本周四，社交游戏公司Zynga的首席游戏设计师Brian Reynolds在“游戏开发者在线会议”上谈论其最新热门游戏“FroniterVille”的成功之处。

继FarmVille之后，6月发布的FrontierVille在短短的一个月期间内活跃用户就突破2000万。对此，Reynolds认为FroniterVille和FarmVille的成功都源于设计师在游戏深度和细节方面的不断提高。

FrontierVille

Reynolds指出，不论是通过社交网站Facebook Feed或社交游戏本身，玩家对所谓“社交游戏”的兴趣主要是希望了解亲朋好友们的近况。在游戏设计上，有些游戏设计师旨在尽量延长玩家的游戏时间，但FrontierVille之类的社交游戏则定位是耗时15到20分钟的小游戏，是人们可以在工作或学习之余进行的游戏。玩家们可以一般忙别的事情，一遍享受游戏的乐趣。

FrontierVille开发团队不断地在游戏中引入新的游戏元素。然后通过移除某些元素对游戏进行测试，动物的引入就是一个例子。此外，制造配偶也是这款游戏中十分受玩家欢迎的元素。

对于如何吸引玩家，Reynolds提出“学习是艰苦的，而上学也并不有趣”。因此Zynga的各款游戏指南都制作得十分有趣而引人入胜，令玩家很快就能上手。

Reynolds表示，一位优秀的游戏设计师哪怕在不经意间也会注意到游戏中出现的各种现象。他向设计者展示了一则有趣的案例，一位女性站在绵羊旁边的幽默卡通版图像被Facebook feeds分享最多。zynga公司利用了这个情景式幽默，并乐见其流传。

最后，Reynolds认为社交游戏的质量在不断提高，社交游戏的未来也将也将更加鲜活，有趣。对于将来开发社交游戏的开发，Reynolds告诉其他游戏设计师，其秘诀在于“趣味性的支付方式”。（本文由游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

Thursday morning, Brian Reynolds, chief game designer of powerhouse social game design company Zynga (which has a presence in Austin) talked about the success of the company’s latest hit, “FrontierVille” at the Game Developers Conference Online.

Launched in June as a follow-up to the popular “FarmVille,” the game already had 20 million active users by July.

Reynolds said the key to the game’s success, along with that of “FarmVille” has been a simple structure with increasing depth and subtlety baked in. He said he believes that what people want out of such so-called “Social games” is to see what their friends are up to, whether it’s through a Facebook feed or within the games themselves. While some game designers aim to keep players engaged for long stretches of time, Reynolds said games like “FrontierVille” are meant to be played in 15-20 minute increments.

They are games that can be played while people are at work or at school, “when you’re supposed to be doing something else,” he said.

The “FrontierVille” team has made it a practice to keep inserting things into the game and gauging their success while ripping things out that don’t. He pointed to the addition of animals, “Varmints” in the wild, that proved to be successful as well as the ability to build family members. Reynolds said that making one’s spouse is the most fun that some people have in the game.

As to how to get people into the game, he said, “Learning is hard. Going to school is no fun.” Zynga, he said, tries to make its tutorials fun and engaging and to make learning how to play the game as seamless as possible.

Good game designers, he said, pay attention to behaviors that emerge organically in the game, even if they’re inadvertent. He pointed to an incident where a humour cartoon image of a female character next to a sheep was one of the most shared “FrontierVille”-related item shared on Facebook feeds. Zynga embraced the humor of the situation and enjoyed watching the meme spread.

Reynolds thinks the quality of social games is going up quickly and that the future will be fresh and episodic content and better storytelling.

The secret, though, is that “Fun monetizes well,” he told the crowd of game designers.（Source：Austin360）