获悉什么新功能能够顺利运作。各团队会将运作顺利的功能植入自己的作品中。

game screenshot from gamesauce.org

Valadares表示，“现在公司已有团队开始着手新项目，这些团队正在试验不同类型的游戏构思。”Valadares工作室的一个新团队尝试通过更具合性质的方式体验社交游戏。据Valadares表示，这旨在弄清此模式如何在减少玩家参与游戏所需好友数量的同时提高他们之间的社交关系。Valadares表示，“玩家无需和10位同事共同操作内容，只需和3位好友合作。”

质量>数量

随着越来越多公司开始涉足社交游戏，社交游戏领域在过去几年获得显著发展（游戏邦注：Valadares从此发展趋势中看到积极的一面，他不仅鼓励同事进行更多尝试，同时希望看到更多业内人士这么做）。

他表示，“当行业日益扩大，业内人士就能够制作出并非瞄准大众用户的独特内容。很多走此路线的人士最终都获得成功。”

除更多尝试外，Valadares还发现，行业涌现更多融入合作模式的作品。这是否能够转化成社交游戏还有待分晓。Valadares表示，“这可能实现，但我不确定这能否在短期内达成，因为我们所处的位置越尖端，所要进行的运算就越多。除非我们转而运用OnLive之类的服务，这样你就不需要借助强大计算机呈现内容，行业就会涌现富有社交性的尖端内容。”

新鲜的灵感

Valadares表示，“有时我们会参考棋盘游戏。这类游戏的优点在于其包含优质故事内容。这通常颇吸引眼球。”Valadares希望社交领域未来能够包含若干元素。“能够出现杰出的故事游戏，因为用户非常一直都非常看重故事元素，我觉得这种情况会一直持续下去。所以我们要如何在社交体验中更凸显此元素？行业已进行若干粗略尝试。”

Playfish文化

获得显著发展后，Valadares的伦敦工作室努力维持自己的公司文化。Valadares表示，“我们获得显著发展，2009年只有3位员工离开公司。我觉得这非常好。我们持续广泛招募人员。公司和我刚加入时相比扩大了4倍（游戏邦注：1年多前公司规模还很小）。”

由于获得显著发展，Valadares不断问自己：“我们要如何庆祝此成绩，同时牢记工作室的最初目标。”随着公司新工作室在全球各地纷纷成立，Playfish人员正努力维持着相同的公司文化。Valadares表示，“在伦敦，各成员都很清楚公司的发展变化，但要将其他工作室联系起来则就困难许多。我们既积极寻求发展，同时又努力维持我们最初的创新精神。”

但就Playfish各地区工作室的特殊文化来说，有些文化差异性应受到推崇。Valadares解释称，“在中国，工作室成员偏好某些游戏。过去，我们试着让他们制作西方国家的游戏，但最后发现他们更擅长制作自己理解的内容。这也是我们分别在美国、欧洲和亚洲设立工作室的原因所在。”

游戏邦注：原文发布于2010年11月9日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（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）

Playfish’s Jeferson Valadares on teams as business units, social game evolution and managing the company’s culture

by Vlad Micu

Playfish London’s studio director Jeferson Valadares and his team have a big task ahead of them. Their mission: figure out what’s next for social games. For Valadares, that means bringing out more social emotions and narrative in games. “The first generation was about competition and leaderboards, but the second generation is more about self-expression,” says Valadares. “We’re still waiting to see what is going to be next and how to make use of the changing user experience on Facebook.” We sat down with him to talk about teams as business units, the next step in social game evolution and managing a company’s culture worldwide.

Little big teams

“We spend a lot of time experimenting on our live games,” says Valadares. “Every week, there’s always something new in a game. The benefit of having a lot of games and big audience is that you can try these things out in different games and see what works.” With each team at Playfish managing their game as a small business unit, this process allows them to easily find out which new features work well. The individual teams then take the successful features and appropriate them into their own game.

“There are teams that are starting new games now, and these are the teams that are trying different types of game concepts,” says Valadares. One of those new teams at Valadares’ studio has started to take a more collaborative approach to playing social games. According to Valadares, the goal was to figure out how this could minimize the amount of friends playing a social game, but increase the social relationship between them. “Instead of doing something with ten people you are just colleagues with, why don’t you do something with three people you’re friends with,” explains Valadares.

Quality > quantity

With an increasing amount of game companies focusing on social games, the social game space has experienced exponential growth in the past couple of years.
Valadares sees the positive side of this growth, not only encouraging his own colleagues to experiment more, but also hoping to see more of that around him.

“When the space gets this big, there is space for people to do some unique things which might not be for everyone,” he argues. “But there are enough people who are interested in that to be successful.”

Aside from experimentation, Valadares is also noticing a rise in projects that involve cooperative game modes. Whether or not that could translate into social games is still not clear. “It could be,” says Valadares. “I’m not sure whether that’s going to happen in the short-term though, just because the more high-end you get, the more computing you need. Unless we move to things like OnLive, where you don’t need a strong computer when those things take off, then we’ll see social high-end as well.”

Fresh inspiration

“Sometimes we look at board games,” admits Valadares. “The value of having good writing, a good story. It’s something that is really compelling to people in general.” There are lots of things Valadares would like to see in the social space. “A really great story-based game, because a story is something that is very strong for humans, always has been, and I suspect always will be. So how can we weave that in with the social experience more strongly? There have been a few shallow attempts.”

Playfish culture

Undergoing substantial growth, Valadares’ studio in London is very much struggling to keep their corporate culture in place. “We’ve been growing a lot, there are maybe three people who have left in the last year or so,” says Valadares. “I think that’s pretty good. We’re still hiring a lot. I think the company is four times bigger then when I joined, which was a little over a year ago.”

Because of that growth, Valadares has been constantly asking himself “how we can celebrate success and not forget the reason we do things.” With new offices starting in different areas of the world, a lot of Playfish people are moving around trying to maintain that same culture everywhere. “In London, everybody kind of sees what’s happening, but it’s harder to keep the other studios connected,” admits Valadares. “We’re still trying to grow while maintaining the creative spirit that we had in the beginning.”

But baring in mind the particular cultures of the regions each Playfish office is located in, some of those cultural variations should also be encouraged. “In China, the guys in the office like their particular games,” explains Valadares. “In the past, we tried to make them do Western games, but what we actually realized is that they’re better doing what they understand. That’s exactly why we have an office in the US, Europe and Asia.”（Source：gamesauce）