作者：Aditya Kulkarni

假设你拥有10个不同的游戏概念。如果你想从中赚到钱，那么当你着眼于发行后的游戏分析数据时你必须能够看到最可观的用户粘性和用户留存数据。而你又该如何决定先开发哪个概念？对此的解决方法便是创建原型。

为什么是原型？

因为这是作为游戏开发者或发行商去管理风险的最巧妙的方法。这能够帮助你在投入大量资金与大型团队进行真正的开发之前去验证游戏概念。如果一款基于最节本形式且没有任何经过优化的图像，声音和精心设计的游戏便能够吸引玩家的注意，那么进一步完善它定能创造出更棒的结果。你可以使用Unity游戏引擎或Gideros游戏引擎为你的测试群组快速创造出一个可行的演示版本。在这阶段你最迫切的任务便是去验证核心机制。

这是我们为《Wobble Quest》创造的最初原型。我们从中发现一些会困住玩家的区域以及一些缺少直觉性的内容。所以我们不断去修改原型直至解决了这些问题并最终呈现出我们的测试群组真正喜欢的演示版本。

prototype(from gamasutra)

当我们真正认为游戏玩法具有吸引力时，我们便开始致力于游戏的完整开发并面向应用商店去发行它。我们的玩家都表示喜欢游戏的每个部分内容，我们也收到许多有关游戏的正面评价与反馈。

我该怎么去做？

原型可以只是使用硬纸板，纸和胶水将游戏玩法拼凑在一起。列出你的游戏规则，并利用一些组件，颜色去突显其中的特色。需要决定胜负条件。如果你的游戏是可以同时让多名玩家进行游玩，那就多叫些人来玩你的原型。如果你想要在台式机，主机或手机上发行游戏，最好的方法便是创造一个基本可游戏的原型，并在你所选择的平台上进行配置，让目标用户群组去尝试它。你可以在原型中整合分析数据并衡量用户行为。并在游戏变得具有直觉性，乐趣与吸引力前不断对其进行调整与优化。只有当一个全新玩家在没有你的帮助与解释前便清楚如何游戏且能够有效游戏时，你的游戏概念才是真正经过认证的。

（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）

Choosing Game Concept for Development

by Aditya Kulkarni

So you have 10 different concepts for a game. For you to make money of it, it needs to be the most engaging and have good retention numbers when you look at the analytics data of your released game. How do you decide which concept to develop first? The solution, prototyping.

Why Prototype?

Because it’s the smartest way to manage your risk as a game developer or publisher. It gives you a chance to validate the concept before spending considerable amount of money on actual development with a large team. If a game engages players in it’s fundamental, most crude form without the polished artwork, funky sounds and well designed game play, it is bound to be great with those added in. You can use the Unity game engine or the Gideros game engine to quickly develop a working demo for your testing group to play around with. You are on a mission here to validate the core mechanics at this stage more than anything else.

This was the earliest prototype that we made for Wobble Quest. We found out a number of areas where the players were getting stuck and some places which were not intuitive at all. We kept modifying the prototype until those problems went away and were left with a demo that our test group loved to play around with.

Once we were confident that the game play was engaging, we worked on full fledged development of the game and released it on the app stores. Our players loved every bit of the game and we got wonderful reviews and feedback about the game.

How do I go about it?

A prototype can be as simple as putting the gameplay together using cardboard, paper and glue. List down the rules of your game, make the pieces, colour code them to make the characteristics stand out. Lay down the win and lose conditions. If it’s a game to be played by multiple people at the same time, get people together and play your prototype. If you are planning to release on desktop, console or mobile, the best idea would be to create a basic, playable prototype, deploy it on your platform of choice and let target groups play it. You can integrate analytics in the prototype itself and measure user behaviour. Tweak, calibrate until the game is intuitive, fun and engaging in itself. The concept is truly validated when a new player picks up how to play the game and doesn’t let go, all without you intervening and explaining how the game works.（source：gamasutra）