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Supercell如何建立和延续与内容创作者及社区的互利关系

发布时间:2019-03-15 08:56:43 Tags:,

Supercell如何建立和延续与内容创作者及社区的互利关系

原作者:Rebekah Valentine 译者:Vivian Xue

正如我在本系列采访的前两部分中所提到的,GamesIndustry.biz并不是本次在Supercell赫尔辛基总部举行的《荒野乱斗》发行仪式的唯一受邀人。该公司还邀请了来自世界各地的近100名内容创作者与他们共同庆祝这一里程碑事件,甚至邀请其中一些人按下他们所在地区的游戏发行按钮。

以这种程度向社区敞开大门不是行业内的寻常做法,但据我采访过的开发人员和员工说,像这样与创作者合作在Supercell一点也不稀奇。

“我们认为我们之间的伙伴关系及合作是双向的,”首席执行官埃卡·潘纳宁(Ilkka Paananen)在欢迎致辞中对社区成员说,“在最佳的情况下,它对我们有利,但我们明白它也必须使你们受益。它必须是一种真正意义上的伙伴关系。”

“迄今为止,我在游戏行业已经工作了十八九年了,在我的职业生涯早期,想让游戏获得知名度,你得说服游戏杂志社报道它,(你面对的)基本上是一些专业的公关、营销人士。可想而知,尤其是对于我们的团队,我们对这种事情实在不感兴趣。如今的环境好太多了。因为如今那些对游戏抱着极大热忱的人,在座的各位,可以直接与游戏团队一起工作,我觉得这是一个非常、非常大的改善。”

我采访过的每一个Supercell团队,从《海岛奇兵》到《部落冲突》再到《荒野乱斗》,都提到了通过游戏官方论坛、Reddit新闻社区和社交媒体平台等渠道获取社区反馈的重要性。《皇室战争》的开发团队表示,这些反馈对游戏的电竞化产生了重大影响。

“我们做(电竞内容)因为玩家们一开始就想要它,”《皇室战争》团队的斯蒂芬·恩布卢姆(Stefan Engblom)告诉我。“在游戏公测期间,玩家们就已经自发举办了比赛。我们也在游戏内加入了迷你竞标赛——仅作为测试内容,我们发现这种竞争性的玩法有很多兴奋点。所以那时候我们就在讨论这个,不过我们仍然把它视为提升参与度和回馈玩家的举措。”

团队的另一名成员塞思·埃里森(Seth Allison)表示赞同,他接着告诉我社区的需求往往与开发者们喜爱或希望在游戏里推行的事物是一致的。

“在我们的团队讨论中,我们从不谈收入和盈利,” 埃里森说。“我们谈论行业内正在进行的大型赛事,我们谈论不同的游戏……《皇室战争》是一款竞技手游而我们又都喜欢电竞,那么为什么不为它举办电竞比赛呢?”

clash_of_clans_logo(from supercell)

clash_of_clans_logo(from supercell)

继《皇室战争》电竞化成功后,《荒野乱斗》也准备采取同样的策略。在发行仪式上,Supercell宣布与红牛和ESL合作,在下个月德国的红牛杯手游电竞公开赛上举办一场特别的《荒野乱斗》锦标赛。尽管如此,游戏主管弗兰克·凯恩伯格(Frank Keienburg)表示他很乐意让社区玩家来决定游戏是否进一步电竞化。

“可以这么说,我们想要举办一场联赛,” 凯恩伯格说。“在游戏发行前对人们说‘它将会成为一个电竞游戏’总让我觉得怪怪的。这么说很奇怪,如果你不清楚玩家们会作何反应的话。它把顺序颠倒了。游戏本身具有竞技性,观看起来很有趣,也很容易解读。我们认为它有电竞潜力吗?当然!”

“所以我们为人们提供工具(实现竞争玩法),然后让他们用这些工具做想做的东西。我们已经和ESL及红牛启动了一项计划,我们将会看到它的结果,但还没有一个公司层面的计划。如果社区想要它,我们会看看他们希望怎样实现它,然后我们会支持他们的想法。如果他们想要的是《皇室战争》那样的联赛,就按他们想的做。”

电竞不是《荒野乱斗》团队计划响应社区需求的唯一方式。凯恩伯格还强调了Supercell “以团队为中心”的非寻常结构的重要性,这种结构使他们能够根据收到的反馈直接调整游戏。

“在别的公司,你想做某件事得通过三四层的审批,”凯恩伯格说。“但在这里,我们在Reddit上看到了一个很酷的想法,我们就去实现它。没有审批流程——我们就直接去做了。这赋予了我们权力,但也伴随着巨大的责任。因为有时候,社区的想法并不是最好的。因此我们试图做平衡。”

搁置“并不是最好的”想法容易,但如何应对玩家对游戏变更的不满完全是另一回事。社区经理莱恩·莱顿(Ryan Lighton)承认,即便他努力对玩家社区保持坦诚和开放,控制好与社区沟通的信息量仍然是个难题。

“对于做承诺这件事我一直很慎重,”他说。“尤其是考虑到我们的工作方式。我们有规划,但对下一年没有具体的规划。我们有指导原则并且会尝试遵循,但我们也不确定最终做出来会是什么样子、什么时候能做出来。如果我们过早对玩家承诺却实现不了,这感觉真的很糟糕。但另一方面,如果我们什么都不告诉玩家,他们会说,‘嗨,伙计们,给我们点消息。’”

“因此,告诉玩家什么、何时告诉他们、告诉他们多少,这三者之间存在一个微妙的平衡。我们会尝试告诉玩家我们大致在做什么、我们想实现什么,而不会说‘我们马上就会推出这个’,当我们觉得有把握时才会做明确的承诺。”

莱顿也坦言,尽管他和其他员工觉得Supercell的玩家社区与其它流行游戏的社区比起来,总体上更积极、包容,但这并不意味着其中不存在有毒玩家。一开始,他觉得这些人的恶劣言论其实没那么糟糕。

“这些玩家看着有毒、暴躁或愤怒,而实际上他们只是太热情了,”他说。“他们很激动。他们是如此热爱这款游戏,他们希望自己对游戏的憧憬能被实现。他们的脑子里一直想要实现它,当愿望没被实现他们感到心烦意乱,因为这是他们在乎的东西。即便是Reddit上偶尔有毒或丧的人,他们最初的动机也是好的。我害怕的不是收到这些负面评论或批评,而是有一天我们什么也收不到。当我们发布了更新,没人在意,这才是令我害怕的。”

当被问到这种“有毒”和“热情”的结合可能带来的危害时,他进一步说道:“我觉得并不是所有的有毒玩家都出于热情,”他说。“有些人就是纯粹的喷子。但是……有时候玩家不知道如何表达他们的不满。我们发布了一个更新,然后他们说‘这游戏烂爆了。’好吧,但你究竟不喜欢什么?什么改变了你的想法?为什么你之前还玩得很开心现在却变了?因此我必须仔细分析他们的反馈,找出他们不开心的原因。”

尽管Supercell开发者经常兴奋地谈论他们与社区的关系有多重要,如果社区没有相同的感受,那也没什么意义。但至少根据社区里最重要的两名成员所述,Supercell所做的与他们所说的是一致的。我们采访了两位著名的YouTuber——帕特里克·卡尼(Patrick Carney)(在社区里,玩家们称呼他为Chief Pat)和加拉顿(Galadon)(他拒绝透露真实姓名),他们分别从2012年和2013年开始玩Supercell游戏并制作相关视频。

两位内容创作者有着相似的最初经历:他们找游戏打发时间,然后发现了《部落冲突》并爱上了它,然后开始制作攻略视频,当时这方面的内容还很少,这吸引了Supercell的关注。

起初,卡尼并不确定引起Supercell的关注是好事还是坏事。他告诉我当他开始制作《部落冲突》视频时,他试图避开Supercell的关注,因为他怕Supercell会告他侵犯版权。但恰恰相反的是,Supercell评论了他的视频,还把它分享到官方Facebook上。自2014年起,Supercell不断邀请他和其他的内容创作者来到芬兰工作室,以便让他们了解和报道游戏的最新情况。

“每个人都知道这是个双赢的提议,”卡尼说。“Supercell拥有了一批围绕他们的游戏创作内容的人,为粉丝创造了更多参与《部落冲突》和其它游戏的方式,并且他们获得了这些站在第一线的人们的支持,帮助他们壮大社区规模。对内容创作者来说,我们玩的是超级热门的游戏,这会让我们的节目受到更多人的欢迎。Supercell也开始提供官方支持,让我们抢先试玩内容或帮我们宣传视频。我有机会参与了他们的超级碗广告拍摄,太疯狂了!我绝不会在别的地方得到这样的机会。”

加拉顿和卡尼告诉我,不是什么人都能加入Supercell的内容创作者团队,他们称之为“NDA Group”,团队成员在Supercell的官方Slack上有一个特殊的节目,还能享受一些额外的好处,比如参观工作室总部、抢先试玩游戏和获取资讯,以及可以直接和开发团队联系。Supercell会对加入的创作者进行审核,这不仅激励了社区成员发布更优质的内容,也为他人树立了榜样。

“好人会遇到好事,并且Supercell总是能找到好人,”加拉顿说。“我认为他们成功的原因是他们拥有一批优秀的员工,不仅如此,他们还找到了一批顶尖的内容创作者……一些游戏社区,我不想点名,比如《达尔文计划》《英雄联盟》,这些游戏社区的环境是出了名的恶劣。但我从没听说过《部落冲突》社区发生过这种事。一部分原因是游戏本身确实好,另一部分原因是Supercell处理问题的方式。他们确实听取了社区玩家的意见,并且很多人们在论坛或社交媒体上提出的意见直接被他们采纳了。”

卡尼和加莱顿说,Supercell与其社区之间的这种关系是罕见的,很多工作室过去曾与他们联系,询问他们如何仿照这种模式。卡尼强调首先你得有一款能吸引天才创作者的游戏,同时Supercell为他们提供的支持是极其宝贵的。

“其他人试图花钱请创作者,或者找人发布内容,但对于Supercell和我们来说,我们之间一直是双赢的关系,”卡尼说。“我们见证了这一关系网的扩大,如今创作者是如此之多。我记得最初只有4-8个核心的创作者,随着时间的推移,发展成如今这个庞大的团体,并且如今想成为Supercell的内容创作者不一定要有一个超过10万粉丝的节目。你只要做出一个或几个很棒的视频,他们就会主动邀请你加入他们的Slack团体,和Supercell人建立直接联系。”

“……如果你想建立一个这样的社区,如果我有什么话要告诉那些“做了新游戏并拥有几个内容创作者”的开发者,我会说去寻找那些真正热爱你的游戏、能推动你的游戏和社区向前发展的人,并尽可能地为他们提供支持。这么做之后,或许你的游戏能够引起人们的关注,并且更多的创作者会出现,希望你可以找到对的人共同建设你们的在线社区。”

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

As I’ve mentioned in the first two parts of this series, GamesIndustry.biz wasn’t alone in visiting Supercell’s headquarters in Helsinki for the launch of its new game, Brawl Stars. The company also welcomed nearly 100 content creators from around the world to celebrate the milestone with them, even inviting some to push the game’s launch button for their respective regions.

Opening the doors to the community at this scale isn’t a common gesture in the industry, but according to the developers and employees I spoke to, such a collaboration with creators wasn’t unusual in the slightest for Supercell.

“The way we see our partnership and working together with you guys is that it’s a two-way street,” CEO Ilkka Paananen said to the community as he addressed them in a welcome speech. “At its best, it benefits us, but we understand that it also has to benefit you. It really has to be a true partnership.

“I’ve been in the games industry for 18 or 19 years now, and earlier on in my career, how you did publicity for games is you had to pitch it to game magazines, and it was almost always professional, PR marketing people [who you spoke to]. As you can imagine especially for our teams, that’s not our cup of tea. Today’s world is so much better. Because what’s happening is people who are super passionate about the games, you guys, can work directly together with the game teams, and I just feel that it’s a much, much better place to be.”

Every team I spoke to at Supercell, from Boom Beach to Clash of Clans to Brawl Stars, mentioned the importance of taking community feedback across channels such as official forums (for the games that had them), Reddit, and social media platforms. For the Clash Royale team, such feedback significantly impacted the game’s push for esports.

“We built [esports content] because the players wanted it from the very beginning,” Clash Royale’s Stefan Engblom told me. “When we soft launched during that beta period, players were already doing their own tournaments. And we had seen in our internal mini-tournament that was meant as just a game test that there was a lot of excitement around this kind of competitive play. So that was something we talked about early on, but we still see it as something that’s about engagement and giving back to the players.”

Fellow team member Seth Allison agreed, and went on to tell me that the needs and wants of the community often fit seamlessly with what the developers already enjoy or want to promote in their games.

“In our discussions on the game team, revenue and profitability is never a part of the discussion,” Allison said. “We talk about the big tournaments that are happening in the industry, we talk about different games…[Clash Royale] is a competitive game and we all like esports, so why wouldn’t we want our game to have esports?”

After the success of Clash Royale esports, Brawl Stars is preparing to take the same tactic. At the launch event, Supercell announced a partnership with Red Bull and ESL to hold a special Brawl Stars tournament at the Red Bull Mobile Esports Open Finals in Germany next month. But beyond that, game lead Frank Keienburg said he was happy to let the community decide if the game proceeds further.

“It’s pretty safe to say we want to have a league,” Keienburg said. “I always feel weird when I see games coming out before their release that say, ‘This is going to be an esports title.’ It’s just a weird thing to say, if you don’t actually know how the community will react. It’s having things the wrong way around. Internally, we play the game competitively, and we think it’s a lot of fun to watch and it’s actually quite easy to read the game. Do we think it has potential for esports? Absolutely yes.

“So we give people the tools [for competitive play], then let people make what they want to out of them. We’ve already kicked off an initiative together with ESL and Red Bull and we’re going to see what comes out of that, but there hasn’t been a company plan. If the community wants this, we see how they want it, and then we’ll support that notion. And if that’s a professional league like in Clash Royale, so be it.”

Esports isn’t the only way the Brawl Stars team plans to tune into the requests of its community. Keienburg also highlighted the importance of Supercell’s unusual team-centered structure in allowing them to make adjustments to the game in a direct fashion based on feedback they receive.

“When you go through other organizations, you end up with three or four layers of approvals to do anything,” Keienburg said. “But here, we see a cool idea on Reddit, and we implement it. There’s no approval chain – we just do it. That is empowering, but at the same time it comes with a great responsibility. Because sometimes, sometimes, the community ideas are not the best. So we try to balance this.”

It’s one thing to set aside ideas that are “not the best,” but another entirely to interact with members of the community that react poorly to changes they dislike. Brawl Stars community manager Ryan Lighton acknowledged the difficulty of balancing how much information to communicate even as he strives for honesty and openness with the player community.

“One thing I am always careful about is making promises,” he said. “Especially with how we work. We have a road map, but we don’t have a concrete road map for the next year. We have a guide that we’re going to try to follow but we don’t know what features we’re going to have and when. If I make promises early and don’t deliver, then it feels really bad. On the other hand, there’s the opposite of that. If we tell them nothing, they’ll say, ‘Heck guys, give us some info.’

“So there’s a delicate balance between what we tell them, when, and how much. We at least try to give them guidance on what we’re working on and what we hope to achieve without saying, ‘This is coming,’ and waiting to say ‘Definitely’ until we can be sure it’s working for us.”

Lighton also was candid about the fact that even though he and others I spoke to at Supercell feel the studio in general has a more positive, forgiving community than one might find in other popular games, that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of toxic players. At first, Lighton downplayed the impact of harsh reactions from such people.

“Even when players are toxic or upset or angry, really they’re just passionate,” he said. “They’re excited. They love the game so much that they want their vision of the game to come to life. In their heads, they have this vision of what they want to happen and when it doesn’t, they’re upset because they care. Even the guys who are sometimes a little toxic or a little upset on Reddit or whatever, it comes from a good place. The day I will be afraid is not when we have negative comments or criticisms, it’s when we have nothing. When we post an update and nobody cares, that’s the day I’ll be scared.”

When pressed on the potentially harmful conflation of “toxic” and “passionate,” he elaborated a bit more.

“I don’t want to say that all players who are toxic are passionate,” he said. “There are some bad eggs out there who are just not saying good things. But…players don’t always know how to express their dissatisfaction. Maybe we drop an update and they’re like, ‘This game sucks.’ Okay, but what is it you don’t like? What changed? Why were you happy before and different now? So I have to parse through all their feedback and try to figure out what it is that made them unhappy.”

Though Supercell developers talked often and enthusiastically about how important their relationship with the community was, that would mean nothing if the community itself didn’t feel listened to in turn. At least according to two of its most prominent voices, Supercell’s words match its actions. I spoke with Patrick Carney (known in the community as Chief Pat) and Galadon (who declined to give his real name), two well-known YouTube creators who have been playing Supercell titles and making videos about them since 2012 and 2013, respectively.

Both content creators had similar beginnings: they found Clash of Clans as a way to pass the time, loved the game, and began producing videos at a time when helpful content on how to overcome certain challenges in Clash was still scarce, which allowed them to catch Supercell’s eye.

At first, Carney wasn’t sure Supercell’s attention was a good thing. He told me that when he began making Clash of Clans videos, he tried to keep them hidden from Supercell in fear that they would bring a copyright strike against them. But Supercell did quite the opposite. The studio commented on his videos, shared them on its Facebook page, and in early 2014 began reaching out to him and other creators to come visit the studio in Finland for opportunities to cover updates to the game.

“Everyone realized it was a win-win proposition,” Carney said. “Supercell had people who were creating content around their games, creating ways for their fans to engage with Clash and other Supercell games, and they had these people who were on the frontline of that and were helping build the community. And for the creators, we were playing massively popular games and were able to create channels that were flourishing. Then Supercell started providing more support, whether that was early access to the updates when they came out or promoting our videos. I had the chance to be in a Super Bowl commercial. That’s crazy! I never would have had that opportunity anywhere else.”

Galadon and Carney told me that Supercell doesn’t give just anyone access to what they referred to as the “NDA group” of creators, who have a special channel in Supercell’s official Slack and get perks like visits to the studio’s headquarters, early access to content and information, and direct lines to the team. Supercell does vet those it welcomes into the fold, which serves as an incentive for community members to not just put out good content, but to be positive role models to others.

“Good things happen to good people and Supercell tends to find good people,” Galadon said. “I think they’re successful because they found good employees, but at the same time, they have found the cream of the crop of content creators…There are some communities of certain games, I hate to name names, but like Darwin Project, League of Legends, games like that, where the community has become known for being really toxic. I’ve never heard that happen in Clash of Clans. Part of that is the game itself, and part of it is the way Supercell runs things. And they do. They really do listen to the community, and there are things that get adopted straight from the forums or social media where people are.”

Carney and Galadon said that the kind of relationship Supercell has with its community is a rarity, and that other studios had reached out to them in the past to ask the creators how they could emulate Supercell’s model. Carney emphasized the importance of having an excellent game in the first place to attract talented creators, but also said Supercell’s particular flavor of support had been invaluable.

“Other people are trying to pay to get in the door with creators or for people to post content, but for Supercell and ourselves, we’ve always had that win-win relationship,” Carney said. “Now we’ve seen that expand to today, where now there are so many creators. I remember when it was a core four to eight creators in the beginning. Over time, that’s grown, which is awesome, and now you don’t have to be a channel with over 100k subscribers to have access to Supercell. You make one or a couple cool videos and they’re reaching out for you to join their Slack group and get access to Supercellians directly and make that connection.

“…If you want to build a community like this, if I’m telling a developer who says, ‘We have a game, it’s very new, we have a few creators,’ I would say vet the people who are really passionate about your game and who can help push your game and community forward, and support them and prop them up as much as you can. Start there. And hopefully as your game builds traction and more creators come on, you can align yourself with the right people to help build out your community online.”(source:Gamesindustry.biz

 


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