揭秘《Clash of Clans》获得成功的5个关键因素

作者：Mike Rose

几个月以前，我参观了《Clash of Clans》的开发工作室Supercell，那时它靠仅仅两款游戏就迅速获利500万美元。

据Pando Daily报道，现在这个数字已经超过每天100万美元，而且谁知道这个数字还会不会再上涨。

之前，Supercell首席执行官Ilkka Paananen曾经在采访中谈论该公司的成功秘诀，但我真正感兴趣的是深入繁杂的开发过程，并直接与游戏设计师对话。

为此，我采访了《Clash of Clans》制作主管Lasse Louhento。他认为这款游戏的创意和开发过程在五个方面有所结合。

1、休闲硬核，双管齐下

与现在的外观相比，《Clash of Clans》一开始的风格更偏向卡通和休闲。事实上，这款游戏的视觉效果经过了无数次变更才最终确定下来。

Louhento解释道：“我们觉得，硬核玩家可能会不喜欢它，觉得太幼稚了。所以我们必须找一个平衡点，既吸引硬核玩家，又不疏远休闲玩家——不黑暗不邪恶不写实，但也不能吵吵闹闹。”

Louhento承认：“我们确实费了一些时间，那不是简单的任务呀！”

clash of clans 1(from gamasutra)

团队最终确定下来的是混合风格——写实和“变形的和风”。该项目的主管补充道：“我是Pixar动画的大粉丝，他们的角色很吸引年轻的观众，但同时，成年人也很喜欢人。我们也超级喜欢日本游戏公司Capcom的角色——强大的美术，精美突出。”

这支五六人组成的团队，提出了不下10个不同的角色概念，但确定想要的概念后其他的都被丢弃了。在视觉画面上，将休闲与写实风格完美融合是吸引更大范围玩家的关键。

当然，不止是游戏的外观。休闲和硬核玩家对玩法的要求也不同，而将这两种玩法融为一体并非易事。

对于硬核玩家，《Clash of Clans》提供在线战斗元素。“我认为这款游戏带有竞技性质。游戏中有排行榜，会让玩家产生‘我想上榜’的感觉。我认为这样会使进程表现得更生动。”

对于不太喜欢互相进攻的玩家，游戏的休闲方面也足够他们游戏了。

他解释道：“游戏的休闲方面就是社交元素。你可以与游戏中的同伴聊天，赞助军队——这种归属感是相当强大的。一旦人们进入游戏世界，他们就会投入地玩上很长一段时间。”

2、尽早确定清楚的目标

Louhento回忆道：“在前一两个月，我们做了一个内部样本，所有员工都在公司里玩。我们编写好所有基本功能和所有角色行为的代码——不过，我记得好像只有野蛮人没做好。”

他补充道：“是个多人游戏，在一台服务器上运行。我们觉得非常棒。”

这是开发团队的福音——从一开始就有一款好玩的游戏。但那是因为他们很明确他们的目标是什么。

他承认：“一定程度上，这是个容易的项目。我们虽然是花了很多时间，但目标从一开始就是明确的。片段可能有所缺失，但结构始终是完整的。”

Louhento将这一切归结为公司的“平板第一”策略。“我们是为平板做这款游戏的——我们可以看到游戏如何展开，帧速是多少，我们在手势控制功能上做了很多工作。”

Louhento认为，当手机游戏开发没有体现易用性时，你是可以看出来的——“以《The Simpsons: Tapped Out》为例，这是一款很棒的游戏，但开发团队没有费功夫思考‘这个按钮够不够大？易用性达到要求了吗？达到最佳效果了吗？’”

“我们花了成百上千小时玩《Clash of Clans》，只是为了尽可能解决易用性问题。如果我们觉得不够好，那我们就重做——我们下定决心要把滚动和轻拍的响应做到最好。”

Louhento解释道，易用性也不是一个新想法。多年以来，消费者已经习惯于选择易用性最佳的产品。

“Google和Alta Vista这两种搜索引擎出现时，他们基本是相同的东西，但其中一个更简约，更清楚、响应更快。”

clash of clans 2(from gamasutra)

他继续说道：“我认为易用性是游戏的重要方面之一。我记得当我们第一次看到iPad游戏时，我们觉得帧速率太糟了，‘谁做得出这种UI？谁会玩这种游戏？’”

一款精美的游戏，除了美术上乘，还需要在其他方面下功夫。“如果界面和控制不是专为平板设计的——你可以轻易地看出它是移植产品。开发者们的想法是‘啊，我们PC游戏移植到iPad吧。’这样玩家就会觉得这款游戏很糟糕，所以我们决定采用完全不同的方式。”

3、指南不要做过头

直到最后一分钟开发团队才把指南放进《Clash of Clans》中。的确，游戏在苹果应用商店发布的前几周，指南的部分还没开工。

Louhento表示，虽然教玩家怎么玩游戏很重要，但是，整个行业都太强调游戏的指南了。

“我们不喜欢冗长又啰嗦的指南。我知道Zynga游戏中有很多他们称之为‘适应阶段’的东西，他们在这东西上花了很多时间和精力——甚至有一支专门研究相关指标的团队，他们的工作就是‘我们要让玩家点击这个地方，那里要放一个更大的按钮，我们要把‘X’按钮移到这个窗口等等无聊的事。”

“我们真的不想做这种无聊事。不过如果其他人喜欢做，那也很好。”

当然，当需要解释的新元素添加到游戏中时，原来的指南也应该升级，以便介绍新元素。正如Louhento所说的，“如果我们看到第一阶段的留存率还可以更高一点，我们就会改进，比如更改按钮的位置等。”

但项目的主管仍然认为，现在的社交游戏把太多时间和资金浪费在太过精细的指南上。

4、公司内部的良性竞争

《Clash of Clans》和《Hay Day》是由Supercell内部的两支不同团队开发的。这两支团队时常友好地打探对方的开发进度，或者最近在制作什么功能。

“我们与《Hay Day》的团队保持健康的竞争状态。我们跟他们说，‘我们的控制功能比你们的好多了’。每周五，我们都会跟对方说‘我们在一周内就完成这个部分了’。然后过了一周，《Hay Day》的团队就会说，‘提醒你们，我们才一周就搞定这么一大块代码了。’良性竞争确实是件有趣的事！”

正是这种良性竞争，不仅使《Clash of Clans》的开发过程高效，而且充满乐趣。

Louhento感慨道：“我已经做了20年的游戏了，但我从来没经历过样的开发过程，从来没有觉得做游戏能这么快乐。”

5、不要打击你的玩家

无论是《Clash of Clans》还是《Hay Day》，都是几周更新一次内容——新道具、新商品和新角色等等。

但这种更新可能非常棘手。新玩家可能被这么庞大的内容弄得不知所措，而老玩家可能觉得新内容破坏了游戏的平衡性。

clash of clans 3(from gamasutra)

Supercell的应对措施是，只对老玩家开放新内容，而对于新玩家，只是让他们慢慢地熟悉游戏，之后才让他们尝试新内容。

Louhento解释道：“进入《Clash of Clans》才一两周的玩家不会看到某些功能。之后他们熟悉操作后，我们就开放一小部分功能，逐步提高游戏难度。”

“我们不会在游戏的最开头部分浪费时间，我们知道怎么做才管用。”

补充新内容必须兼顾休闲和硬核两方面的平衡。“我们意识到我们不可以把游戏搞得太复杂，但又必须有足够的深度。从外部看，它是相当简单的，但深度藏在内部。”

至于如何保持《Clash of Clans》的平衡性，Supercell有一套系统保证任何新内容都不会破坏游戏的内部运作。

我们的自动测试模拟会连续运行上千次战斗，每次都让不同的战士对付随机规模的军队。测试完后，我们会查看数据的相关性，看游戏是否向哪个数据区域发生倾斜。

Louhento表示：“当然，玩家可能想出一些骗术，但这种模似能够发现大多数可能毁坏游戏的不平衡因素。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

lash of Clans’ 5 keys to success

By Mike Rose

When I visited Clash of Clans studio Supercell a couple of months ago, the company was raking in $500,000 a day from just two titles.

Now that figure is more than $1 million a day, according to a report from Pando Daily — and who knows if it’ll stop there.

I previously talked to Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen about the company’s success, but what I was really interested in was delving into the nitty gritty, and questioning the game designers directly.

To this end, I discussed the development of Clash of Clans with its product lead Lasse Louhento. Here, he describes five ways in which Clash’s creation and ongoing development were brought together.

1. Bring in both the casual and the hardcore players

Clash of Clans originally had a much more cartoony and casual look than its current form — in fact, the game went through numerous visual alterations before the final look was settled on.

“We had this notion that maybe the hardcore players would actually dislike this, and think it was too childish,” explains Louhento. “So we had to find a sweet spot, such that it wouldn’t alienate the casual players – nothing dark and black and evil and realistic – but on the other hand, it couldn’t be too blubby.”

This wasn’t a quick chop and change, admits Louhento. “It took us a while – it wasn’t an easy task!” he says.

What the team eventually settled on was a mixture of realism, and a “super-deformed, Japanese style,” adds the project lead. “I’m a huge fan of Pixar, and their characters are appealing to a younger audience, but at the same time, they’re cool for adults too. We’re also big fans of Capcom characters – strong character art that’s really polished.”

Within the team of 5-6 people, more than 10 different character concepts were brought forward and abandoned before they found exactly what they were looking for. Discovering that perfect mixture of both casual and realism in the visuals was key to pulling in a wide range of players.

It’s not just the visuals, of course. Casual and hardcore players want different types of gameplay, and attempting to mix these together can be tricky.

For the hardcore, Clash of Clans offers online battling elements. “I think there’s something about the competitive nature of the game,” says Louhento. “We have leaderboards, we have that kind of edge where people think ‘Oh I want to be there, so I’ll need to upgrade this.’ The progression, I think, is more visual.”

And for those players who aren’t so into attacking each other, there’s enough to keep them entertained on the side.

“It’s the social elements too,” he reasons. “You can chat to clan mates, and donate troops – that feeling of belonging together is really powerful. Once people get into a clan, they are really invested and willing to play for a long time.”

2. Have a clear goal from early on

“For the first two months, we did a company-wide demo, and everybody played inside Supercell,” says Louhento. “We coded all the basic functionality, all the character behavior – I think we only had the Barbarian character back then though.”

He adds, “It was multiplayer, running on a server. And it felt really good.”

This was a bit of a blessing for the team — to have a game that felt good to play from the get-go — but it really all came down to knowing exactly what their goal was from the very beginning.

“It was an easy project in a way,” he admits. “Obviously we put hours and hours into it, but the goal was pretty clear from early on. There were pieces missing, but the structure was there.”

And Louhento puts a lot of this down to the company’s tablet-first strategy. “We make these games for tablets – we can see how things are scrolling, we think about the framerate, and we’ve done a lot of work on the gesture controls.”

Louhento believes that you can tell when a mobile game hasn’t really been developed with usability in mind. “Take The Simpsons: Tapped Out, for example,” he says. “It’s a great game, but they didn’t really put in the effort to think ‘Is this button big enough? Is the usability good? Is this really optimal?’”

“We all played hundreds and thousands of hours of Clash of Clans, just to try to iron out everything. If it didn’t feel right, let’s do it again – let’s really make the scrolling and tapping work best,” he adds.

And this isn’t an new idea either. The public has been choosing the products with the best usability options for many years now, reasons Louhento.

“When Google and Alta Vista came out, they were basically the same thing, but one was a bit more minimalistic, a bit more clear, it performed quicker,” he notes.

He continues, “I think that’s a big part of it – usability. I remember when we were first looking at iPad games, and there were horrible framerates. We said, ‘How can anyone create this UI? Has anyone actually played this game?’

There was plenty of gorgeous artwork and clearly huge amounts of effort put in to make games look great, he says, “but the interfaces and controls weren’t done for tablets – you could easily see that it was a port. You could see the developers who had said ‘Oh, let’s port our PC game for iPad’. And it just felt sucky, so we wanted to make a completely different approach.”

3) Don’t overdo the tutorial

You may or may not be able to tell, but the tutorial for Clash of Clans was added at the very last minute. Indeed, just weeks before the game was launched onto the App Store, no work had been started on the tutorial at all.

Says Louhento, while it is of course important to teach your players had to handle the game properly, there’s far too much emphasis put on tutorials elsewhere in the industry.

“We’re not big fans of long, overdone tutorials,” he says. “I know Zynga has a lot of what they called the ‘Onboarding Stage’, and they spend a lot of time and effort with it – there’s a whole Onboarding team, and they specialize in looking at the metrics, and deciding things like, ‘Let’s make them click here, let’s have a bigger button here, let’s remove the ‘x’ button in this window’ and all that sort of nasty stuff.”

“We really don’t want to do this nasty stuff,” he continues. “If people like what they see and feel comfortable with the environment, then great.”

Of course, as new elements are added to the game that need explaining, then the original tutorial will be updated to incorporate this. And, as Louhento adds, “If we see that the retention in the first phase could be a bit better, we play with it a bit – maybe that button is in a weird place, tweaks like that.”

But in general, the project lead believes that there’s way too much time and money splashed on teaching players every nook and cranny of social games.

4) Healthy competition is great for your company

Clash of Clans and Hay Day were developed by two different teams within Supercell, and the two groups would constantly have friendly digs at each other about how far they were through development, or the features they’d managed to implment most recently.

“We had this healthy competition with the Hay Day team,” Louhento explains. “We’d say ‘our controls feel better than yours’, and every Friday we’d say things to the other team like ‘we managed to build this in a week’.”

“Then next week the Hay Day team would say ‘by the way, we just did this big chunk of code in a week.’ So there was some great, healthy competition. Funny competition!” he adds.

This was a huge part of what made development on Clash of Clans not only of a high standard, but also enjoyable.

“I’ve been making games for 20 years,” Louhento says, “and I’ve never seen this kind of progress – and also joy from making games.”

5) Don’t overwhelm your players

Both Clash of Clans and Hay Day are updated every few weeks with new content — new items, new in-app purchases, new characters and the like.

But updates such as these can be tricky. New players can potentially become overwhelmed by hordes of content, while veteran players may feel like new content messes with the equilibrium of the game.

Supercell’s solution is to only make new content available to loyal players, and bring new players in more gradually before throwing everything into their boat.

“A player coming into Clash of Clans won’t see certain functionality for the first two weeks,” explains Louhento, “and then once they are familiar with the controls, then you can complicate the game a bit, by adding pieces to it.”

“We try not to mess around with the very beginning of the game, because we know it works,” he adds.

Adding new content must conform with the game’s balance between casual and hardcore too. “We’re aware of the fact that we can’t make it too complex, yet it has to have that hidden depth,” Louhento notes. “From the outside it looks relatively simple, but it has that hidden depth.”

And when it comes to keeping a complex game like Clash of Clans balanced, Supercell has a system in place that makes sure any new content doesn’t screw around with the inner workings.

An automated testing simulation runs thousands of battles one after the other, throwing in randomly sized armies with different soldier types each time, and then correlates the data to see whether they’re an obvious area in which the game can become skewed.

“There might be tricks that players figure out of course,” admits Louhento, but for the most part he says that this simulation stage catches all of the bad balancing that could potentially ruin the game.