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从最初Steam Greenlight中获取的经验教训

发布时间:2016-08-30 10:55:10 Tags:,,,,

作者:Billy Bonk

我想我可能要先简单地介绍下自己。我叫Billy今年18岁,我所参与的团队只有3名成员,其中还包括我的双胞胎兄弟和我们的朋友。而到目前为止我已经从事编程4至5年时间,但我却并未真正将自己的项目带到市场上。在我们第一款决定对外公开的游戏中,我们遭遇了各种各样的陷阱,但我们也从失败中获取了一些宝贵的经验教训。

在游戏开发中没有什么能比截止日期更让人辛苦的事了,所以当我们专注于在一个月内创造一款游戏并尝试着将其带到Steam Greenlight上时,我们便遭遇了一些问题并在之后发现了一些有帮助的诀窍。首先我们注意到,随着截止日期的靠近,我们的工作积极性便会飞速提高。而一旦我们将游戏上传到greenlight,我们便会基于评论中的反馈开始修改漏洞并改变一些角色装扮。或许在第一天我们还能应付得了,但是当第二天到来时我们便会意识到强制进入greenlight过程并不是件明智的事,特别是在我们还未准备好的时候。

我发现一件非常重要的事便是,缺少社区或追随者将会严重阻碍你的游戏的greenlight。当我们来到greenlight的时候我们还没有什么市场营销经验,并且在过去也未曾推广过什么内容。所以为了弥补这些我们创造了一个Twitter账号并尝试着通过reddit和开发者日记进行推广。尽管利用Twitter粉丝并不是坏事,但是你还必须拥有更多追随者去进行投票。就像我们的主要投票来源是看到我们的Facebook内容的朋友和家人。尽管这在一开始能够帮到我们,但是等到第二天的时候我们票数便会直线下滑。所以我们最好能提前几个月创建一个适当的用户基础。并尝试着在reddit或Steam上创建一个在线社区。

screenshot(from Gamasutra)

screenshot(from Gamasutra)

不要匆忙将你的游戏带到Steam Greenlight上。或许这是大家都清楚的,但是随着开发者不断完善游戏,他们似乎便会逐渐忽略这一常识。我必须承认,当我们将游戏上传到Steam上时它还非常糟糕,但是我们却是在看到一些评论表示游戏很无聊以及有些人抱怨游戏的CRT效果导致分辨率出现问题时才意识到这一情况。所以你最好在将游戏上传到greenlight之前尝试着将其呈现在一些人面前而去获取相关反馈例,如你可以在一些游戏开发社区暖暖身然后发篇文章去寻求反馈。我同时也发现在像9Gag或imgur这样的媒体平台发布游戏玩法的GIF图像并寻求反馈蛮有帮助的。

但如果你像我一样因为这一尝试兴奋不已,并因此忽视了我和其他开始尝试自己第一次greenlight过程的开发者的提醒,你便需要考虑以下内容。如果你从未尝试着去获取任何支持者,那么对你来说第一天便非常重要,所以你必须确保能够公开你的游戏中最吸引人的画面。我总是会惊讶地发现许多人都在上传着一些有关游戏玩法的无意义的图片,当然也包括我自己。因为大多数人只会在你的页面上停留短暂时间,所以你的视频和图片便是向他们传达你的游戏有多优秀的唯一方式。你必须让你的游戏能和孔雀一样去展示自己的功能。同时你还要尝试着去思考自己游戏最突出的地方在哪里并想办法去突显它。所以你最好在按下上传按键后认真思考这些问题:

你的游戏有什么独特之处(像拥有很多武器或游戏玩法之类的回答是没有意义的)

这是否是一款复制游戏?(如果你不能去突显自己的独特功能的话它便有可能就是一款普通的复制游戏)

这款游戏的外观非常糟糕。(大多数人都希望能够忽视所有严厉的评论,但我认为你们必须去忍受人们所说的这一切。有些对于游戏的攻击其实比对游戏的夸奖对你更有帮助。因为他们会注意到你可能忽略的一些特定问题。)

你的视频并未突显游戏玩法所传达的内容?(就像我之前所说的你必须确保你的视频不只是包含你认为该呈现的前5分钟游戏内容。)

你是否能够解释这些内容?(认真回答人们所指出的任何问题,毕竟你是游戏开发者了解游戏的发展方向,所以你可能认为这些问题都太明显不过,但玩家毕竟不是开发者。)

这便是我在经历了一周的Steam Greenlight所获取的经验教训。此外这同时也是我在尝试着解决我们所犯的各种问题时所学到的内容。

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

My Experience with Steam Greenlight + Greenlight Tips

by Billy Bonk

I guess I’ll start off with a brief description about myself. My name is Billy I’m 18 and the team I worked with was just my twin brother and our friend. As far as Experience goes I’ve been programming for about 4 – 5 years now but I’ve never truly taken any of my projects to the market. Since this was the first game we decided to bring to the light we obviously ran into pitfalls left and right but we did gain some pretty valuable knowledge from our losses.

Nothing makes game devs work harder than deadlines, so when forcing ourselves to create a game in one month and try to post it to steam greenlight we ran into some issues and later realized some helpful tips. The first thing we noticed was as the deadline neared the work effort skyrocketed. Once we uploaded to greenlight we killed ourselves fixing bugs and changing cosmetics based on some general feedback in the comments. This was great for the first day but once day 2 came we realized that forcing the greenlight process is not a smart or easy thing to do especially when we weren’t completely ready.

One of the most important things I’ve noticed was that a lack of community or following will hinder your game’s greenlight dramatically. Going into the greenlight process we had no previous marketing experience and have barely promoted anything in the past. So trying to make up for lost time we created a twitter as well as tried promoting through reddit as well as a devblog page. Although using twitter followers isn’t bad, you must have a large following for the votes to show up through these means. One main source of votes came from friends or family seeing our facebook posts and trying to help out. Although this helped initially we dropped off dramatically by day 2. So it is extremely important to try to gain a fanbase months before hand. Really try to tap into online communities that you are engaged in be it reddit or a steam group.

Don’t rush your game to be placed on steam greenlight. This may seem like common sense but as the game looks more and more polished to the developer, it may not appear so to the one judging it. I’ll be honest when we uploaded our game to steam it looked really trashy, it wasn’t till after some comments about it looking boring and bland did we take visuals to heart, and some complaints about the CRT effect causing resolution issues and we threw it out the window. This brings me to another tip. Before uploading to greenlight try to get some feedback on your game by bringing it to a small group of people. I would recommend warming up to the people here (https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/) at the gamedev community and then making a post asking for feed back. I’ve also noticed that posting GIFs of your gameplay to media platforms like 9Gag or imgur and asking for feedback will almost bring instant feedback.

Day 1 vs Day 3 of the game we’re trying to get greenlit heres our page http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=713913006

BUUUTTT… If you’re going to ignore my warnings and the warnings of every other person who shared their initial experience attempting the greenlight process, because you are too excited to start (like me), here are some tips. The first day is crucial if you haven’t already attempted to gain any followers, so make sure you post the best pictures for your game. It never ceases to amaze me at the amount of people who upload pointless pictures of random gameplay, myself included. Most people are on your page for a few moments and your video and pictures are their only way to tell how good your game is. So your game must act like a peacock and strut it’s features. Really try to think about what highlights your game and capture that. And before you press the upload button anticipate these questions.

What makes your game so unique? (generic response like lots of weapons or gameplay don’t cut it, really think about)

Isn’t this a clone of…? (you’ll get this one if you don’t highlight your unique features)

This game is trash look at problem xyz with it… (Most people want to ignore all the harsh comments but I beg you bear with what they have to say. Someone tearing into your game is far more beneficial to you then “Nice game!”. They may notice certain flaws that you may have chosen to ignore.)

Your video didn’t highlight much gameplay what is it about? (Like previously stated you must make sure that your videos are HIGHLIGHTS not just the first 5 minutes you felt like recording.)

Can you explain this…?(Respond to people who ask questions they are doing you a great favor by pointing out things that everyone else is thinking but not you since you are the developer and have an idea what direction the game is going.)

This is just what I noticed so far after about a week of being up on Steam Greenlight. Furthermore this is also just my personal experience and some of the things I’ve noticed while rushing around trying to fix the many mistakes we made.

If you enjoyed this article then please comment below and tell me if I should make more. I’m considering writing about the devlog process and finding the best place to center your projects information.(source:Gamasutra

 


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