Episode是如何成为当今最大的互动故事平台的？

原作者：Jennifer Allen 译者：Vivian Xue

你可能没玩过Episode。它听起来也许很熟悉，这得归功于大量营销，以及它常年排在iOS/谷歌/亚马逊应用商店榜单内，但简单地浏览一下这个应用，你可能会觉得“这不是我的菜。”

这个应用有点像故事阅读创作平台Wattpad和游戏书《惊险岔路口》（Choose Your Own Adventure）的结合体，里面有大量的剧情(分支剧情)可供选择，主角是一些动漫人物，画风似乎贴近小女生的审美。

这也许是Episode被游戏界忽视的原因。但是，它通过针对一个以年轻女性用户为主的群体获得了巨大的成功。通过为年轻女性提供一个阅读互动故事的平台，以及一些简单的工具让她们自己创作故事，工作室Pocket Gems做了一部低调的大作。

截至目前，平台上播放的剧集已经超过25亿集，播放时间总计38000多年。这些剧集大部分是由该应用的550万注册创作者设计的。

Episode的成功很大程度上归功它的简单性。玩家在启动应用后即可直接进入各种不同的剧情体验。

通常，这些故事围绕着浪漫爱情或校园经历，但其中也不乏一些著名IP如《贱女孩》、《美少女的谎言》的衍生故事。它是青少年丰富想象的理想素材，事实上玩家的决定会影响接下来剧情的走向。

用户生成故事

Episode使用户创建自己的故事变得简单易行。平台在网页上提供了一个简单的脚本引擎，同时应用内部也有一个拖放的创建模式。

创作者无需任何技术知识，创作一个故事也不需要花很长时间，还有可能通过“报酬计划”赚到钱并获得荣誉。

episode（from gamasutra.com）

Pocket Gems的主管和创意经理卡斯·菲利普斯（Cass Phillipps）说，工作室内部有一个小型创作团队，此外还有一个庞大的创作社区。

她说：“我与社区创作者的合作更多，但我也和我们的内部作者也有合作。”

菲利普斯大概6年前加入Pocket Gems，担任游戏剧情作者。当时Episode团队只有5个人——与如今的80人的规模相去甚远。如今作为剧情总监，她帮助引领和指导所有故事的主题设计。

菲利普斯说，他们一直计划实现团队和社区共享创作工具，并以追求更强的社会临场感（social presence）为动力。（社会临场感越高，就越有“真实”之感，越能让人沉迷其中，游戏邦注）

她致力于改进脚本工具，钻研如何帮助社区创作者设计出更好的剧情，并和玩家体验部门的人合作。

“在应用发行时，我们希望确保我们的工具能同时向社区开放，”她说。“我们一直以来的目标是建立一个创作者平台。我们认为很多人都是作家和创作者。”

Pocket Gems的想法是为他们提供一个讲故事的地方。除此之外，一些故事是团队内部创作的，还有一些由名人改编的故事，比如围绕歌手黛米·洛瓦托（Demi Lovato）的同人故事。2017年将继续推出新的IP，尽管菲利普斯无法确定具体的名单。

内部创作的过程类似于游戏开发。菲利普斯说，“我们采取的是基础的方式，每个人都可以拿出自己的想法，（在进入流程之前）将它们具体化。我们只会对故事进行略微的探索，大约四个小时，看看它是否有潜质。

故事创作分成脚本编写、迭代、选择设计等阶段，然后故事将经历内部定性测试，接着是外部定量测试。一部作品可能需要六个月到一年的时间才能完成这个过程。

共享开发工具

内部团队使用的工具与社区创作者几乎一样。尽管一些内部制作的故事无法立即分享给社区创作者，但它不久后就会向社区开放。在智能手机上通过应用程序创建故事是Episode最近推出的新功能。它无需使用脚本语言，而是拖放的方式创作。

正如菲利普斯所说，这个工具“简单易学”但想要精通它很困难。“实际上我认为精通它有点太难了，因此我正在尝试改进它，”她说。不过让角色出现在屏幕上、让他们说话是一个相当基础简单的操作。“我们的目标是让创作变得像这样容易，并且越来越容易。”

这种简单性确保了Episode的成功。超过500万的创作者在不同程度上使用了这个平台。“有些人只是想写一些小故事和朋友们分享，”菲利普斯指出，但也有许多人通过写故事赚钱。

不过这并不是很多人决定开始创作的原因。菲利普斯收到过无数用户的来电，并从中发现吸引玩家成为内容创作者的常常是社区——在网上获得名声和人气是一件很吸引人的事。

“他们无需征求任何人的同意。创作者在完成创作后就可以马上将它分享出去。”这对人们来说是一个很大的激励。“他们之所以开始创作是因为他们喜爱写作，并且想向人们展示自己的故事，”她说，这与fanfiction（同人小说）的兴起很相像。

但作者们受到激励的原因不仅仅是对名声和反馈的渴望——在Episode上成功的故事能赚到很多钱。菲利普斯举了很多成功的例子。一名来自欧洲的女士通过在Episode上写故事赚钱，得以辞掉一直厌恶的工作。

如今她定期去旅游，在Instagram上记录她的经历，收获了大批粉丝。还有一些人通过写故事赚得了法学院的学费。

故事若包含了不适当的内容，还是会被下架，但菲利普斯坚称Episode社区对这类不宜内容起到了强力的遏制作用。顶尖的作家不间断地更新他们的作品，名利双收。

和读者们保持互动是成功的关键，这也是为什么该应用的成功受益于Instagram的存在。经常举行一些创作比赛，让粉丝们提交自己的作品或想法，奖励被采用创意的作者。

电视剧式的创作过程

内部开发的故事要经过数个阶段以确保剧情的紧凑，而社区创作故事的剧情走向常常变化不定。创作者们可能对剧情有自己的想法，但正如菲利普斯所说，最终呈现出来的内容很大程度上取决于粉丝们想要什么。

尽管很多作家会采取几乎相反的方式。菲利普斯说：“他们获得灵感的方式是听取粉丝的想法，然后逆着粉丝的心愿创作。”

“他们想，‘哦，我的粉丝们真的很喜欢这个角色，我要把他们全杀了！’”就像在任何形式的媒体中一样，戏剧性是让人们沉迷、想要继续探究的原因。

菲利普斯把它比作真人秀节目，在真人秀节目中，人们可以通过投票决定人们的去留。

实现这个概念的前提是粉丝们对故事的热情只增不减。工作室计划改善移动平台的创作工具，同时引入更多的外部IP。

更重要的是，菲利普斯说，Pocket Gems正在尝试为应用增加社交功能，使用户能够在应用内部进行通信，而无需依赖外部渠道(目前Instagram是该应用用户交流的主要地方)。

开发人员很重视改进玩家和创作者之间的沟通方式。“我们当然想成为一款极受欢迎的应用，”她说，“但写作是一种非常个性化的行为。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

It’s likely that you haven’t played Episode. The name might sound familiar thanks to a prolific marketing campaign, and its consistent presence on the iOS/Google/Amazon App Store charts, but a brief glance may have led you to think ‘this isn’t for me.’

The app is sort of like Wattpad meets Choose Your Own Adventure, with a panoply of episodes (branching narratives) to choose from. The drama is portrayed by animated characters, and the aesthetic of the art seems to be targeted to teenage girls.

That may be why many of in the game community have been overlooking Episode. But it has achieved serious success by pursuing a predominantly young female user base. By offering young women a platform for playing through animated interactive stories, plus simple intuitive tools to create their own stories, the studio Pocket Gems created an unsung blockbuster.

Over 2.5 billion episodes have been played so far, amounting to over 38,000 years of combined viewing time. And most of the episodes were designed by the app’s 5.5 million registered creators.

Much of Episode’s success is down to its simplicity. Within moments of firing up the app, players can dive straight into a variety of different stories.

Typically, tales are focused on romance or high school experiences, but there’s also room for branded stories built around recognizable IPs such as Mean Girls and Pretty Little Liars. It’s ideal fodder for a fertile teenage imagination, enhanced by the fact that the player’s decisions affect what happens next.

User-generated stories

Episode also makes it nearly as easy to write one’s own story. A straightforward scripting engine is available on the website, with a drag and drop creation mode within the app.

Without any prior knowledge, it doesn’t take long to create a story with the potential to earn money as well as accolades through the writer payments program.

Cass Phillipps, director and creative manager at Pocket Gems, says there is a small team of internal writers, as well as a vast community creating their own content.

“I do more work with the community writers but I do some work with our internal writers as well,” she explains.

Phillipps joined Pocket Gems about six years ago as a game writer. She got involved with Episode when there were only about five people on the team — a far cry from the 80-person team of today. Now director of stories, she helps lead and guide the themes for all future stories.

Phillipps says that the plan all along was to build tools that could be used by the team as well as the community, with Episode always driven by the desire for a strong social presence.

She regularly works on how best to improve the scripting tools, how she and Episode can help the community write better, as well as liaising with the player experience teams.

“[At launch] we wanted to make sure our tools would be turned on for our community [at the same time],” she notes. “Having a platform for a community of writers has always been our vision. We think so many writers and creators in general are out there.”

The thinking was to be able to give them a place to tell their story. Alongside that are a number of internally-led stories, as well as established familiar names such as stories centering around singer Demi Lovato. New IPs are set to continue throughout 2017, although Phillipps wasn’t able to confirm any specific names yet.

In each case, internal stories are created in a similar way to any form of game developments. “It follows the basic idea of pitching sessions in-house,” Phillipps says. “Anyone can come with a pitch, and they’re fleshed out a little bit [before going through a process] we call a ‘life through’…We just explore the story a little bit for about four hours and see if it has legs…if it has a place to go.”

Broken down into numerous stages such as script writing, iterating, deciding choices, and so forth, the story then undergoes internal qualitative testing, and then external quantitative testing. The process can take anywhere from six months to a year for a finished product.

Opening up the development tools

The tools used by the internal team are nearly identical to those available to the community. While some parts of internally made stories aren’t instantly available to community writers, it’s soon rolled out for all. Being able to create stories through the app and on your smartphone is a recent inclusion to the Episode family. It doesn’t use the scripting language, utilizing drag and drop methods instead.

As Phillipps explains, it’s “easy to learn” but it’s also currently quite hard to master. “I actually think it’s a little too hard to master, so I’m looking at ways to improve it,” she says. Fundamentally though, getting characters on screen, and getting them talking is a fairly basic process. “Our goal is to always keep it that easy and to make it easier and easier.”

That level of ease has ensured Episode’s success. Over 5 million creators use the platform to varying amounts. “Some are just making small stories they share with friends,” Phillipps points out, but there’s also a lot of money to be made through the service.

That’s not why many people start writing though. Phillipps has found through numerous user calls that the community aspect is often what draws players to become content creators — achieving some fame and popularity online being a big appeal.

“There’s no approval they have to go through. They can pretty much write their story and put it out to the world immediately.” That’s a huge incentive to get people started and see what they can come up with. “They start because they love writing and they want to get their stories out there,” she says, much like the rise of fanfiction.

But author-designers are not simply motivated by a desire for fame and feedback–there’s money to be made from successful stories on Episode. Phillipps cited a number of examples of success stories. One woman from Europe has been able to quit a job she hated, with her income coming solely from the stories she writes for the app.

Regularly travelling, she now documents her experiences on Instagram, building a substantial following. Others have been able to pay their way through law school through their Episode writing efforts.

Stories can still be flagged if they contain inappropriate content, but Phillipps insists that Episode’s community acts as a strong disincentive for working blue. Top writers stick around with frequent updates garnering them popularity and profit.

Being in touch with one’s audience is crucial to success, which is why the app benefits from a substantial Instagram presence. Contests are frequently arranged where fans can submit fanart or ideas, with prizes tied into the next episode of a story.

The TV-style experience of episodic writing

While internally-developed stories go through various processes to ensure the story is tight, community stories frequently change as they go along. Writers may have an idea of what’s going to happen, but as Phillipps says, a lot of what happens next is down to where fans want things to go.

There are numerous incidents of this almost backfiring, though. “The way they get their ideas is they take what their fans want, then actually do the opposite,” Phillips notes.

“They think, ‘Oh, fans really love this character, I’ll kill them off!’” Much like in any form of media, drama is what keeps people hooked to see what happens next.

Phillipps compares it to reality TV shows, where one can vote who stays on or who gets voted off.

It’s a concept that can only grow amongst a user base keen to interact with stories even more so than previous generations. There are plans to improve Episode’s mobile tools, as well as introduce even more outside IPs.

More importantly, Phillipps says that Pocket Gems is playing around with what can be accomplished with the social side of the app. Profiles are in development, allowing users to communicate within the app, rather than rely on external sources. (Instagram is currently the most popular source.)

Changing the conversations that happen between players and creators is not something the developers are taking lightly. “We obviously want to be an incredibly popular app,” she says, “but writing is a very personal act.”（source: gamasutra.com）