提到手机游戏《口袋恶魔》（Pocket Devil）与《热气球向上冲》（Fight Doodle），是不是马上让你联想到《口袋上帝》（Pocket God）和《涂鸦跳跃》（Doodle Jump）这两款游戏呢？

Eyedip's logo

日前，Pocketgamer记者针对游戏克隆和借鉴的区别等话题，对前面两者背后的美国手机游戏开发商Eyedip公司创始人史蒂芬·弗莱舍（Steven Fleisher）和杰里米·阿德尔曼（Jeremy Adelman）进行了采访，下文为访谈内容：

Jeremy Adelman & Steven Fleisher

问：可否谈谈Eyedip公司成立的由来？

史蒂芬·弗莱舍：成立Eyedip公司的想法始于2009年。当时我和杰里米都有共同的创业冲劲，希望做点与大学期间在传统办公室上班有所不同的事情。再加上我们在手机应用领域上趣味相投—–我是一个狂热的游戏玩家，杰里米又笃信手机应用革命前途光明，所以我们就一起成立了Eyedip。

杰里米·阿德尔曼：那时候苹果应用商店的出现，重塑了人们对手机作用的认知和看法。手机应用的强大功能，令我们很快为之所迷。这也是我们平生第一次遵从自己的意愿、梦想和热情，创办属于自己的事业。我们很清楚自己的背景和优势，自信具有犀利的洞察力和丰富的奇思妙想，有能力在这个远未饱和的市场中，为上百万的用户开发具有创新性、娱乐性和生活化的应用。手机应用市场在全世界的行情走高还仅仅是一个开始，我们希望参与其中，见证这一行业创造的奇迹。

问：Eyedip开发的游戏有何特色？

史蒂芬：我们希望自己创造的应用具有娱乐性、吸引性以及老少通吃的普适性。我们的游戏目标用户非常广泛，网罗男女老少，无论是我四岁的侄女，大学生还是杰里米95岁高龄的祖父，都可以体验其中乐趣。我们致力于创造简单易操作、用户无需对照游戏指南，就能凭直觉立即摸索出玩法的应用。

根据我们的市场情况分析，下载应用的玩家往往喜欢找些新鲜游戏消磨时光。我们愿为这些玩家提供超体验的游戏，满足他们的需求。Eyedip开发的游戏大多充满幽默感，十分搞笑，而且具有超强的吸引力和极高的质量。

Pocket Devil

问：《口袋恶魔》从《口袋上帝》中找到灵感，《热气球向上冲》又从《涂鸦跳跃》得到启发，请问你们如何定义游戏创意借鉴和山寨模仿之间的区别？

史蒂芬：《涂鸦跳跃》和《口袋上帝》都是非常棒的游戏，也确实激发了我们的灵感。我们认为对所有开发商来说，整个应用行业就是一个相互启发、借鉴的过程。

比如说，手绘涂鸦艺术已成为一些独立游戏的取材对象。这表明我们也可以做一些人见人爱的涂鸦游戏，但不会让玩家陷入令人抓狂的多边形数量和动态阴影的超现实照明渲染过程。许多游戏都采用了这种风格，并对其进行升华，但这并不能算是模仿，这就是我们对两者区别的定义。

不少优秀游戏的诞生，都创造了新的风格，为游戏社区引入了颇受欢迎的新玩法。《口袋恶魔》与《热气球向上冲》立足于前人精华，同时也充实了独一无二的游戏功能、玩法等新内容。

经过数月时间的进化，《口袋恶魔》已呈现出和《口袋上帝》截然不同的面貌，有不少《口袋恶魔》的粉丝将其视为《口袋上帝》的恶搞版，虽然这并非我们本意，但这两者一个天堂一个地狱主题的鲜明对比，确实很有意思。另外，《口袋恶魔》还可以在iPad上运行。

至于《热气球向上冲》，这款游戏独特而搞笑的功能就更加丰富了，而且还增加了不少额外的迷你游戏内容，总之我们认为，喜欢《涂鸦跳跃》的玩家也一定会喜欢《热气球向上冲》。

Fight Doodle

问：是否会担忧其他游戏粉丝对你们的负面评价？

史蒂芬：我们正视所有的用户反馈，无论是正面评价还是消极反应。玩家的任何评论对我们来说都是一种激励，只会促使我们不断提高游戏作品质量。

问：你们认为iPhone游戏虏获用户的最关键因素是什么？

杰里米：首先，游戏作品本身必须具有娱乐性、创新性、吸引力、奖励性，这样才能留住玩家。

其次，要不断对游戏进行更新升级，Eyedip游戏的每一次升级都会尊重用户的意见和反馈，这样我们提供的新内容才更易留住粉丝，收获新玩家。

第三，要想扩大客源，口碑营销最为关键。如果一名玩家觉得《口袋恶魔》或者《热气球向上冲》挺有意思，就有可能向朋友推荐，或者向同伴秀秀自己在游戏中获得的成就、战绩等，一传十，十传百，这种口碑营销的传染性很强。

社交网站也是促进游戏应用口碑营销的功臣，用户可以在Facebook上晒出自己的积分，在微博上发布原创图片等，这一点也同样适用于《热气球向上冲》等游戏，社交网站的推广和传播，大大提高了我们游戏应用的曝光率和知名度。

问：请问定期更新iPhone游戏的重要性？

史蒂芬：从游戏发展的角度来讲，应用更新升级非常关键，我们乐意为玩家增添新的游戏内容，提高应用本身质量。

《口袋恶魔》开发的初衷就是让它成为一款可持续更新的游戏，这也正是用户的期望所在。这款游戏的升级版本是免费的，所以只要更新了游戏内容和功能，用户对这款游戏更是依依不舍，留连忘返。

至于《热气球向上冲》，我们岂今为止已经推出了3款独一无二、新型的迷你游戏，也做了一些功能和玩法的优化。Eyedip在开发所有应用时，都会充分考虑加强玩家的游戏体验。

问：Eyedip目前在开发游戏应用上有何计划？

杰里米：手机游戏产业才刚刚初具雏形，为了保证竞争优势，我们的暂时不便透露下一步发展计划。

问：作为一名游戏开发者，你们最大的成就感是什么？

史蒂芬：有一件事让我印象深刻，当时我下班回家，靠在沙发上测试《口袋恶魔》的初次升级版，突然意识到自己正在干什么，不禁大笑起来，自问：这就是我的工作？原来游戏就是我的生活，我的工作就是“游戏人生”。

问：可有计划将Eyedip的游戏植入其他手机平台？

杰里米：我们目前正在针对其他平台开发游戏，也计划在年底前推出这些游戏。

我们的经营模式是尽可能向更大规模的玩家推广游戏，这当然也包括非App Store平台的其他用户。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

Pocket Devil and Flight Doodle’s creators on the difference between copying and inspiration

Mischievous counter point

US games and app start up Eyedip has released plenty of content.Yet it’s two games, Pocket Devil and Flight Doodle, that have caught the attention, in part due to their respective similarities to Pocket God and Doodle Jump.

We hooked with co-founders Steven Fleisher and Jeremy Adelman to find out their plans for the studio and the difference between inspiration and clones.

Pocket Gamer: What was the inspiration behind Eyedip?

Steven Fleisher: The idea of Eyedip was born in early 2009. Jeremy and I both had coinciding entrepreneurial itches and were both looking for something different than the well of job opportunities available at the typical corporate jobs we had been doing since college.

Because of our shared interest in the exploding world of mobile applications – with me being an avid gamer and Jeremy being a great believer in the mobile phone revolution and possibilities of what applications can do – we founded Eyedip,

Jeremy Adelman: At the time, Apple’s App Store was rapidly redefining the role of mobile phones in everyday life. After a glimpse at the possibilities of what applications could do, we were immediately captivated.

For the first time in our lives, we began to professionally follow our hearts, dreams, and creative passions by welcoming Eyedip to the party. We both knew that with our backgrounds, we had the insight and ingenuity to develop innovative entertainment and lifestyle applications that could help us reach millions of consumers, in a market that appeared vastly unsaturated. This was just the beginning of a worldwide phenomenon, and we wanted to be part of it.

What do you think characterises Eyedip games?

Steven: The goal behind the apps that we create is for them to be enjoyable, addictive and polished for users of all ages and skill levels.

Whether it’s my four year old nephew, a college kid or Jeremy’s great grandfather who’s 95, we develop games that appeal to a broad audience and are overwhelmingly inclusive. We strive for simplicity. All of our products are highly intuitive and can be experienced so that players can jump in and play with little or no instructions.

Our market landscape analysis has shown that downloaders are constantly looking for new apps to kill time, pick up and play and keep them engaged. Our hope is to provide them with the most high quality games and simulations to fill this need. Everything we develop at Eyedip is embedded with humour, fun and attention grabbing content that is designed to be highly super addictive and of the highest quality.

Pocket Devil is inspired by Pocket God and Flight Doodle by Doodle Jump so how do you define the difference between taking inspiration from and copying?

Steven: Doodle Jump and Pocket God are awesome games and they certainly inspire us. We feel the whole app industry is an inspiration for all developers.

For instance, the hand drawn look of the doodle art theme has almost become a hallmark of indie games. It illustrates that we can make games that people love without

getting bogged down rendering hyper realistic lighting with crazy polygon counts and dynamic shadows. Tons of apps embrace this style and use it in all new ways. That

isn’t copying and that’s where we see the differentiation.

What we’ve seen with Pocket Devil is that fans view it as a mischievous counter point to Pocket God. This wasn’t our intention, but we understand the fun this allows our fans in terms of positioning the two apps as good versus evil. So the love hate relationship among fans is meant to be part of the fun.

In Flight Doodle, you can customise your own balloon and there are a bunch of mini games we’ve just released too. We think Doodle Jump players will love Flight

Doodle.

There are fantastic games creating new genres and introducing great mechanics that the community loves. Pocket Devil and Flight Doodle build on and enrich those

genres by offering features and gameplay that other games don’t have. They join the ranks of games like Harbor Master and Veggie Samurai as innovative and entertaining games in their own right.

Do you worry about getting negative feedback from some fans of the other games?

Steven: We take all positive and negative feedback seriously. Any comments we receive assist us in the development process and help us to improve the quality of our products.

What do you think are the most important things about iPhone games in terms of gaining an audience?

Jeremy: First, the product itself has to be fun, innovative, addictive and rewarding so that people come back time and time again.

Second, through aggressive iteration we refine our applications with each iteration based on user feedback and always providing new content to keep fans and new customers engaged.

Third, in order for audiences to continue to grow, there’s nothing more powerful than word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth growth makes the experience interactive, and interactivity is the key to growing audience. When a user picks up Flight Doodle or Pocket Devil and feel like they’d need like to show off our apps to a friend, or share an achievement or accomplishment highscore with a buddy, it becomes contagious.

Social media helps spread the word about our apps, and ultimately grows our audience to a more dispersed and more interactive one. Being able to post a score to your Facebook, page or tweeting a picture of your very own creation, as on Flight Doodle, creates a chain reaction that rapidly elevates the level of exposure of our apps.

How important do you think regular updates are for iPhone games?

Steven: In general, not all games require updates. From a development perspective, iteration is key, because we love adding new content for our players and improving the quality of our apps.

Pocket Devil is designed to be continually updated with new original content, which the users are expecting, and these new offerings are always story driven. Updates are free, so when new content and features are added, it’s fun to keeps users engaged and coming back for more.

On the other hand, we feel that games like Flight Doodle are solid as is and only require minimal updates. That being said, we also understand the need to create new

updated features such as the three completely unique, new mini games we are releasing throughout September and a few updates on the backend, such as speed and performance optimisations and bug fixes.

What’s Eyedip’s set up in terms of how and where you develop your games and apps?

Jeremy: In this embryonic industry, to keep our competitive edge we like to keep the ingredients to our secret sauce under wraps.

What do you think is most exciting thing about being a developer?

Steven: I will never forget the day when I was working from home, laying back on my couch testing an early iteration of Pocket Devil. I started laughing out loud at

the thought of what I was doing. I couldn’t believe it; it just hit me, “This is my job?!” I play games for a living. Life is good.”

Do you have any plans to bring your games to other mobile platforms?

Jeremy: We’re currently developing apps for other platforms and plan to launch before the end of 2010.

Our business model is about delivering our apps to as large an audience as possible, and this absolutely includes platforms beyond Apple’s App Store.（source:pocketgamer）