虚拟游戏开发天才回归现实世界
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威尔•莱特曾经开发过史上最成功的一些游戏作品，包括艺电公司（Electronic Arts）出品的《模拟城市》（SimCity ）和《模拟人生》（The Sims），全球总销量超过1.5亿套。2008年，莱特主持开发了很久的游戏《竞技》（Sport）终于面世。《竞技》上市前进行了大张旗鼓的炒作，上市后却反响平平。其后不久，2009年，这位游戏开发大师离开了艺电公司旗下由他亲手创立的马克西斯工作室（Maxis studio）。最近，莱特和技术专家阿维•巴泽维及笨乐俱乐部（Stupid Fun Club）的成员共同成立了一家名为Syntertainment的新公司。笨乐俱乐部是莱特的智囊团，尝试开发过从机器人到延时摄影线性娱乐（stop-motion linear entertainment）等各种项目。这家新公司正在加紧开发一个全新的跨平台游戏，它将首先在手机上推出，然后再转战其他平台。最近《财富》采访了莱特，下面是采访实录。 尝试开发手机游戏是什么感觉？ 我没觉得开发手机游戏有什么不同。有了云之后，现在很多游戏变得更有互动性了。游戏已不再局限于传统的台式机和电子游戏机了。我本人，还有我认识的人，都会更多地在手机、而不是其他设备上花很多时间浏览网络、和他人交流或是玩各种游戏。在某种意义上，手机将是今后占据主导地位的平台。 手机对启发你的创造性起到了什么作用？ 最大的因素是手机随时随地都能用。它总是在我口袋里，不论我在哪儿，都能通过手机和他人互动。对我来说尤其有意思的一点是，从个人数据的角度来说，如果人们同意的话，我们可以通过手机了解到用户的大量信息。 您的新游戏是什么主题？ 去年11月，我创建了一家名叫Syntertainment的新公司。我们正在致力于开发一个非常特别的创意，它可能会在手机上引领潮流。我只能大致说它是一个和人们的现实生活及生活中的角色相关的游戏，而不再是虚构或虚拟的世界。 不久前您曾谈起过自己最近推出的游戏HiveMind，说它将现实生活游戏化。您现在开发的新游戏和它类似吗？ 这个领域很困难，我们还在开发阶段。我们正在逐渐弄明白应该采用怎样什么样的手段。将现实生活游戏化并不是只有一条道路，而是有多种可能，所以当我们深入到细节之中时，发现这个领域发展空间巨大。因此，关于呈现给玩家什么内容、玩家在想什么等问题，我们必须非常专注和具体。我还是对开发以现实为基础的游戏有着浓厚的兴趣。 现实生活游戏化，比如从信用卡到停车场都能获得积分这种现象，对您开发这个项目产生了什么样的影响？ 现在有很多来自游戏的象征和结构被用于生活类应用软件。游戏正在成为一种语言，游戏的结构已经成为我们今天现实生活的一部分。 |
Will Wright has created some of the most successful video games of all time, including Electronic Arts' SimCity and The Sims, which has sold over 150 million copies worldwide. The game developer left EA and the Maxis studio he founded back in 2009, shortly after his long-in-development Sport launched in 2008 and failed to connect with gamers after years of hype. Wright recently formed a new company, Syntertainment, with technologist Avi Bar-Zeev and members of The Stupid Fun Club, Wright's think tank that has explored everything from robots to stop-motion linear entertainment. Syntertainment is gearing up development of a new cross-platform game experience that will debut on mobile and grow into additional platforms. A transcript of a conversation with Wright follows. What's it been like exploring mobile games? I don't even think of it as is a separate thing because so much of this stuff is getting interactive now because of the cloud. Games are headed beyond the traditional desktop or console experiences. My own habits and the people I know spend a lot more time interacting with the web, with other people and even other games on my phone than any other device. Mobile is going to be the dominant platform in some sense. What does mobile open up to you creatively? The biggest factor is that it's always accessible to me. It's always in my pocket, and I can be out in the world doing things and still interacting. On the personal metrics side, which is extremely interesting to me, you have the ability to gather huge amounts of data about a person through their mobile devices, if they allow it. What's your new game about? I started a new startup back in November called Syntertainment, and we are focused on a very specific idea which is probably going to lead on mobile. I can broadly say it's something that will connect to people and reality and the gameplay of their life and not so much on fictions or virtual worlds. You had previously talked about your last game, Hivemind, as a gamification of people's lives. Is this new game similar? That's still a rough area we're working in. We're just getting more specific about how we approach that. It's a pretty open-ended charter -- gamification -- so as we get down to the details of it there's a huge opportunity in this space. That's why you need to focus on something very specific in terms of what you're presenting to the player and what they're thinking. I am still extremely interested in making games where reality is the playing field. How has the gamification of life, when you look at everything from credit cards to parking lots offering points, impacted what you're doing with this project? A lot of gaming metaphors and structures are now being applied to things lifestyle apps. Gaming is becoming a language and all of these structures are metrics within the way we live today. |
