在我看来，最困难的莫过于向玩家解释为什么我要对自己制作的游戏放任自由。这种情况之前曾出现在《Golemizer》，现在到了《Star Corsairs》又是这样。

不够努力

有些人一直建议我要持续修复游戏内容，要不断进行完善，进行广泛“传播”，不要对其置之不理。我很难反驳这种看法。但不是所有项目都能够靠“付出更多”而自然而然地获得“成功”。有时项目本身就不尽人意，有时你自己能力有限，还有些时候这一构思也许已没有什么发挥空间。

Golemizer from play-free-online-games.com

在没有竭尽全力的情况下，我很满意自己初次涉猎游戏开发，就能制作出《Golemizer》这样的作品。不是所有开发者都能在自己的首款作品中取得类似成绩。我首次就尝试在有些人看来缺乏可能性的项目，而且最终作品还像模像样。我还能做些什么？也许是积累更多经验、认识更多人、寻求更多帮助，或是投入更多时间。或者这些假设不切实际，这就是作品的最佳状态。

当然首次尝试需要我们投入更多时间进行磨合。在付出如此多努力，承受巨大压力之后，我觉得说出“我不想继续这个项目”会让我问心有愧。“少付出些”是否具有可能性？我试过这么做，但要平摊各个项目的时间非常困难，特别是在你明知有些项目最终会无疾而终的情况下。我白天可以同时制作多个项目，但到晚上我就不必这么做。

坚持与否的决定

需注意的是，在制作游戏时，我们并没有明确的路线可循。你通常需要摸索自己的路线，无法看到远处的终点线。没有人会告诉你“再坚持6个月”。也许你得再坚持6个月，也许是6年。“这些人在这款游戏中默默投入6年时间，最终总算苦尽甘来”之类的故事非常励志，但不是所有人都能够在同个项目坚持这么久，等待取得更杰出的成绩。有时是否继续前进只是个判断力问题。

当事情并未取得预期进展时，你会心生疑问。我是不是把事情搞砸了？还是只是我的运气太糟？我是否错过某些重要的营销步骤？还是游戏构思不太妥当？这一构思有没有什么发展空间？

没有人能帮你回答这些问题，所以你需要自己做决定。有些人会提供他们的意见，但若你决定继续坚持下去，最终付出实践的还是你自己。所以你需要权衡利弊，然后做出决策。你如何知道自己所做的决策是否正确？唯一的办法就是看看自己能否招架得住，是否出现沮丧或失望感觉。

进行决策

这里的问题是，“你为什么要对自己的游戏置之不理？”这取决于你的动机。这只是个业余爱好，未涉及其他东西？还是是为了赚钱？还是只是一心想要制作这款游戏。就我而言，我是想要制作某些能够影响我日常生活的作品。让自己脑中的想象内容真正融入我的生活中，给生活带来相应变化。我觉得自己有必要制作这些内容，看看它们会给我的生活带来什么影响。游戏显然有给我的生活带来一定影响，虽然不是我预期的方式。我觉得能够每周工作3-4天就算非常不错，我猜要真是这样，我可能今天还在制作《Golemizer》。我心里其实期待更多，但我是个悲观主义者，觉得能够弥补两天“流失”的付费工作日就已非常足够。现在我每周工作4天，第5天没有工资。我做出这样的决定是为了做自己想做的事。所以我依然有实现自己的部分目标，但不是基于我之前项目的杰出成绩。

所以我的动机和现实情况相抵触。你能否只一味只着眼于现实，希望事情未来能够变更好？或是回到你最初的动机？所以你追随自己的最初动机，然后勉强地说“我正在勇往直前”。大家会因此而讨厌你。其他人会不理解为什么你要“这么快”就放弃，希望你不要把这个项目看作是满足自己最初动机的渠道。而另外一些人则会颇为失落，但他们清楚你为什么要作此决定。

作此决定会损及你的名声，但值得冒险尝试。有人也许会说“等着瞧，他没几个月就会放弃”。事实是，关于什么时候适合继续前进，我们并没有统一标准，没有人会说“他没有达到X目标，所以还马马虎虎”（游戏邦注：也就是所谓的最低标准）。你需要自己划定界限，应对其中后果。这里你不能欺骗自己。在你一心着眼于他人，完全将自己置之度外时，试着探究自己真实的想法。着眼于自己，将他人放置一旁意味着有人会因此而感到不满。对此我们也无能为力。

是不是所有项目都要完全符合最初预期？鲜有独立开发者能在自己的首款作品中获得成功的事实清楚说明，其实并非如此。我无法因自己的头几款作品都是在线游戏而阻止自己尝试其项目。若关于某款MMO游戏的制作，你很想发出“早和你说过”之类的指责，尽管这么做，我现在已了然于心。

离线/单人游戏简单许多

我推出过几款单人Flash游戏，我没有因这些游戏而加班加点，虽然它们表现平平。游戏发行那周你无疑会异常兴奋，但几个月后，你就会开始着手下个项目，不会因为鲜少关注前款作品而觉得有什么不妥。

这就是为什么我现在会呈现这种态度，至少是在我自己制作的项目中。并不是说我不会再自己单独制作在线游戏，而是说换种方式应对其中压力是个不错的选择。这并不意味着制作过程会变简单，而是说后发行工作会轻松些。我猜你应该常收到玩家这类的邮件，询问：“为什么你不再发行新补丁？”，但在我看来，在线游戏玩家对于新内容的期待更强烈。

Star Corsairs from rampantgames.com

有趣的是，虽然《Golemizer》和《Star Corsairs》的表现并不突出，但每天依然有许多玩家会玩这两款游戏（游戏邦注：《Star Corsairs》约有100人，《Golemizer》约有200人，变化不是很大）。同样有趣的是，现在我是“网络明星”，这意味着我可以在互联网投放游戏，通过各种方式吸引用户眼球。在线游戏存在的问题在于“临界规模”。若用户的体验时间都集中在同个15分钟，那么每天100位用户算是不错的成绩，但若时间是分散在一天中不同时间点，那这就没有什么值得高兴的。用户会登陆游戏，然后看到没人在玩，就选择离开。缺乏玩家的MMO很难吸引玩家眼球。

那么我的主要观点是什么？就每天100-200位玩家来说，若游戏属于单人模式，那么我有望每天售出1份，因为用户在考虑“是否要购买游戏”时，不会在乎网站有多少人在线。而若是MMO，他们多半会在玩过一个礼拜后就选择离开，因为他们总是一个人独自体验，我很难售出游戏。我并不是说我每天一定能够出售一份游戏，而是说存在这种可能。而对于没有玩家的MMO来说，开发者要售出游戏就非常困难。这只是我个人的观点。

（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）

When the game you developed is haunting you

The most difficult thing I had (and still have) to do is to explain to players why I’m letting sleep an online game I worked on (not kill just letting it be on its own). It happened to Golemizer and it’s now going in the same direction for Star Corsairs at the moment. It’s not easy to explain it all in an email so let’s see if I can do better on this blog.

You did not try hard enough

It’s probably what some people may feel like telling me. Keep fixing it, keep improving it, keep “spreading the word” about it, don’t let go. It’s hard to argue against that. But still … Not all projects automatically “succeed” simply by “trying harder”. Sometimes the project just isn’t good enough, sometimes you’re just not the right person that could see how to turn this any other way and sometimes the idea already reached its full potential and it’s alright this way.

Without trying to sound like full of myself I’ve now become quite happy with what I achieved as a total newbie with Golemizer. Not all indie devs had that kind of results with their first game. I went with what some call an impossible project on my first try and managed to make something decent out of it. Could it have been anything more? Maybe. Maybe with more experience, more contacts, more help, more time, etc. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s the best it could ever be.

Sure it took a lot of time to be at peace with this first experience. After going so much efforts, stress and unhealthy habits (like barely sleeping) I was then feeling guilty to say “I don’t feel like doing this anymore”. Would it have been possible to just do “less of it”? Well I tried for some time but it’s hard to be equally involved in many projects specially when you have come to accept that one of them won’t get any farther. I’m able to work on many projects at the same time at my day job but then I don’t have to do so in the evening after a full day of work …

But look at game X! They kept going for Y time and it turned out well in the end

Yes. Again something it’s hard to argue against. What you need to realize is when we work on a game we don’t follow a clear path. You create your own path and you can’t expect to see on the horizon the finish line. Nobody can tell you “just keep going for 6 more weeks”. It might as well be 6 more months or 6 more years. It’d make an amazing story to hear “this guys kept going for 6 years with the same game before it met such success” but not everyone is able to stick with the same game for so long while waiting for better results. Sometimes moving on is just a matter of sanity.

When things don’t quite go as you wish they would go you ask yourself a lot of questions. Did I screwed up? Is it just my luck that sucks? Did I miss some important marketing move? Is the concept of the game just lame? Is there any real potential in this idea after all?  And so on …

Nobody can answer these questions for you so you have to make the decisions. Some can offer their opinion but in the end it’s you that will stay behind the keyboard to work if you decide to keep going. So you evaluate the good and the bad and then make a decision. How do you know you’ve made the right one? Well the only way to know is if you can deal with it or not without confusing this state of mind with feelings like frustration or disappointment.

Making the decision

The question is “why would you turn your back on your own game”. Well it depends on your motivation. Is it to just have a hobby and don’t care about anything else? Is it to make money? Is to work on THAT game only? Me it was to create something that would have an impact on my day-to-day life. Have something from my imagination comes into my own little real world and change it. I feel the need to create and I also feel the need to see these creations have a measurable impact on my life. Oh it sure did but not quite in the way I expected. Well the way I hoped. Just being able to keep a day job for maybe 3-4 days a week would have been an amazing result for me and I’d still be working on Golemizer today I guess. Deep down I was hoping for more but since I’m a pessimist being able to compensate for 2 days of “lost” paid work would have been enough. Instead now I work 4 days a week but that 5th day is completely unpaid. It’s a choice I made to help me work on what I really like to do. So I still achieved part of it but it wasn’t based on the good results of my previous projects.

So there comes a time your motivation and reality collide. Do you just deal with reality and hope things get better in the near (or very far) future? Or do you go back to what motivated you in the first place? So you go with your motivation and have to make the tough call of saying “I’m moving on”. People can hate you for that. Others don’t understand why you’re giving up “so soon” and wish you would consider this project as something else than an expression of your initial motivation. Others are sad but understand why you’re making this decision.

Making this decision can possibly hurt your reputation but it’s a risk to take. People might just say “bah don’t bother he’ll just leave in a few months”. The fact is there’s no universal standard for when it’s okay to move on. There’s no minimum result that will have people say “oh he didn’t reach X so it’s okay”. You have to draw the line yourself and deal with the consequences. It’s about not lying to yourself really. Asking yourself when are you just doing this for others and just putting yourself on the back burner. Choosing yourself over anybody else can only mean not everyone will be happy about it. There’s not much to do about that.

Again are all projects meant to inevitably match initial hopes at some point? The fact that few indies have success with their first game (or 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.) tells me that the answer is “no”. I can’t prevent myself to not work on other projects just because my first few ones were online games. If you wish to tell me “told you so” about anything related to the creation of an MMO feel free to do so. I’m at peace with it now.

Offline/single-player games help you to sleep better at night

I released a few single-player Flash games and I’m not loosing any sleep over them even if they didn’t perform not that amazingly. Sure you get that adrenaline rush on the week of release but a few months later you’re already thinking about the next one and don’t feel bad for not caring about the past.

Maybe that’s why now I’m going in this direction. At least for my own self-motivated projects. Not that I won’t ever work on an online game again on my own but it’s nice for a change to deal with the pressure in a different way. It doesn’t mean that it will be easier but the post-release struggle won’t be the same for sure. Oh I guess you still receive at some point mails from players asking “why don’t you release new patches anymore?” but expectations for new stuff in online games are much greater I think.

An interesting way to look at it is that even if Golemizer and Star Corsairs and not doing particularly well they still receive a somewhat interesting number of visitors each day. 100 for Star Corsairs and 200 for Golemizer, give or take. Now it’s now interesting as in “I’m an Internet star” but it means I’m able to put a game out there and by various means manage to have people discover it. For online games the problem is the “critical mass problem”. 100 visitors per day is great if they all visit your website in the same 15 minutes but not so great if it’s spread on 24 hours. They get in, see nobody around and then leave. An empty MMO is not an attractive one.

So my point? Well on 100-200 visitors per day there’s a chance I might make 1 sale of a single-player game because people don’t care about how many people are online on this website when they visit it when it comes to “do I buy this game or not”. With an MMO they could play for a week, leave because they’re always playing alone and I still haven’t made a sale. I’m not saying I’ll automatically make 1 sale per day but the possibility is there. For an empty MMO the possibility to make a sale is significantly lower. It’s just my own little way to see a bright side in all of this.

But you’re still wrong

I know I won’t change anyone’s mind about what they think I should or shouldn’t do. That’s not really the point anyway. I just know that some people out there might be curious as to why such decision was made. Maybe someone can even learn something from it. Or maybe not. It’s now posted anyway.

So you can stick to “shame on you for giving up so soon” or you can wish me luck for my next project and the next one and the next one. Heck it’d be really great if you’d take some time to leave some feedback on one of them!（Source：over00）