作者：Dan Pearson

令人惊讶，Alex Seropian这个制作了两款最著名掌机射击游戏之一的人，居然开始厌恶双摇杆操作方式了。为了让《光晕》也能用双摇杆操作，这位Industrial Toys创始人在苦干之后，很吃惊地发现，当开发商们在当下的触屏智能手机上还有其他许多选择时，他们却依旧如此热衷于双摇杆操作。

alex_seropian(from gamelab.es)

今年初，当他赶往位于巴塞罗纳的GameLab公司时，他说道：“这些我们称之为手机的东西，其实是电脑，对吧？”

“它们是很强大、很复杂的电脑。如果你有一台iPad，那么你已经有一个比任何掌机、大多数PC更高分辨率的设备了，它对大游戏几乎没有硬件限制。许多开发商都太懒了——从主机直接移植到手机的游戏太多了，并且有许多是不必要的概念。转移整个双摇杆操作方式的概念让我感到惊奇，所有人居然都觉得那是个好主意。”

Industrial Toys的第一款游戏仍然对外保密，但从已公开信息可知，这是一款具有科幻背景和一些射击元素的游戏——所以，为什么Seropian会毫不留恋地抛开他倡导的操作组合？

“不只操作方式很笨拙，支撑这一方式的想法也让我感到困惑不解。特别是在《光晕》上，我们居然花了那么多时间为这一射击游戏创造有趣的双摇杆操作体验——但对射击游戏而言，操纵杆并非玩家想要的理想的操作方式。

“一款好的射击游戏会让你觉得自己有很大的控制权，你在技能上有足够的发挥余地，这样你才会上手，才能精通。在传统的PC射击游戏中，你有一只鼠标，你可以触碰到并击中任何一个像素点——就是这样。而用操纵杆，你得把光标移向那个像素点，这样就困难多了。

“为了使射击游戏更加卓越，我们投入了大量工作和研究操纵杆运作方式，但居然还要把这种方式移植到那种你可以简单触碰任何一个像素的设备上，这实在是太蠢了。我们是针对设备而创造控制方式。我们的目标是重新定义什么是射击游戏，触摸控制方式就是起点。有些方法是把操作装置放在游戏空间中，而不是在屏幕上，所以当你想与游戏中的角色互动时——射击或掩蔽或狙击，那些都要通过环境而不是控制装置产生交互作用。”

然而，他认为有些东西是值得坚持的。其中一种继承自他的AAA掌机游戏的工具是，创造可信的背景故事和和涉猎与产品有关的领域——《光晕》正是充分利用了大量书籍、图画小说和周边小说。

与Seropian团队合作的科幻写手John Scalzi帮Industrial Toys“精心制作”了一个宏大的世界观，它将给游戏增加神韵和框架，一定会让玩家们满意。

当被问及如何评价Daniel Crespo的断言——低价会损害创新，因为缺少研发预算，Seropian一言以蔽之：“应用商店中的’贫富差距’很明显。”

“如果你不在最尖端，你就完了——这绝对是真理，但至于创新，我持相反意见。手机将是创新的源泉，或者说已经是了，而掌机并不会发生这种变革。

“当发行商在一款游戏中投入5千万美元时，其中的一个要求是‘别搞创新了，我们只想把我们的钱挣回来！’

“创新意味着，有50%的可能钱会打水漂，这就是为什么所有大型主机游戏会在第1部之后推出续作2、3、4”。在他看来，因为有些人制作社交游戏或手机游戏时，只是贪求速度，以低价推向市场，但他们不会这么做。正如你所见，随着成功的次数增多，投资的水平也会越来越高。

“我认为那种急于求成的人会越来越少。仍然有许多人只想推出产品，这样的人总是有很多的，但随着市场开始走向成熟，市场会分裂。会出现一些需要大量投资的游戏，这些游戏会通过数字渠道之外的方式广告宣传。目前真正做到这一点的手机游戏只有《愤怒的小鸟》。”（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）

Seropian: Don’t port unnecessary concepts to mobile

By Dan Pearson

For a man who created one of the best known shooter franchises of the last two console generations, Alex Seropian is surprisingly down on twin stick controls. Having slaved over making them usable for Halo, the Industrial Toys founder is amazed that developers are so keen on sticking with them when they have so many other options on today’s touchscreen smartphones.

“These things, we call them phones but really they’re computers, right?” He says as we sit down to catch up at Gamelab in Barcelona, earlier this year.

“They’re very powerful, sophisticated computers. If you have an iPad then you already have better resolution than you will on any console, and most PCs, already. It’s not like there are any hardware limitations to making great content. A lot of the efforts have been lazy – there have been a lot of straight-up ports from console titles to mobile and a lot of ports of unnecessary concepts. The transfer of the whole dual sticks thing just amazes me, that anyone would think that’s a good idea.”

Industrial Toys’ first title is still tightly under wraps, but it’s public knowledge that it has a sci-fi setting with at least some shooter elements – so why is Seropian so keen to move away from a control scheme which he helped to pioneer?

“It’s not just the results being clumsy, it’s the thinking behind it that’s confusing to me. Especially to me because on Halo we spent so much time trying to make joysticks fun for a shooter – Sticks are not the ideal controls that you would ask for, for a shooter.

“To make a good shooter you have feel like you have a lot of control, you need enough bandwidth in the skill curve so that you feel you can get good at it, that you can master it. The traditional shooter on the PC, where you have a mouse and you can touch any pixel and shoot it – it’s all about that. Having a joystick where you have to push the cursor towards that pixel is so much more of a challenge.

“So much work and research went into making sticks feel good for a shooter that to reinterpret that on a device where you can touch any pixel is just brain dead, I don’t get that. Our approach is really built toward the device. Our ambition is to reinvent what a shooter is, with touch as the starting point. Some of that methodology trickles down to putting the controls in the game-space, not on the screen space so when you want to interact with the character in the game – to shoot or take cover or snipe – that’s all through interacting with things in the environment rather than through controls.”

“So much work and research went into making sticks feel good for a shooter that to reinterpret that on a device where you can touch any pixel is just brain dead, I don’t get that”
There are some things which he thinks are worth carrying over, however. One of the tools he’s keeping in the trunk from his AAA console days is the creation of a believable backstory and universe surrounding your product – something which Halo capitalised upon to great effect with a number of books, graphic novels and surrounding fiction.

On board with Seropian’s team is renowned sci-fi author John Scalzi, helping Industrial Toys to “craft” a big IP, a universe which will add nuance and framework to a game which promises to be anything but throwaway.

He smiles a wry grin when I press him on pricing and won’t be drawn, instead pontificating on how he sees mobile budgets and development time developing generally.

“The App Store is very much feast or famine,” Seropian tells me when I ask him for comment on Daniel Crespo’s assertions that low price points will crush innovation because of a lack of R&D budget.

“If you’re not at the top, then you’re through – that’s definitely true, but I would actually suggest the opposite in terms of innovation. Mobile is where the innovation will happen, is happening already, it doesn’t happen on the console.

“When a publisher has put $50 million down on a game, one of the requirements is ‘please don’t innovate, we want to make our f***ing money back!’”

“Innovation is a 50/50 chance of flushing that money down the toilet, which is why all the big console games have 2, 3 or 4 after the title. There’s definitely something to be said for his argument, because when some people make a social or mobile game it’s all about doing it fast, getting to market cheaply, but we’re not doing that. As you see more and more successes, and there will be more and more, the level of investment will go up.

“I think we’re going to see less and less people trying to make a quick buck. I think you’ll still have a lot of people who just want to put an app out there, there’ll always be a lot of that, but like any market as it starts to mature, it’ll start to split up. There’ll be games with a lot of investment behind them, games being advertised beyond the digital channel. Angry Birds is the only real mobile game doing that right now.”(source:gamesindustry)