作者：James Nouch

Telltale Games最新发行的iOS版本的《行尸走肉》（The Walking Dead）是一款章节冒险游戏，它最初是在2012年4月面向PC和主机而发行的游戏。

而iOS版本的《行尸走肉》却没有任何“偷工减料”——这仍是与PC和主机版本相同质量的游戏。

同时Telltale也决定给这个新版游戏贴上与公司其他发布于iOS平台的游戏（游戏邦注：这些游戏也是原PC/主机游戏的衍生版本）相同的价格标签。

Telltale Games发行高级副总裁Steve Allison在最近访谈中提到了将一款游戏带向各种平台所面临的挑战，以及如何为这类型游戏设定价格等问题。

walking dead(from pocketgamer)

很明显iOS版本的《行尸走肉》与这款游戏的PC和主机版本非常相似。你们在此过程中遇到了何种技术挑战，并且面对iOS设备你们做出了何种不同的设计？

我们都知道，智能手机和平板电脑的计算机配置正快速发展，甚至将赶超家庭主机，而我们也承认想将所有的游戏推向各种平台。

去年我们投入了大量的努力将我们旗下的游戏引进iOS平台，并挑战iOS游戏开发工作，并创造了《Puzzle Agent》和《Hector》等游戏。

通过这些努力我们不仅提高了技术，同时也能真正理解触摸控制环境与其它平台的区别，并确保核心内容的完整性。

在每次发行中我们都掌握了创建触屏UI的最佳方法，控制改变的必要性，针对于每种设备的优化以及如何面向不同发行模式（区别于我们在PC和主机上所看到的）创造手机应用。

一开始我们便共同制作了《行尸走肉》的PC和主机版本。我们的目标是确保这款游戏的iOS版本与其PC和主机版本一样拥有较高的质量。

对于《行尸走肉》，我们面临着许多艰难的选择，像该选择何种iOS设备才能实现我们的目标，所以我们最终决定该款游戏的iOS版本将不支持第四代iPhone/iPod以下的设备以及iPad 1。

即使这样iOS版本的游戏也需要拥有一些区别于PC和主机版本的特别优势。

特别是面向触屏设备，我们需要创造全新的对话UI和控制UI，从而让玩家在此感受到不同于手柄或键盘/鼠标操作的游戏体验。

你是否考虑过玩家在主机和手机设备上的不同游戏玩法？

我们的章节游戏格式便是面向所有平台让玩家能够在休息时间购买并快速玩游戏。

不管是面向什么平台，游戏的每个章节都拥有一个目标游戏时间，即大约2个小时，而游戏故事也都是一些小篇幅且容易消化的内容。

这些考虑因素映射了手机用户的心态，并且是我们不用纠结任何平台而专注于创造游戏内容的核心特征。

你们如何为iOS版本的游戏定价？在Xbox Live Arcade上每个章节的售价大约为5美元，但是iOS玩家对于游戏价格的想法可能会有所不同……

我们已经在iPad和iPhone的App Store中分别以6.99美元和4.99美元成功售出了我们其它游戏的章节内容。

我们知道《行尸走肉》能够为玩家带去非常棒的触屏体验，并且作为我们第一款同时存在于主机版本的iOS游戏，4.99美元的定价与我们过去在App Store中大获成功的游戏售价是一样的。

iOS平台上的99美分玩家理念只是一种传说。产品的质量和深度才是玩家判断游戏是否物有所值的重要标准。

我们的游戏在最初发行时便进入了排行榜单前10的位置，并且也未出现任何衰败的趋势，那些购买了iOS版本的玩家也给予了积极的反馈意见。

这便证明了我们游戏的定价是合理的，这一价格不会阻碍游戏对玩家的吸引力。

walking dead（from pocketgamer）

你是否认为今后我们将能够看到更多同时发行于主机和手机平台上的游戏？还是说《行尸走肉》只是一个例外？

随着计算机硬件的不断完善以及新设备的不断涌现，早前的模式将会被逐渐淘汰，而我们也将看到更多不一样的新内容。

一些内容开发者将追随着我们的脚步，面向更多不同的平台创造属于自己独特的游戏内容，并基于不同平台而对内容做出相应调整，

而其他开发者将努力获得多个平台的授权而创造出具有主机游戏般高质量的交叉体验，他们并不会在转向手机平台的同时抛弃主机/PC。

这种跨平台体验也许是更大的主机或PC体验的子集，当玩家在不同设备和平台上玩游戏时更是能最大化地感受到跨设备玩游戏的好处。（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）

The 99c iOS gamer is a myth: Consumers will pay more for quality, insists Telltale Games

by James Nouch

Telltale Games’ latest iOS release is The Walking Dead, an episodic adventure game that first launched in April 2012 for PC and consoles.

But The Walking Dead on iOS is no cut-down port – to all intents and purposes, it’s largely the same game.

As such, Telltale saw fit to issue it with the same price-tag as its close relatives on console and PC.

To find out about the challenges of bringing one title to these varied platforms, and how you decide a fair price for such a game, we spoke to Telltale Games’ SVP of publishing Steve Allison.

Pocket Gamer: The Walking Dead for iOS is remarkably similar to the PC and console versions of the game. What technical challenges did that present, and what did you have to design differently for iOS devices?

Steve Allison: As we’ve seen the computing specs for smartphones and tablets rise rapidly to rival home consoles, we committed internally to the idea of ubiquitous content across as many platforms as possible for all of our titles.

The past year we invested a good amount of effort in bringing some of our catalogue titles over to iOS as well as doing some original iOS development on the Puzzle Agent and Hector titles.

This effort was so that we could get our technology there and to really understand what differences the touch control environment would dictate versus our other platforms while keeping the core content intact.

We learned a lot from each release about the optimal way for us to build touch screen UI, the control changes necessary, optimisations for each device and how to build the mobile apps to enable a different kind of distribution model than we see on PC and consoles.

The first title that really was in production along with the PC and console platforms from day one was The Walking Dead. Our goal was to keep the game experience on iOS as high quality as the PC and consoles.

For The Walking Dead we had to make some tough choices as to what iOS devices to support in order realise that goal, so we had to make the call to not support iPhone/iPod below 4s and the iPad 1.

Even then the iOS versions needed some specific asset tuning and tweaks to lighting versus PC and console versions.

Specifically on the touch devices we also created entirely new dialogue UI and control UI to drive the game so that the experience felt like it wasn’t a port from a gamepad or keyboard/mouse experience; it’s all worked out nicely.

Did you give much consideration to the different ways people play games on consoles and mobile devices?

Our episodic game format is designed for all platforms to be consumable in one sitting if a player chooses to, or in quick sessions.

Regardless of platforms, each episode generally has a target play time of about two hours and the pacing of our narrative is always built into smaller digestible chunks.

Those considerations that map to the mindset of what people would define as a mobile consumer are some core traits of how we build our content regardless of the platform.

How did you determine pricing on iOS? Each episode costs roughly $5 on Xbox Live Arcade, but iOS players may have rather different ideas about pricing…

We’ve had good success selling episodes of our other titles on the App Store for $6.99 on iPad and $4.99 on iPhone.

We knew The Walking Dead was shaping up to be a great touch screen experience and as our first universal iOS title that would also be available on console, $4.99 an episode is consistent with our past successful experiences on the App Store and with the pricing on other platforms.

The idea of a 99c gamer on iOS is more myth than fact, it’s the quality and depth of each product that will drive the right price for consumers.

We’ve had a great initial launch as a top 10 title with no signs of slowing down and great feedback on the game from people who have bought the game for their iOS devices.

This is the right price for our game and it has not impeded our ability to get people interested in buying it.

Do you think that, moving forward, we’re going to see more games launching on both consoles and mobile? Or is The Walking Dead a bit of an exception?

With the computing specs continuing to improve as new devices are introduced and older models phased out we will absolutely see a lot more of it.

Some content creators will do what we do and build their content ubiquitously for as many platforms as possible, tuning key aspects per platform.

Many others will build crossover experiences to multiplatform franchises that are more and more console quality, as opposed to huge steps down from their console/PC big brothers when the franchise appears on mobile.

These cross-platform experiences may be subsets of a larger console or PC experience providing cross-device benefits that are maximised when gamers play across devices and platforms.(source:pocketgamer.biz)