游戏内容丰富性与玩家回馈编辑本段回目录
假设你想要制作一款游戏，那你将遵循何种模式去制作这款游戏？组建一个团队，开始制作游戏并将其推向Steam平台？或者上传到应用商店？制作一个体验版本和一个全价的完整版本？希望它能够获得好运并取得惊人成绩？
也许你能够制作出一款名声大噪的游戏，但是你却犯了一个常见错误：你认为自己正在从事一份有关制作内容的业务。
screenshot from edge-online.com
小说家通过撰写小说而从销售中获利；音乐家通过发行唱片赚钱，而游戏开发者也是借由制作游戏赢得利润。如此看来他们的工作好像都是关于制作东西并进行出售然后从中赚钱，但是这样的娱乐产业又与其它产品业务有何差别呢？这都是关于为自己的产品制定一个符合行情的市场价格，并通过广告手段进一步推销自己的产品。但是真的是这样吗？
当然不是。
游戏（或任何其它的艺术品）主要由两部分内容构成。第一部分便是包装，包括盒子、光盘、指南、运送和处理及广告、促销等发行商所提供的服务。包装是有形的，你可以通过提供内容包而向消费者收取费用。
但是消费者并不是为了产品的包装而消费。所有的游戏磁盘都一样且它们的包装盒子也近乎相似，但是它们却以各种不同的价格出售。就像《使命的召唤》售价高达50英镑，而其它游戏却只要10英镑。
包装只是引导消费者获得产品第二部分内容的重要方式（就像门票一样），而第二块内容则是指游戏世界。你的游戏世界是无形的，它的存在是内容包的意义所在。它是无价的；或者说，它并没有固有价值。而正是因为误解了这一点才导致很多开发者产生错误的产品心态。
错误的产品心态导致开发者认为自己的产品拥有固有价值，从而产生保护这些产品的想法。有时候他们会认为所有人都自私地希望能够免费获得产品，而如果他们做不到“以毒攻毒”，便会失去专业开发者的资格。
这就是很多开发者会不断提议各种合法解决方案且主张各种保护主义政策的原因所在。他们担心各种盗版行为，所以在各种会议上总会出现“生存第一主义”，“面临大难时的幽默”或者“厄运来临”之类的情绪。
当你发现在今天的时代中，包装已不再那么重要，且有越来越多开发者正在制作与你类似的东西时，你便会开始意识到竞争的重要性。如果你与你的小型开发团队能够将游戏上传到App Store中，那么其他人也能这么做。
面对这种情况，很多开发者开始尝试着去压缩自己的游戏内容，从而让自己所提供的每一小块内容都能够变得更有价值，例如提供只有一个关卡的体验版本，然后让玩家选择是否购买完整版本，或者是使用订阅模式，抑或是使用高成本的复制保护措施。
但是比起过去，这些方法已不再那么有效了。
在数字时代中，所有包装的价值都趋向于零，因此改变了整个产业的规则。21世纪的游戏产业规则是：你给予的越多，你能够得到的也就越多。
游戏制作（或者是制作其它艺术品）并不是一种制作东西的产业。这是一种关系产业。玩家想要成为游戏的忠实粉丝，希望能够享受你的游戏世界并拥护它，而为了能够把握住这些玩家，你就需要做出各种大胆的尝试，想办法让玩家能够从众多竞争者中选择你的游戏。
就像约会一样：谁更可能建立长久关系，是想要第一次约会就发生关系的家伙，还是愿意投入更多时间发动各种物质进攻的绅士，如送巧克力，请吃饭或送花。而在这些人中谁才能够获得更多利益？所以获取玩家其实也是如此。
你越吝啬的话，你最终将获得越少的玩家。人际关系的建立是一种长期策略，能够帮助你获得更多真正忠实的粉丝，努力维持这些粉丝，你将有可能争取到更多粉丝。而这种关系不是只针对一两款游戏而言，这是一种终生关系，将延伸至你今后的每一款游戏中。
为了做到这一点，你就需要努力变得更加慷慨。也就意味着你需要尽量提供更多关卡和内容给玩家，就像Rovio的《愤怒的小鸟》；允许玩家进行更长久的在线游戏，就像暴雪所创造的“战网”（游戏邦注：允许无数玩家能够一同参与在线游戏活动的游戏网站）；在体验版本中免费提供三分之一的游戏内容，就像ID的《Doom》；与游戏社区紧密联系在一起让社区玩家获得更多能够表达自己的方式，就像Bungie的《光晕》。
而礼品形式虽然多种多样，但是其共同特征都是“大”，就像一大盒巧克力或一大束红玫瑰。在未来，开发者不再需要担心产品的包装问题，他们将使用数字发行模式去发行自己的游戏，并为了赢得玩家的信任而提供更多游戏内容。
慷慨将不再是单一的行为，为了推动销量的提升开发者将把慷慨贯穿于自己的日常交易或价格调整中；通过采取这种持续的行动，你能够让玩家知道你正在为他们制作一些特别的产品；如此他们才会愿意在今后的游戏中做出投资。所以切记，多提供才有可能获得用户更多的回应。
游戏邦注：原文发表于2011年12月22日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Tadhg Kelly）
Opinion: The importance of being generous
Tadhg Kelly
So, assuming you either make games or want to, what’s your model for how to do that? Pull a team together, make a game and pop it up on Steam? Upload it to an app store? Make a demo and sell a full-priced version? Hope to hit the wave and strike it lucky?
You’re probably making a huge, but fairly common, error: you think you’re in the business of making stuff.
A novelist writes a book, sells it and earns money from those sales. A musician does likewise with an album, and a game developer with his game. They seem to be making stuff and selling it, so the business of entertainment seems like any other product business. It’s all about charging a price for an object that the market will bear, and advertising to sell more of that product. Right?
Well, no, not really.
A game (or any artwork) has two parts. The first is the package, meaning the box, discs, manual, shipping and handling, advertising, promotion and so on that the publisher provides. The package is tangible. You charge money for the package and the audience pays.
But the package is not why customers buy, nor what they are buying into. All game discs are the same and come in similar boxes, yet despite their physical similarity they wildly differ in price. Call Of Duty can get away with charging ￡50 where some games are only ￡10.
The package is just a means of access to the second part: your game world. It’s a ticket. Your game world is intangible and yet is the entire point of the package. It is priceless. Or to put it another way, your game world has no intrinsic value. And that’s where things get depressing.
The product mentality leads developers to believe that their work has an intrinsic value, which in turn leads them to want to protect it. It sometimes seems as though the whole world selfishly wants their work for free, and so the age of the professional developer is over if they don’t fight fire with fire.
That’s why they lobby for legal solutions and other measures to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It’s why they worry about piracy, and why at conferences the mood is often one of survivalism, gallows humour or impending doom.
When you realise that not only do we live in an age when the package is less necessary than ever before, but also there are many more developers just like you all doing the same thing, everything starts to feel like a race to the bottom. If you and your small team can upload a game to the App Store, then so can anyone.
Faced with this, many a developer tries to restrict or dole out their world as sparingly as possible to make each one seem artificially valuable, such as a demo version with one level and an option to buy the full-priced version, a subscription model or high-priced copy protection.
It used to, but increasingly doesn’t, work.
In the digital age all packaging tends toward a zero price, and that changes the rules. The rule in the 21st century is this: the more you give, the more you get.
Making games (or any artform) is not a making-stuff industry. It’s a relationship industry. Players want to be fans, to enjoy your game world and to support it, but to capture them you have to make the bold gestures that lead them to trust you above all the rest of your competition.
Think of it like dating: who has more chance of building something that lasts, the guy who wants to get laid on the first date or the guy who puts the time in with chocolates, dinner and flowers? Who is going to benefit more? Finding fans is like that.
The more miserly your behaviour, the less likely any player is to become a fan. The business of relationship building is a long-term strategy of finding your thousand true fans and then working with them to build a million more. It’s not about one game or another; it’s about a lifelong relationship where game after game draws more and more of them into your orbit.
To do that, you have to be generous above and beyond the norm. That might mean giving huge amounts of levels or content away, as Rovio does with Angry Birds. It might involve enabling endless online play, as Blizzard does with Battle.Net. Alternatively, giving away a whole third of your game as a freely available demo, as id did with Doom. Or engaging with your community passionately and giving them tools to express themselves, as Bungie does with Halo.
The exact form of the gift varies, but the common theme is the large gesture, like a big box of chocolates or a dozen red roses. With no packaging to worry about, the future is about using digital distribution to give, give and give some more in order to build trust.
Generosity is not a single act, a daily deal or a price drop that you initiate to drive sales; it’s a constant activity that tells players that you are making something special for them, and that you care. Do that and they will be much more willing to spend over the odds for your latest game in the long term. Keep giving, and they respond.
Rovio has figured it out. Why haven’t you?(source:edge-online)
