开发者谈手机平台是电子竞技游戏的未来

原作者：Ethan Gach 译者：Vivian Xue

尽管电子竞技仍以《英雄联盟》这样的PC游戏为主，但一些新手游正在改变着这种格局。

根据NPD集团去年公布的一份调查，年龄较小的孩子使用最多的游戏设备是手机。游戏工作室已经注意到了这一点，制作游戏时不仅迎合核心玩家，同时也迎合了休闲玩家。

“在触摸屏时代，多人竞技手游的出现是迟早的事，”Super Evil Megacorp的首席运营官Kristian Segerstrale说。该开发商的作品《虚荣》是一个多人在线竞技手游。

Segerstrale说Blizzard Entertainment，Riot Games和Valve证明了他们可以发展庞大的PC玩家群体，而移动玩家可能会形成下一个大型群体。

为了实现这个目标，Segerstrale认为手游设计者既要吸引传统的PC玩家，也要贴近更广泛的智能手机用户。比如当《虚荣》在2014年刚出现时，竞技手游玩家组织还不存在。

专为手机平台设计的《虚荣》是PC团战游戏的简化版。

clash royale(from bilibili)

游戏发行一年多后，《虚荣》玩家组织Gankstars发展了起来。团队成员说他们最初是一个休闲组织，目的是让朋友们聚在一起打游戏，但很快在规模小却发展迅速的《虚荣》电竞圈里变得人人皆知。

Gankstars Sirius战队的成员去年在韩国夺得了《虚荣》国际高级联赛冠军。他们的成功不仅证明了各类电子竞技比赛的热度在不断提升，同时也证明了iOS和安卓在未来很有可能成为普遍的电子竞技平台。

同时Segerstrale认为游戏设计应实现让不同的玩家都能上手，他强调这一点是很困难的。

“像尊重核心玩家一样尊重那些休闲玩家将是一个很大的挑战，”他说“在未来5到10年内，能做好这一点的公司将能够真正创造出引人注目的产品和游戏体验。”

手机平台吸引人的原因：

如果说《虚荣》致力于迎合PC玩家，那么Supercell发行的《皇室战争》则旨在让电子竞技触及“任何拥有手机”的群体。这个开发商曾制作过广受欢迎的战略游戏《部族冲突》，《皇室战争》将卡牌收集与塔防机制结合在一起。

自3月初发行以来，它已经创造了近1.1亿美元的创收。“它拥有成为一个真正热门的竞技游戏所需要的一切，”Twitch平台的编程技术总监Marcus Graham说。

“《魔兽世界》、《英雄联盟》，这些游戏的核心优势是拥有成百上千万的玩家，”Graham说，他注意到这一点推动了热门游戏的电竞发展。

“如果你有1000万玩家，你在他们中举办一场锦标赛，即使只有1%的玩家参与，比赛也很容易获得成功。”

Graham和其他人认为，手游电竞的规模可能会超过当前的PC电竞。F2P模式在过去的电子竞技中发挥了极大的作用。

英特尔活动组织者、英特尔极限大师杯赛的幕后策划人George Woo表示，“像《英雄联盟》这样的F2P游戏是未来的趋势。”

“对电子竞技帮助最大的大概是F2P游戏，因为它扩大了玩家的规模。”

手游直播软件Mobush商业发展部的联席主管Koh Kim表示，手游与生俱来的简便性，比如无需外接手柄，对直播是一个很大的好处。Mobush是Gankstar的赞助商，和它PC端的竞品相比它的设定要简易许多。

“在PC领域，用户界面本身非常复杂，”Kim说。

通过迎合核心手机用户，Mobush的目标是将游戏直播流引入到更大、更多样化的受众中。

kim说：“那些以前可能由于缺乏技术知识经验而从来没直播过的人，现在能够与其他用户进行实时互动。”
手游竞技的一个额外优势大概是，竞技游戏玩法生来适合智能手机。

Gankstar的联合创始人即经理Alex说，用触摸屏玩游戏“就是感觉很自然。”

Twitch的Graham说，移动电子竞技的发展有可能改变现有的PC游戏。

他说：“最终我们将迎来手游版的《英雄联盟》。”

“我们将会迎来这样一个游戏，全世界的玩家在一起打游戏，你们可以说着互不相同的语言，但(游戏)会是你们的共同语言。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

While eSports competitions continue to emphasize PC games like League of Legends, new titles available on mobile devices are shaking things up for players and fans.

According to a report released last year by the NPD Group, younger kids are playing games on their phones more than any other device. Game studios have taken note, creating mobile games that appeal to core and casual players alike.

“Somebody’s going to create [these multiplayer competitive games] for the touchscreen generation,” said Kristian Segerstrale, COO and Executive Director of Super Evil Megacorp, the studio behind Vainglory, a mobile multiplayer online battle arena game.

Segerstrale said Blizzard Entertainment, Riot Games and Valve showed they can grow big communities of PC players, and mobile devices could be next.

To get there, Segerstrale believes mobile designers need to appeal to a traditional PC audience while remaining approachable to the more general smartphone audience. When Vainglory was first unveiled in 2014, for example, a guild for competitive mobile gamers didn’t exist yet.

Designed for mobile platforms, Vainglory is a simplified version of PC games that pit teams against one another in battle.

A little more than a year later, the Vainglory guild organization “Gankstars” is forging this new on-the-go arena. According to the team, what started as a casual guild to help friends play games together quickly blossomed into a household name in the small but rapidly growing world of competitive Vainglory.

The members of team Sirius, part of the Gankstars guild, ranked as world champions after winning the first-ever Vainglory International Premier League in South Korea last year. Their success not only speaks to the growing popularity of all different kinds of eSports, but also the promise of eSports on such ubiquitous platforms as iOS and Android.

It also helps that the game is accessible to a variety of audiences, which Segerstrale stressed, can be difficult.

“Being respectful of the very casual player as much as we are respectful of the core player will be a big challenge,” she said. “The companies that will truly create the stand out product and experience over the next five to 10 years on touchscreens will be able to do that well.”

Why Mobile is Appealing

While Vainglory aims to ingratiate PC players, Supercell’s recently released Clash Royale hopes to be the one to bring eSports to the “anyone with a phone” demographic. A strategy game from the makers of hugely popular Clash of Clans, Clash Royale combines the collectible card game with tower defense mechanics.

It’s already brought in close to $110 million since it was released in early March. “It has everything it needs to be a really popular competitive game,” said Marcus Graham, Director of Programming at Twitch.

“World of Warcraft, League of Legends, these are games that at their core had millions and millions of people playing the game,” Graham said, noting that this gives popular games a leg up on the competition.

“If you have 10 million players and you say you’re doing a tournament for the game, it’s easy to be a success even if you only get 1 percent of those players involved.”

Graham and others believe mobile eSports could outsize existing PC eSports communities. The free-to-play model has worked well for eSports in the past.

“Free-to-play battle arena games like League of Legends are where the trend is,” said George Woo, events organizer at Intel and the man behind Intel Extreme Masters.

“Games with free distribution probably have the most leg for being successful in eSports because there’s a larger population of people playing it.”

Mobile games offer built-in simplicity, such as eliminating the need for external controllers, which can bode well for streaming, according to Koh Kim, co-head of business development at Mobcrush. Mobcrush, a mobile streaming app that sponsors Gankstars, requires little setup compared to its counterparts on PC.

“In the PC realm, the user interface itself is really complicated,” said Kim.

By catering to a mobile-centric audience, Mobcrush aims to introduce game streaming to a larger, more diverse audience.

“People who probably have never streamed before, [lacking] the means or the technical know-how, now have the ability to engage with other users in real-time,” said Kim.

Perhaps the biggest perk to mobile eSports is that the gameplay is intuitive for the smartphone generation.

Alex ‘PwntByUkrainian’ Novosad, co-founder and manager of Gankstars, said playing games with a touchscreen “just feels natural.”

Twitch’s Graham said that the growth of eSports on mobile has the potential to transform existing PC games.

“Eventually we’re going to have our League of Legends for mobile,” he said.

“We’re going have a game that’s played worldwide, where you can speak a language completely different from someone else, but [the game is] the language you speak together.”（source：iQ  ）