对于FrontierVille的开发者Brian Reynolds而言，十年前的他根本无法想象自己将成为开发Facebook社交游戏的先锋人物。当时，他正致力于开发Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri和Rise of Nations等即时战略游戏，这类游戏普遍受到很多电脑狂和军事策略爱好者的欢迎。

然而讽刺的是，Reynold开发电脑游戏的经验却帮助他之后开发了一款备受全世界男女老少热捧的社交游戏FrontierVille，甚至很多从没有有接触过电脑游戏的玩家也沉迷其中。最近，在GDC Online的奥斯丁会议后，我们采访Brian Reynolds，了解其对FrontierVille和社交游戏的看法。

Brian Reynolds

问：6月发售的FrontierVille现在是Facebook上排名第三的热门游戏，这种状况是不是超过了您的预期呢？

答：是的，它超乎我的想象。在完成这个游戏时，我对它的评价是还不错。当时我想：“好吧，这就是我和伙伴们一起开发的社交游戏处女作。起码在设计方面，我们都是社交游戏新手，还在试着学习和赶上专业人士的水平。”因此，我当时觉得FrontierVille作为我们的首款社交游戏作品应该算“不错”，我们以之为豪。

问：真的吗？您认为FrontierVille只是“还不错”？

答：是的。当人们正在从事一些新事物时一般不都是这么想的吗？当时我的期望只是开发一款中档的“还不错”的游戏，实现盈利后好继续开发下一款。因此当FrontierVille诞生后我只认为它基本符合我的预想。之后FrontierVille取得十分不错的成绩，因此我相信公司中有很多人都很看好这款游戏。

Frontierville

问：在FrontierVille之前，您开发的游戏大部分都是面向传统电脑玩家的。那么，当您面向所谓的“休闲玩家”时，您是什么感觉呢？

答：休闲游戏玩家和传统核心游戏玩家是完全不同的两个群体。休闲游戏玩家的构成更加广泛，很多玩家之前从未接触过游戏。是因为Facebook引进了游戏，他们接触到这一理念。因此，休闲游戏玩家也传统的游戏爱好者完全不同。另外，社交游戏无需安装。这类在网站上就可以进行的游戏也不需要任何的电脑技术。现代社会的人基本上都可以很快上手玩游戏。

我认为，现在的网络能够让我们开发一些市场更加空缺的社交游戏。

问：您所说的“开发市场更加空缺的游戏”是指什么？

答：由于传统视频游戏的主要玩家群体是15到25岁的年轻男性，因此我们开发的游戏一般都与战争、外星人和射击等游戏元素有关。现在，我们不必再局限于这些元素。其实，在社交游戏这种大型市场中，上述的这类游戏元素并没有优势。我们很少玩过这一类的大型市场游戏。这类社交游戏并不是没有，但是很难做大。换句话说这类游戏或许可以从现有玩家身上获得大额盈利，但其玩家数无法与社交游戏的大型市场相比。

问：您看好大量视频游戏系列进军社交游戏领域吗？我们是否有机会体验Facebook版的《光晕》呢？

答：我认为这些事情很快就会发生。现在很多游戏开发公司都已经目睹了社交游戏的优势。优秀的游戏开发商会想方设法进入Facebook。他们并不傻，他们亲眼目睹了社交游戏的盛行，了解社交的力量。

但是大型视频游戏转换发展方向往往需要很长的时间。社交游戏仅有2到3年的历史，很多在社交游戏兴起前就开始开发的视频游戏现在还没有发布。因此大型的视频游戏开发商进入这个领域还需要一些时间，但我相信他们可以领会社交游戏的优势。

另外，我并不认为大型视频游戏开发公司的进入会对社交游戏行业产生重大影响。我认为在现有的游戏中加入“社交元素”并不会产生大的社交游戏现象。

问：今年GDC Online有一个版面名为“社交游戏糟糕吗？”。我很好奇——您对这个问题的回答是？

答：翻白眼吧。我们都曾经接触过一些优秀的视频游戏，我甚至是那种想开发游戏自己玩的电脑狂。因此我可以理解人们对社交游戏的这种抗拒心理。当你进入这一行，希望将所有人生投注在开发核心游戏时，你发现核心游戏行业正在走下坡路。然后你知道很多工作室不再聘请甚至解聘员工。我也曾经经历过这些。

问：您最近曾在GDC Online表示FrontierVille可能是您开发的最受欢迎的游戏，是吗？

答：是的，是的。也许有一天FrontierVille的玩家数量会超过我之前开发所有游戏的总玩家数。

问：您认为社交游戏市场是否已经饱和？

答：我并不这么认为。因为我们还正在探索，我们仍努力开发更优秀的游戏。去年我们才刚刚发现运用Flash先端技术能开发出更加光鲜的游戏，然后游戏开发公司可以拥有之前10倍甚至20倍的游戏玩家。因为玩家们喜欢的就是这样一种简单娱乐的游戏体验。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

If you had talked to FrontierVille creator Brian Reynolds a decade or so ago, he probably would have never dreamed that he’d be a pioneer of the social gaming movement, creating a Wild West-themed game for something called ‘Facebook.’ At that time he was knee-deep in creating real-time strategy games like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations, which generally appealed to geeky guys with powerful PCs and a penchant for military maneuvers.

Reynold’s time spent creating those PC games are, ironically, exactly what helped him create one of the most popular games in the world, played by both men and women of all ages, many of whom have never played a computer game. He went into more detail on how that’s possible in his recent keynote speech at the GDC Online conference in Austin. I caught up with him afterwards to take his temperature on FrontierVille five months later and the state of social gaming.

FrontierVille launched in June and now it’s the #3 most popular game on Facebook? Would it be right to say the game exceeded your expectations?

It exceeded mine. I made the game feeling like “OK, well this is going to be my first social game as a designer and most of my colleagues, certainly on the design side, we were all new to social gaming, and we were all, you know, trying to learn about it and pick it up, and I felt like “Well this will be our game that’s ‘Okay.’” I felt like, I was proud of it. I felt like …

Really? You thought FrontierVille would be just ‘OK’? That’s funny.

Well, don’t you sometimes feel like when you do something new you have to, like, screw one up to then learn it? So my expectation, was like “It will be fine. It will be in there with some of our middle games, and it will make money, and then we’ll make the next one.” Then we put it out and it’s like “Oh, OK, well I guess I’m doing this now.” (Laughing) Because FrontierVille did do really well, and I’m sure that there are others within the company that did expect it to do well.frontierville on facebook brian reynolds interview games.com
Yes I’m sure. So, before you made FrontierVille, you created games for the more traditional PC gaming set. Has there been anything surprising about making games for a so-called ‘casual’ gaming crowd?

I’m suddenly talking to a whole different group of players than I’ve ever been able to talk to. I mean, it’s a bigger one, and it’s just totally different… You get to talk to people who have never been engaged with games before and suddenly they’re into it, and realizing that it’s something about the Facebook thing. I mean the web, and Facebook have finally gotten games to the point where, they’ve lost a lot of, really they’ve totally lost the stigma of geekiness. And it’s because you don’t have to climb your way through all of the computer setup stuff to do ‘em. Being able to play games on the web is no longer — you no longer need any computer skills, like at least no more than you need to just be a human being in modern society now.

I think, with the web, it would be possible now to make games for more niche markets that have never been targetable, really, with games before. I just don’t think those would make great social games, necessarily.

What do you mean when you say “make games for more niche markets?”

Think about different demographics, because typically video games have been mostly for young men, that’s kinda like, 15 to 25 is the core range, and that means you’re making games about war and aliens and shooting and that kind of stuff. Now it doesn’t have to be about that anymore, in fact, in social games, in mass marketing, it really can’t be about that. You don’t see mass market games about any of that stuff, you see people try in some of the social games, but they don’t end up being very big. You know, maybe they’re like making a lot of money from the people that they are getting, but they’re not getting all that many people compared to the mass market games.

Do you expect to see big blockbuster video game series making the jump to social? Will we ever see Halo on Facebook?

Well, I think you’re probably going to see that stuff. I think the Triple A people are going to see the advantage in having the social graph, so I think Triple A are going to find ways [to get onto Facebook]. They’re not stupid; they’re seeing this stuff going on, and they see the power of social.

I mean, it takes long time to turn the aircraft carrier of a Triple A game, you know, in a new direction. And social games are, two or three years old, so people started making games before there were ever social games at all, which still haven’t come out yet! [LAUGHS] So in terms of just turning the battleship its going to take a little bit of time, but I think they’re going to see the benefits of social graphs in those games.

At the same time, I don’t think that’s going to be a significant thing in the social games industry. I think that adding ‘social’ onto a Triple A game, like the kinds that are currently being made, is not going to create some big social game phenomenon,

brian reynolds + Libe GoadThere was a great panel at GDC Online this year called “Do Social Games Suck?” I’m curious — what’s your response to that question?

An eye roll, I suppose. It’s… you know? I mean, I realize that part of the triple A industry thing–you know, we all got to get into triple A games–is you know, we were all kind of geeky guys making games for ourselves that we wanted to play. And I can certainly understand some of the backlash. “Well, you know, this isn’t the kind of game that you know I’m personally into,” or whatever. That’s not actually true for me, because I actually am kind of a social game addict.

You know, I can understand the resistance too. You know, coming in, thinking you’re going to have a career in hardcore game. Finding the industry in decline. Or at least consolidation, you know. Kind of in a recession, I guess is the technical term. And you know a lot of studios are either not hiring or laying off and all those kind of unpleasant things. I have experienced those things in my time.

It was pretty interesting for you to admit in your recent GDC Online talk that FrontierVille is the most popular game you’ve ever worked on.

Yep, yep, yep. You know, probably. On any given day, probably more people play FrontierVille than ever bought all of my other games combined.

Do you think social games have reached a saturation point yet?

No, actually. I don’t. Because I think we’re still finding out. You know what I mean? We’re still making the games better. Just look at last year, when we suddenly realized that you could make them more polished with a Flash front end. And suddenly you could have 10, 20 times more players than you could ever have before. Just because they liked the experience, it was just a more clean, pleasant experience.

But we haven’t. I don’t feel like we’ve necessarily have learned what all of the topics are. We haven’t educated everybody about the fact that there is this new form of entertainment, and that it actually is fun. (Source: Games.com)