作者：Kirk Mckeand

当想到自由时，没有什么比无限广阔的太空更适合了。

来自免费游戏开发商Grand Cru首处女作《Supernauts》便尝试着提供给玩家这样的自由感。你可以将其称为创造性太空。

从表面看来，对于刚刚成立3年的工作室去尝试着这样的想法来说可能太过大胆，但Grand Bru却并非毫无经验，其创始人曾是Mr. Goodliving的创始人。

Grand Cru的CTO兼联合创始人Mikko Wilman回忆道：“这些人拥有许多创造有趣且休闲的手机游戏的经验，他们一直在诱导我从Sulake跳槽，那时候我还是《Habbo Hotel》的首席软件架构师。”

“结合我在运行大规模免费MMO的经验以及他们的手机休闲游戏经验似乎是面向不断发展的免费试吃创造某些新内容的一个好开始。”

一次又一次

《Supernauts》可能是该工作室的处女作，但其实他们已经花了3年的时间去创造它。因为对于机制的全面整修，对于Grand Cru的开发者来说《Supernauts》就好似他们的第二款游戏。

在第一年致力于这款游戏时，该团队很快意识到很多事并不像计划那样发展。

Wilkman回想道：“第一次的迭代非常接近于伴随着用户生成关卡的平台游戏。如果你能想象《小小大星球》和《我的世界》的结合，你便会看到一幅非常棒的画面。”

“那时候我们的关注点并不只是手机，该项目非常复杂，我们不能明确如何长期发展这一免费游戏。所以我们抛弃了大多数游戏玩法并只是保留了机制创造，重头开始创造所有内容，专注于创造性和社交元素而不是单一的玩家进程。”

Mikko Wilkman(from pocketgamer)

第一个理念并未设定在太空。这是关于更直接的超级英雄和恶棍之间的设置。它设置跳跃到某一个点上，但却总感觉哪里不对，所以最终游戏便让玩家的脚可以在地面上站稳。的确，《Supernauts》的stellar设置是因为想要提供给玩家上述所提到的自由。

Wilkman说道：“关于如何提供给游戏无限扩展的空间我们想了很多，所以太空便是一个符合逻辑的选择，这同样也打开了各种可能性，即从洪水淹没地球再到Zapper和Space Fish。”

最初的故事

游戏的名字《Supernauts》是我们经过一次非常长的头脑风暴会议所决定的，这有趣地与一部分社区众包混合在一起。

Wilkman说道：“之后有人说道，‘Supernauts’大声地说出关于我们是否需要更多理念这一点并不存在任何问题。”

在设定了理念后，我们经过了一年的工作却最终抛弃了它，游戏花费又花了2年时间才完成—-但Wilkman最初关于《Habbo Hotel》的经验提供给他关于该项目的理想基础。

Wilkman补充道：“我个人关于《Habbo Hotel》，所有的社交互动以及社区优势等经验都非常接近于这款游戏的核心，即从最初的理念开始。”

“对于我来说，社区便是一切，能够接触到尽可能多的玩家便是我创造游戏的主要动力。我迫不及待地想与世界各地的玩家进行交流，即使我需要使用谷歌翻译器才能做到这点。”

supernauts(from pocketgamer)

Grand Cru始终拥有坚定的理念，并一直都将社区放在最首要的位置上。

Wilkman说道：“我们总是坚持免费模式，因为这是通过游戏触及更多人的最佳方式。我们想要让即使不付钱也能玩游戏成为一种可能，或者至少去避免强迫玩家付钱的感觉。当我们需要赚到足够的钱在未来发行更多游戏时，这便成为一种微妙的平衡。”

“进程需要具有有效的平衡，所有的时间安排最终都必须具有意义。更高级的材料自然需要花费更长时间进行搜索，我们尽可能去提供给用户更多选择进行投资。最终，许多内容其实就是直觉—-我个人到现在为止已经玩了1500个小时的游戏了。”

“软发行参数自然非常重要，我同样也拥有自动bot能够在几秒钟内把游戏带到最后关卡去仔细检查所有内容。”

在公平的免费游戏魔咒之外，有一款游戏是我们创造《Supernauts》的巨大灵感来源，它就是《我的世界》。但《Habbo Hotel》的用户创造空间也为《Supernauts》的创造性工具形成的构建组块。《Supernauts》提供给玩家创造性自由，不只是关于在他们的太空城设置地面网格，还包括创建建筑组块（游戏邦注：并且玩家也可以在内部进行各种设置）。

个性化你的太空

Wilkman说道：“我们同样也看到许多用户具有创造性，即在他们的《Farmville》农场中创造像素图像。与社交互动和合作性游戏玩法结合在一起的创造性真的是我们希望在此达到的主要目标。”

为了创造这样的工具箱，Grand Cru使用了Unity，并且取决于不同人的工作还使用了其它工具，如Photoshop，Visual Studio和Maya。Wilkman表示他们团队的主要工具是亚马逊和Omniata（用于分析）。

Wilkman承认：“3年前我们从《我的世界》中看到了应该怎么做，并认为这也能够应用手机上的休闲控制。在我们公司存在的第一天起我们便拥有了第一个伴随着组块建造的首个原型。”

提供给玩家这种创造性自由是确保《Supernauts》能够凸显于App Store中无数创建游戏的关键。毕竟，《我的世界》也是这样流行起来—-让玩家能够创造属于自己的世界。

Wilkman说道：“这绝对是关键，还伴随着创造比赛，即你可以设置一个包含15个玩家的团队并与世界各地的玩家进行比赛。对于我来说，成为第一场比赛的一份子并与世界各地（或者至少是芬兰和加拿大）未知的玩家一起创建一座奇幻的城堡真的具有很大的情感共鸣，真的太和谐了。”

Wilkman已经习惯于与其他人一起创造某些内容。《Wupernauts》并不像许多手机项目那样属于个人的工作。Grand Cru是一家相对较大的手机游戏工作室，并且还非常年轻。

Wilkman说道：“我们很早就清楚这是一个对技术拥有更高要求的项目，幸运的是我们的大多数创造者都善于创造高性能的手机游戏和图像技术。”

“在整个过程中，我们一直与一些非常有才能的美术师（2D，3D和动画）和设计师共同去扩展团队，创造出首屈一指的市场营销和支持团队，并拥有一些很出色的人能够负责游戏之类和产品管理。”

“现在我们大约拥有20个人致力于游戏中，并且大家都扮演着各自不同的角色。我们真的很幸运能够创造这么一个优秀的团队，即包含产业专家以及刚从学校毕业等拥有各自技能和经验的人才。”

进一步发展

团队合作是克服执行如此充满野心的项目（也是该工作室的处女作）所引出的种种挑战的关键。

平台选择所创造的一大障碍便是创造出有效的音频。手机玩家更倾向于戴耳机玩游戏—-特别是在上下班的时候，这让音频成了一个棘手的问题。

Wilkman说道：“所有的声音都必须与游戏的主题，外观和感觉相匹配，同时不能妨碍彼此；例如背景音乐将伴随着玩家游戏好几个小时，甚至几个月。”

“为了游戏主题我们在Audiodraft上举行了一次众包竞赛，并且游戏中的所有‘声音’都是由我们的内部开发团队所完成。”

如今Grand Cru已经为自己的项目而致力于多个原型中，但所有的这一切还需要依靠《Supernauts》所累积的成功。而这款游戏能获得怎样的“成功”还有待讨论。

游戏专注于创造性玩家社区意味着《Supernauts》的影响将会非常大，即使最终数值可能不如新闻中所预期的那样高。

（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）

Born of stars: The making of Supernauts

By Kirk Mckeand

When you think about freedom, there’s nothing quite like the infinite vastness of space.

Supernauts, the debut game from free-to-play developer Grand Cru, attempts to offer its players such a sense of freedom. You could call it a creative space.

On surface level, it might seem especially bold for a studio formed just three years ago to attempt such a bold vision, but Grand Cru is not without considering experience, having formed out of the ashes of Mr. Goodliving – a RealNetworks mobile game studio the previously resided in the Finnish captial, Helsinki.

“The guys from there had loads of experience in making fun, casual mobile games and they managed to lure me in from Sulake, where I was working as the Lead Software Architect of Habbo Hotel,” remembers Mikko Wilkman, CTO and Co-Founder of Grand Cru.

“Mixing my experience with running a large scale free-to-play MMO with their mobile, casual experience seemed like a perfect combination to start building something new to the growing free-to-play market.”

Time after time

Supernauts might be the studio’s debut, but it’s been three years in the making. Although – because of a complete overhaul in mechanics – for the developers at Grand Cru, Supernauts feels like their second title.

After spending the first year working on the game, it soon dawned on the team that things weren’t exactly going to plan.

“The first iteration was much closer to a platformer with user generated levels,” recalls Wilkman. “If you think of a mix between Little Big Planet and Minecraft you should have a pretty good picture.

“At that time, our focus wasn’t on mobile alone and the project got quite complex and we couldn’t balance out how to make it properly work as free-to-play on the long term. So we scrapped most of the gameplay and just kept the building mechanics, and rebuilt everything else from scratch, focusing on creativity and social aspects instead of single-player progression.”

That first concept wasn’t set in space, either. It was more of a straight up superheroes and villains setup. It even had jumping at one point, but it just never felt right, so the final game – now set in space – keeps its player’s feet planted firmly on the ground. Indeed, Supernauts’ stellar setting came from wanting to afford players that aforementioned freedom.

“We thought a lot how to give the game infinite room for expansion so space was a logical choice, and it also opened all kinds of cool possibilities from flooding the earth to Zappers and Space Fish,” says Wilkman.

Origin story

The game’s name, Supernauts, came from a long and drawn out brainstorming session, interestingly mixed with a portion of community crowdsourcing.

“After someone said ‘Supernauts’ out loud there really wasn’t any question on whether we needed more ideas or not,” Wilkman says.

Once settled on a concept, after a year of working on something only to scrap it, the game took two more years to finish – but Wilkman’s previous experiences with Habbo Hotel gave him ideal footing for this project.

“My personal experience with Habbo Hotel, all the social interaction and the strength of the community has always been something very close to the core of the game, starting from the first concepts,” admits Wilkman.

“To me, community is everything and being able to reach out to as many players as possible is my main drive to make games. I can’t wait to get to chat with players from around the world, even if I need to use Google Translate for that.”

Grand Cru has always had solid ideals, with the community at its forefront and free-to-play dominance firmly in its sights.

“We’ve always been fully free-to-play, as that really is the best way to be able to reach as many people as possible with the game,” says Wilkman. “We wanted to make it possible to play the game without ever paying, or at least avoid the feeling of being forced to pay. It’s a tricky balance when we also need to make enough money to ship more games in the future.

“The progression needs to be well balanced, all the timings must make sense in the end. More advanced materials naturally take longer to research and we do our best at providing users choices on what to invest into next. In the end a lot of this stuff comes down to intuition – personally I’ve played the game way above 1500 hours by now.

“Soft launch metrics are of course important and we also have this automatic bot that can play the game up to the latest level in a few seconds to double check everything is as it should be.”

Outside of that fair free-to-play mantra, one game has always acted as a huge inspiration for creating Supernauts: Minecraft. But Habbo Hotel’s user-created rooms also formed the building blocks for Supernauts own creative tools. Supernauts gives players creative freedom, not only in where to place the land grids of their space cities, but the building blocks of the constructions that sit within it can also be manually placed.

Personalise your space

“We also saw a lot of users getting creative, doing pixel art on their Farmville farms and figured creativity is something built into each and everyone of us if just given the right tools,” says Wilkman. “Creativity combined with social interaction and collaborative gameplay is really the main goal we hope to have reached with this.”

To create this toolset, Grand Cru used Unity, with individuals using other tools on top, depending on the job, like Photoshop, Visual Studio and Maya. Wilkman says that the team’s hosting tools on Amazon and Omniata, which they’re using for analytics, were just as important.

“We simply saw what was going on with Minecraft already three years ago and thought that might work very well with casual controls on mobile,” admits Wilkman. “We had the first prototype with block building running on the first day the company existed.”

Giving players this freedom in creativity was key to making Supernauts stand out from the thousands of other building games on the App Store. After all, that’s what makes Minecraft so popular – allowing players to make the world their own.

“This is the absolute key, yes, together with the building contests where you can set up a team of up to 15 players and compete worldwide for best creations,” says Wilkman. “For me, it was quite emotional to be part of the first contest and to build a wonderful castle together with totally unknown players from all over the world – or at least Finland and Canada – in perfect harmony.”

Building something with other people is something Wilkman is used to. Supernauts wasn’t a one-person job like many mobile projects. Grand Cru is a relatively large studio for one so young and on mobile.

“We understood early on that this is a technically highly demanding project and luckily most of the founders were very hardcore on high performance mobile game and graphics technology,” says Wilkman.

“Along the way, we’ve managed to expand the team with incredibly talented artists – 2D, 3D & animation – and designers, build a marketing and support team second to none and have the best people possible looking after the game quality and product management.

“Currently we have roughly 20 people working on the game in various roles. We’ve been very fortunate to be able to build a team with wide skills and experience ranging from industry veterans to enthusiastic interns straight out of school.”

Sounding off

Teamwork was key to overcoming some of the challenges thrown up by taking on such an ambitious project as the studio’s debut project, solely for mobile.

One of the hurdles created by that platform choice was in getting the audio right. Mobile gamers’ preference for playing with headphones on – especially when commuting – makes audio a tricky beast to master.

“All sounds must fit the game theme and look and feel perfectly while not getting in the way; for example background music needs to be something you can listen to for hours as a lot of players play the game for months, multiple sessions per day,” says Wilkman.

“We actually ran a crowdsourced competition on Audiodraft for the main theme and all the ‘voice acting’ in the game is done in-house by the development team.”

You can read more about the game’s sound developement on the company’s blog.

Grand Cru is already working on multiple prototypes for its next project, but what this is will likely depend on the level of success Supernauts amasses. Just what constitutes ‘success’ in this case, however, is up for debate.

The game’s strong focus on a community of creative players means Supernauts’ impact could be sizeable even if, in the long run, the numbers aren’t quite as big as the games press is expecting.

The hype that has steadily built throughout Supernauts’ years in development, however, suggests the sky’s quite literally the limit.(source:pocketgamer)