作者：Edge Staff

2008年，NaturalMotion因为与《侠盗猎车手4》的合作（游戏邦注：即游戏开发公司Rockstar Games将其技术引擎用于这款游戏中）而名声大震。该软件开发者的程序动画技术Euphoria（能够让动态动画以3D形式呈现出来）能够为玩家活灵活现地展现出“自由城”中所有人的行动。

对于很多软件开发者来说，接下来需要做的便只是等待更多客户找上门。NaturalMotion成立于2001年，其首席执行官Torsten Reil意识到自己为牛津大学的动物学组所做的人类和动物运动的研究具有商业用途，所以直到2008年，该公司便已经创造了各种各样的新技术。其中便包括程序生成技术Euphoria，包含了游戏动画引擎Morpheme（后被Ninja Theory应用于《Enslaved》中）和Endorphin（能够为电影提供“虚拟替身”的技术）。但是Reil并不只是希望NaturalMotion去承担别人创造性作品的技术授权业务，他也想自己开发游戏。

Reil解释道：“使用这一技术我们便能够创造出不同的游戏类型，并且我们也有自信去处理好游戏的制作。”该公司的首次尝试便是一款较为粗暴的全面接触类体育游戏——呈现出并列争球的局面，铲球，急冲等行动都非常适合Euphoria的动画。所以这款名为《Backbreaker》的美式足球游戏便为玩家呈现出了所有模拟内容以及最独特的互动行为。

进行游戏开发也就意味着该公司必须雇佣一个全新的团队——因为NM不能从技术领域挪出额外的专家。Reil承认：“这花费了我们不少时间。这款游戏的开发团队规模非常小，只有6个人，甚至在发展顶峰时也只有12个人，这在当时看来真的是非常小的团队规模。”

NaturalMotion_Line_Up(from edge-online)

（从左到右：游戏制作副总监 Barclay Deeming，产品总监Struan Robertson，CEO兼联合创始人Torsten Reil）

《Backbreaker》最终于2010年面向PS3和360平台发行了，并收到了褒贬不一的评价。一些较为消极的评价表示，比起游戏，它更像是Euphoria的广告，而正是这一点让Reil郁闷不已。他说道：“对于那些认为我们的游戏只是一种技术演示的观点我真的很无语。我们真的是很认真地在制作这款游戏。市面上已经出现了其它技术演示类游戏了，如《侠盗猎车手4》便是突出呈现出技术优越性，所以我们并不需要再为玩家创造同样的游戏。”

如果该款游戏不能在主机上获得巨大的成功，它有可能在其它平台上能够做得更好。在开发中途，该工作室实现了在iPhone 3GS上运行其动画引擎Morpheme的创想，从而为游戏的移植提供了便利。这是一种较为冒险的策略。Euphoria所提供的程序生成内容是更具创造性和破坏性的技术，当它在《侠盗猎车手4》最初亮相时，NM便计划着在今后自己的主机游戏上继续发挥它的功效。也就是说，Morpheme能够创造出比iOS上任何游戏更高质量的动画，所以该工作室才想好好把握住这一优势。

Reil解释道：“我们认为如果能够将高质量的资产，图像和视觉效果，特别是动画，融合在人们能够随时碰触到的游戏上将会是一件非常棒的事。”

手机游戏也具有自己的学习曲线——手机游戏玩家不像主机游戏玩家那样了解游戏，所以手机游戏最好能在一开始便清楚地呈现出简单的UI。Reil回想到：“我们随便从大街上选择了几个使用iPhone但却不是出于游戏目的的行人，并将我们的游戏交给他们。我记得第一次可用性测试便是在10个路人间所进行的。而当我们问道‘有多少人喜欢这款游戏？’时，只有4个人给予了肯定的答案。”

比起主机游戏版本，手机游戏版本简单多了，因为后者主要是基于街机式及时行动得分模式《Tackle Alley》——主机版本中的一个小游戏。《Backbreaker Football: Tackle Alley》的iOS版本是在其主机版本初次亮相的好几个月后才问世的，这款手机游戏也继续沿用了Euphoria引擎。直到今天，《Backbreaker》在iOS平台上已经获得了超过550万的下载量——远胜于其主机版本的成绩，用户评价也朝着积极方向而发展。

《Backbreaker Football》为NM的下一款游戏勾勒了一张蓝图：在《Backbreaker》的续集中我们可以看到基于Morpheme的图像以及紧凑的游戏循环的结合；除此之外以曲棍球为主题的《Icebreaker》以及马术模拟游戏《My Horse》也都是如此。尽管在iOS平台上拥有简单图像的游戏更受欢迎，但是NM却始终将自己的成功归因于动画上。

Backbreaker Football: Tackle Alley (from edge-online)

游戏制作副总监Barclay Deeming解释道：“一开始，特别是在iPhone版本中我们便利用了玩家的口口相传特性，即让玩家产生‘这看起来好棒’，并希望与好友分享的想法。这也是我们为何在《Backbreaker》设置了重新游戏功能的主要原因。你想如果孩子在学校玩这款游戏并大喊道‘来看看这个！’将会有多大的效应。我们希望以这种病毒式方法去传播我们的游戏。”

正是因为具有这种病毒性的吸引力才使得智能手机和其它手机设备成为了NM游戏的最佳归属，Reil也承认现在的他们已经不再对制作传统主机游戏感兴趣了。

他透露道：“当然了，从技术方面看来我们对主机还是很感兴趣的，因为毕竟这是我们的主要客户，但是如果说到我们自己的IP创造以及发行业务，iOS将成为我们的唯一平台选择。首先，它拥有强大的安装基础，不存在过多的分裂性——这点与主机非常相似。其次，我们注意到现在的市场出现了巨大的转变，这便为我们提供了创新的机会。”

NaturalMotion_studio(from edge-online)

Reil回想着之前的主机游戏发行经历说道：“与零售商合作真的是件非常痛苦的事，我不想再经历第二次了。与所有涉及零售业务的中间商合作真的非常困难，为游戏争取一个货架空间就与做恶梦一样可怕。当你发现整个过程中存在着许多既得利益，还有其它发行商控制着货架空间时，你便很难再挤进去了。作为一家对游戏充满激情的公司，我们过去的经历真的充满坎坷。但是在iOS平台上却不是如此。”

面向iOS，该工作室以《My Horse》为起点，再次使用了免费模式。Reil解释到：“一开始我们创造了5款付费游戏，并且每款游戏平均能够获得5倍的回报，如此看来这的确是非常赚钱的业务。但是在2010年初，免费游戏开始迅速上升成为最流行的业务模式，因为基于免费模式游戏也可以作为广告而存在——玩家可以免费下载游戏，所以这期间并不存在任何障碍。口口相传方法也是在这时候开始发挥功效。”

而NM在App Store中的这种自信（以及成功）在《CSR Racing》（游戏邦注：Boss Alien所开发的街头赛车游戏，其中并未包含任何人类动画——也就是该公司现在最得意的技术）问世后更是达到了顶峰。它那基于敲打的赛车机制以及精明的盈利手段便是该公司过去四年经验的结晶。产品总监Struan Robertson说道：“可以说我们的能量已经完全爆发出来了。”

“所有的一切都围绕着这些赛车的核心体验而展开，你需要不断提高汽车的性能并尽可能快速地超越你的对手。我们从《My Horse》和《CSR》中学到的并不是关于赛马或赛车，而是关于用户体验。我们可以从一款游戏中汲取相关内容并放置到其它游戏中，我说的便是《CSR Racing》中的玩家模式。我们一直在追求着创新，并且在我们的下一款游戏中也会组建不同的团队。但是我们仍可以利用汽车游戏中的元素去创造一款不是关于汽车的游戏。”

在《CSR》发行当天我们访问了该工作室，并深深感受到了所有人的自豪与紧张，我们看到Deeming和Robertson会不时地冲到监控器前查看分析报告。其实他们根本就不需要担心，因为《CSR》在短短几天时间里便窜上了App Store畅销排行榜的顶峰，并因为在本月初于苹果的Worldwide Developer’s Conference上亮相而获得了更高的曝光率。Reil解释道：“作为开发者或发行商，如果你真的努力在提升产品的质量，苹果便会最终注意到你的游戏。但是我们从不主动幻想苹果会对我们的游戏感兴趣。但最终他们还是走向了我们。”

这是NaturalMotion Games旗下的一间工作室，位于牛津北部一个富饶的乡村Jeridho，并明确划分了技术团队和游戏设计团队。虽然这两个团队是分开工作，但是当我们从游戏部门走到技术开发部时我们注意到他们之间并未竖起一道概念艺术墙。这也就意味着即使他们未能致力于同一个个体项目中，但是他们至少是在同一个屋檐下工作的。

Deeming说道：“在某些技能上这两个团队的工作也会产生交集。基于我们的工作理念和开发技术，两个团队也会频繁地展开交流与讨论，他们对于对方的工作也都充满兴趣。”

CSR_Racing(from edge-online)

Robertson继续说道：“两个团队彼此尊重。并频繁地展开各种交流。我想很少有外人会相信这是两个独立的部门吧。”但是对于我们来说保持某种程度的独立也是非常重要的。“我们尽力确保为每个团队圈定自己的职责，从而避免在我们的技术客户需要技术支持时技术团队不会致力于游戏制作中。”很明显该公司也仍然牢牢把握着他们的技术业务——即使创建了iOS游戏，我们也仍然能够在一些新的主机游戏上看到Morpheme和Euphoria的身影（特别是最近，在《英雄本色3》中Euphoria真实地呈现出了巴西黑帮身中枪伤步履维艰的画面）。的确，Rockstar始终都是该公司最忠实的客户。Reil说道：“Rockstar总是希望能够创造出让用户眼前一亮的新内容。而Euphoria便帮助他们做到这一点。Euphoria能够以一种不同的方式去移动游戏角色，并为玩家呈现出一种更具互动性和新鲜感的画面。”

但是Euphoria却还未能进军iOS平台。在被问及该问题时Reil的回答非常谨慎，但是不管怎么看我们都认为他们最终会面向苹果推出一款基于程序生成动画游戏。他承认道：“虽然我们还未向公众展示基于iPhone的Euphoria全面模拟内容。但是这却不意味着这一技术将不再影响我们的设计。”与此同时，NM的办公室将搬至牛津中心区，以便更好地监视《CSR》的发展。在最近的风险投资中，该工作室更是募集了1100万美元的投资，并且他们也将使用这笔经费去进行更大的拓展。

在两个完全不同的领域所获取的成功让NM完全可以依靠“回本”谋生了。但是Reil及其团队却不甘如此，他们拥有更大的目标。“如果不能成为下一代游戏发行商中的佼佼者，我们便希望能够成为开发产业中的一大领导者。我们并不满足于作为一家只创造出几款游戏的小型开发者。我们希望把握住更大的机会为更多用户创造出更加高端的内容。这便是我们的野心！”

（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）

NaturalMotion: From GTA’s physics to App Store success

By Edge Staff

Back in 2008, NaturalMotion’s profile was skyrocketing, helped in no small part by its work on GTAIV. The software developer’s procedural animation technology, Euphoria – which enabled dynamic animation on the fly of multiple 3D figures – ensured that the population of Liberty City felt as alive as the city itself. People stumbled believably when shoved, pin-wheeled horribly to the pavement when clipped by a car, and staggered utterly convincingly out of local bars. As advertisements go, it couldn’t be bettered; after a shaky false start with a cancelled Indiana Jones title, the biggest game of the year was now showcasing the Oxford studio’s tech.

For many software developers, the obvious next step would be to wait for more clients to call. Founded in 2001 by CEO Torsten Reil, who realised that his research on human and animal movement for the University Of Oxford’s zoology department could have commercial applications, NaturalMotion had built up a diverse suite of technologies by 2008. As well as the procedural generation of Euphoria, it had game animation engine Morpheme (the later incarnations of which would be used by Ninja Theory in Enslaved) and Endorphin – a technology that provided “virtual stuntmen” for films. Reil, however, didn’t want NaturalMotion to be simply in the business of licensing tech for other people’s creative endeavours. He wanted to make games too.

“With this technology, there were whole game genres we could do differently, and we felt that we had a pretty good handle on how they could be done”, Reil explains. It was rough, full contact sports games that the studio turned to first – the world of scrums, tackles and dives was particularly suited to Euphoria’s animations. So work began on Backbreaker, an American football game where everything is simulated, every player interaction unique.

A switch to game development meant hiring a new team, since NM couldn’t spare experts on the tech side, not with technology to work on and clients to provide for. “It took us quite a long time to do it”, Reil admits. “We did it with quite a small team: six people, and then 12 at peak, which was quite small for a next-gen team at the time.”

From left: Barclay Deeming, VP of games; Struan Robertson, product director; Torsten Reil, CEO and co-founder

Backbreaker was released in 2010 on PS3 and 360, to mixed reviews. Some less positive appraisals suggested it was more advertisement for Euphoria than a game, a suggestion that causes Reil to bristle even now. “It kind of annoyed us that people thought it was a tech demo”, he says. “It wasn’t a tech demo. We took it very seriously. The tech demos are the games that had already been published. Games such as GTAIV speak for the technology, and we didn’t need to do other games to show people.”

But if success was modest on console, Backbreaker fared better elsewhere. Midway through development, the studio realised that the iPhone 3GS was capable of running its animation engine, Morpheme, so work began on a simplified port. It was a pretty left-field manoeuvre. The procedural generation offered by Euphoria was the more innovative, disruptive technology, and after its debut in GTAIV, NaturalMotion was well placed to continue to showcase its capability with further console releases. That said, Morpheme was capable of producing animations of better quality than anything seen on iOS thus far, so the studio wanted to capitalise on this gap.

“We thought it would be great to combine high quality assets and graphics and visuals, particularly animation, together with gaming that everyone could pick up”, explains Reil.

Mobile gaming brought its own learning curve – users less accustomed to gaming than console owners needed clear, simple UIs, for a start. “We literally got people from the street – people who used iPhones, but not necessarily for gaming. We gave them the game, and I remember the first usability test out of ten, ‘How much do you enjoy the game?’ scored four”, Reil recalls, laughing.

The mobile device game was simpler than its console brother, focusing on the instant action of arcade-like point scoring mode Tackle Alley – a minigame in the console release. Backbreaker Football: Tackle Alley’s iOS release pipped the console version’s debut by a number of months, and the mobile game went on to outperform the Euphoria-powered sibling. To date, Backbreaker on iOS has been downloaded over 5,500,000 times, and – in contrast to the console version’s reception – user reviews are glowing.

Backbreaker Football came to define the blueprint for NaturalMotion’s subsequent games: the combination of Morpheme-powered graphics and tight gameplay loops can be found in Backbreaker’s sequel; the hockey-themed Icebreaker, and even equestrian pet simulation My Horse. And despite the popularity of graphically simple titles on iOS, NaturalMotion attributes much of its games success to the animation.

Backbreaker Football: Tackle Alley

“From the very beginning”, explains VP of games, Barclay Deeming, “especially with the iPhone version, we had these word-of-mouth moments where players think ‘This looks amazing’, and they want to show it to their friend. That’s why we have the replays in Backbreaker – so that, you know, we would imagine a kid at school saying ‘Oh, check this out!’ We wanted to games to spread virally that way.”

This viral, over-the-shoulder appeal makes smartphones and other mobile devices a natural home for NaturalMotion’s games, and Reil acknowledges that the studio is now no longer interested in making traditional console games.

“Obviously for our technology side, we are super interested in console, because those are our customers, but for us ourselves creating IP and developing our publishing business, iOS is definitely our only platform”, he reveals. “Firstly, it has a large installed base and there isn’t a lot of fragmentation, so in that sense it’s more like a console. Secondly, we believe there’s a huge disruption in the market right now, which gives us an opportunity to innovate.”

It’s hard to get Reil to reminisce fondly about his experience of console publishing. “Dealing with retailers was a pain in the arse – an absolute pain in the arse, and I don’t want to do it again. And dealing with all the middlemen involved in general retail was difficult, getting shelf space for the game was a nightmare, when you find there are so many vested interests already, there are other publishers dominating and determining what the shelf space is, it’s really hard to get in,” he says. “As a company who have a lot of passion for their games, seeing all of those blocks, it was a scarring experience, to put it charitably. And, you know, that’s not true of iOS.”

As well as iOS, the studio has embraced the free-to-play model, too, starting with My Horse. “We did five paid games first, and the average turnaround investment for our paid games was five times, so they were quite profitable, and it looked like quite a good business,” explains Reil, “But it was becoming increasingly clear at the beginning of 2010 that F2P was a superior business model, because now the game is free you can use the game itself as an ad – people can download it for free, so there’s no barrier. That’s where word-of-mouth moments work really well.”

Indeed, NaturalMotion’s increasing confidence with – and success on – the App Store has culminated in the release of CSR Racing, a street racer developed by Boss Alien that’s notable for containing none of the human animations for which the studio is renowned. Its tap-based racing mechanics and shrewd monetisation are a reflection of the lessons learned over the past four years. “There’s no fat on there,” says Struan Robertson, product director.

“Everything is drilled down to that core experience of playing those races, improving your car and beating faster and faster opponents as you go. What we’ve we learned from My Horse and CSR is that it’s not about horses [or cars], it’s about user behaviour. What can we learn from that game that we can then put into this game, and likewise, we were talking about CSR Racing, and the player model in there. Our thinking has moved on again, and there’s stuff there we’d change for the next game. Using knowledge from the car game to do games that aren’t necessarily about cars.”

CSR is released the day we visit the studio, and there’s a palpable sense of pride and nervous expectation as Deeming and Robertson occasionally rush to the monitors to check analytics. They needn’t have worried – CSR reached the peak of the App Store’s highest grossing charts within days, boosted, perhaps, by its appearance at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference earlier in the month. “If you really push for quality as a developer or a publisher, and really really push, then Apple will notice your game”, explains Reil. “But we never assume that Apple is going to take an interest. They call you.”

The studio – located in North Oxford’s affluent Jericho, is evenly split between the technical and game design team – who work under the banner of NaturalMotion Games. Their work is separate, but the only clue that we’re going from gaming to technical development as you walk the office floor is the sudden absence of concept art on the walls. While the teams don’t work together on individual projects, they benefit from being under the same roof.

“There’s a reasonable amount of crossover in terms of some of the skill sets,” says Deeming. “And in terms of our ideas and developmental technology, there’s a lot of chat and discussion, and there’s a great deal of interest from both sides of the company in what the other side is doing”.

CSR Racing

“There’s a lot of respect from both sides”, continues Robertson. “There’s a lot of socialising as well. I think when you’re out of the building, no one considers us to be two separate companies.” It is, however, important to keep some degree of separation, claims Reil. “We made sure that the teams are ring-fenced, so that when our technology customers feel they needed support, the tech team isn’t working on games”. It’s indicative of a continued commitment to the technical side of the business, which has seen Morpheme and Euphoria appear within a host of console releases even as NaturalMotion has been building up its iOS catalogue – most recently, Euphoria ensured Brazilian gangsters staggered back realistically from gunshot wounds in Max Payne 3. Indeed, Rockstar has continued to be one of the most enthusiastic clients. “Rockstar always has a desire to do something new, and to do something that wows people and gives them something that they haven’t seen before”, says Reil. “And I think, you know, that Euphoria actually panned out that way. Euphoria was a different way to have characters move, and to make them much more interactive, and surprising.”

One place Euphoria hasn’t appeared, however, is on iOS. Reil is cagey when asked about it, but it seems likely that a game featuring truly procedurally generated animations will appear on an Apple device eventually. “The full-on simulation of Euphoria on iPhone, we haven’t shown the public yet. It doesn’t mean that it hasn’t impacted our design”, he concedes. In the meantime, however, NaturalMotion is more concerned with the matter of an imminent office move to a new location in central Oxford, as well as closely monitoring CSR’s fortunes. The studio also recently raised $11 million in venture capital, which it’ll be using for further expansion.

With success in two very different fields, NaturalMotion is in a position to rest on its laurels once more. Instead, Reil and his team have decided to aim even higher. “We want to be one of the leading, if not the leading next-generation game publisher. We don’t want to be a small developer that does a couple of games. We think there’s a huge opportunity now to bring incredibly high-end content to a huge number of users. So that’s our ambition.“(source:edge-online)