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开发者谈确保游戏开发有节奏的执行力至关重要

发布时间:2018-05-23 14:05:15 Tags:,

开发者谈确保游戏开发有节奏的执行力至关重要

原文作者:Brendan Sinclair 译者:Megan Shieh

Ovosonico创始人Massimo Guarini表示:在游戏制作的过程中,执行力至关重要。独立开发者需要遵循时间规划并将成本控制在预算范围内。

Ovosonico公司成立至今已有5年之久,这个意大利独立工作室在这5年里制作了两款游戏——2014年索尼在Vita平台上发行的《紫氏宝贝(Murasaki Baby)》和《June的最后一天(Last Day of June)》,这两款游戏上周在PS4和PC平台上首次亮相

Guarini说:“执行力有时比想法本身重要得多。对于一个初创公司而言,你很容易忽略自己的初始目标并失去重心,而失去重心的情况很有可能会危及整个项目。”

warlords of drakendor(from gamesindustry)

warlords of drakendor(from gamesindustry)

无论游戏质量如何,你都得按照预定的时间和预算推出游戏,并构建一个框架来帮助实现这一点。

他说:“你可以很有创意,但前提是你得自律——确保你的产品能够按时完成研发并准时推出,因为有的时候‘准时发布比游戏的完美程度更重要’。这点非常关键,因为这经常是导致工作室倒闭的原因。

从经济角度上来说,你需要非常了解你的资源、截止日期和可以分配的时间,并在自己觉得可以的时候就考虑发布游戏,否则你可能会进入永无止境的优化和迭代。我在许多工作室和独立开发者那里都看到过这种情况。

除非你的上一个游戏已经卖出了几百万份,累积了足够的收入,否则那些需要6到7年才能完成的作品根本没有任何经济意义;但这种情况并不多见。”

自工作室成立以来,Guarini就一直在平衡Ovosonico的业务需求和创新愿望。

Guarini说:“我们最初创立的时候是作为索尼的第一和第二方开发者,这是一个很好的起点;但从长远来看,创造价值的能力对工作室而言非常重要。只有打造属于自己的IP才能创造长期价值。”

《Murasaki Baby》于2014年9月在Vita平台上发布。索尼曾表示想把这个游戏移植到PS4,但该游戏是围绕掌机的要求设计的,如果要将它移植到其他平台上,游戏必须得进行大规模的调整。因此,Ovosonico选择追随自己的长期目标,并将公司的少数股份卖给了505 Games的母公司Digital Bros,从中获得了144万欧元的资金,在此过程中也保持了Ovosonico的独立性。

Guarini说:“作为一个工作室,Ovosonico完全可以与平台所有者进行第一或第二方交易。

但与此同时,保留部分IP是我们的长期战略。有时你可能会想要卖掉一些IP来达成某些交易;另外一些IP也可能会成为与其他公司合作的产品,比如《Last Day of June》。

其他方面几乎没什么改变,虽然与Digital Bros建立了合伙关系,但我们仍是独立运营,他们并不参与公司的经营,因此不会有股东大会之类的事情,就连财务方面的事务我们也都是自己内部处理的。”

这种自由创造了冒险游戏《Last Day of June》。游戏开始时,Carl和他的妻子June正在去他们最喜欢的景点的路上,那是一个非常美丽的世界,但当他们临近终点时,事情变得恐怖起来。为了避免悲剧发生,玩家必须解决各种谜题并逐步揭开事件的谜题,从而拯救June的生命。

游戏收到的评论都不错,但比起好评,销量更重要。如果是在五年前,该游戏的设计足以在市场上脱颖而出,但如今要脱颖而出却没这么容易。

Guarini说:“我们想要在不牺牲游戏质量的前提下,将游戏作为一种强大的交流工具来传递我们想要表达的讯息,然后确保玩家能够感同身受,就像你在电影院看完电影出来后的感觉一样。”

Guarini认为内容的多样化推动了玩家群体的多元化。

例如:《Last Day of June》的灵感来自前卫摇滚音乐家Steven Wilson的一首歌,Wilson提供了游戏的配乐。他知道Wilson的部分粉丝可能对游戏本身不感兴趣,但是因为游戏和他们的偶像之间的联系,这些粉丝还是会想要玩《Last Day of June》。

问题是,尽管制作游戏的技术门槛已经越来越低,但人们接触游戏的障碍一直在增加。

Guarini说:“我母亲绝对不会为了想要玩电子游戏而买台PS4。因此我们需要降低人们接触游戏的障碍,让游戏可以接触到更广泛的用户群。到那时我们就能够降低实验的财务风险,做更多次实验,因为你针对的玩家核心已经不再单一,多元化的用户群对很多类型的游戏都会有需求,而且他们会期待看到与传统游戏不同的新事物。这正是游戏行业所需要的,而我也相信我们早晚会等到这一天。”

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It’s been five years since Massimo Guarini launched Ovosonico.

In that time, the Italian indie studio has produced two games, the 2014 Sony-published Vita title Murasaki Baby and Last Day of June, which debuted on PS4 and PC last week, and Guarini has learned at least one key takeaway from the experience.”The biggest lesson is that execution is sometimes much more important than the idea itself,” Guarini told GamesIndustry.biz in the days leading up to Last Day of June’s launch. “It’s really easy in a startup to lose sight of your ultimate goals and to lose focus. And when you lose focus, you can jeopardize an entire project.

“Guarini hones in on the importance of discipline, delivering games on time and on budget regardless of the quality of the idea, and structuring the business to facilitate that.”You can be creative, but you need to be disciplined as well to make sure you deliver your stuff and call an end to production, because ‘Better shipped than perfect’ at a certain point,” Guarini said. “It’s extremely important, because that’s what causes a studio to collapse, more often than not. Financially speaking, it’s important you are extremely aware of your resources, of your deadline and the time at your disposal, and that you call it a wrap whenever you feel it’s enough for you, because otherwise you could go on polishing and iterating forever. I’ve seen this happen at many studios and many independent developers as well, titles that take six or seven years to be completed and it makes no financial sense at all unless you’ve sold millions before, but that’s not the norm.

“It’s an interestingly practical takeaway for a developer who often speaks about the power of games as a medium and his own ambition to create emotionally moving experiences, but it’s not exactly out of character for Guarini, either. He’s been balancing Ovosonico’s business needs with its creative aspirations almost since the studio was first established.”We started as a sort of first-party/second-party developer for Sony, and that’s quite good as a starting point, but in the long term, it’s important for the studio to be able to create value,” Guarini said. “And you can create value in the long term only by owning the IPs.”"A game needs to be standing out not for how it does things, but for what it says”Murasaki Baby launched in September of 2014, months after Sony clearly signaled its retreat from the handheld market.

Sony had wanted to move the game to the PS4, but Ovosonico had designed it around the Vita’s hardware functionality, and Guarini said it would have required a massive overhaul to bring it to the more vibrant platform. Instead, the studio opted to pursue its longer term goal and sold a minority stake in the company to 505 Games parent company Digital Bros, bringing in €1.44 million and retaining its independence in the process.”Ovosonico as a studio is completely free to make first-party/second-party deals with platform holders,” Guarini said. “But at the same time, you’ve got this consolidation that allows you to make plans on a longer time scale, and that’s particularly important because with some of the IPs, you might want to sell them to strike a deal. Some other IPs are going to be like co-productions, and that’s the case with Last Day of June, for example. So that was particularly interesting for us to retain part of the IP as a longer term strategy. For the rest, nothing has really changed because operation wise, we’re still independent. The partnership is a silent one, so there’s no real shareholder meetings or anything like that. Even with financing, things are completely managed internally.

“That freedom has produced Last Day of June, an adventure game that follows a number of characters through the events of a tragic day, giving the protagonist some time travel abilities to use in the hopes of creating a happier ending. It’s exactly the sort of emotional game Ovosonico was founded to create, described by one reviewer as “beautiful, melancholic,” and “incredibly powerful.” Another critic said it made him cry, adding the game “will leave you feeling like you belong to something bigger than yourself.”

Guarini the creator might be happy with reviews like that, but Guarini the studio head needs the game to sell, as well.

Five years ago, the game’s stylized aesthetic, focus on an emotionally driven narrative, and those write-ups would have been more than enough to make the game stand out in the marketplace. Today, perhaps not as much.”We’re not surprising people by saying, ‘Hey we made an artsy game.’ That’s not the point,” Guarini said. “The point is, we really feel the need to send out a message using video games as a communication tool. They can be a powerful communication tool without sacrificing gameplay or mechanics. A game needs to be standing out not for how it does things, but for what it says.”It’s something that should be able to speak for itself. The overall experience the player has playing the game is hopefully something that stays with you for a long time.

That was the goal, sending out a message and making sure the player feels something in the same way you come out of the theater after a movie and something stays with you. That’s probably going to be the most important part.”Ultimately, Guarini sees diversity of content driving the diversity of the audience. For instance, Last Day of June was inspired by a song from prog rock musician Steven Wilson, who also provided the game’s soundtrack. He knows a portion of Wilson’s fan base have no interest in games, but will want to check out Last Day of June based on the artist’s connection to it. The problem is that even though the technological barriers for creating games have come tumbling down in recent years, Guarini says the barriers for people to actually get introduced to games have been going up.”My mother will never be able to buy, plug in and set up a PS4 or whatever to play a video game,” Guarini said. “So the day the technology bar is lower will be a great day for the industry because it will mean we can reach out to a more diverse, horizontal audience. And we will be able to experiment even more with less financial risks because you’re not just targeting the vertical core of gamers that as we all know might not be interested in radical changes or new things that differ form the traditional aspect of things.”I think the gaming industry needs that, and I think eventually we’ll get there.”(Source: gamesindustry.biz  )


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