作者：Burak Tezateser

“游戏行业生态圈”是我长期听到的一个热词。我常在多个不同场合听到这个词，它的最普遍用句是“我们的圈子很弱但一直在改进”。我来自土耳其这个半欧半亚的国家，但我想我们所面临的情况与其他国家大同小异。我想分析一下所谓的“脆弱生态圈”对于这个行业不同利益相关者所意味的结果及其相关挑战，并提出我自己对于克服这些挑战的看法。

让我们先看看维基百科对于“经济生态圈”一词的定义：

“一个由相互组织和独立个体所支持的经济共同体——即经济领域的有机体。经济共同体制造对客户有价值的商品和服务，而这些客户本身也是该生态圈中的成员。这个成员有机体还包括供应商，主要制造商，竞争者及其他利益相关者。随着时间发展，他们的职能和角色会共同演变，并且会根据一个或多个中心公司所设定的方向进行结盟。这些公司所建立的领导角色可能会随着时间发展而发生变化，但生态圈领导者的功能是由共同体来评估，因为它有助于成员向共同的愿景前进以整合大家的投资，最终找到互助的角色。”

看起来我们似乎应该区分“全球生态圈”与“本土生态圈”。在过去10年中，本土生态圈的重要性因为互联网的兴盛，共享知识，免费工具，全球峰会而锐减，但它并没有就此灭亡。在此我将讨论组成这个部门的5种不同利益相关者。这些利益相关者分别是开发者，工作室，投资者，大学和政府。我并不认为对于本地生态圈来说，市场是这些利益相关者中的一员，因为市场在多数情况下属于全球性的。我将讨论这些利益相关者在本地生态圈中的相互作用。

开发者

我们可以说是“发展中国家的开发者”甚至是“发展中国家的发展中开发者”。毕竟我们很难在一个脆弱的生态圈中找到资深开发者，而这又会将整个系统引进一个恶性循环，因为没有资深开发者，你就无法制作出高质量的游戏，也无法引导初级开发者。

如果你有幸找到一名资深开发者，就会发现他们几乎100%是通才。例如，你想找一名场景3D美术师，通常拥有3年经验的资深开发者的简历如下：

*熟悉Maya、Zbrush、3D Studio Max、Mental Ray

*精通场景建模，道具建模和道具动画

*可靠的团队伙伴，能够及时完成任务

但在土耳其，同一个人的简历可能就会变成这样：

*熟悉Unity3d、Unreal Engine、3Dstudio Max、Photoshop、Indesign、Illustrator、SoftImage、After Effects、Movie Maker

*精通2D和3D建模，纹理，概念美术，插画，游戏设计，故事撰写，视频编辑，海报物资，照明，动画，艺术方向

*请聘用我吧，我真的很有天份。

如果此人拥有5年经验，其简历的差异还会更大。

多数开发者都在找机会进入西欧或北美市场，但只有最具天份的人能够做到。这意味着就算一个工作室发现一枚金子，也不可能长期持有。要游说外国人加入自己的工作室同样极为困难。

另一个劣势就在于缺乏替代人选。有个曾在加州工作多年的朋友告诉我：“当你的团队招聘一名新成员时，你会询问团队每个成员对这名新人的看法。团队中只要有一人对新成员颇有微词，你就不能录用此人。”这个法则在脆弱的生态圈中并不适用。

开发者如果在一个生态圈中孤独落寞那么其动力就会急剧下降。互联网减少了这种孤独感，但如果开发者无法获得真正的赏识就会丧失动力。对于程度员来说尤其如此，没人了解他们的工作，也就没人欣赏他们的才能。

开发者的一大好处就在于，他们几乎都极为聪明并且教育程度较高。他们代表了我们社会的光明面，具有改变现状和打破脆弱生态圈恶性循环的潜力。

我作为制作人对脆弱生态圈中的开发者的看法如下：

*你应该长期留存团队开发者并助他们学有所长。

*你应该为其提供良好的职业路径并助他们在大型工作室找到工作（如果他们有需要的话）。没有人会想在没有晋升空间的情况下一直担任阴影美术师或AI程序员，除非你会在他们需要的时候助其找到另一份工作。实际上前雇员在大型工作室就业对你来说也是件好事，因为他们数年后可能重新回归，成为更为资深和忠诚的团队成员。

*你要为他们找到导师并助其自我成长。

*你要了解更多技术类的知识，以便欣赏程序员的才能。

*你必须了解如何与每种个性的人相处，并努力创造团队和谐，因为你无法仅仅因为某人举止失礼而将其解雇。

*不到万不得已不要解雇成员。

开发工作室

与强大的生态圈相比，脆弱生态圈中的独立开发者数量远超过团队和工作室数量。这些工作室人员数量较少，它们开业和倒闭速度也更快。我见过的一半以上游戏开发工作室仅推出一两款游戏就倒闭了。除了手机游戏，其他类型的游戏开发则较为罕见。

我认为这些缺乏经验的团队的最普遍错误就在于，它们低估了开发过程或市场营销中某些环节的重要性。有些程序员和美术人员组建了团队，但他们对游戏设计却一无所知。另一个例子就是我自己的工作室，我们制作了一个长达3年的项目，但却没有经过充分测试就发布了游戏。

有大量工作室对自己的开发经验避而不谈，对开发过程绝对保密，好像他们的项目可以改变世界一样。这些针对不同题材和市场制作游戏的工作室之间也存在一种人为产生的竞争。

极少数游戏工作室是由行为中的资深元老创建。它们大多是由软件/IT公司或广告公司的成员创办。而那些刚出校门的富二代创办游戏公司也是一种极为常见的现象。

扁平式组织极为罕见，公司中的领导职位并没有准确的定义，他们也没有太多威信，所有决策通常是由老板一人拍板，以致许多计划/管理方式都无果而终。这方面还是以我自己的工作室为例：在规划《Monochroma》项目时，我们根本就没有考虑过动画的问题。结果动画就变成了最困难的开发环节之一，我们就不得不3次重新制作所有动画。这真是惨败。

低薪是游戏初创企业的最大优势。在土耳其，一个简单的资产制作任务的成本仅是北美的三分之一，这是游戏初创企业的一个有力武器，它们应明智地利用这一点。

那么我如何解决这些问题呢？

我趋向于采用人工密集型的游戏开发方式。我偏爱需要制作大量资产，具有美观的艺术方向和故事具有沉浸感的大型冒险游戏。

我尽量去了解自己所知的多个工作室，并询问关于它们的问题，也会向它们讲述自己的问题。我也努力从自己的错误中汲取教训，使用扁平化管理方式，这样人人对自己的任务都有职责和权力。我也尽量去听取关于自己决策的反馈，并再次检查执行情况。

我们创办了一个名为Oyunder的组织，旨在邀请工作室参与并分享自己的经验，创造一些人脉，获取反馈并从其他工作室的失误中汲取经验。我们组织这个圈子中的活动和大会。现在我们已经看到了这些努力所取得的成效了，只有合作才能共赢，各自为阵不会进步。

投资者/集资

集资似乎是在脆弱的生态圈中创办游戏公司最困难的一环。最近能够从科技基金获益的只有电子商务初创企业。即使是这样投资模式也非常保险和屈尊俯就。天使投资人以极低的价格掌握公司50%的股份，可以分享企业人脉关系和经验。但游戏行业却并没有什么可与其分享的经验或人脉关系。

游戏初创公司获得投资，通常是通过朋友或家人牵线，但后来总是无法善终。其失败项目为人所知之后，其他投资者就会对这个行业避而远之。

若是寻找海外投资，初创公司必须认识到海外天使资金通常更青睐本土投资，而通过发行商人筹资则远比早年的游戏行业更困难。

寻找外包工作相当困难，但仍然比寻找投资更容易。由于缺乏游戏相关的外包工作，有些游戏初创公司就会接单制作广告和软件项目，并因此而丧失了自己的方向。

科技补助金，车库创业和自我筹资似乎就是游戏初创公司筹资的剩余选择。要吸引投资者的眼球，这一行就必须产生更多成功故事和详细的行业分析。

我对退出这个恶性循环的策略就是申请科技补助金，创建一个管道制造一些技术样本并寻找海外投资。我计划在欧洲或北美成立一个总部，但具体的资产制作则在土耳其完成。

大学

因为这个行业还不够强大，大众对游戏开发，游戏公司或游戏本身的看法基本上来自那些耸人听闻的媒体消息，比如“又有一人连续玩17小时游戏毙命”或“男子沉迷游戏杀死全家人”。在保守的社会大众眼中，游戏就算不是一种危险的行为也至少是一种很糟糕的习惯。大学教授与公众并没有什么区别。富有创造力的学生因家长和学校所迫从事IT或广告行业。所幸并非所有毕业生都如此顺从。

最近在土耳其有一些硕士班开设了专门的游戏开发课程，并且即将提供全日制学位。我相信这将会极大改变游戏行业的现状。

我个人一直在努力同自己能够接触到的大学建立联系并对其进行协助，但单靠个人努力还远远不够。

在Oyunder协会我们创立了针对高中生的游戏开发俱乐部。我们也鼓励大学开展与游戏相关的课程，或者至少让游戏开发成为现有课程的一部分。我们还召集了一些对游戏行业感兴趣的学术界人士，并帮助他们创办了一份与游戏相关的学术论文集。

政府

政府对游戏行业的看法通常反应了大众的看法。游戏及游戏开发或多或少与所有的政府机构相关，因为政府对这一话题还没有明确的战略或中心组织，相关法律条款和补助方面也存在许多随机性。有时候政府会为行业创造极佳的机会，有时候则是极大的阻力。例如，财政部最近开放了一轮补助，为开发者返还50%的平台佣金，但却没有明确指出相关的平台，而这些初助金也仅面向手机游戏。不幸的是，政府对于“游戏”的定义也不甚明朗，这也给想申请补助金的手机游戏开发者构成了挑战。

土耳其为出口公司提供了巨大的额外津贴，以便缩小预算赤字方面的差距，但政府却并不清楚游戏究竟该算一种服务还是产品，所以他们也无法为游戏开发提供特殊照顾。因为游戏开发被列入编程领域，而编程又从属于IT领域，而IT又是一种服务。

按照这个说法，我们的贸易办公室也算是金属矿工的出口办公室。金属矿工？因为游戏是电脑程序，电脑程序又要在电脑上运行，电脑是由线路和电线组成的，而电线和线路又是由金属来处理的。为什么不能这么说呢？照这样算你还可以将其列入食品出口商的条目。

现在到处都有软件园，据称其创建的初衷是为科技公司提供办公场地和减税政策，但现在这些地方都充斥着大型公司客服的IT运营项目，初创公司很难找到空余的办公室了。

从积极方面来看，科技补助金还是很实用并且可以作为一种加速器。在全球市场中还有许多针对本地游戏进行市场营销的补助，我相信土耳其在这方面比其他许多国家做得更好。至少政府在这方面的政策还行，但在相关法律条款方面还有很大提升空间。

我们需要行业协会和业余爱好者共同努力才能推动格局变化。

总结

我并不认为脆弱生太圈中的一切都很糟糕。这个圈子中具有许多不同挑战和机遇。我们应该共同进步克服困难。（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

The Problems of Weak Game Industry Ecosystems

by Burak Tezateser

“Game industry ecosystem” is such a buzz word I’ve been hearing for a long time. I heard it every once in a while in various contexts, the most common use of the word is “Our ecosystem is weak but improving” I think even I gave this automated response to journalists a few times. I live in Turkey by the way. A semi-european, semi-middle eastern country but I believe we have a similar situation with a lot of other countries. I want to analyze the outcomes of so called “weak ecosystem” for different stakeholders of the industry and the challenges associated for such environment then I will come up with my own ideas to overcome these challenges.

Let’s start with a definition of the term “business ecosystem” from Wikipedia:

“An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organisms of the business world. The economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organisms also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders. Over time, they co-evolve their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies. Those companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the function of ecosystem leader is valued by the community because it enables members to move toward shared visions to align their investments, and to find mutually supportive roles.”

It seems that we need to separate “global ecosystem” from “local ecosystem”. During the last 10 years the importance of local ecosystem decreased due to the use of internet, shared knowledge, free tools, global summits, yet it did not expire. I will talk about 5 different stakeholders that more or less form the sector. These stakeholders are developers,  studios, investors, universities and government. I don’t believe market is one of these stakeholders for the local ecosystem, because market is global in most cases. I’m going to discuss the interaction of these stakeholders with the local ecosystem.

Developers

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We might as well say “developers of developing countries” or even “developing developers of developing countries”. Anyway. It’s pretty hard to find experienced developers in a weak ecosystem and that puts the whole system into a vicious circle as you can’t develop quality games and you can’t educate junior developers without experienced ones.

If you’re lucky to find an experienced developer, they’re almost 100% generalists. For example, when you’re looking for a 3D artist for environments in your next project, a typical CV of a 3 year experienced guy looks like this:

-Knows Maya, Zbrush, 3D Studio Max, Mental Ray
-Experienced in environment modelling, prop modelling and prop animation
-Solid teamworker, good at deadlines

In Turkey, the CV of the same guy would look like this:

-Knows Unity3d, Unreal Engine, 3Dstudio Max, Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, SoftImage, After Effects, Movie Maker
-Experienced in 2D and 3D, modelling, texture, concept art, illustration, game design, story writing, video editing, post effects, lighting, animation, art direction
-Hire me and I’ll kick ass, I’m very talented

This gap opens further if the guy has 5 years experience and so on.

Most of the developers seek an opportunity to move to Western Europe or North America but only the most talented ones can go. This means when a studio finds a gem,  they won’t be holding it for long enough. It’s also very difficult to convince a foreigner to come.

Another pitfall is the lack of alternatives. A friend of mine that worked long years in California once told me: “when you’re hiring a new guy to the team, you gotta ask the opinion of every existing team member for the new guy. If even one of them has a slight concern that he/she won’t be getting along with the rest of the team, you shouldn’t hire.” That rule would hardly work in a weak ecosystem.

The motivation of developers drop dramatically when they are alone in the ecosystem. The internet definitely decreases this feeling of solitude but when a developer can’t get a real appreciation they lose their drive. This is often the case for programmers, nobody understands what they’re doing therefore nobody appreciates.

The good thing about developers is that almost all of them are very smart and well educated. They represent the bright part of our society and they have the potential of changing the status quo and breaking the vicious circle of weak ecosystems.

The quicknotes I took for myself as a producer about the developers of a weak ecosystem:

-You should stick to your team member developers for long years and help them specialize

-You should offer them a nice career path and help them find a job in a bigger studio if they’re looking for it. Nobody would like to become a shader artist or an AI programmer if there is no other vacant job for that area in your country unless they know you would help them to find another job when they need it. It is actually a good thing to have a few of your former team members to work in big studios, because they will probably return to you in a few years as more experienced and loyal team members.

-You need to find them mentors and help them improve themselves.

-You need to learn more about the technical stuff to be able to appreciate your programmers.

-You need to learn to get along with every type of personality and work extra hard to create a team synergy, because you don’t have the luxury of firing a guy simply because he’s misbehaving.

-Firing someone should be the very last resort.

Development Studios

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There are much more indie developers than there are team and studios in a weak ecosystem compared to a strong ecosystem. Also these studios are less crowded and they open and close much faster. More than half of the game development studios I have seen made one or two games and closed. Anything else than mobile development is quite rare as well.

The most common mistake I see in these inexperienced teams is that they tend to under emphasize some parts of the development process or the marketing. A few programmers and artists team up and they don’t realize they know nothing about game design. Another example is my own studio, we make a 3 year long project and we release it without proper testing.

A quite large number of studios abstain from sharing their knowledge and keep their development process top secret as if they are going to change the world. There is an artificial competition between studios making games with different genres and markets.

Very few game studios are founded by veterans from the game industry. Most of them are started by people working in a software/IT company or an advertisement company. It is also very common for kids fresh out of college with rich parents give way to game startups.

Flat organizations are very rare. Lead positions are not well defined and they don’t have much authority, usually the boss makes all the decisions. There are lots of planning/management fails. I should give another example for my own studio: While planning Monochroma, we didn’t think about animations at all. It turned out that animations are one of the most difficult parts of the development, we had to do whole animations 3 times from scratch. Epic fail.

Low salaries are the biggest advantage of game startups. In Turkey a simple asset production task costs 1/3 of what it would cost in North America. It’s a huge weapon in the hands of game startups. They just have to use it wise.

So what do I do to overcome these problems?

I tend to labor intensive development of game development. I’m leaning towards cinematic adventure games where you need tons of assets, a beautiful art direction and an immersive story.

I try to know as many studios as I can and ask them about their problems and tell them mines. I also try to learn from my mistakes, use a flat organization where everyone has responsibilities and an authority over what they do. I try to get as many feedback for my decisions and double check everything.

We started an organization, Oyunder, where studios can join and share their knowledge, make some network, get feedback and learn from other studios mistakes. We organize networking events and conferences. It’s been quite effective already and we started to see the rewards. Together we stand, divided we fall.

Investors / Fundraising

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Fundraising seems to be the most difficult part of starting a game business in weak ecosystems. Lately the only ones benefiting from tech funds are e-commerce startups. Even then investment models are very safe and patronizing. Angel investors take control 50% of the company for ridiculously low prices from very bright entrepreneurs in return of sharing their network and knowledge. Unfortunately for game industry, they don’t have any knowledge or network to share.

Every once in a while a game startup finds an investment, usually through friendship or family but it ends up with big disappointment. Knowing about these failed projects other investors choose to stay away from the industry.

Seeking help from foreign investmet, startups realize that foreign angel funds usually prefer to make investment in their local area and fundraising via publishers are much harder than earlier years of game industry.

Finding a contract work is pretty hard way but still it seems to be an easier way than seeking investment. Some game startups lose their focus while doing advertisement work and software projects as game related contract work is rare.

Tech grants, garage startups and self investment are the remaining solutions for fundraising. Success stories and detailed industry analysis are needed to attract the attention of investors. Our game developer association Oyunder is establishing a center of research of game industry in Istanbul, Turkey.

My own strategy to exit this vicious circle consists of applying for tech grants, building a pipeline, producing a few tech demos and looking for investment abroad. I am planning an HQ somewhere in Europe or North America and the asset production will be made in Turkey.

Universities

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As there is no strong industry to shape the public view about game development, game business or games themselves, public opinion are coming from click-bait news such as “another guy died from playing video games straight 17 hours” or “gamer guy killed his whole family”. Games are a very bad habit if not dangerous in the eye of the conservative society. Professors are not much different than common public. Creative students are forced by their parents and their schools to work in IT or advertisement. Hopefully not all of them obey.

Some good things are happening as well. Lately, in Turkey a few master classes are opening up purely for game development and there is a full graduate program coming up soon. I believe this will change the scene dramatically.

Personally I try to be connected with all the universities within my reach and assist them but we need more than just individual efforts.

In our association Oyunder we started a pilot project for game development clubs in high schools. We’re encouraging universities to open courses related to game development or at least make it part of the existing courses. We also gathered the academic people interested in game industry and helping them start a journal for game-related academic thesis and essays.

Government

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Government view of games and game development often reflects the public view. Games and game development are somehow related with all the government institutions and as there is no defined strategy nor a centralized body for the topic, there are many random, interesting laws, bans and subsidies according to the level of knowledge of the bureaucrat assigned for the task. Sometimes there are unbelievably good opportunities and sometimes it’s a total mess. For example while ministry of finance is starting a great subsidy that offers 50% of the platform commission back to the developer, he forgets to list all the related platforms and the subsidy only covers mobile games. Unfortunately there is no authority that would define what is a “game” neither therefore it’s a real challenge for a mobile game developer to be eligible for the subsidy.

Turkey gives huge bonuses to exporting companies in order to close the gap in the budget deficit yet they can’t understand if games should be a service or a product so they don’t offer anything special to game development. Because game development is listed under programming and programming is listed under IT and IT is a service.

Similarly our trade office is the export office of metal miners. Metal miners? Because games are computer programs, computer programs runs on computers, computers are all wires and circuits and wires and circuits are processed metal. Why not? They can put you under food exporters if you want.

Cyberparks are everywhere and it was told they were built to offer space and tax exemptions for technology companies and now they’re filled with IT operations that are mostly customer service of big companies and it’s impossible to find an empty office.

On the positive, tech grants are applicable and can used as an accelerator. There are many subsidies to marketing campaigns of local games in global markets. I believe Turkey is doing much better than some other countries in that sense. At least there is a good intention but laws and regulations have a long way to help the industry.

We need associations and lobbyist to work harder for a change.

Conclusion

I don’t think everything is bad in a weak ecosystem. There are lots of different challenges and opportunities. We just have to learn to cope with them.(source：gamasutra)