作者：Colin Campbell

游戏开发最奇怪的决定之一是，开发者应该在许多方面或不征求社区反馈建议。

《Maniac Mansion》和《Monkey Island》Ron开发者 Gilbert现在正在制作探险游戏《The Cave》，他最近说：“你必须做你认为正确的事情，并在心里采取最好的措施。如果你遵循真实的自己，欣赏你设计风格的粉丝会喜欢你的作品。真正优秀的创作内容通常包含许多尖角，这是他们的乐趣。”

这是开发者的心声。他/她通常独立工作或有一个小团队，完全致力于某一艺术目标。幸运的是，今天的游戏开发给这些璀璨的明星带来了更多充分发挥的机会，2012年出现了许多来自小团队的优秀作品。

然而，大多数增加收入的游戏并不是艺术家内心期望的结论，而是来自技术人员的手（游戏邦注：他们无疑很有创造力，很有才华）。相反，他们遵循了巨大整体计划的艰苦旅行成果。他们在所谓的大计划中添加了一些见解。

这是一个预算为2000万美元的游戏开发项目，包括一个由数十人或数千人组成的团队。开发者自身的功效并不突出。合作完成各项工作。这本身就是一种复杂的创造方式，需要倾听、共感和让步技巧。

每个人都欣赏专注于工作的开发者——他们无法忍受别人对自己工作的看法(除了他们最亲密的合作伙伴或缪斯女神)。每个人都欣赏梵高沉迷于自己的画板，没有任何妥协的风格。

Neal Stephenson的科幻作品《Reamde》主角Richard包含这段文字 Forthrast将自己的角色设定为世界优秀的MMO游戏《T’Rain》的开发者。在开发游戏时，他与行为并举，但当它成为一部优秀的作品，成为围绕员工管理和数据分析的游戏时，他变得消极、悲观和厌倦。掌握不同技能的人开始崭露头角。

EA的游戏开发侧重于员工管理、数据分析和听取反馈建议。我最近和EA在一起 Games全球营销副总裁Laura Miele谈到了她的角色：“这一重点是确保用户的反馈建议能够被吸收，并将工作室的人才培养结合起来。我们为这些数据建造桥梁。”

“我为我的营销部门建立了一个倾听模块，这对我们来说是一个非常有意义的过程和工具，我们有很多来自市场、客户和产品的输入信息。游戏中每个人都嵌入了遥测技术。因此，整合所有这些信息，提出有价值的想法，为创意开发团队创造一定的市场清晰度，所有这些都能带来新的创造。”

她把自己的角色描述成倾听别人的建议。这与Gilbert的立场大不相同，但两者都侧重于互娱的开发和销售(游戏邦注:即使在规模上有很大差异)。

远程技术、市场调研等形式的反馈信息将继续为游戏开发者的决策过程提供参考。比如Zynga等大型游戏公司都是由这种信息数据管道组成的。

当代遥测技术和大型发行商不愿意在徒劳试验中消耗时间和金钱，为开发商和客户创造合理的联系。“我们知道用户喜欢什么，”Miele说。在《战地风云3》中，他们喜欢室内地图，他们喜欢自定内容。因此，我们可以根据Battlelog服务在游戏体验中添加更多这样的原素。”

自90年代在Westwood工作以来，Miele一直负责处理数据和帮助制作游戏。“十年前，我们很难掌握用户对某些内容的反应，”她补充说。你花3年时间制作游戏，然后发布，然后在3年后发布更新内容。现在，我们可以更快地优化他们提供的大量内容。”

这就产生了这种担忧。大型游戏开发商将逐步改变开发进度越来越短的投资，锁定用户期望的关键感受。每个人都看到相同的游戏类型。独立开发者可能会强调，来自大公司的许多游戏都有共同的特点。

当我问到Miele这个问题时，她坦言：“如果你用字面上的方式查看数据，把它转换成你读过的内容，那就是这样。但这不是我们做事的方式。我们为开发团队提供了足够的重要依据，以吸收大部分输入信息，评估有效信息，产生相应的观点，掌握统计数据。最后，我们希望他们遵循数据和分析数据，否则你会螺旋下降。”

今年出现了这种情况，当时客户对《质量效应3》的结尾不满。BioWare Ray Muzyka在处理这一问题的公开信中寻找这一艺术矛盾的症结。

他指出：“我认为游戏是一种艺术学校。每个人媒体的危害来自客户。它们与故事的展示形式密切相关。他们有权给予建设性的批评。同时，我坚信并支持开发团队的艺术决策。”

在这种情况下，Bioware意识到自己处于两难境地，无法同时服从两派人员:一派认为给开发者发号施令是他们的权利；另一方认为艺术家根本不需要别人的建议。

具体情况更为微妙。只有少数成功的艺术家和开发者不注意用户的期望，而完全满足客户期望的开发者最终会失败，很可能会陷入脑损伤的情况。（本文为游戏邦//gamerboom.com编译，拒绝所有不保留版权的转让，如需转载，请联系:游戏邦）

Opinion: Game creation and the art of listening

by Colin Campbell

One of the curious choices inherent to game development is the extent to which the creator does or does not listen to feedback from the community.

Ron Gilbert, the talented creator of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island, currently working on adventure game The Cave, recently said, “You have to do what you think is the right thing to do and what you think is the best thing to do. People who like what you do and are fans of your work are just going to like what you do as long as you do something true to yourself. Creative things, if they’re really good, they have lots of pointy little edges, and that’s what makes them interesting.”

This is the voice of the auteur, the person working alone or in all groups, entirely devoted to a particular artistic vision. Happily, game development today offers more and more opportunities for such bright stars to do what they do, and 2012 has seen a bounty of gorgeous, moving games from all teams.

However the vast majority of commercially successful games are not so much the work of artists passionately following their own desires, but by artisans — creative and talented, for sure, but toiling away according to a grand overall scheme, adding dashes of their own genius to something that is best described as a Big Plan.

This is the game development of $20 million budgets, the one that keeps teams of a few dozen or even a few hundred employed. It has little use or facility for the individual as creator. Everything is collaborative. This in itself is a taxing form of creativity and it calls for skills of listening, empathy and meeting-in-the-middle.

People admire a single-minded devotion — the creators who don’t torture themselves over anyone’s opinion of their work, apart from that of their most intimate collaborators and muses. We admire the Van Gogh lashing into his canvas without even a splash of compromise.

There’s a passage in Neal Stephenson’s brilliant techno-thriller Reamde, in which a main character, Richard Forthrast, contemplates his own role as the founder of the world’s most successful MMO, T’Rain. In making the game he was all action and passion, but once it becomes a success, once it becomes about people-management and data ysis, he falls into despondency and boredom. People with different skills come to the fore.

Making a game at, say, Electronic Arts is all about people-management and data ysis and listening to the feedback. I recently spoke to EA Games’ senior VP of global marketing, Laura Miele about her role: “It really is about making sure that consumers are being heard and that we are connecting our creative talent in our studios,” she said. “And that we’re bringing that message and connecting those dots.

“I created a listening engine for my marketing organization, and it has been an incredibly valuable process and tool for us, where we have multiple inputs of information and data from the marketplace and consumers, as well as our products. We have telemetry in our games. And so when you can bring all that together and develop meaningful insights and bring some transparency from the marketplace to our creative development teams, it really can unleash more innovation.”

She describes her job, essentially, as listening to other people’s opinions. This is exactly the opposite of Gilbert’s perspective, and yet both are engaged in making and selling interactive entertainment, albeit on vastly different scales.

Telemetry, market research and any other form of feedback are constantly informing or affirming decision-making processes among game developers. Huge games companies, like Zynga, are constructed entirely of these angular pipes of data and information.

Modern telemetry and the desire among large publishers to not waste time and money on fruitless experiments has created an efficient nexus between creator and consumer. Miele explains, “We know what consumers like. In Battlefield 3, they love the indoor maps, they love the customization. And so we’re able to add more dimensions to that game experience through the service [Battlelog].”

Miele has been yzing data and helping to create games since she worked at Westwood back in the ’90s. She adds, “Ten years ago it was very hard to understand how a consumer responded to something. You would spend three years making a game, and you would put out there, and then you’d have another three years before you could react in a new iteration. Now, by being more pointed and focused about what we are offering, we are able to innovate faster.”

This does lead to the concern that creators of big games move in ever-decreasing circles, chasing the central experience of what the consumer wants, all converging on, basically, the same game. The indie auteur will point out that many games from large organizations share prime characteristics.

When I asked Miele about this, she said, “If you were reading data quite literally and translating it exactly into what you were reading, then yes. But that is not at all how we are behaving. By taking multiple inputs and evaluating what makes sense, having insights and data informs and allows our development teams to create. The last thing we want them to do is be beholden to data and ytics. Otherwise you could end up being in a downward spiral.”

This issue came up spectacularly earlier this year when consumers made a giant fuss about the Mass Effect 3 endings, which many found to be unsatisfactory. BioWare’s Ray Muzyka, in an open letter addressing the situation, found a way to the heart of the artistic conflict.

He wrote, “I believe passionately that games are an art form, and that the power of our medium flows from our audience, who are deeply involved in how the story unfolds, and who have the uncontested right to provide constructive critici. At the same time, I also believe in and support the artistic choices made by the development team.”

In that case, Bioware found itself in an impossible situation, unable to please two sets of fundamentalists: those who believe it is their right to dictate to the creator, and those who believe the artist has no business listening at all.

The truth is more subtle, that successful artists and creators who take no heed of their audience’s wishes are extremely rare, while those who slavishly follow their audience’s every last desire are doomed to failure and, probably, madness.（Source: gamasutra）