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开发者谈失败:有很多令人惊叹的故事却没有成功的结局

发布时间:2017-04-26 16:34:37 Tags:,

开发者谈失败:有很多令人惊叹的故事却没有成功的结局

Rami Ismail和 Mike Bithell谈论有关游戏业内对独立游戏的“浪漫化”倾向以及倾听失败开发故事的价值

作者:Matthew Handrahan

有抱负的独立游戏开发者们可以很容易地向成功吸取经验,但对于其必然存在的对立面:失败他们又是如何看待的呢?对于独立游戏界里那些知名人士来说,该行业的不足之处在于那些一个个没有繁荣起来的故事,并且该行业对成功所给予的特权似乎过度看重了。

上礼拜在Reboot Develop中心,Rami Ismail 和Mike Bithell主持了一场自由提问的环节,在这环节中,挣扎的想法一次又一次地冒出来。独立游戏危机结束了没有?它到底有没有发生过?市场过度拥挤的情况是如何影响到独立游戏产业构建方式的?其中最具有挑衅性的一个问题是由在会议上和在媒体上占主导地位的“中产阶级”提出的——是否游戏这个行业只允许那些有特权和成功的声音被听到,对此,Bithell和Ismail给出的最后的回答是:“没错是这样的。答案是肯定的。”

Ridiculous Fishing(from gamesindustry.biz)

Ridiculous Fishing(from gamesindustry.biz)

Ismail继续说:尤其是在会议上,游戏行业出现了很多的幸存者偏差,这使得人们更加偏向认为成功是就是一系列正确选择的结果,他们还把好运气标榜得无比重要,对其他失败的开发故事通通选择无视。因此能在独立游戏领域做演讲的家伙都是成功的极少数部分。

Ismail说:“我家里以前没钱,我们的电脑都是从我的一个叔叔那里借钱买来的,但是我现在靠游戏行业成长起来,终于过上了舒适的日子。而我能有机会在这次活动讲话就是因为我们取得了成功,这也是我们会被邀请而来的原因。”

“在这个行业里,有一个最重大的挑战就是——弄清楚那些发言人所说的一系列意外事件是如何引导他们走向【成功】的。”

Bithell表示同意,并补充说:那些成功人士倾向于相信自己的成功就是自己的天赋和决策能力的直接作用效果。考虑到成功的故事基本都是在大会或者媒体上做的宣传,这会造成人们对那些成功故事所提供建议产生偏离印象。然而其他那些更能体现大部分独立游戏人在游戏开发过程中的经验的故事却往往很难找到。Ismail这样说:“找到这些有重要意义的故事很有必要,因为人们可以从中学到的东西非常非常多。”

Ismail提到了一个罕见的例子——他曾经给一个开发者提供过他们游戏的真诚反馈,不过这个反馈的真诚程度不是所有人都会喜欢听的。而这有可能让某人从此离开游戏业,这些人通常都会因为走出这一步而“过得更快活”。

“这同样对从事游戏业的人来说也是一个合理的结局。因为并不是所有结束都是毁灭性的——退休或者死亡。这个行业里还有很多故事,如果你觉的你听到的都是同一种,那你得找找别的故事来听。”

“我可以告诉你,还有很多令人惊叹的故事是没有成功的结局的。”

Bithell承认道,尽管人们的大部分注意力都放在了他和Ismail要说的关于如何在游戏界存活下来的故事,从某些情况来看,跟存活毫无关系——但他们相对的成功使得故事呈递方式出现了局限性。“当我和Rami看到这个标题的时候,我们就知道,这种公开谈论我们成功的方式是是个巨大的错误。”

Ismail补充说:“我们之所以能站在这里的很大部分原因是我们被特殊对待了,你们听到的大部分都是成功人士的故事。因为人们不想听一些糟糕失败的故事,毕竟做游戏很艰难,而且不是总是那么有趣,以及我们大部分人都很有可能在这里栽跟头。”

这个问题的另外一个方面是成功带来的成功。Ismail和Bithell对于和五年前相比的现在要想成功是否真的有难度这个问题上有不同的见解——Ismail认为成功跟失败的比例大体还是相同的,只不过现在开发者的总人数变多了而已;而Bithel觉得现在Steam平台的影响回到了2012年的程度,其推动力有了剧烈的衰退——不过他们两人都同意的是:只有那些找得到庞大受众群体的的游戏开发者才有特权。

Ismail说他们两个“从这一点上来看都是幸运儿。人们才刚开始把独立游戏认真看待的时候我们已经在发展中了,所以很多大公司做的独立游戏都是建立在我们的需求基础上。”Bithell还说了有关他和新闻界的关系主要是因为他的游戏作品《孤独的托马斯》而建立起来的,这是让他能有今天的优势条件。“从此很多大门向我们打开了,就好像我们在这场博弈中选择的是简单模式似的。”

然而此处有个悖论:许多开发者觉得Bithell和Ismail这样的人物事迹对他们有着激励作用——他们的建议被开发者们积极地采用并赋予很高的价值——然而这些成功人士似乎清楚地知道他们的成功之路对其他人来说是很难甚至不可能复制的。他们两人都明白,对于目前表现看来,游戏产业需要增强其平衡性;在独立游戏领域中,失败是很常见的结果,这跟从业人员的天赋与能力无关。实践就是最重要的,当然了,如果开发者要开发的游戏没有受众用户或者资源稀缺,那这种实践基本没有成功的希望。

Bithell还对生存者和成功的偏见所产生的结果有一些探讨。当他被请去给大学生上课的时候,他总是会问教室里的学生毕业后根据自己的喜好会选择一条怎样的路:是为Rockstar公司工作,还是自己成立一间独立游戏工作室。根据Bithell所述,只有很少的学生选择给Rockstar工作,他们大部分人都渴望能自己独闯出一片天下。

“当然了,如果有能力的话当然要去追求自己的目标,”Bithell这样告诉Reboot Develop会上的观众们。“如果你能在失败几次后还存活下来并做出一些很酷的作品,那就继续干下去。但是还有另外一条路,在这另外一条路上你会有更多的经历与际遇。”

而这另外一条路也是Bithell在其事业早期所走过的道路,那些欣赏他在独立游戏领域作品的人们并不一定熟悉这一段历史。Bithell曾经在Blitz Games和Bossa Studios有过至关重要的经历;尤其是在Bossa的经历——他作为公司第一个创始团队以外的人员被聘请进入Bossa。“我在这份工作中收获良多以至于足以创立自己的公司了,我采用了我在Bossa公司里所记住并且喜欢的经营模式内容,在我跟他们有不同意见的领域采取跟他们俨然不同的措施。”

“说真的我们确实把独立游戏开发给‘浪漫化’了,并且似乎每个人都是白手起家然后不知从哪来的就冒出来了。但是Phill Fish曾在Ubisoftg工作过,Jon Blow曾经为几家不同的公司有过出色的表现。基本你听过的每个独立游戏超级新星都是有类似背景的。”

Ismail对此表示同意,不过他想辩证的一点是——给大公司打工并不意味着要放弃并且跟你自己的想法对着干。“有一份好的兼职工作并不意味着失败——这是聪明的举措。这样的兼职让你能够在把游戏做到拿得出手赚得了钱之前让自己再撑一阵子。”

“在这里我想给大部分人的建议就是,在你做的游戏还没开始赚钱之前,先别辞掉你现在的正式工作。拜托拜托千万要保住那份工作……压上一切来赌一些不一定做得到的事听起来好像相当浪漫;你可能确实也听过几个这样浪漫的故事版本,不过你并没有听过其他有相同经历最后却还是玉石俱损的故事。”

“然而不会有大会邀请失败者的。”

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Aspiring indie developers can easily learn about success, but what about its necessary opposite: failure? Speaking at Reboot Develop, a panel of prominent figures in the independent scene said the industry falls short when it comes to stories about anything other than prosperity, and overlooks the many privileges that success affords.

On the last day of Reboot Develop, Rami Ismail and Mike Bithell participated in an informal Q&A session, in which the idea of struggle surfaced again and again. Is the Indiepocalypse over? Did it ever even happen? How has over-crowding in the market affected the way indies build businesses? Most provocative of all, though, was a question on the dominance of “middle-class” voices at conferences and in the media. Does the industry, Bithell and Ismail were asked, only allow its more privileged and successful voices to be heard?

“Yes,” Ismail said, definitively. “The answer is yes.”

Particularly at conferences, Ismail continued, the games industry is given to survivorship bias, reinforcing the idea that success is the product of a series of right choices, masking the good fortune that almost always plays a vital role, and ignoring the experiences of those that fail. Hence a panel about indie development, a notoriously unforgiving space, in which every speaker was from the successful minority.

“My family didn’t have money,” Ismail said. “Our computer was a loan from an uncle, but as I grew through the industry I’m now in a rather comfortable position. One of the reasons I’m speaking at an event like this is because we are successful. It’s why we get invited.

“One of the biggest challenges, as an industry, is how to make it clear that the voices you do hear have had a series of accidents that somehow led to [success].”

Bithell agreed, adding that successful people tend to believe their standing is directly in proportion to their talent and canny decisions. Given that stories of success dominate both conferences and the media it can create a skewed impression of the value of their advice, while other stories – which are more representative of the experiences of the majority of indie developers – can be difficult to find. “Find those stories,” Ismail said. “They are so important, and there’s so much you can learn from the people who go through that.”

1
Ismail referred to occasions where he’s offered truthful feedback to a developer about their game, the kind of truth that not everybody enjoys hearing. Every now and then that feedback prompts the person to leave the industry altogether, and those people are often “much happier” for having taken that step.

“That’s also a valid outcome of working in the games industry. It doesn’t have to end in ruin – in retirement or death,” he continued. “There are so many stories in this industry, so if you ever feel like you’re only hearing one of them, please search for the others.

“I can tell you, there are so many amazing stories out there that don’t end in success.”

Bithell admitted that, although great attention is paid to what he and Ismail have to say, their relative success places “limitations on how well we can convey that story” – that being the story of surviving and, in some cases, not surviving at all. “Me and Rami, when we see articles about that I know we highlight it,” he said, “because we see it as a massive failing on the way we talk publicly.”

Ismail added: “Privilege is a huge part of why we’re here, and yes, the voices you hear are mostly successful people. Because people don’t want the story that shit sucks, and making games is hard, and not always fun, and most of us will probably fail at it.”

Another aspect of the problem is the way that success begets success. Ismail and Bithell had different takes on whether it is genuinely more difficult to be successful now than five years ago – the former believed the ratio of success to failure is still broadly the same, but the total number of developers is higher; the latter cited the impact being featured on Steam had back in 2012, the force of which has been severely eroded – but both agreed that there are privileges only available to people who found a significant audience when they did.

Ismail said they were both “part of a lucky group in that regard. When we were growing people had just started to take indie seriously, so a lot of indie stuff that big companies do was specifically built around our needs.” Bithell spoke about his relationship with the press, which was formed on the strength of Thomas Was Alone, and gives him an advantage to this very day. “There are a lot of doors open to us,” he added. “Honestly, it means that we’re really playing on easy mode at this point.”

The paradox here is that figures like Bithell and Ismail are inspirational for many indie developers – people from whom advice is both actively sought and greatly valued – and yet they seem acutely aware that their paths to success are almost impossible for others to reproduce. Both acknowledged the need for greater balance in the way the industry is represented; in indie development failure is simply one outcome of doing business, and not an indication of a person’s talent or application. There are best practices, of course, but best practices can be very different for a business with no audience or severely restricted resources.

2
Bithell talked about one outcome of this bias towards survivors and success. When he is asked to teach university students, he said, he always asks the room to choose a preferred path once their studies have finished: work for Rockstar, or start an indie studio. According to Bithell, only a few people ever opt for Rockstar, while the rest are eager to go it alone.

“Absolutely, you should go for it if you can,” Bithell told the Reboot Develop audience. “If you can fail a few times and survive and make something cool, go for it. But there is the other path, and the other path is the one that’s more travelled.”

It is also one that Bithell took in his early career, a detail that those who admire his work as an indie don’t often understand. Roles at Blitz Games and Bossa Studios gave him vital experience; particularly Bossa, where he was the company’s first hire outside of the founding team. “I learned enough on the job that, when I started my own company, I remembered what they did. I copied what I liked, and did things differently in the areas I disagreed with their decisions.

“It’s generally true that we romanticise indie devs, and make out that everyone comes from nothing or appears from out of nowhere. But Phil Fish worked at Ubisoft, Jon Blow did awesome work at a bunch of different companies. Every indie superstar you’ve ever heard about probably has a background like that.”

Ismail agreed, arguing against the notion that working for a bigger company is tantamount to giving up on or working against your ideals. “Having a good job on the side is not defeatist – it’s smart,” he said. “Have something on the side that can carry you through until your game is good enough that you are certain it will make some money.

“The recommendation I give to most people is do not quit your day job before you’re making money. Before that, please, please keep that job… Risking everything for something that might or might not work sounds really romantic; you’ve heard a version of that story a few times, but you haven’t heard the other stories of the people who did that exact same thing and just crashed and burned.

“Those people don’t get invited to speak at conferences.”(source:gamesindustry.biz  


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