????你后來怎么會和好萊塢合作開發游戲？

????游戲行業過去一直與好萊塢有很多合作，不過最近很多游戲公司都把重點放在了自己的游戲上，所以很多好萊塢大公司也在尋找新的游戲公司來合作。當他們推出一部電影時，基本上都希望有一款游戲和它搭配。所以他們找到我們，說我們在Facebook上做的游戲很不錯。接了幾個這樣的電話之后，我們才說：“讓我們嘗試一下，看看會怎么樣吧。”我們首先嘗試的是《教父》(The Godfather)，一開始我們很擔心，因為如果我們自己開發一款游戲的話，我們完全可以自己賺錢，不必跟任何人分賬。第一次做電影游戲時，我們真的有如履薄冰的感覺。但是《教父》對各方來說都很成功，因為它不是那種律師團隊想榨干你最后一滴血來簽協議的高端游戲。我們喜歡犯罪和家族恩仇的游戲。所以我們那次與派拉蒙影業（Paramount）的合作獲得了巨大成功。后來華納兄弟（Warner Brothers）也給我們打來電話，然后是美高梅影業（MGM）。那時我們開始做《霍比特人》(Hobbit)游戲。環球電影公司（Universal）也給我們打了電話，然后我們開始做《速度與激情6》(Fast and Furious 6)。最近我們剛剛宣布，我們將與漫威影業（Marvel）合作一個大項目。我們現在已經理解了這個模式，也知道我們可以給玩家帶來什么。

????這些游戲的目標是模擬電影情節，還是讓故事進一步發展？

????有些公司的游戲試著模擬電影情節，它們的吸引力在于把電影重演一遍，讓你產生沉浸于情節之中的感覺。有些游戲在這方面做得很不錯，但那并不是我們的戰略。我們的戰略是開發電影的其它元素，這些元素可能只在電影或原著中體現了一部分。我們基本上可以圍繞這一點創造出一個全新的故事線索。顯然我們仍然希望采用這部電影的精華，比如一些讓它非常成功的角色、故事和環境，但是我們不想被限制在電影的內容里。對于我們來說，最理想的情況是，一部游戲可以風行5到10年。我們的第一部游戲《亞瑟王國》差不多是5年前推出的，現在它的表現依然非常搶眼，每個月都有幾十萬玩家在玩。如果你僅僅按照電影的腳本走，你可以把一部兩小時的電影延伸到100個小時，但它的吸引力維持不了幾年。

????有沒有哪些電影是你不想改編成游戲的？

????當然，我們會考慮一部電影的受眾群體。首先我們不會把紀錄片改編成游戲——原因是顯而易見的。相對來說，像喜劇之類的也難以改編成游戲。《權力的游戲》(Game of Thrones)則是一個很好的例子：該劇有很多性和暴力的場面。如果我們把它改編成游戲，這些東西可能不會出現在游戲里。《教父》是另一個很好的例子。我們會展現一張床上放著一個馬頭，但我們不會展現更真實、更生動的畫面。

????有沒有哪個角色或故事讓你陷入麻煩？

????當你試圖在百思買（Best Buy）里以60美元的價格賣一張游戲光盤時，你可能會聽到諸如“哇，你聽說了嗎，這個游戲可以讓你闖進機場，用電鋸掃倒一片人”之類的話。人人都反對這種暴力，但你猜怎么著？它真能吸引人們到百思買花60美元買張光盤一探究竟。但我們的游戲不一樣，我們的模式是相反的，你可以免費下載游戲，安裝和上手都很簡單，然后再看你是否喜歡玩。我們的職責就是做出非常好的東西，確保你今天玩了明天還會回來。在游戲里做那種噱頭對我們來說用處不大。我們必須計算的是，它是否會讓我們現有的玩家群體流失。

????How did you end up working with Hollywood on some of your games?

????The gaming business used to work a lot with Hollywood, but more recently the companies are more focused on their own games. So a lot of the big Hollywood companies were looking for new types of gaming companies to do deals with. When they launch a movie, they generally want a game to go with it. So they started coming to us, noticing we were making good Facebook games. After a couple of those kinds of calls, we actually said, “let’s explore what this looks like.” We started with The Godfather. In the beginning, we were really concerned because, if we made a game ourselves, we could make money and not have to share it with anybody. We were tiptoeing our way into it. But The Godfather was a great deal for everyone because it wasn’t that premium sort of title where the legal team felt like they needed to extract every last pound of flesh to do a deal. We loved the I.P. involved. We love games about crime and houses fighting with each other. So we made that game a huge success with Paramount. Warner Brothers started calling us, and then MGM. That is when we did a Hobbit game. Universal gave us a call, and we did Fast and Furious 6. We just announced we are doing a big Marvel project. We understand the model now, we understand what we can bring to the table.

????Is the goal of these games to mimic the movie, or go further?

????There are other game companies that have tried to mimic the movie, where the appeal is to relive the movie and immerse yourself in it. There are certain types of games that do well with that. That is not our strategy. Our strategy is always to explore another element of the movie that you may see touched on a little bit in the movie or the book. We basically take that and create a whole new storyline around it. We still obviously want to use the characters and story and environment that made the movie so great. But we don’t want to be limited to the content that is in the movie. Ideally, a big success for us is to have a game that is still running for five to 10 years. Our very first game that we released almost five years ago, Kingdoms of Camelot is still going very strong today with hundreds of thousands of people playing it every month. If you just follow the script of a movie, you can stretch a two-hour movie into a hundred hours. But you can’t make a game that lasts for years.

????Are there any types of movies that you wouldn’t turn into a game?

????Certainly, we think about the demographics of a movie. Documentaries are not something that we would create a game around—that’s probably super obvious. Something like a comedy would be harder to create a game play around. Game of Thrones is good example: there’s a lot of sexual content and extreme violence in that show. If we made a game about it, those things probably wouldn’t appear in our games. Or The Godfather is a good example. We will show a horse’s head in a bed, but we won’t go through the actual, more graphical parts.

????Has there been any character or storyline that got you into trouble?

????When you are trying to sell a video game for $60 dollars at Best Buy, you see more of that. “Wow, did you hear you can go into an airport and mow down a bunch of civilians in this game,” or something. Everyone gets up in arms about that, but guess what? It makes people go to Best Buy and pay $60 to see what it’s all about. With our games, it’s very different. We turn the model around. You can download the game for free, so it’s easy to check out the game and start playing it, see if you like it or not. But it’s our job to kind of make sure we are doing really cool stuff within the game to keep you coming back tomorrow and the day after that. It doesn’t really serve us that well to create this crazy thing in the game that causes an uproar. We have to do the math in terms of whether it might turn off our current player basis or not.