As a veteran of online, mobile and console games services I’ve become used to the idea of change; mostly from sitting on the sometimes uncomfortable bleeding edge. My latest experience of change was when Applifier was acquired by Unity Technologies in March this year. It may sound like a simple acquisition but for me it heralds a profound change to the business of making games; and I’m genuinely excited about it!
作为在线,移动和主机游戏服务的资深人士,我已经习惯了改变的观念。 主要来自坐在有时不舒服的出血边缘上。 我最新的变更经历是当Applifier在今年3月被Unity Technologies收购时。 这听起来像是简单的收购,但对我而言,它预示着制作游戏业务的深刻变革。 我为此感到非常兴奋!
Why so excited? Well, we all know about the revolution which has already arisen since the arrival of the AppStore and in particular the concept of FreeToPlay. There has been an explosion of games and different approaches to generating revenue. This wasn’t just about the changing market but the combination of that plus the availability of tools like Unity; and the idea of democratizing game development.
为什么这么兴奋? 好吧,我们都知道自AppStore到来以来已经发生的革命,尤其是FreeToPlay的概念。 游戏和产生收益的不同方法激增。 这不仅涉及不断变化的市场,还包括市场的结合以及Unity等工具的可用性。 以及使游戏开发民主化的想法。
Of course this opened the creative gates for a new breed of indie developers to bring to market their own vision of what games could be. Games which could create magical moments for the player. If you love games then you know the moments I mean and they are not always planned. I remember the joy when I managed to get more than 7 of those creatures through one of the levels of the beautiful Badland. I remember how it felt to pick-up all the letters for the first time in Skyline Skaters and the rush that followed. I remember when I fell through the ‘world’ in Fat Cat Rush (it was a glitch but I found it funny).
当然,这为新型独立开发商打开了创意之门,以将他们自己对游戏的愿景推向市场。 可以为玩家创造神奇时刻的游戏。 如果您喜欢游戏,那么您就会知道我的意思,而这些时光并不会总是有计划的。 我记得当我设法通过美丽的荒地之一获得超过7种生物时的喜悦。 我记得第一次在Skyline Skateers中捡起所有信件的感觉以及随后的匆忙。 我记得当我在Fat Cat Rush中跌入“世界”时(这是一个小故障,但我发现它很有趣)。
![Everyplay Image1](https://i-blog.csdnimg.cn/blog_migrate/82f7029203d73df7db622e7459c134b7.png)
These are the moment we crave and knowing they are possible keeps our attention. But there is latent power in those experiences; a power which can only be truly released by sharing them. Sharing is part of the very fabric of what it means to be playful. Having some rules or experience which we share with people who understand; who share our interests. It’s part of how we define ourselves as human and even how we separate ourselves from others – who don’t play the games we do.
这些是我们渴望的时刻,知道它们是可能的,这会引起我们的关注。 但是这些经验中有潜在的力量。 只能通过共享才能真正释放的力量。 分享是玩耍的本质。 有一些规则或经验,我们可以与了解的人分享; 谁拥有我们的利益。 这是我们如何将自己定义为人,甚至将自己与其他人(不玩游戏的人)区分开来的一部分。
Everyplay came out of the idea that when a friend shows us a game they love, we are much more likely to want to play it ourselves. Gameplay recording lets us unlock the power of the Internet to allow players to share their magical moments with the widest audience. It becomes a kind of user generated content experience for any game. Look what I did! Watch me play. Players get to show off their associations with the games they love. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t have to be profound or even particularly spectacular; indeed they are often the opposite. The important thing is that they are our personal moments.
Everyplay的想法是,当朋友向我们展示他们喜欢的游戏时,我们更有可能自己玩游戏。 游戏录制功能使我们能够释放互联网的力量,使玩家可以与最广泛的观众分享他们的神奇时刻。 它成为任何游戏的一种用户生成的内容体验。 看看我做了什么! 看着我玩。 玩家可以炫耀自己喜欢的游戏的联想。 不要误会我的意思,这不一定是深刻的,甚至不是特别壮观。 确实,它们经常是相反的。 重要的是,它们是我们的个人时刻。
Of course the last thing most developers want is to put in another SDK, we have tried to make this as easy as possible. All it takes is to get the plugin from the Asset Store and decide where to start and stop recording. We have focused hard to make sure that there is virtually no performance loss: no impact on GPU and nearly zero impact on CPU. To do this the video is streamed directly to the file storage to avoid memory issues. In addition, we are using the H.264 codec which means that videos only take around 4mb per minute; we even have a continuous recording system allowing you to keep just the last few minutes of play if you prefer to keep the videos short.
当然,大多数开发人员想要做的最后一件事就是放入另一个SDK,我们已尝试使其尽可能简单。 要做的就是从Asset Store中获取插件,并确定从何处开始和停止记录。 我们一直在努力确保几乎没有性能损失:对GPU的影响和对CPU的影响几乎为零。 为此,将视频直接流式传输到文件存储,以避免内存问题。 此外,我们使用的是H.264编解码器,这意味着视频每分钟仅占用4mb左右; 我们甚至有一个连续的录音系统,如果您想使视频简短,可以让您仅保留最后几分钟的播放。
However, the point of this blog post isn’t just to tell you about the SDK. I want to share some of the things we have learnt that mean that developers can make the most of the experience.
但是,这篇博客文章的目的不仅仅是告诉您有关SDK的信息。 我想分享一些我们学到的东西,这意味着开发人员可以充分利用这些经验。
1. Always Record: Whilst we don’t mandate this, we strongly recommend you always record play. Otherwise players will miss those crazy times which just ‘happen’.
1. 始终记录 :虽然我们没有强制要求这样做,但我们强烈建议您始终记录播放。 否则,玩家将错过那些只是“偶然”的疯狂时刻。
2. Use a Thumbnail: We capture a screengrab as part of the video recording and have found a big increase in use (and hence effectiveness) when this is used to create a personal thumbnail of what you just did.
2. 使用缩略图 :我们将屏幕抓取作为视频录制的一部分,当将其用于创建您所做的个人缩略图时,发现使用(以及效果)有了很大的提高。
3. Metadata: Everyplay has the ability to embed metadata into the video file to reflect both Private and Public data. This information can be used in all kinds of ways to pull the most relevant videos back into your game. Why not use it to add videos to your high-score table. That way players can prove how they beat their friends. Alternatively, why not add a ‘Fame score’ showing a player how popular they are based on Everyplay shares and Likes for their videos.
3. 元数据: Everyplay可以将元数据嵌入视频文件中,以反映私有数据和公共数据。 该信息可以通过各种方式用于将最相关的视频拉回到您的游戏中。 为什么不使用它将视频添加到高分表中呢? 这样,玩家就可以证明自己是如何击败朋友的。 另外,为什么不添加“成名评分”,根据玩家的视频“ Everyplay分享”和“喜欢”显示玩家的受欢迎程度。
4. Community: Its worth taking the time out to create an identity for your game on the Everyplay platform and use that to create a conversation with your audience. We have a rich a diverse community of games players who explore new games as well as share their moments together. Join in with the experience and see how you can share, like and comment on posted videos as well as follow other players or games.
4. 社区 :值得花时间在Everyplay平台上为您的游戏创建一个标识,并使用它与您的观众进行对话。 我们拥有一个多元化的游戏玩家社区,他们探索新游戏并一起分享自己的时刻。 加入体验,了解您如何分享,喜欢和评论发布的视频以及关注其他玩家或游戏。
5. Incentives: It can be useful to offer incentives to players for sharing however, you need to be careful about how you do it. Its sometimes better to make more of the intrinsic social benefits rather than to use extrinsic game levers, for example if you trigger the sharing process when meaningful gameplay moments happen like gaining achievements or defeating boss levels. However, some games have seen value from using ‘Opt-in’ incentives to upload videos.
5. 激励 :为玩家提供分享激励可能会很有用,但是,您需要注意如何做。 有时候,更多地利用固有的社会利益,而不是使用外部的游戏杠杆,例如,如果您在有意义的游戏时刻(例如获得成就或击败老板的等级)发生时触发了共享过程,那就更好了。 但是,某些游戏已经从使用“选择加入”激励机制上传视频中获得了价值。
6. Capture Players Faces: It can be powerful to record the faces of your players using the front facing camera (currently only on iOS devices); especially where your games trigger real emotions such as fear or frustration. However, of course it’s very important to be careful (especially if your game is targeted to young children) so you will want to clearly communicate that this is happening. We show the live-feed from the camera input in a box on the screen – which can be turned off by the player both during and post recording. We must of course remember that the video is only uploaded by the player’s choice (and they can remove it off before uploading). We also moderate these videos at Everyplay to avoid the most problematic risks such as profanity or abusive imagery, but this can mean some delays to when those videos will be available.
6. 捕获玩家的面部:使用前置摄像头(当前仅在iOS设备上)记录玩家的面部可能很强大; 尤其是在您的游戏引发真正的情绪(例如恐惧或沮丧)的地方。 但是,当然要非常小心(特别是如果您的游戏针对的是幼儿),因此非常重要,因此您将需要清楚地说明这种情况正在发生。 我们在屏幕上的框中显示来自摄像机输入的实时供稿-播放器在录制过程中和录制后都可以关闭它。 当然,我们必须记住,视频仅是由播放器选择上传的(他们可以在上传之前将其删除)。 我们还会在Everyplay上对这些视频进行审核,以避免出现最有问题的风险,例如亵渎或滥用图像,但这可能意味着这些视频的发布时间有所延迟。
There are around 600 games at the time of writing, but that number keeps rising so fast that it’s nearly impossible to keep track. As we learn more about the best practice we will bring that to the blog and please feel free to ask us any questions.
在撰写本文时,大约有600款游戏,但是这个数字一直在快速增长,以至于几乎无法追踪。 随着我们对最佳做法的更多了解,我们会将其带入博客,请随时向我们提出任何问题。
Oscar
奥斯卡奖