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Kei Hirono分享游戏制作人应重视的5个建议

发布时间:2013-03-01 13:55:49 Tags:,,,,

作者:Christian Nutt

作为制作人可不轻松。他们必须想办法确保开发团队与管理者之间的平衡——确保所有人的进度相同,确保游戏始终处在适当的轨道上,确保始终满足公司的需求,更重要的还是满足玩家的需求。

Kei Hirono非常了解这种努力。大家都知道,他是《黑暗之魂》(如今最受欢迎的游戏之一)的制作人,而作为Bandai Namco Games东京总部的制作人,他同时也致力于其它游戏中。Hirono最近在旧金山忙碌于新游戏《Time and Eternity》的发行工作,以下他所提出的关于成功开发一款游戏的相关建议,包括与各种公司合作,确保管理者与开发者之间的平衡,获得开发团队的信任以及在危机时刻应该做什么等等。

Dark-Souls(from whatculture)

Dark-Souls(from whatculture)

1.获得开发商的信任

Hirono是发行商一方的制作人,从而让他很难与一起工作的开发团队之间保持紧密的关系,如《黑暗之魂》的开发商From Software。

你是如何获得外部开发商的信任?Hirono答道:“我需要先信任对方。这一点非常重要,如此对方才有可能反过来信任我。”

当然也存在一些阻碍因素。“发行商们很容易认为开发商是在为自己工作,从而会对其下各种命令。我认为我们必须带着‘共同完成任务’的想法。”他表示牢记开发商与发行商之间所维系的是合作关系非常重要。

个人沟通有利于建立这种合作关系,他说道:“日本便很重视这种个人沟通,但是也有很多人不愿与别人进行当面交流,总是对别人说谎,甚至毫不在意别人在做什么。我认为我们必须相互讨论各种该做或不该做的事。”

2.平衡管理者和开发者的要求

尽管他同意制作人的职责便是确保管理者不干涉开发团队的工作,但他也表示“那并不是全部。”

“制作人的目标便是基于他们所效力的公司的目标。所以我不仅需要与开发工作室协作起来,但同时我们还必须听从老板的指示,对开发团队施以必要的压力。”

他继续说道:“当然,我们不能盲目地施以压力。压力只有在合适的情境和时间下才能发挥作用。你必须努力保持两边的平衡。”

尽管Hirono认为在创造游戏时双方公司是“同等重要的”,“我不能只听取易一方的需求而将开发方当成任劳任怨的机器人。”

Hirono说道:“我必须考虑项目方向以及如何维护这种合作关系。”最重要的元素便是明确游戏真正需要的是什么,特别是在开发到达一个危机点时。

“我总是会尽可能尊重对方的想法,并尝试着废除那些没有用,或者会阻碍发展的内容。也许开发者们会意识到这些内容,但这也是游戏创造者过于膨胀的梦想所触发的内容。”

“我认为我的分内工作便是将他们的梦想引回现实的路径上。所以我会告诉他们应该专注于项目中的哪些部分以及哪些内容并不重要等等。这是我的工作职责中非常重要的一部分。”

3.留下表达空间

尽管保持开发商的理想主义与发行商的现实性的平衡意味着只能待在艰难的现实中。但是Hirono也知道必须留给开发商们一定的空间去表达自己的看法。在Bandai(游戏邦注:通常都是基于外部开发,并总是选择授权游戏)中他便感受到了这一点。

在面对授权游戏时我们必须牢记:“如果你未拥有一个能够真正理解并热爱工作内容的团队,那么很多努力都将功亏一篑。首先你必须让他们了解所有性能,就像我便花了很多时间确保团队成员都能理解所有目标。”

鉴于公司规模以及Bandai Namco所承担的项目数,Hirono并不能自行选择游戏。但是他也表示能够利用这种情况,并从中获得学习。他说道:“即使是由公司给我分配任务,我也拥有足够的空间去探索自己想要做的事。所以我认为自己真的很幸运能够致力于这样的项目中。”

4.与多方保持同步并不是件易事

制作人还有一项工作职责便是将不同公司的工作整合在一起:变成一款游戏。但是Hirono提醒道,即使你认识其中的一方,你也不能被虚假的自信所蒙蔽。

对于《Time and Eternity》,游戏的2D图像是由动画公司Satelight所创造,而游戏则由JRPG工作室Imageepoch所开发。Hirono说道:“这是我第一次与Imageepoch合作——而因为我认识Satelight的员工,所以觉得事情并不如想象中那般复杂。但是因为我从未同时与这两家公司合作过,所以有时候我也会觉得很辛苦。”

“有时候,当看到的动画作品并不适合游戏时,我便会对动画创造者大发脾气,说‘这种东西怎么用!这根本就不能与游戏的其它内容衔接在一起!’所以这一工作其实并不轻松。”

5.最重要的事

“我认为激情或热情非常重要——你必须真正了解自己想创造出怎样的项目。这是也是我们所坚持的。”

尽管项目很长,开发者们都相继失去了激情,但是只要团队中还有一个人还热衷于游戏的创造,那便足矣。Horono说道:“我们总是要求各种不同的人去创造一款游戏,但是如果团队中没有一个人具有激情,那么一切的努力便只是在浪费时间。我相信团队成员的热情越浓厚,项目的寿命便会越长,并最终能够呈献给玩家更加出色的内容。”

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

5 tips from the producer of Dark Souls

By Christian Nutt

Being a producer isn’t easy. You have to balance the desires with the development team with those of management — while keeping everyone on the same page, keeping the game on track for release, and making sure that it meets the needs of the business and, most importantly, the players.

Kei Hirono knows a lot about this struggle. He’s best known as the producer of Dark Souls — one of the best-loved games of the current generation — but he works on other titles, too, in his job as a producer at Bandai Namco Games’ Tokyo headquarters. Gamasutra recently caught up with him in San Franciso, where he was promoting the upcoming release of his latest game, Time and Eternity (pictured below).

Our time with Hirono was short, but we were able to assemble this list of tips for successful game development — including topics like working with multiple companies, keeping management and developers in balance, gaining the trust of your dev team, and what to do in a crisis.

1. Getting developers to trust you

Hirono is a producer on the publisher side — which can put him at loggerheads with the development teams he works with, which are generally external to the company, like From Software, which developed Dark Souls.

How do you get an external developer to trust you? “By trusting them. That’s the most important thing; to have that back-and-forth,” Hirono says.

There is, of course, an impediment to that. “It’s easy for a publisher to see the developer as working below them in a way, ordering them around like that. I think it’s vital that you go with a style that’s more together — ‘Let’s do this together, let’s get this going.’” He says that it’s key to remember that the relationship between publisher and developer is a partnership.

Personal communication is also important to building this relationship, he says: “this is something you often see in Japan, but some people don’t look at people in the face and speak honestly with them, or pay attention to what they’re doing. I think it’s best to do that, arguing with each other over whether we should do this or do that.”

2. Balancing the desires of management and developers

While he agrees that it’s a producer’s job to keep management pressure off of the development team, “that’s not all of it.” There is, he says, another side to this story.

“The goals of a producer are naturally going to be based on the goals of the company they’re working for. It’s important for the development studio and me to be working together as a team, but part of the job does also involve using what your boss tells you to place some pressure on the dev side.”

“You can’t work that way all the time, of course,” he continues. “Pressure like that only works if you pick the right time and situation to use it. It’s a balance you have to achieve as you work.”

While Hirono thinks that business concerns are “equally important” to creative ones when developing games, neither is so important “to the point where I’d simply take demands from the business and development sides like a robot.”

“I have to factor in what direction we want to take the project, and how we can best work together,” Hirono says. The most important factor is identifying what the game really needs, Hirono says, particularly when development reaches a crisis point.

“I try to give respect to what the other party wants to do as much as possible. While keeping that in mind, I try to do away with things that aren’t useful or are getting in the way. These are things that maybe even the developer realizes need to be cut, but the thing with game creators is they often start with oversized dreams.

“I think part of my job is to help guide these dreams to a point where they can reach reality. So I give them my thoughts about what parts of the project they should concentrate on and what doesn’t matter as much. That’s an important part of my work, and for the most part things go along pretty well.”

3. Leaving room for expression

Even though managing the balance between the developer’s ideals and the hard realities of the publisher means living in a difficult reality, Hirono knows it’s still crucial to leave room for developers to express themselves. He got his start on the Bandai side of things — pre-Namco merger — where games were almost always externally developed and almost always based on licenses.

There is one thing to bear in mind when working with a licensed title, Hirono says: “if you don’t have a team who really understands and loves the thing they’re working with, that can really screw things up. First, you have to get them into the property, and I devote a lot of time making sure that the staff fully understands it.”

Given the size of the company and the number of projects Bandai Namco has going at any one time, Hirono also can’t always pick the games he works on. In situations like that, he says, he can make the best of it — and still learn. “Even in cases when the company assigns me something, there’s usually still room for me to explore what I want to do. I think I’ve been lucky to be able to work on a lot of projects like that,” he says.

4. Synchronizing multiple parties isn’t easy

One part of a producer’s job can be to take the work of different companies and bring it together into a whole: one single game. Even if you already know one of the parties, though, you can’t be lulled into a false confidence, Hirono warns.

For Time and Eternity, the game’s 2D graphics were produced by animation company Satelight, while the game was developed by JRPG specialist studio Imageepoch. “This was the first time I had worked with Imageepoch — I’ve known the people at Satelight for a long time, so that was all right. But I hadn’t worked simultaneously with both outfits before, so it sometimes got real tough,” Hirono says.

“There were a few occasions where we’d get animation product that just didn’t fit in with the game at all. So I’d yell at them, saying things like ‘We can’t use this at all! It’s all too different from the rest of the package.’ So in that way, development can often seem like a struggle.”

5. The most important thing to remember

Even if things look bleak, there’s one absolutely crucial thing to keep in mind, Hirono says.

“For me, I think it’s having passion, or enthusiasm — really knowing what you want to do with a project. That’s important to me, to uphold that. If you don’t have it…”

The thing is, though, that projects are long, and the developers can lose that spark. Just one person doing so is enough, says Hirono. “Well, it requires a lot of different people to create a game, but if you don’t have at least one person on the team who has and retains that kind of passion, it’s going to just dissipate over time. I believe that the more of that heated enthusiasm you have, the longer it’ll last, and the more it’ll come through to gamers in the final product.”(source:gamasutra


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