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Tiger Style分享旗下iOS游戏的发展历程

作者:Wagner James Au

《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》和《火星漫步》:获得极高销量的低预算iOS游戏

在《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》中,玩家将扮演一只蜘蛛,通过轻弹手指而控制该蜘蛛在一间空荡荡的大厦中跳跃并织网前行,寻找着大厦曾经的主人所隐藏的秘密。截止 至2012年中旬,这款游戏共卖出了超过36万份的好成绩,开发商也从中获得了超过100万美元的收益。(游戏邦注:在畅销月时这款游戏至今仍能挣得超过 5000美元的利润。)

Spider_Tiger_Style_Game(from gamasutra)

Spider_Tiger_Style_Game(from gamasutra)

而在《火星漫步》中,玩家将扮演一个带着喷气机独自滞留于太空中的探险家,并在火星的某个洞穴中发现了生命物的存在——以外星人的生命形式存在着的活生生的生态系统。发行于2012年3月的《火星漫步》截止至今日已经售出了超过5万5000份,并为开发者挣得了超过24万美元的收益。

Smith在提及游戏发行后所经历的稳定的销售月或销售年时说道:“这两款游戏都将带来长尾效应。此时(也就是我们在编写这篇文章的时候)《火星漫步》仍然处于销售寿命的初始阶段。”

Waking_Mars_Tiger_Style_Game(from gamasutra)

Waking_Mars_Tiger_Style_Game(from gamasutra)

当我们在讨论游戏的开发成本时,销售数量将会变得更加重要:根据Smith估算,《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》花费了1万5000美元的成本而《火星漫步》花费了3万8000美元。因为Tiger Style并未拥有一间真正的办公室,也没有自己的投资者,就像Smith自己说的那样,他们的经营模式“就像电影制作公司或合作社那样。”

Tiger Style是如何规划预算并制作游戏

《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的1万5000美元的预算包含了购买设备,获得授权以及法律支持等费用。除此之外还包含了给予团队成员的1万美元预付版税。而这些费用还不保含工资或福利。所以在8个月的开发过程中Smith都是依靠着自己的积蓄过日子。

Simth说道:“在项目开发过程中我们都是无偿承包商;而当游戏发行后我们便开始收集终身版税。”最重要的是,Tiger Style是一家没有真正办公室的分散式公司,该公司的员工们都是通过网络而交流办公,并且该公司并未拥有任何投资者。所以他们便无需挪出太多费用去进行公司的日常管理。

《火星漫步》也是遵循相同的模式。根据Smith,这款游戏的开发主要依赖于《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》赚得的收益,并经历了2年的开发过程。他们预先支付了3万8000美元的版税以及5000美元的其它费用。在《火星漫步》2年的开发时间里,Smith和公司的共同拥有者Kalina完全依赖于《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的收益。而现在,他们也再次基于《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》和《火星漫步》的利润开始开发下一款游戏。

Smith表示:“团队的其他成员看起来更像是一个电影制作团队。他们就像是承包商一样的存在,因为当我们明确了一个项目后便会将其递交给这些团队成员,而利用剩下的时间去挖掘其它利益。我们还会预先提供版税给那些在制作过程中有需要的成员们。”

使用社交媒体推动Tiger Style游戏的发展

社交媒体是推动Tiger Style游戏发展的重要组成部分。根据Smith,《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》和《火星漫步》的预告片(发布于YouTube上)便是面向那些听说过游戏,但却希望在花钱前更深入了解游戏的玩家而介绍游戏的主要工具。Smith说道:“我们将预告片作为最重要的推广工具。即通过在向玩家传达游戏故事的同时呈现出相关游戏画面。”

Spider_Facebook_Share(from gamasutra)

Spider_Facebook_Share(from gamasutra)

关于社交网站的推广,《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》设有一个特殊的功能让玩家能够在Facebook上炫耀自己的游戏战绩。(游戏邦注:这一功能的使用率为11%。)《火星漫步》也采取了类似的做法,即让玩家能够在完成对于火星某一物种的探索并回到地球上时发Tweet告知好友。

根据比较,玩家在Facebook上发送《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的信息远远多于玩家在Twitter上所发送的《火星漫步》的信息,而Smith认为这主要是归咎于执行的问题。他说道:“《火星漫步》的Tweet信息显得更加神秘。比起张贴一些模糊的信息,如(《火星漫步》的Tweet信息)‘Larians更喜欢吃移动的生命物体,但同时也能够从Zoa的种子中汲取营养价值’,让玩家可以与好友分享自己解决了一款电子游戏中的谜题更具有推广性。”

Tiger Style如何提高销量和用户粘性

Smith指出了Tiger Style通过在游戏中添加了何种功能以及该工作室采用了哪些方式去提高游戏销量,并保持现有玩家的用户粘性:

更新:《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》具有一个非常棒的更新内容,即“Director’s Cut”——在总的38个关卡基础上又添加了10个新的关卡。这些新的关卡弥补了原先故事中让玩家感到迷惑的缺口,并为他们呈现出更加有趣的新游戏玩法。

Smith说道:“‘Director’s Cut’是一个非常有趣的更新内容,为游戏吸引了许多新玩家以及其它媒体的注意。iOS市场希望开发者们能够紧跟市场发展脚步,并不断推出游戏的更新内容。更新还能够提高一款游戏在App Store中的推广机会,并进一步吸引现有玩家的注意力(保持用户粘性)。”

Smith注意到iOS游戏的共有特性便是保持更新:“许多开发者一开始都只发行了游戏的基本骨架,并在之后不断更新,通过游戏完善和扩展而吸引更多玩家的注意力。”

游戏测试:Smith说道:“在《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》和《火星漫步》发行之前,我们都进行了广泛的游戏测试。而对于《火星漫步》,我们更是完善了这一过程,即让玩家专注于眼前的iPad,而其余的团队成员盯着大屏幕观察他们的游戏。”

“当然了其他开发人员也具有自己的独到见解,但是最有帮助的数据还是来自游戏测试者,也就是我们的目标用户。有时候看到这些玩家绊倒在我们认为很简单的设计上时,我们也会感到非常郁闷。”

“我们不断地完善《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的开始关卡,直到它们变得足够紧凑且具有效益,并能够带给休闲玩家轻松且有趣的新体验。而因为这种完善都是在游戏发行前所进行的,所以我们很难判断这对销量会带来何种影响,但是我们清楚,只要能够吸引休闲玩家的注意力,我们便离成功不远了。”

Waking_Mars_levels(from gamasutra)

Waking_Mars_levels(from gamasutra)

独立的关卡:最初《火星漫步》突显了一个无缝的世界,即将玩家顺畅带进其中进行探索。这种设置会让洞穴显得更加巨大与杂乱,也就是更加逼真。但是很快地我们发现这么做很容易让玩家感到混淆。即他们将搞不清楚体验的开始与结束,他们也很难判别自己到底是胜利还是失败;相反地,他们只能在游戏中不断蹒跚前行,寻找新事物。所以我们便决定为《火星漫步》设定独立的关卡,即让玩家必须完成一个关卡后才能进入下一个关卡,从而让玩家清楚自己的每一步前进。除此之外,这么做还能让玩家获得更强烈的成就感,并更深刻地理解游戏。

排行榜/成就:为了让《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》更加多元化,Tiger Style添加了排行榜,成就机制以及各种不同的游戏模式。Smith说道:“因为相比之下《火星漫步》拥有更加多元化的游戏玩法,我们便认为无需再添加这些内容。但是当我们回顾过去时却发现这种想法是错误的。因为许多玩家都非常喜欢排行榜,并且大多数玩家都热衷于追求自己在游戏中的成就。缺少了这些元素,游戏就跟电影没两样了;而包含了这些元素,游戏立马变成了值得玩家反复回到其中的乐趣所在。”

远程开发策略

就像我们之前提到的,Tiger Style并未拥有自己的办公室,也就是他们的所有开发过程都是通过远程协作完成的。Smith说道:“我不认为分散的公司运行模式会对我们的最终产品造成任何影响,但是它却会改变我们的创造和交流过程。”这需要我们创造极其详细的社交文件并使用在线合作工具。

作为创意总监,Smith最重要的一项任务便是确保所有成员都能明确一个相同的目标,从而将各自的努力融入极具凝聚力的工作中。在过去好几年间Smith都是待在传统的游戏工作室中,即所有成员每天都能在同一间办公室碰面,并彼此交流游戏设计的看法。

你可能会认为这种直接且高频率的交流能让成员们的思路更加清晰,也许在某种程度上看来的确是这样的,但这也会促成一种不良趋势,即成员们总是理所当然地认为自己理解别人的想法,但是事实上却并非如此。

Smith继续说道:“相比之下,我们在Tiger Style并不能进行面对面的交流,从而导致我总是会认为其他成员所描述的与我想的并不是同一款游戏。所以我必须为所有成员提供足够明确的方向。为此我创造了许多用于交流想法和设计观点的详细文件。”

而如果某些问题不能通过文件去解决的话,Tiger Style便会开始寻求其它方法:“当我们面对的是设计问题时,也就是游戏玩法未能发挥应有的作用,事情总是会变得较为棘手。最理想的情况便是将所有成员集中在一起,借由小黑板去传达你的想法。集体绘制图表(头脑风暴)应该是帮助我们找到解决方法的有效途径,但是在Tiger Style却不可能做到这一点。有时候我们甚至会长达好几天地面对着同一个问题,直到最终想出具有相互作用且能够在代码中运行的解决方法。也就是我们需要自己去测试答案而不是与其他成员进行讨论。尽管这么做也比较费力,但却能够保持每个成员的思路清晰。”

《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的设计文件摘录

之前所提到过,Randy Smith为其远程团队创造了一些详细的设计文件(明确阐述了游戏相关理念)。而以下便是Tiger Style的第一款游戏《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的文件样本:

Spider_Design_Focals(from gamasutra)

Spider_Design_Focals(from gamasutra)

Smith说道:“这份文件是关于如何处理头脑风暴的游戏理念。其目的便是在潜在游戏设计中添加让所有成员都能够轻易理解的一句理念。我们可以很快速地完成这份文件,因为我们总是能够同时想出许多理念。使用点句模式去罗列这些要点非常重要(如上图)。这能帮助成员们专注于重要的内容而排除其它可能干扰自己思路的元素。”

Spider_Summary_thumb(from gamasutra)

Spider_Summary_thumb(from gamasutra)

“从上图的文件中我们可以看出这是与发行后的《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》不同版本的内容。一开始我们是围绕着这一理念创作,而在进行数字原型创作时开始转向使用软件,并将其发展成更容易接近的休闲游戏。我们并不需要重新编写这一文件,而如果我这么做了,那么第二个点句将变成核心“行动”机制,而第三个点句将变成环境故事参考,能够将玩家带进一座废弃的大厦中。”

Spider_Look_Design_Feel_thumb(from gamasutra)

Spider_Look_Design_Feel_thumb(from gamasutra)

“我想通过上图的幻灯片明确《博莱斯庄园的蜘蛛》的基调:阴郁并现实,而非单纯的卡通化。虽然最后我们选择了深受Edward Gorey(游戏邦注:著名画家,其绘画风格大多为钢笔画,黑白调)启发的插图,而放弃了使用现实照片,但是该幻灯片中所明确的基调仍然帮助我们有效地突显了这款游戏。”

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

How to Design Your iOS Game to Grow: Learning from the Style of Tiger Style

by Wagner James Au

Spider and Waking Mars: Quirky, Low Budget iOS Games With Impressive Sales

In Spider, you play an arachnid, jumping and spinning your way through an empty mansion with the flick of your finger, discovering the mysteries of the family who once lived there along the way. As of mid-2012, the game has sold more than 360,000 copies and grossed more than $1,000,000. (Spider still earns more than $5,000 in a good month.)

In Waking Mars, you play a lone, stranded space explorer with a jetpack, lost in the caverns of Mars recently discovered to be full of life — specifically, a living, breathing ecosystem of alien life forms. Mars, which launched in March 2012, has so far sold over 55,000 copies, grossing more than $240,000.

“Both games have a long tail,” Smith notes to me, referring to their small but steady sales months or even years after launch, “and as of this writing Waking Mars is still in the beginning of its sales lifetime.”

The sales numbers are even more impressive when you consider how much these games took to produce: Smith estimates it cost $15,000 to develop Spider and $38,000 for Waking Mars. This is possible because Tiger Style doesn’t really have an office or investors, and operates, as he puts it, with a business model that’s “more like a film production company or a cooperative, perhaps.”

How Tiger Style Budgets and Produces Their Games

Spider’s $15,000 budget includes the purchase of all equipment, licenses, and legal support. It also includes $10,000 in royalty advances paid to the team. That sum, however, doesn’t include any salaries or benefits. For example, during its eight months of development, Smith lived off of his own money.

“We’re all essentially unpaid contractors during a project; then we all collect lifetime royalties when the game is released,” says Smith. On top of that fact, consider that Tiger Style is a distributed company without an office; the company employees work over the internet, and the company doesn’t have investors. That’s about as low of an overhead as companies can get.

Waking Mars operated under the same model. It was a two-year development cycle that was supported by the income of Spider, according to Smith. They paid out $38,000 in advance royalties and about another $5,000 in other expenses. He and co-owner Kalina lived off the income from Spider during the two-year development of Waking Mars. (While they were developing Spider, they lived off their savings.) Now they’re living off of Spider plus Waking Mars’ income to develop their next projects.

“The rest of the team is more like a film production company,” says Smith. “They are contractors who work with us when we have projects for them to work on and find other income the rest of the time. We provide royalty advances to those who need it during production.”

Promoting Tiger Style Games with Social Media

Social media is an integral part to promoting Tiger Style’s games. According to Smith, the trailers for both Spider and Waking Mars (posted to YouTube) were key instruments in selling the games to players who had heard of them but wanted to see more before spending their money. “We consider the trailer to be the single most important piece of promotion that we can do,” says Smith. “We choose to show gameplay footage while also communicating the fantasy and story that was being offered.”

For social network promotion, Spider had a feature that let you brag on Facebook that you were playing it or that you solved one of its quests. (The adoption rate of that feature was 11 percent.) Waking Mars did something similar, allowing you to Tweet to your friends back on Earth when you had completed research on one of the Martian species.

Fewer people Tweeted from Mars than Facebooked from Spider, which Smith attributes to implementation. “The Mars Tweets were also a bit more mysterious,” says Smith. “Sharing with your friends that you just solved a mystery in a video game is probably an easier sell than posting something cryptic like [a Waking Mars Tweet] ‘Larians prefer to eat mobile life forms but are also able to derive some nutritional value from Zoa seeds.’”

Tiger Style Practices That Increased Sales and Engagement

Smith points to several features in Tiger Style’s games and the studio’s development practices that have greatly helped sell more units, while keeping existing players engaged:

Updates: Spider had a very significant update called the Director’s Cut that added 10 new levels for a total of 38. These new levels patched some holes in the story that players were confused about and contributed to fun new gameplay.

“The Director’s Cut was such a significant update that it attracted new players, more attention, and some additional press,” says Smith. “The iOS market likes to know that developers are listening to them and keeping their games updated and fresh. Updates also increase the chances of a promo spot in the App Store and draw attention from your existing install base.”

Smith notes constant updates are a common feature in iOS games: “Some developers go so far as to release a game with only the bare bones that make it enjoyable, and then update continuously, targeting improvements and extensions to the aspects of the game that seem to satisfy players the most.”

Playtesting: “For both Spider and Mars we did very extensive playtesting before shipping the games,” continues Smith. “We really refined this process for Mars, having players focus on the iPad in front of them while the rest of the team was watching on a big screen.

“Fellow developers often had great insights, but the highest-quality data came from playtesters who were most like our target audience. Sometimes it was really depressing to watch these players get tripped up on designs that we thought made learning the game easy.” (Casual gamers who were new to some of the deeper features Tiger Style was attempting.)

“We refined the opening levels of Spider and Mars over and over and over again until they were as tight and economic as possible while still easing casual players into an exciting, new experience. This all happened before we shipped the game, so we can never be sure how it impacted sales, but our guts tell us this emphasis on reaching the casual audience is one of the major contributors to our success on iOS.”

Discrete Levels: Waking Mars originally featured a seamless world that would stream in as you explored. This made the caves seem vast and rambling and very believable. It soon became evident that the trade-off was player clarity. Players didn’t know when one experience was starting and another was over. It was hard for them to tell if they were winning or losing; instead, they just kept stumbling forward into new things. Changing Waking Mars to have discrete levels that a player must finish one at a time helped with pacing and clarity. It also gave players the sense of accomplishment and an understanding of the game.

Leaderboards/Achievements: To provide more dimension to Spider, Tiger Style added leaderboards, achievements, and different game modes. “Waking Mars was a much larger game with more gameplay variety, so we felt those would be unnecessary additions,” says Smith. “In retrospect we were probably wrong. Some players really got attached to the leaderboards, and most players had fun questing after the achievements. Without them, the game feels akin to a movie that you watch once. With them, the game feels more like a hobby that’s worth coming back to.”

Strategies for Remote Development

As mentioned earlier, Tiger Style doesn’t have a traditional office location, and all of its developers work remotely. “I don’t think being a distributed company has impacted our final products, but it does change the processes we use to create and communicate design,” says Smith. That involves the creation of highly detailed design documents, and the use of online collaborative tools.

As the creative director, one of Smith’s most important jobs is to get everybody seeing the same end goal so that their efforts align nicely into a cohesive, unified work. Smith worked for years at game studios where people saw each other every day in the office, and talked often about the game they were designing.

You’d think that kind of direct, high-bandwidth communication would increase clarity, and to some extent it certainly does, but Smith also found that there’s a tendency to take for granted that people understand each other when sometimes they don’t.

“Comparatively, at Tiger Style,” continues Smith, “I don’t see everyone face to face, so I rarely assume they’re picturing the same game I am. This puts pressure on me to provide effective direction. I find myself creating more evocative documents to communicate the vision and design.”

When some problems can’t be solved at the document level, Tiger Style turns to other solutions: “Sometimes things get tricky when we’re attempting to solve a design problem, say something that’s not working in the gameplay. Ideally, you’d like to converge on a whiteboard to sketch out your thoughts.

Editing diagrams collaboratively in real-time is a great way to brainstorm possible solutions. When that hasn’t been available to us, we’ve at times just individually taken ownership over the problem for a few days until we can present a potential solution that’s interactive and running in code. It’s essentially like prototyping your answers instead of trying to talk through them. Again, it takes extra effort but is more likely to produce clarity.”

Design Document Excerpts from Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor

As noted above, Randy Smith creates detailed design documents to clearly convey game concepts to his remote team. Here’s some samples of those for Tiger Style’s first game, Spider:

“This document is the ‘treatment’ of a brainstormed game concept,” says Smith. “Its purpose was to develop a one-sentence idea into a potential game design that everyone could envision. This was written quickly, as we were considering several concepts simultaneously. It’s important that you be able to boil the essence of your game down to a small number of very succinct bullet points.” (See slide above.) “This helps you identify what is most important so you can focus on it to the exclusion of potential distractions and embellishments.”

“In this case, we already see right away that this document describes a different version of Spider than what we shipped.” (See slide above.) “We started with this concept but let the software speak to us once digital prototyping began, evolving it into a more accessible casual game. There was never any need to redo this documentation, but if I had, the second bullet would probably read something about the core ‘action drawing’ mechanic and the third would reference the environmental storytelling that quietly invites players into the mystery of an abandoned mansion.

“On this slide [see above] I’m attempting to establish a tone that informed Spider: hip and realistic, not cartoony and goofy. In the end, we abandoned photo-real for an Edward Gorey-inspired illustrated art direction, but the tone set forth in this slide still helped to distinguish Spider.”(source:gamasutra)


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