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Big Huge Games开发者谈DomiNations的制作和表现

发布时间:2017-04-27 15:16:54 Tags:,

本文原作者:Matt Suckley(专题编辑)

在F2P游戏开发界中人们常说——游戏的发行意味着一切的开始而不是结束。

游戏的发行不像是把产品包装了送到货架上就不用管了,它还需要后续不断运作和更新的游戏产品服务,而这些常常需要花费长达几年的时间与精力。

在该文章条目中,我们对Tim Train进行了采访,Tim是Nexon旗下Big Huge Games游戏工作室的CEO,我们聊了他们在2015年发行的战略型手游《统治者》的运转情况。今天(2017年4月20日)是这款游戏发行的两周年纪念日。

dominations(from pocketgamer.biz)

dominations(from pocketgamer.biz)

PocketGamer.biz: 现在DomiNations距离发行已经过去两年了,你认为从发行直到现在作为一款成熟游戏作品其表现如何?

Tim Train:那真的是一场疯狂愉悦之旅!DomiNations的发行给了我们这个团队很多“第一次”的经历:它是我们的第一个手游、第一个联合项目、第一个战斗型城市建设游戏。

尤其从技术层面上,为了确保游戏有足够的稳定性能够适应逐渐壮大的游戏内社区建设,我们从中学到了非常多的经验教训。

第二年,我们已经得以把注意力集中在游戏的趣味性和举办新活动上了,这让我们的玩家在每次登陆的时候都能保持对游戏的新鲜感。

总而言之,我们成立工作室制作DomiNations就是在博弈——我们赌会有数以千万计的人们跟我们一样喜欢世界历史——高兴的是我们在这场博弈中赌赢了,我们的努力没有付诸东流。

我们总是很奇怪为什么那么多游戏背景都是建立在一些凭空想象的虚幻世界或者科幻小说世界中,我们人类自身的历史明明如此丰富、激昂并充满了文化的交融,却鲜少有人加以利用。

对于现在要运营DomiNations线上事项的团队有多大?

我们现在这个团队有40人,里面有程序员、设计/产品人、美工、生产和游戏质量监督。

你所认为的客户支持和更新有多重要?你在这些方面采用的方法是什么?

客户支持对我们来说是非常重要的,我们全公司每个礼拜都要回顾一遍客户支持记录,并且努力提升我们游戏的整体体验。

然而,我们离完美还有很远所以我们总努力做得更好。随着DomiNations的持续性成功,我们在社区建设上加大了投资力度,壮大我们的团队让玩家在DomiNations论坛上与我们进行更多的互动。

我们还保持对新内容的不断更新。有时这些更新内容会是新时代里巨大的技术进步的表现,不过我们对于增加受玩家欢迎的类似“友好挑战”的新内容也感到非常兴奋,这则更新内容将会被涵盖于5.5版本的更新中。

你将能通过让你朋友来一次“自由”进攻来测试自己的新型基地布局,或者你可以试图自己推翻自己的城池!

在对游戏的不断更新中,我们尤其热衷于对一些在美国历史书中没有得到应有评价的人物进行突出强调——从非洲领导人Mansa Musa到中国女皇武则天——他们都是对历史的形成有深远影响的大人物。

玩家对这些重大的更新有怎样的反应?

我们最受欢迎的更新就是那些能给玩家带来消灭敌人的新玩具的更新。

从“狙击塔”到最新的“联合部队”,没有什么比良好公正的鞭策更叫人满足的了。

随着今年喷火兔子军团成为游戏正式军队,我们可能将会着手创造一个仅在愚人节进行的一次性售卖新传统。对于明年要推出的有略微优势的新型建筑单位,我们已经想好它的设计了。

要如何做到能让DomiNations在发行后很长时间内仍保留有相当规模的活跃玩家基础?

这也也许算得上是老生常谈了,不过还是得说——我们只不过就是努力地去让游戏变得有趣、新颖、激动人心,好让玩家每天都想上游戏查看查看。

我们最重要的关键指标之一是“有机安装”——这意味着新玩家不是通过广告推荐而下载的游戏——DomiNations中有相当大部分的玩家是通过玩家之间口口相传进入的游戏,而这也是我们非常引以为豪的。尤其在竞争如此激烈的手游生态系统里,想要被注意到是一件非常难的事情,所以我们好开心能有这么多的用户愿意让自己的朋友也一起加入到我们的游戏当中。

你觉得在这个不断发展的行业里你需要付出多大努力才能跟上策略型手游的开发潮流?

对于那些市场上发行的主流策略型手游我都会去试玩,而且我发现近期发行的一些手游在没有抄袭热门手游的情况下仍然能够吸引到我。

尽管我可能并没有时间玩,但是只要是高质量的独立策略游戏我都会去购买,因为我希望能为手机平台上不同的游戏业务模式献上一份微薄的支持。尽管我喜爱F2P游戏给予我们的用户广度,但我同样相当欣赏老派一次性付费的独立游戏体验,尤其想到我们的核心团队曾经花费那么多年的精力投注于独立游戏上,就更是如此了。

有什么关键指标——比如下载量、日活跃用户数或者用户留存量——是你们愿意跟我们分享的嘛?

对于我们的下载量在2年内超过了3200万次我感到太兴奋了,这比我在PC领域里头20年来做过的所有游戏的下载量总和还要多。

同样地我们还跨过了不可思议的1亿美元总收入大关,这个数据再次证明了对于喜爱策略型游戏的玩家来说人类历史是个相当有内涵的主题。

你在DomiNations中有怎样的收获?你对游戏的决策中有哪些是后来你觉得可以做到更好的?

就想我回答之前问题所提到过的一系列“第一次”清单,我想说DomiNations让我得到了数不清的收获,并且随着游戏的逐步成熟,我们也在越做越好。

有一点尤其重要的收获就是——我意识到建设联系紧密的游戏社区对保障游戏的常年运转具有非常重要的意义——我们所鼓励的联盟参战与合作的游戏特色给了玩家很多的乐趣,这有利于长期的用户留存,让玩家们有理由在一天内多次进游戏报道。

意识到这点以后:我回想起之前,我会希望要是之前能在游戏中包含更多用于可以让活动持续进行的靠谱工具就好了,如此一来我们就可以在游戏一发行的时候就把这些工具提供给玩家。

我对于明年即将接触到的一些新玩法都感到无比兴奋,更别提我对未来游戏的期待了。

DomiNations在接下来的2017年里及2017年以后有什么打算吗?

确实是个好问题!首先,我们会把从原子时代到今天为止的现代的所有人类历史搬到游戏中。

从游戏可玩性角度切入,那些大型传统游戏比如《文明》和《帝国时代》的历史进度会从你开始深入游戏后会开始变慢。而我们的游戏中, 每个“新时代的转变”都将代表人类历史进程上的一小部分。

我们还希望接下来能保证自己集中精力为DomiNations添加覆盖整个游戏的新系统,所以不只是从头到尾跟我们同在的玩家占了所有乐趣,我们也分享到了趣味。

我是很想再说说更多的细节……不过因为我们想要在开发进程中把趣味性设计放在首要地位,所以在没有把握将它运作起来之前我们还不想谈得太远了!

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It’s often said in the world of free-to-play development that launching a game is the beginning, not the end.

These aren’t boxed products released onto shop shelves, never to be worked on again. These are games-as-a-service that require constant operation and updating, often over a period of several years.

PocketGamer.biz has long been investigating the Making Of notable games soon after their launch, but what happens long after a game is released?

In an attempt to find out, this regular feature will talk to the developers behind maturing live games about their experience so far. You can read all previous entries here.

In this entry, we speak to Tim Train, CEO at Nexon-owned Big Huge Games, about the 2015 mobile strategy game DomiNations. It celebrates its two-year anniversary today (April 20th, 2017).

PocketGamer.biz: With DomiNations now two years old, how do you reflect on its performance – from launch to the mature title it is now?

Tim Train: What a crazy and fun ride it’s been! When we launched DomiNations, it represented a number of firsts for the team: first mobile game, first Unity project and first combat city-builder.

Particularly on the technical front, we learned a lot of lessons and spent the first year being sure the game was stable enough to accommodate the strong ongoing community that formed around the title.

For the second year, we’ve been able to focus on fun features and new events for people so there’s always something fresh happening when they log in.

Overall, we are really happy that DomiNations validated our big bet when starting the studio – that there are tens of millions of people out there who love world history just as much as we do.

We’re always surprised that there is such a glut of games set in made-up fantasy or sci-fi worlds, when human history is so rich, compelling and cross-cultural.

And we’re only in the Atomic Age – we have plenty of ages to go before we get to the modern era.

How big is the team currently handling live ops on DomiNations?

We have about 40 people on the team, spread across engineering, design/product, art, production and quality assurance.

How important do you consider customer support and updates to be? What has been your approach to this?

Customer support is very important to us. Every week we review our CS tickets with the entire company and strive to improve the overall gameplay experience.

However, we are far from perfect and we always work to get better. With the ongoing success of DomiNations, we’re also making significant investments in growing our community, with more people joining the team to respond to players on our forums.

We’re also always working on new updates. Sometimes those are the big technology advances represented by new ages, but we’re also really excited to add popular player requests like Friendly Challenges, which will be included in the upcoming 5.5 release.

You’ll be able to test out new base layouts by having your friends do a “free” attack, or try rolling your own city yourself!

And with our ongoing game updates, we particularly enjoy highlighting characters from history who may not have gotten their due in American history books – from African leader Mansa Musa to China’s Empress Wu – who have had significant influence on shaping the past.

How have significant updates been responded to by players?

Our most popular updates are the ones that give players new toys to destroy their enemies.

From Sniper Towers to the newest Coalition Troops, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as a good, righteous smiting.

And we may have started a new tradition with our one-time-only April Fool’s sale, with this year’s Fire Breathing Bunny Army as the inaugural troop. We’re already dreaming up next year’s slightly-off-kilter unit type.

How have you gone about ensuring that DomiNations maintains a sizeable and active player base long after its launch?

This may be a cliché, but we just try to provide fun, new, compelling reasons to return to the game every day.

One of our most important key metrics is “organic installs” – which means new players who did not come to your game via advertising.

That’s a great measure of how many people join the DomiNations community from word-of-mouth, which we take a lot of pride in.

Particularly in this very competitive mobile ecosystem, where it can be hard to get noticed, we love that so many people refer their friends to the game.

To what extent do you feel the need to stay up to date with the developing trends in the ever-growing mobile strategy genre?

I always try to play any major release in the mobile strategy genre, and have really enjoyed some recent releases that avoid the trap of just cloning the latest hit.

I will also buy any quality indie strategy game that gets released, even if I probably don’t have time to play it, just to support different business models on the mobile platform.

Although I love the breadth of audience that F2P titles offer, I also really appreciate an old-school pay-once experience, particularly since our core team spent so many years creating those kinds of games.

Any KPIs such as downloads, DAU or retention you’re willing to share?

We’re really excited to have exceeded 32 million downloads in two years, which surpasses the sum total of all the games I’d ever worked on in the traditional PC space for the first 20 years of my career.

We also just crossed the magic $100 million threshold for total revenue, which again has validated that human history is rich subject matter for strategy gamers.

What lessons have you learned/are you still learning from DomiNations? Is there anything about the game that, in hindsight, you’d now handle differently?

Particularly given that list of firsts mentioned in the initial question, I’d say we learned innumerable lessons from DomiNations and we continue to get better as the game matures.

One key learning is just how important a connected community can be in helping ensure that the game will continue for years and years.

Features that encourage Alliance participation and cooperation are fun for players, good for long-term retention and give people those reasons to check in several times a day.

Given that learning: in hindsight I wish we had been able to include more robust tools for ongoing events, so we could have provided those to players right at launch.

But now that we have religion on that topic, I’m excited about some of the new modes of play that will be coming in the next year, not to mention any future games.

What’s next for DomiNations in 2017 and beyond?

That’s a big question! To start with, we have all of human history from the Atomic Age through to the present day to go.

In the grand tradition of titles like Civilization and Age of Empires, from a gameplay perspective history starts to slow down once you get deeper into the game.

Each “turn” or, in our case each new Age, represents a smaller slice of human history, since people have much deeper knowledge of recent events than, say, the Dark Ages.

We also want to be sure we focus on adding new systems to DomiNations that can span the entirety of the game, so it’s not just the players who have been with us the whole time who are having all the fun.

I’d love to talk about more specifics… but since we want to focus our development process on prototyping the fun first, we don’t like to talk about things too far in the future until we’re confident that they are worth shipping(source:pocketgamer.biz


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