Will Luton谈Battle Royale影响行业的10个事情

原作者：Will Luton 译者：Willow Wu

Battle royale快速崛起是2018年电子游戏行业的重头戏，而两大主演就是《绝地求生》和《堡垒之夜》。

尽管很多人认为它的成功依靠的是广大玩家的支持，但很明显这类游戏的成功在一定程度上要归功于核心创作人员对行业传统智慧的藐视。这种正当的“放肆行为”也意味着我们能从battle royale中学到不少“课本上不会有的知识”，帮助我们设计出更好的游戏。

1.可以惩罚玩家

如果有人在早些年时跟你说2018的大热门游戏是这样的：绝大多数情况下你会在拼命搜刮道具之后一命呜呼、失去一切，你会信吗？Battle royale的神奇之处主要就在于玩家们要面对彻底的失败而且还愿意从头再来。

过去十年的手游设计主张的是不给玩家呈现糟糕的反馈，想方设法地给玩家一点安慰。《守望先锋》也许就是最典型的例子：在游戏中，直观的击杀/死亡比率被奖章所取代。获得奖章的条件还涉及到目标攻防时间和治疗量——这跟k/d比率基本没有什么关系。

而battle royale则是反其道而行之，对玩家非常苛刻，不断提醒着玩家“你把事情搞砸了”。但是输了也输得很公平，毕竟是另一个玩家把你杀了而不是游戏本身。Battle royale就是通过负面反馈激励玩家提升技能。这种残酷的失败让人回想起了街机游戏的黄金年代，同时也提醒了我们让玩家直面失败不是不可行的，但是只有在玩家可以从失败中汲取教训的情况下他们才愿意继续玩下去。

2.F2P总是会成为赢家

Battle royale崛起过程中最有趣的故事之一就是两款游戏之间的竞争，它们采用了截然不同的方式: 中等价位的付费游戏《绝地求生》发行半年之后，F2P游戏《堡垒之夜》发起了挑战。尽管后者较晚发行，但从玩家数量和收益来看，《堡垒之夜》的领先迹象还是比较明显的。

fortnite（from gamesindustry.biz）

虽说行业中的任何人都明白免费游戏所具有的优势，但是core类PC、主机市场似乎还是选择坚守阵线。《堡垒之夜》的成功因素有很多，比如上手容易、执行力好，但其中最主要的还是它没有付费门槛——无论是谁都可以轻松召唤小伙伴加入游戏，他们要做的就只是按下“下载”二字。《英雄联盟》和《炉石传说》就是典型的例子，付费模式的core PvP游戏明显还是争不过F2P。

3.速度与质量非常重要

《堡垒之夜》胜过《绝地求生》的另一个方面就是发行后的执行力。对于一个在有限时间内组建的新团队来说，《绝地求生》已经是一个奇迹了，尤其是考虑到这是创意总监Brendan Greene的第一款商业游戏。

而《堡垒之夜》有更加稳固的基础，Epic有办法加快更新速度，把注意力更多地放在玩家所重视的玩法多样性以及炫目的装扮物品上。与此同时，《绝地求生》还面临着不同玩家机型的需求、各种琐碎的bug、设计债以及焦点不明这些问题，玩家自己都有怨言更别说要推荐给朋友了。相比流畅灵活的《堡垒之夜》，《绝地求生》的口碑增长确实比较缓慢。

随着游戏逐渐向服务产品倾斜，关注游戏体验质量、有针对性的优化和举办线上活动变得和其它营销手段一样重要。服务好的游戏自然就能获得更多玩家，而且还能把他们留得更久。

4.装饰道具能助你登顶

F2P模式发展初期，盈利讨论大部分都围绕着帽子或者是其它琐碎的装饰道具上，但随着市场的发展，大家总结出了更有效的做法是为玩家提供便利和竞争优势。而《堡垒之夜》则成为了App Store中第一个依靠装饰道具拉动盈利增长的第一畅销游戏。

但是，你必须注意到battle royale游戏的独特之处：每场比赛都有100名玩家，大家都想要让自己变得与众不同。于是，皮肤就成为了一种显示玩家财富和奉献精神的工具，在提高玩家沉浸度的同时也促使了虚荣心的产生，让游戏的收益达到一个新的高度。《堡垒之夜》中，战场通行证的巧妙引入更进一步强化了盈利效果，就像是《皇室战争》中的宝箱，让玩家感觉不像是在买东西，而是为自己之前的努力获取额外的奖励。

虽然《堡垒之夜》的人均消费可能远低于许多较为传统、盈利设计更具侵略性的手游，但它成功吸引了一批数量非常可观的用户。

5.Mod社区是创意发源地

在迈入2010之前，独立游戏看似将成为整个行业焕发创造力的源泉，吸引更多人加入这个圈子，为玩家带的全新体验。虽然事实并非如此，但业余mod社区却意外地挑起了这个担子：先是MOBA，现在是battle royale。

怀有黑客情怀的他们不被商业期望所束缚，mod社区就成为了游戏行业的原始汤。无论是平庸的想法还是绝妙的灵感都可以在这里进行试验：如果一个mod引来了关注，那么它就会收获更多贡献资源或者衍生内容，让这个想法发生演变并不断发展。第一个battle royale mod出现在2012年，游戏主体是《我的世界》，这些主创人员花了五年时间才把它塑造成如今的battle royale游戏。

Mod社区聚集了一大群来自世界各地的有才之人，他们既高产又创意十足，而剩下的我们这群人只能在一个相对小很多的圈子里进行创作。毫无疑问，未来能够带来新游戏类型的肯定就是那些总想着“要是______不是很酷吗”的人。

6.游戏类型的快速变革

每当有新的大热门游戏出现，就会不可避免地会出现一群FOMO(Fear of Missing Out，害怕错过)开发者，然后各种山寨游戏就扎堆发行，这时就有业内专家公开谴责说这个行业缺乏创意。在这些喋喋不休的言论包围下，人们很容易就错过正在发生的事：游戏类型的快速变革。

虽然battle royale从最初算起花了6年的时间来进行改进，但是仅仅是过去几个月我们就看到了不少有趣的现象：Realm Royale引入了制造机制，Totally Accurate Battlegrounds在游戏中试验了超现实主义幽默以及各种武器。更有意思的是有些开发者把PvE带进了游戏中，甚至把对战人数提升到1000人。虽然这些尝试很有可能都会以失败告终，但创作者们一定能够找到新的闪光点，并帮助推动battle royale达到新的、尚未被视为创新的新高度。

之前就有发生过不少类似的情况：90年代中期，现在我们所熟悉的第一人称射击游戏（FPS）在出现了百家争鸣的盛景，这是游戏史上值得纪念的时期，但是这些开发者们的游戏曾经也被称为“类《毁灭战士》游戏”。

7.现在跨平台跨的是PC、主机和移动平台

跨平台在传统意义上指的是不同的主机平台，可能后期会移植到PC。但《绝地求生》《堡垒之夜》发行不到一年就从PC、主机移植到移动平台，而且大获成功。

自从触屏手机问世以来，人们普遍认为虚拟控制对精准度要求高，容易误触。但是中国手游的虚拟控制技术确实发展的很快，就比如《王者荣耀》，《堡垒之夜》《绝地求生》借鉴了他们的技术成功做出了非常适合移动用户操控的游戏版本，也为他们带来了可观的利益。

除此之外，《堡垒之夜》的跨平台功能现在能够让任何平台的玩家一起组队对抗另一个平台的玩家。传统的跨平台屏障被打破了，同时也意味着各个平台之间的界线正变得越来越模糊。Epic正致力于消除平台因素对玩家游戏体验的影响，这也是我们应该跟随的正确方向。

8.系统性玩法+玩家=剧情

Battle royale最独特、最吸引人的游戏特性之一就是能够自主创造剧情：比如在某局比赛中你的团队会把摩托车后空翻扔下悬崖以躲避对方的攻击，而在另一局中你们可能会花上20分钟在小屋中安静地窥视外面的情况。

开发者们将一群真实的玩家聚集在一个内嵌系统既相互重叠又灵活的游戏世界中来激发游戏设计者所称的应急行为——指的是玩家有意行动但不可预见结果的交互行为。已经有很多包含深层次系统的游戏运用了应急行为——《矮人要塞》（游戏邦注Dwarf Fortress）就是一个典型的例子。然而，battle royale作为系统性玩法游戏对大型多人环境的高效运用是其它游戏都未曾做到的。

MMORPG游戏虽然很倚重系统，但是玩家们必须按照预定的任务线走，也就是说无论是谁遇上谁，玩家获得的游戏体验都是差不多的。Battle royale给玩家自由空间，还提供了一堆可以用来合作或者是对抗其他的玩家的工具，游戏中完全不存在什么预定路线。于是玩家在游戏中就成为了剧情创造者，制造出各种伏笔，除此之外也让battle royale游戏变得非常具有观赏性。

9.电竞的力量

出于玩家人数原因，要举行线下battle royale电竞活动不是那么容易的一件事。但是不可预料的剧情发展让游戏的直播趣味十足，《堡垒之夜》和《绝地求生》都是Twitch平台上最热门的游戏。

拥有1500万的日均观看人数，Twitch已经成为玩家寻找同好社区和新游戏的主要平台。这种免费的曝光途径也让battle royale获得快速增长，而且几乎不需要额外的宣传开销。Epic明白这一点，给这些直播玩家提供了价值1亿美元的奖金池，以示他们的感激之情。这笔投资的主要目的就是吸引优秀的电竞团队来扩大覆盖率、促使更多人直播、更多人观看以及更多人去买战场通行证。

1亿美元的投资究竟是不是明智之举还不好说，但是这个行为表明了电竞选手和播主对游戏的覆盖率以及留存率是相当重要的。

10.游戏是当下的流行文化

从知名说唱歌手Drake在Twitch直播《堡垒之夜》到英国足球明星用游戏角色动作庆祝胜利，这一切都体现了游戏已经成为了流行文化的一员。从80年代的“吃豆人热”到90年代《古墓丽影》女主Lara Croft成为风靡一时的标志性人物，人们总是觉得游戏只是一种短暂的新鲜事物。

然而《堡垒之夜》感觉就像是有史以来第一次让广大媒体们用看待音乐、电影、电视剧的眼光看待游戏。随着时间的推移，越来越多游戏行业出身人士在媒体中担任重要角色，用他们自己的方式传播游戏、让更多人理解游戏。虽然抨击言论依然存在，但人们确实对《堡垒之夜》产生了更多关注，有了不同的解读。比如BBC报道了Twitch当红游戏男播主Ninja不与任何女性玩家互动的决定，Ninja在他们看来就和其他娱乐明星一样，有很多玩家认识。截至6月，《堡垒之夜》的用户基数已经达到了1.25亿，相当于Netflix的全球订阅人数，所以Ninja并不是什么不值得报道的小圈子名人。

Battle royale的崛起事实上是一个转折点——游戏行业不仅是在收益上超过了其它主流媒体，而且还获得了同样的文化效应。

如今，游戏不再是少数群体的活动，它就像是看电影、听音乐，成为大众生活中娱乐选择。游戏是当下的主流文化。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Battle royale’s exponential rise has been the A plot for video games in 2018, with the gritty and complex PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and the slick, chiselled Fortnite in the leading roles.

While there’s as many takes on the success of the genre as there are players, it is clear that the ascent is thanks in part to the irreverence the genre’s key creators have show toward conventional industry wisdom. This justified impudence means there are a wealth of surprising lessons from the genre that will help us all make better games.

1.You Can Be Punishing

If someone would have told you that the breakout game of 2018 would see see you grind loot only to instantly die and lose everything in 99 out of 100 games, would you have believed them? Much of the beauty of the battle royale genre is in players facing punishing failings and being willing to jump back in.

The trend in design in the past decade has been in protecting the player from negative feedback. Perhaps the pinnacle of this thinking can be seen in Overwatch, where kill-death ratios are replaced with medals for a tangential actions such as time on the objective or healing done.

Meanwhile battle royale games slap you around the face and scream “you fucked up” over and over. Yet as these failures are so fair – after all, it’s another player and not the game that killed you – they put the player on a skill progression path they’re happy to follow through negative feedback alone. This harsh failure is reminiscent of the golden era of arcades and reminds us that it is okay to give a player an uncushioned fail condition. But only if the player can take a learning from their loss that will bring them back to play.

2. F2P Wins, Even In Core

One of the most interesting tales from battle royale’s rise is in the fight for prominence between two games that took wildly different approaches: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was a mid-priced title that was followed six months later by the free-to-play Fortnite. Despite being later to the market, Epic’s game has emphatically won in terms of players and revenue.

While the power of free should now be obvious to anyone in the industry, it had seemed like the core PC and console market was a staunch holdout. While there are many factors that led to Fortnite’s success, such as better accessibility and quality of execution (see ‘Speed and Quality Matters’), the biggest contributor to Fortnite’s growth was its lack of entry price: anyone could drag in any of their buddies to play with only the friction of a download. Having seen this dynamic at play in both League of Legends and Hearthstone, it’s now clear that following a paid model in core PvP will at best leave you in second place.

3. Speed and Quality Matters

Secondary to price, Fortnite also trumped PUBG in another area: post-launch execution. PUBG is a marvel for a new team on a limited timescale, especially considering this was creative director Brendan Greene’s first commercial game. Yet Fortnite was built upon more stable foundations, starting life as an existing game with a natural fit for a battle royale mode.

Epic were able to update more quickly and with greater focus on the things that mattered to players: gameplay variety and kickass cosmetics. Meanwhile, PUBG struggled with hefty machine requirements, niggling bugs, design debt, and muddy focus, leaving an annoyed and less evangelical fanbase. As such, PUBG suffered a comparatively weaker word of mouth growth than the slick and nimble Fortnite.

As games become more and more a service, a focus on quality of life, well directed improvement and live events is as important as any other marketing efforts. A well serviced game simply gets more players, but it also keeps them longer.

4. Cosmetics Can Take You to Top Grossing

In the early days of free-to-play, much talk around monetisation focused on hats and other trivial cosmetics, but as the market evolved we collectively concluded that convenience and competitive advantage were much stronger drivers. It was a great surprise when Fortnite became the first cosmetic-driven economy to maintain a top grossing position in the App Store.

However, there is something unique about battle royale games: each and every match, there is a ready-made audience of 100 players, each eager to differentiate themselves. Skins, then, become a way to signal a player’s wealth and dedication, driving higher engagement and unprecedented levels of spend on vanity. In Fortnite, this monetisation desire is amplified by the clever Battle Pass system that, much like Clash Royale’s chests, makes spending less like buying and more like releasing rewards for your own past efforts.

While Fortnite’s spend per player is probably much lower than that of many of the more traditionally and aggressively monetised mobile games it has managed to open up a considerably larger audience.

5. The Mod Scene Is A Primordial Soup

At the turn of the decade, it seemed like the indie scene would be the source of a renewed creativity through the industry, bringing incredible new experiences and demographics to gaming. While that failed to pass, the amateur modding community has inadvertently stepped up: most notably with MOBA and now battle royale.

Freed from commercial expectations and emboldened by a hacker mentality, the mod scene has become the primordial soup of game genres. Many ideas, from sloppy to inspired, are experimented with: if a mod draws an audience then it gains more contributors or spin-offs, with the idea mutating and building. The first battle royale mod appeared in 2012 on top of Minecraft, taking five years to shape up to be what we know today through a handful of key contributors.

With such a diverse worldwide pool of creators that works so quickly and creatively within the mod scene today, and while the rest of us work in much smaller creative bounds, the future undoubtedly holds more genres sparked into existence by those thinking no further than “wouldn’t it be cool if…”

6. Genre Evolution Is Rapid

Once a game hits, there’s the inevitable rush of developer FOMO, triggering gamers to call copycat and pundits to decry a dearth of industry creativity. However, amongst this clammer and jibber jabber, it’s easy to miss what is actually happening: the rapid evolution of a genre.

While battle royale has already seen six years of refinement from the mod scene, in the past few months alone we’ve seen interesting takes on the genre: Realm Royale introduced crafting and Totally Accurate Battlegrounds explores surrealist humour and experimental weapons. And there’s more interesting takes coming that bring PvE and thousand-player matches or attempt to fit inside existing franchises. While most of these takes are likely to fail, they will do so finding the edges and helping to propel the genre to new, yet to be considered creative heights.

It’s at times like these that it is worth remembering that as developers of the mid-nineties began to pioneer defining mechanics for what we now know as the first person shooter genre that their works were dubbed “Doom clones”.

7. Cross Platform Is Now PC, Console and Mobile

Cross platform has traditionally referred to multiple console SKUs, perhaps with a later PC port. But in less than a year since launch, both PUBG and Fortnite have moved from PC and console to mobile with impressive success.

The consensus since the advent of touchscreen phones is that virtual controls are fiddly and inaccurate. But utilising the rapidly improving virtual controls from Chinese titles such as Arena of Valor, both Fortnite and PUBG have managed to make very playable mobile versions that have resulted in impressive financials.

Additionally, Fortnite’s crossplay features now allows for players from any platform to group with and play against players on any other platform. This crumbles the traditional walled gardens of console generations past and means the lines between platforms are increasingly blurred. Epic are leading a charge to make platforms an irrelevant part of a players experience and it’s a direction we should all follow.

8. Systemic Gameplay + Players = Stories

One of the most unique and exciting characteristics of battle royale is the ability for the games to create stories: Maybe in one match your team avoids enemy fire by backflipping a motorbike off a cliff and the next game you spend 20 minutes silently peeking out of a hut.

This story creation is achieved by putting lots of real players inside a game world packed with overlapping and intentionally flexible systems, resulting in what game designers call emergent behavior. Emergent behavior describes intended but unforeseen interactions between players and multiple game mechanics. There have been lots of deeply systemic games that give rise to emergent behavior – Dwarf Fortress being a classic example. However, battle royale games are the first time a systemic game has used a massively multiplayer environment effectively.

MMORPGs, while system-heavy, have players follow the questlines designers planned for them: the experience of any two players beating a raid is comparatively similar. Battle royale games break free of prescriptive paths by giving players space and an array of tools that can be used in conjunction with or against other players. The result is players having a sense of authorship and intrigue as the game plays out around them, but as a byproduct it also makes battle royale games very watchable.

9. The Power of Esports

While battle royale is something of an awkward esport due to the sheer number of players, the emergent stories makes for inherently interesting streaming, pushing both Fortnite and PUBG to the top of Twitch’s most-streamed list.

With a daily audience of 15 million, Twitch has become a major resource for players to uncover a community as well as new games. And it’s this free exposure that has allowed battle royale to grow so rapidly with little investment. Epic, knowing this, has written a huge love letter to streamers with a willy-waving $100 million prize pot. This investment is aimed at attracting the best esports teams, meaning more coverage, more hours streamed, more viewers and more Battle Pass purchases.

While it’s hard to be sure if that $100 million is a wise investment, it indicates just how much is at stake in getting esports players and streamers to put a game in front of their audience and keep it there.

10. Gaming Is Now Pop Culture

From Drake on Twitch to the England’s footballers flossing, the success of Fortnite has shown us that gaming is no longer a pop culture outsider. During the ‘Pac-Mania’ of the ’80s to Lara Croft’s brief stint of as an icon in the ’90s, it always felt as if games were coming to mainstream culture as a passing novelty.

Fortnite, however, feels like the first time the wider media is addressing gaming on the same terms it would music, film, TV or the press. With each passing year, more game-natives reach leadership roles within media, bringing an understanding of gaming that is is reflected in the way their outlets discuss games. While there is still some scaremongering, there’s also a great diversity in how Fortnite is reported. For example, the BBC covered Ninja’s decision not to play with female streamers with an assumption of reader knowledge akin to any other celebrity news.

And there’s good reason for the BBC to assume an audience’s understanding: as of June, Fortnite had a player base of 125 million, a number equal to Netflix’s worldwide subscriber count. Battle royale is a turning point where gaming did more than beat mainstream media in revenue but gained the same cultural validity.

Today, gaming isn’t the reserve of a small niche demographic; it’s an entertainment choice for as many people as watch movies or listen to music. Gaming is now pop culture.（source：gamesindustry.biz ）