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确保你始终专注于游戏开发的5个建议

发布时间:2016-08-09 15:43:39 Tags:,,,,

作者:Sara Casen

Midnight Hub是前Mojang和Paradox的开发者所运营的一家瑞典独立工作室。而现在我们正致力于开发受故事驱动的奇幻游戏《Lake Ridden》。本文最初是发表在我们的开发者博客上。

这周我们对之前的网页内容进行了一次大检查。事实上这一全新的网页也花费了我们一些时间。我想我们应该不是唯一需要努力寻找时间去创造游戏和更新网页的独立开发者吧。正是其中的一些项目一直拖延而浪费了你用于创造游戏的宝贵时间与精力。而对于我们来说拥有这一新网页的长久好处便是能够让我们明确问题的解决。而这也将引出我们今天的主题:你该如何保持专注于游戏创造?

当我们刚创建Midnight Hub时我们清楚还需要面对许多与游戏开发无关的事情,但这也是必须去执行的任务。不过我认为我们中的所有人都未准备好去面对随时会跳出来的各种不同任务并且这些任务还有可能将你从《Lake Ridden》的开发过程中抽离出来。创造一款游戏就非常困难了,你总是缺少足够的时间,金钱和人才,所以你需要再三考虑是否该将这些资源浪费在任何不能对游戏创造带去直接帮助的内容上。如果不能做出正确的决定,你可能只会深陷各种忙碌的工作中而不能真正去执行那些对游戏发行有帮助的工作。以下便是帮助你去完成游戏创造的5个建议(游戏邦注:同时也能够确保你在运行一家独立工作室时不会忘记自己的真正职责):

1.做计划

假设你正在创造一款游戏或者拥有一个你想将其变成自己全职工作的兴趣。那么你想要实现什么样的目标呢?只有当你真正清楚自己想要的是什么,你才会清楚你该做些什么去实现这一目标。而一旦你清楚自己需要做什么时你便可以使用项目管理方法并将所有工作划分成一些可管理的部分。

当Epic在开发行动射击游戏《战争机器》时他们便始终坚守“Marcus Fenix是个坏蛋”这一咒语(游戏邦注:Marcus是游戏中的主角)。而他们在开发中关于游戏的每个决定都反应出了这点。

我不知道是不是真的,但如此分解提取将让你拥有一个非常明确的任务。就像这把枪是否能让Marcus看起来更像坏蛋?会还是不会?这个声优是否能让Marcus看起来像个坏蛋?会还是不会?这个过程动画……你将从中获得答案。

story(from gamasutra)

story(from gamasutra)

我们的办公室中有一幅画,画上有一个写着“故事”的框架。这能够提醒着我们在《Lake Ridden》中需要始终专注于讲述一个有趣的故事。故事是这个游戏项目最主要的元素。

问题:你正在广撒网而不能真正完成任何工作。

可行的解决方法:保持集中。明确你想要实现的目标。当你清楚你的游戏的愿景时你便可以开始决定如何实现这一愿景了。在团队中建立一个清楚且共享的计划将有效推动你的游戏项目的发展。

2.处理一些消耗时间但却很重要的任务

当你在运营一家小型工作室时你并不能只是全身心专注于游戏中。这是你必须清楚的。你需要投入时间去确保房租是否及时缴纳,与具有潜力的团队成员交流,处理程序订阅问题或接见投资者或新闻记者等等。这是任何小型工作室都需要执行的工作。你必须清楚这是你需要去完成的任务,如此你才能够专心为游戏编写代码,构思理念并设计功能。

问题:你觉得自己没有足够的时间真正致力于自己的游戏。所有其它工作总是跑出来阻碍你。

可行的解决方法:明确这是运营一家小型工作室的一部分工作。然后你可以选择忽视所有会让你分心的工作或决定什么才是对你真正重要的工作。而如果将其全部忽视可能会导致这些工作在之后反过来咬你一口。

相反地你应该明确那些真正重要的工作,如创建一个更新网页去营销游戏,及时支付房租以确保不会流落街头,每个月参加针对于游戏开发者的IRL活动去拓展自己的圈子。你需要非常谨慎地做出选择。

当有人问我他们是否能来我们的工作室并访问我们团队有关游戏开发的论文时,我都会回答:“那让我也去你们工作室吧。”这让我有时间去判断我/团队是否真的有时间这么做。你并不想留给别人不好的印象,你只是想让他们理解你没有足够的时间去这么做。而有时候拒绝别人真的很糟糕。我们每周便会收到好几封有关会面或Skype通话等请求的邮件。但是因为时间和预算并不允许我们去接受这些请求。

如果你的团队成员越少,你们便越需要去规划优先执行的任务。当我们创建Midnight Hub时我们还只有3名成员,所以在一开始我的一个任务便是处理大多数非开发任务,并留给Johan和Erik更多时间和空间去致力于游戏创造。

这么说吧,你的时间永远都不会是免费的。假设你将自己的全部积蓄投入于创造一本漫画书。你辞掉了全职工作而打算全身心去做这件事,你希望能够实现自己的梦想!如果你将你投入于项目中的金钱除以1个小时以及你所需要投入的人力,你便会知道1个小时对自己来说有多少价值。这便是1个小时的“无条件会面”或一个小时创作的货币价值。

3.避免会议

我们总是很容易在会议中浪费大量时间。有人会通过会议进行社交,去谈论自己的小孩或以此进行消遣。如果你不谨慎对待的话会议很容易成为一个巨大的时间黑洞。不过也有些方法能够帮助你最大限度利用会议并在之后重新回到游戏创造中。

问题:你总是不断参加各种会议并且似乎无止尽地在这里唠唠叨叨。你们未能在此做出任何决定,你会觉得自己浪费了原本可以用于创造代码/美术/设计的宝贵时间。

可行的解决方法:有些会议是必要的,即能够确保你们始终走在开发正轨上。再一次你也需要在此进行优先规划。明确真正重要的会议!就像对于我们来说计划会议和晨间站立会议都很必要,毕竟所有成员都需要了解该致力于什么工作。

以下是关于如何有效举行会议的要点。我便注意到一些会议因为做不到以下内容而遭遇了失败。

拥有明确的会议目的:决定将致力于怎样的特定功能,决定由哪家公司来制作你的预告片,决定于哪位团队成员交谈等等。

时间框架。大多数情况下你都可以确保会议不要太长。并创建一个紧凑的时间框架。

创造一个日程表并事先将其发送给所有成员,从而确保他们可以为会议进行事先准备。始终按照日程表上的安排行事。

只邀请对的人参加会议。不要浪费其他人的时间。

确保你们能够在会议上做出某些决定。在会议期间进行所有讨论并最终做出一个明确的决定以便你们可以对此展开行动。

4.有时候完成比完美更重要

许多创造性工作者都是完美主义者。这可能导致他们很难真正发行一些内容或真正推出自己所创造的作品。虽然追求完美从本质上来看是没错,但是你必须清楚何时该完成作品并发行它。

问题:你总是花费大量时间去专研各种微小的细节,你希望做到最完美并因此导致最终只完成非常小部分的代码/设计。

可行的解决方法:就像Jared曾在《Silicon Valley》中说过“当你不再觉得自己的beta测试版本不够完美时一切便太迟了。”创造游戏其实就是一个迭代过程。有时候你需要接受“完成”比完美更重要的事实并了解何时该真正放手。你必须承认自己的时间和精力都非常有限,所以你需要谨慎地使用它们。不管怎样任何一件艺术品是永远都不可能被真正“完成”的。

5.休息

你的大脑总是需要休息。一整天致力于一些创造性任务需要你投入大量的精力和注意力。所以如果你想继续创造游戏就必须留给大脑足够的休息时间。很多初创人士或创造性工作者总是会长时间工作。

问题:你工作了非常长时间,但是效率却越来越低。灵感已经不复存在或者你总是不断犯错。

可行的解决方法:更有效率地工作而不是埋头死干。当你致力于一款游戏时你的任务是创造游戏,而当你下班时你的任务便是给自己充电,不管是大脑还是身体。我不相信8小时的工作时间适用于所有工作。如果你所面对的是创造性工作,你可能需要暂时离开工作台并去看看外面的世界。因为创造性需要你不断进行探索,前往一些全场所,玩不同游戏,见不同人,阅读不同书籍,以此去放松自己并拓展自己的灵感。你必须好好照顾自己,避免周末仍继续工作,更不要生病了还坚持工作。困了就去睡觉。好好享受这个夏天吧!

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

5 Tips To Stay Focused on Your Game Development

by Sara Casen

Midnight Hub is a Swedish indie studio run by former Mojang and Paradox developers. Right now we’re hard at work with our story-driven mystery game Lake Ridden. Feel free to reach out on Twitter if you got any questions! This post was originally posted on our developer blog.

This week we gave our old page an big overhaul. The truth is that launching this new web page is something we had in the works for quite some time now. I guess we’re not the only indie studio stuggling with fidning enough time to make their game AND having an updated page? It’s one of those projects that just drags on and on, eating up a lot of valuable time and energy you could have invested into making the game instead. For us the longtime benefits of having this new page were big enough to justify the hassle of setting up it up. This leads me to the blog topic of today: how do you stay focused on making your game (or any kind of project!)?

When starting Midnight Hub we knew that there would always be plenty of things that are not really game development, but which still needed to get done. But I guess none of us were prepared on just how many different kinds of tasks that pop up all the time and drag you away from delivering Lake Ridden to you guys. Making a game is hard enough, you are short on time, money and talent, so spending it on anything that doesn’t directly help the actual game getting done needs to be justified. Otherwise it’s very easy getting caught up doing busy work instead of actual work that should be taking you closer to releasing the game! Here are five tips on how to get your game done (and at the same time making sure you’re not ignoring vital responsibilities when running an indie studio):

1. Have a plan.

Let’s say you are making a game or have a serious hobby you want to turn into a full time job. What do you want to achieve? Only when you know what you want, can you identify what you should be doing to get there. When you know what needs to be done you can apply a project management method and break down the work to manageable chunks, just as we talked about a few weeks earlier on this blog.

Rumor has it that when Epic developed the action fueled shooter “Gears of War” they went by the mantra “Marcus Fenix is a badass” (Marcus being the main character of the game). Every decision about the game should reflect this statement during the development.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but distilling it down like this gives you a very clear mission. Is this gun helping Marcus look like a badass? Yes/no? Does this voice actor makes Marcus a badass? Yes/no? Does this cut scene make…you get the idea!

We have a drawing in the office showing a piedestal with the word “story” written on top of it. This reminds us that we always want to focus on telling a good story with Lake Ridden. Story above all with this game project.

Problem: You’re jumping all over the place, not really getting anything done, perhaps discarding a lot of work.

Possible solution: Focus. Identify what you want to achieve. When you know the vision for your game you can start making decisions on how to actually get there. Having a clear, shared vision in the team pretty much is a deal breaker for your game project, as this big study of successful game developers suggests.

2. Tackle time-consuming, but important tasks.

When running your own small studio you just can’t focus 100% on working on the game at all times. Accept this. You need to put time aside to do things like networking, making sure the rent was paid in time, interviewing potential team members, hassle with subscriptions for programs or meet with investors or press. This is part of the job at any small studio. Realize that these are important things that need to get done, to enable you to write code, draw concepts or design features for the game itself.

Problem: You feel like you don’t get enough time to actually work on the game hands on. All kinds of other work keeps coming in the way.

Possible solution: Realize this is part of running a small studio, to some extent. Then you can either choose to ignore all kind of “distractions” OR decide which ones are important to you. Ignoring them all will almost certainly come back and bite you in the butt sooner or later.

Instead, identify the important ones, like having a updated web page to market your game, to pay the rent so that you have an office and perhaps attend one IRL event for game developers each month to expand your network. Be picky and choose wisely. Prioritize.

When someone asks me if they can come by and hang at our studio or interview the team for their master thesis on game development my standard reply is “let me get back to you”. This gives me the time to see if I/the team actually got time for this. You don’t want to come across as a douchebag, just let them understand that unfortunately you don’t have as much time as you wish you had. Sometimes it sucks to say “no”. We get emails at least a couple of times a week with all kinds of requests for meetings, Skype calls, or other kinds of meetings. I just can’t attend all of these AND get Lake Ridden done on time, on budget.

The fewer you are on you team, the harder you need to prioritize. When we started Midnight Hub we were three crew members, and one of my missions from early on was to be the one dealing with most of the non-game development stuff to give Johan and Erik as much time and space possible to work hands-on with the game.

Let me put it this way, your time is never really free of charge. Let’s say you put all your savings into making a comic book. You quit your day job to do this full time, you want to fulfill your dream! What is one hour of your time worth? If you take the amount of moneys you invest into your project (how much of your savings your are burning trough), divide it per hours and person you get the hourly rate for what 1 hour of work is worth to you. That is the monetary value a 60 min “unconditional meeting over a cup of coffee” or one hour of drawing actually has. Scary when you start to think about it ; )

3. Avoid bad meetings.

It’s easy to waste time on meetings. Some people use meetings to be socialize, to talk about their kids, or to pass time. If you are not careful meetings can be a huge time sink. But there are ways to maximize your meetings and then get back to working on the game again!

Problem: You are constantly in meetings that just seem to drone on and on forever. Nothing is really decided, and you feel like you are losing valuable time that could be spent with the code/art/design.

Possible solution: Some meetings are necessary to make sure you are all on track with the development. Again, prioritize. Identify important meetings! Sprint planning meetings and our morning stand-ups are necessary for us, everybody need to know what to work on.

Here are some pointers. I have seen meetings failed since they lacked one or more of the following. How to have an efficient meeting:

A clear purpose with the meeting: to decide on how a specific feature will work, to decide on what company will do your trailer, to interview a possible new team member etc.

A time frame. Most of the time you can keep the meetings quite short. Set a tight time frame.

An agenda. Send it out to everyone ahead of time so they can come to the meeting prepared. Stick to the agenda and firmly guide people back when they wander of the agenda.

Invite the right people only. Don’t waste anyone else’s time.

Make sure you decide on something. All discussions during the meeting should end with a clear decision(s) so you can take action!

4. Sometimes done is better than perfect!

Many creatives are perfectionists. This can lead to having a hard time releasing something or knowing when to let go of your masterpiece. Wanting something to be perfect is a good trait in itself, you just need to know when to call it done and ship it. Both for your own mental sanity and the rest of the team.

Problem: You spend a lot of time on small details, you want it to be just perfect, which results in very little code/design actually getting committed/published.

Possible solution: “If you’re not ashamed of your beta you released it too late”, as the character Jared says on Silicon Valley. Making games are very much an iterative process. Sometimes you need to accept that “done” is better than “perfect” and just push it out the door. Knowing when to let something go comes with gaining experience. Acknowledge that your time and energy are limited resources, spend them wisely. A work of art is never “done”, just abandoned and all that.

5. Take breaks!

Your brain need breaks. Working with creative tasks all day requires a lot of focus and energy. To stay sharp and on top of the game you need to give your brain some rest. A lot of startups or creatives work very long hours.

Problem: You work long hours or periods of time, getting less and less done. You don’t feel inspired or keep making a lot of mistakes.

Possible solution: Work smarter, not harder. When you are working on your game your mission is to make the game, when you are off duty your mission should be to recharge yourself, both your brain and body. I don’t believe that the 8 hour work day necessarily applies to all kind of work. If you are doing creative work you need to get up from your desk and go see the world sometimes. As creatives it’s crucial to keep exploring, visit new places, play different games, meet a lot of new people, read books or something that makes you relax and expand your inner database of references. Take care of yourself, try not to work on the weekend, don’t work when your’re sick. Get the sleep you need. You are not a slacker for giving yourself some slack, enjoy the summer!(source:gamasutra)

 


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