游戏社区管理经验科技百科

来源：好游戏攻略时间：2024-11-27 07:33

作者：Mike Rose

团队射击游戏《Ace of Spades》仍难以逃脱“带着枪支的《Minecraft》”这种标签，从其方块风格的场景中我们不难看出原因

但对该作的玩家而言，其中涵盖的挑战模式比娱乐成分更多。Ben Aksoy开发的《Ace of Spades》于2011年首次推出alpha版本，之后Jagex购买了该作的版权，并于上个月推出付费模式，但相关资深玩家并不喜爱这种转变。

Ace of Spades(from gamasutra)

其一，之前基于第一次世界大战题材的《Ace of Spades》可以免费下载，但Jagex加入后，该作开始呈现流畅画面，并删除程序生成地图与多种元素（包括修改游戏模型的功能）。

Jagex的《Ace of Spades》品牌总监Rob Kinder解释道，这是个棘手处境，他们尚未合理解决。如你所见，Jagex其实已在该作投入约18个月时间，但最近才正式公布加入消息。

Kinder表示：“其中一个问题是，在早期接手项目时，一开始你未必准备好宣布自己加入。”

他继续指出：“另外的问题是，如今由于对外公开商标与URL所有权等信息，我们难以以隐瞒自己加入的事实。因此需采取平衡措施。一方面，我们应等待最佳时机，在完全准备好资源、视频与锁定功能后宣布Jagex的加入，借此激发社区活动，而另一方面，我希望及早告知社区相关事件，而不是通过官方消息扩散知晓。”

结果，在隐秘多年后，Jagex无意间分离《Ace of Spades》社区的做法公开了这个事实。

Kinder解释道：“回想起来，当初我们在这两种方法中处于尴尬境地。我们内部拥有关键开发者，也对外招聘各国人员，而他们的加入是众所周知的。我们中的某些作品、图像与UI主要通过社区渠道展出，我们甚至会电话联系几个关键社区成员，邀请他们体验游戏。”

他坦承：“虽然比起关键代表，该社区规模更加庞大，我仍得为未与大部分玩家基础进行有效沟通负责。”

他诉说道：“现在我们的目标是尽自己所能做好社区所有事项。我们为新手创建了一个社区，他们可以在此自由选择游戏地图；我们也基于社区平衡与玩法建议推出更大型的更新版本，希望他们仍能投入其中，并决定在1月启动世界大战的更新版，其中恢复了原型创建中颇为盛行的某些慢速策略性玩法，但完整版中却忽略了某些已确定内容。”

ace of spades(from gamasutra)

不断调整

原始核心理念发生了哪些变化？骨灰级玩家有权对Jagex改造的游戏模型发怒吗？

Kinder答道：“目前，Jagex已从事该项目18个月左右的时间，但我认为该作核心理念在最后成品中完好无损。其基本体验模式仍旧是玩家能自由创建或破坏建筑，但我们认为，在此添加新层次可以提高广大玩家的体验。”

除了增加新职业与武器装备，Jagex还引进一系列新游戏类型，包括僵尸与钻石矿工（游戏邦注：这两种类型在玩家中最受欢迎）。

Kinder指出：“其中的最大改变是缺少评分模式与玩家创建的关卡。”

“起先，我们致力于在《Ace of Spades》中引入用户生成内容。我们已表明这个用意，玩家可以在Steam Workshop上创建并分享内容。然而由于我们并未构造方便新用户创建出色内容的专门游戏编辑器，因此不得不推迟这项举措，此外骨灰级玩家可以创建更详细更复杂的内容。”

“这是初始原型碰到的准入门槛——即并未拥有专门编辑工具，也就是说，玩家不得不借用第三方工具，但却无法在当前游戏上发挥作用。”

Kinder保证：“我们会针对友好用户专门定制引擎，一旦完成，我们便会将它推广到更多社区领域。”

现存粉丝基础优劣并存

你可能会发现，目前Jagex正试图理解导致《Ace of Spades》发行方式不同的原因。在此之前，从未有哪家公司有机会在拥有大批忠实粉丝的情况下发行作品。

ace of spades(from gamasutra)

Kinder解释道：“拥有大批粉丝具有一定优势，他们已经了解作品，也喜爱它，并且渴求更多内容。对此我们还有什么好抱怨的呢？”

“另外，我们尚不清楚用户能够接受哪些变化。发行续作也会碰到同样问题。当然，我们希望该作能吸引更多用户，与此同时，我们也需对现存社区负责；首先应确保没有忽略该游戏受到欢迎的原因。”

“为此，我们应与玩家（游戏邦注：即热爱并体验该作的玩家）合作，并接受各社区的反馈。”

Kinder着重强调Jagex为此制定了长远计划，而满足现存粉丝是其中的一大部分。

他指出：“我们尤其喜爱《Ace of Spades》。作为首款独立开发的作品，我们从中收获颇丰。”

作为类似《Minecraft》的游戏，Jagex对这种不断比较有何感受？

这名Jagex高管表示：“对此我毫不在意，当然，这种比较势必会给自身造成麻烦。比如，虽然《Ace of Spades》设置在方块沙盒背景中，其目标与核心玩法机制却与《Minecraft》完全不同。我认为，最终这款游戏不必证明自己与其它作品的相似成分，便能突显自身价值。”

Kinder希望《Ace of Spades》的开放性——其建设性操作方式以及玩家的巨大自由感，能让它从一系列其他第一人称射击游戏中脱颖而出。

他补充道：“同时，我们希望通过赋予其独特外观，令其自成一种风格。我们已试图发挥引擎优势，坚持低保真度传统，采用更现代画面技能让整个游戏在高端设备上呈现出色画面，同时在问世5年之外的老设备上仍然具有趣味，并呈现出独特视觉效果。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）

How Ace of Spades gave Jagex a lesson in community management Exclusive

by Mike Rose

“Minecraft with guns.” This is the description that team-based shooter Ace of Spades is still unable to escape from, although it’s not difficult to see why thanks to its blocky environments.

But for Ace of Spades players, there’s far more at stake than simply defending the origins of their pastime. The Ben Aksoy-developed game, first released as an alpha build in 2011, was bought out by Jagex (seemingly in 2012, when Jagex announced its involvement), and released as a paid game last month — and veteran AoSers aren’t exactly happy about the switch.

For one, the World War I-based title was free to download until Jagex came along. Then there’s the smoothing of the visuals, the (current) removal of procedurally generated maps, and various elements that have been disabled including the ability to modify the models in the game.

Rob Kinder, Jagex’s brand director for Ace of Spades, explains to Gamasutra that it’s a rather sticky situation that hasn’t been handled all that well. You see, Jagex has actually been working on Ace of Spades for around 18 months now — however, it was not ready to publicly announce this until recently.

“One of the problems of taking on a project at such an early stage is that you aren’t necessarily ready to announce your involvement the minute you start work on it,” he says.

“The other problem with this is that, nowadays, it’s almost impossible to hide your involvement in something because of publicly listed trademarks, URL ownership etc.” he continues. “So it’s a balancing act. On the one hand we wanted to wait until we were absolutely ready to announce Jagex’s involvement, with assets, video and locked features; something we could excite the community with, but on the other hand we wanted to let the community know what was going on early without going wide with an official announcement.”

As a result of keeping its involvement a secret for so long, Jagex has accidentally managed to split the Ace of Spades community somewhat.

“In hindsight I think we straddled an awkward line somewhere in-between these two approaches,” notes Kinder. “We had some of the key contributors working in-house, or contracted from other parts of the world and their involvement was known. Some of our artwork, graphics and UI were shown exclusively through community channels and we even spoke to a couple of key community members on the phone to get their input.”

He admits, “The community is much bigger than its key representatives though, and I have to take responsibility for not communicating effectively with that wider player base.

Jagex is now looking to right this wrong, and make sure the Ace of Spades community is always kept in the loop.

“Our goal now is to make sure we involve the community as much as possible in everything we do,” he tells us. “For starters, we’re launching a community built, community voted map to the game, for free; we’ve launched an extensive update based on balancing and gameplay suggestions made by the community, and we’re looking to involve them heavily in future content updates, starting with our World War update in January, which will bring back some of the more slow-paced, tactical gameplay that was so prevalent in the prototype build, but something we acknowledge has been underrepresented in the full release.”

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

And what of all the changes to the original core concept? Do veteran players have the right to be angry at how much Jagex has molded the game to its whim?

“Jagex has been working on Ace of Spades for aro