作者：Dant Rambo

在之前的访谈内容中，我们提到了Edmund McMillen即将出炉的《The Basement Collection》合集，其中收录了McMillen在《超级食肉男孩》与《The Binding of Isaac》之前的作品。

今天我们要解决一个更广泛的主题：游戏行业的现状。本次谈话主要围绕McMillen与Team Meat伙伴Tommy Refenes制作的仿制游戏，以及促使电子游戏成为一种特殊媒介的原因。而相关答案会令你眼前一亮。

App Store的兴起对有些人产生了积极作用，但仍有观点认为“在此占据更大份额的开发者能够获取更多利益”。

这是一种错误看法。我讨厌淘金热，以及人们那种“我打算针对App Store制作一款游戏，借此获取丰厚收益”的想法。我试图向他们解释，这多少带有一些风险。这是一场赌注，得凭借运气。没错，你可能会成功。但这种几率十分渺小。那么你打算在此投入多长时间？最后可能是颗粒无收。

我认为，在用户产生‘我无法在商店中找到任何游戏’的想法之前，我们应该提供一些优秀的内容。

我已经就此考虑了很久，于是，我与Tommy决定针对iPhone与iPad推出《Super Meat Boy：The Game》。我认为这是一款出色之作，因为该市场上充斥着大量劣质产品，而真正的游戏才会引人注目。像《Sword & Sworcery》这种游戏可以在App Store上创下100万美元的收益吗？这听起来有点可怕，但没有哪款游戏可以凭白无故地在此创下丰厚收益，因为App Store市场上堆满垃圾。人们毫无选择。但他们却乐意花费5美元购买一款抽象冒险游戏，因为他们想玩这种游戏，他们渴望的是好游戏。

Super-Meat-Boy-The-Game(from gamezebo)

难道Tommy没有针对iOS平台推出仿制游戏吗？

我们制作了大量仿制游戏。我们推出了《超级食肉男孩》这款效仿游戏以回应PETA，Tommy制作了一款仿制游戏（更应归结为观察游戏），并以《Zits and Giggles》命名推出，而后他通过提高价格在此进行了一次实验……起先，他将其定价为1美元，结果无人问津，于是他把价格提升到5美元，结果有人购买，接着，他又将价格依次提高到10美元、20美元、30美元，甚至到700美元，仍有人购买（游戏邦注：可能是一至两个人）。后来，他在GDC大会演讲上就此批评了App Store，结果几天后这款游戏被强制下架。

我认为人们渴求实质性游戏，因为这类游戏已不复存在；而其它时候的游戏体验只是在消磨时间。因此，人们越发感觉到空虚，而游戏领域存在的大量垃圾作品均是‘只需支付5美元，无需亲身投入，你便可以获得所有事物’。

Zits and Giggles(from gamezebo)

对于那些直接表明利益至上的游戏，我们实在难以享受其中。

这种现象十分有趣。我不知道你是否见过Peter Molyneux的《Curiosity》。其实，该游戏合集中的一款绝密游戏便改造自《AVGM》，后者是我在2009年制作的一款复杂游戏。它十分类似《Curiosity》，只是其中主角是我自己。

[编者注：此时，Edmund展示了《Curiosity》发行前的一段剪辑。最初拍摄这段影片是为《Indie Game：The Movie》服务。虽然最终没有将其融合在成品中，但却说明了《AVGM》是一款可与《FarmVile》这种社交游戏相媲美的作品。在该作中，玩家可以不断摁下开关。而且摁下的次数越多，便会出现更多新事物。]

基本上，我所制作的游戏均与现实生活紧密联系。有时面对诸如《AVGM》或PETA这些事宜时，我希望以艺术形式抗议——通过讽刺获得感悟。其中优势在于，你可以自己选择。这也是我在《Meat Boy》开发尾声最喜欢的事物之一。在推出该作后，PETA也推出了相似作品，我们从中获得了愉悦，而且实际上，我们一天内便能反击PETA的游戏。

Super Tofu Boy(from gamezebo)

并非所有开发者都会做这种事情，即让人们通过游戏去思考某些显著问题。

游戏是由人们打造而成。人们对其如饥似渴，就好像非洲地带的饥饿孩童一样。

我认为，我们目前仍处于摸索游戏这一定义的阶段。游戏已经被商业所撕裂，因商业而发展滞后，在我看来，人们仍需在此领域探索游戏的发展之道。

目前，大部分人们仍认为电子游戏是种艺术，你可以通过电子游戏表达自己的情感，因为游戏中包含视频、电影、音乐与插图等其它艺术形式。没错，电子游戏确实包含这些内容，但这不是其成为特殊艺术形式的原因。而是相应的互动性，与激发人们思想的交流方式促成的。这更是一种亲身实践的学习过程，在此，你无法正确掌控玩家的行为，但多多少少可以提供对话开头，辅助他们向理想方向发展。这是游戏的特殊性，也是造就其成为独特艺术形式的原因。而现在我们才刚意识到这一点。（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）

Edmund McMillen Interview, Part 2: The Games Industry

by Dant Rambo

Greetings, and welcome to part two of our five-part interview with the one and only Edmund McMillen. Yesterday’s entry was all about upcoming title The Basement Collection, a compilation of some of McMillen’s work before Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac.

Today, we tackle a broader subject: The current state of the gaming industry. There’s talk of parody games – including ones created by McMillen and Team Meat partner Tommy Refenes – along with what it is that makes video games so special as a medium. The answers, as news previews often like to say, may shock you.

The rise of the App Store has been great for some people, but it’s also perpetuated this notion that the lion’s share of those who puts out a game on it will be rolling in dough.

Yeah. It’s a bad way. I hate the gold rush stuff. I hate when someone is like “I’m going to make a game for the App Store because you can make a lot of money on there.” I try to explain to them, you know, it’s kind of a crapshoot. It’s a gamble. It’s the lottery. Yeah, you could [succeed]. But the chances of that happening are really low. And how much time are you going to invest? You could make nothing.

I feel like something needs to give before the userbase is like ‘I can’t find anything in this store.’

I looked at it like that for a really long time, and then Tommy and I started working on Super Meat Boy: The Game, which will be on iPhone and iPad. I looked at it more like, because the market is so saturated with garbage, real games stand out. And a game like Sword & Sworcery that made a million dollars or whatever on the App Store? It sounds horrible, but there’s no reason a game should make that much on there because the market for the App Store is garbage. People only buy garbage. Yet they are willing to buy something that’s an abstract adventure game for $5? People want it. People want good games.

Didn’t Tommy put out a parody iOS game?

He and I do a lot of parody games. We did a parody in Super Meat Boy in response to PETA, and he did a parody — less a parody and more an observation — where he put up this game called Zits and Giggles, and then he started as an experiment by raising the price…When he put it up for $1 no one was buying it, but when he put it up for $5 people started buying it, and then he put it up for $10, then $20, then $30, and it got up to like a couple hundred dollars — I think it was maybe $700 — and people were still buying it, like 1 or 2 people.  And then he did a talk and it got removed right after he did the talk.

I feel like people are starved for substantial games, because they’re not there anymore; it’s just timewasters. And they become more and more empty, and all the abusive garbage that people throw out there with all the ‘you can pay $5 instead of actually playing the game so you can get all the things that you would be getting if you played the game.’

It’s hard to enjoy a game that’s so transparent about the fact that it wants you to give it money.

It’s pretty funny. I don’t know if you saw the game by Peter Molyneux [Curiosity]. So, spoiler alert, one of the secret games in the collection is a remade version of AVGM, which was a very obscure game that I made in 2009. It’s the same game [as Curiosity], except mine’s a joke. Mine’s making fun of that whole thing.

[Editor’s note: At this point, Edmund showed me a clip that was recorded long before Curiosity was announced.  It was originally filmed for Indie Game: The Movie.  While the clip never appeared in the final film, it explains AVGM as a game that’s comparable social games like FarmVille. In it, players will flip a light switch over and over.  The more times they click to flip the switch, the more new things show up.]

Almost all the games that I’ve done come from something in my life. There are times like the AVGM thing or the PETA thing where I want to use this art form as a protest – as educational in a satirical way. That’s one of the awesome things about this art form is that you have the option. It was one of the things I loved about the end of Meat Boy’s development. After it came out and we had the PETA stuff happen, we were able to have fun with it and actually jab back at PETA in-game within a day, so that was cool.

Not many developers do that kind of thing; using games as a means to get people to think about salient issues.

Not so much now as in the past, but there were a few underground places like awards shows and stuff [that featured such content], but the games were really contrived. It was like starving kids in Africa; it was this literal thing where you’d see starving children, and it’s just like… they’re trying.

But yeah we’re at a point right now I think in games in general where we’re learning the vocabulary. It’s been torn apart by business, it’s been pushed back by business, and I think people are still getting their feet wet and learning how to speak in games.

A lot of people still think video games are art and you can express yourself through video games because they encompass other art forms like video, movie, music, and illustration. Well yeah, they do, but that’s not exactly what makes video games special as an art form. It’s the ability to interact with the player and have this conversation with them about something in a way that stimulates their mind.  It’s a more hands-on learning experience, where you’re not exactly controlling everything they’re doing, but more or less giving them a start of a conversation and then they get to take it where they want. And that’s what makes games special, and that’s what makes them a unique art form. And we’re just learning that now.(source:gamezebo)