George Fan is the mastermind behind PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies, a game that's often been described as "crazy." (Crazy good, crazy addictive... or just plain crazy. It's all accurate.) We spoke to George about Plants vs. Zombies, his previous PopCap project Insaniquarium, and what kind of hidden object game he would make if he could.

George Fan是PopCap旗下熱門游戲《植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸》的主策劃, 這款游戲經(jīng)常被人評(píng)價(jià)為“瘋狂” (瘋狂的好玩, 瘋狂的上癮，或者就是簡(jiǎn)單的瘋狂。) 今天我們一起和 George 來(lái)聊一聊《植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸》、他之前為 PopCap 策劃的作品《瘋狂水族館》以及如果他能做隱藏對(duì)象的游戲他會(huì)做什么。

George Fan和僵尸，左邊的是George （眾：看得出來(lái)?。?/p>

Zombies are unofficially considered “taboo” in casual games (along with ninjas and robots!), but Plants vs. Zombies has gotten a great response from both the hardcore and the casual crowd. What’s your secret?
提問：一般都認(rèn)為僵尸是休閑類游戲的禁忌（與此相同的還有忍著和機(jī)器人），但是植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸卻在高級(jí)玩家和休閑玩家那里都得到了非常好的反響，你有什么秘訣嗎？

Hmm... I don't really have a secret... I think it's a just result of personal taste. I'm not into games that are too gritty or take themselves too seriously, nor am I into themes that are too pandering or sickeningly sweet. So when I set out to create Plants vs. Zombies, I made sure it struck the right balance for me thematically. Yes, you have these cutesy plants, but the existence of zombies prevents it from being to sugary. Yes, it's a PopCap game with zombies, but they're goofy, cartoony zombies so it's all good.

嗯…… 其實(shí)真沒啥秘訣……我覺得就是個(gè)人品味的體現(xiàn)吧。我不喜歡太難玩太把自己當(dāng)回事兒的游戲，也不喜歡太迎合太腦殘的主題。所以我設(shè)計(jì)植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸的時(shí)候就確保主題方面對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)比較平衡。你是有超可愛的植物，不過僵尸的存在就讓游戲的“含糖量”不會(huì)太高；它也的確是有僵尸的 PopCap 游戲，不過它們是呆呆傻傻又卡通的僵尸，所以整體來(lái)說(shuō)還不錯(cuò)。

More than that, however, I think it's the gameplay that really strikes a balance between the casual and the hardcore. I'm big on strategy in games, so I made sure to include a heaping spoonful of it in this one. So there you have the hardcore side of the game. On the other hand, I despise games that make you go through walls of tutorial text to teach complex game mechanics, so I tried to keep it extra simple in the beginning of the game. And that's the casual side for ya.

另外，我覺得真正能在高級(jí)玩家和休閑玩家之間找到平衡的還是游戲方式了。我超喜歡策略游戲，所以我在這款游戲里放了大量的策略因素，這樣你可以在游戲里找到高級(jí)玩家熱衷的因素。另一方面，我不喜歡游戲的說(shuō)明太復(fù)雜，所以我盡力讓游戲入門變得極其簡(jiǎn)單，這樣對(duì)于休閑玩家來(lái)說(shuō)就也能接受了。

After designing Insaniquarium and working on Diablo 3 with Blizzard, what made you decide that your next project would be a tower defense game?
你設(shè)計(jì)完《瘋狂水族館》，又幫暴雪做了《暗黑破壞神3》之后，是什么讓你下定決心要做這樣一種塔防游戲呢？

I was messing around with some new game ideas after completing Insaniquarium, one of which was to make a more defense oriented version of Insaniquarium. I was also playing Tower Defense mods in Warcraft III at the time. I looked at the towers in Warcraft III and thought that plants would make some pretty good towers, being stationary and something I could inject a lot of personality into.

我在做完瘋狂水族館之后腦子里裝滿了各種新游戲的想法，其中一種就是做一款防御更多的水族館游戲。我當(dāng)時(shí)還在玩魔獸3的塔防地圖。我看著魔獸3里面的塔，就在想，用植物來(lái)代替固定在一個(gè)地方的塔應(yīng)該更好看一點(diǎn)，我還在里面加了一些個(gè)人的想法。

And that's how Plants vs. Zombies became a tower defense game. I wanted to make sure to bring something new to the genre, and that was the impetus for re-envisioning how tower defense games could play. Traditional tower defense concepts like 'mazing' and 'juggling' always felt awkward to me because it would force you to play against the 'pathing algorithm' of the enemies. It was a little too esoteric for my tastes, so I worked to pare the gameplay down to the 5 lane configuration you see today.

這樣，植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸就變成了一款塔防游戲。我想給這種類型的游戲加點(diǎn)新東西，這也能推動(dòng)塔防游戲玩法的發(fā)展。老式的塔防有一些概念，像“迷惑”和“欺騙”總會(huì)讓我感覺很怪，你總要應(yīng)對(duì)敵人的路線法則。對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，這個(gè)東東有點(diǎn)過于神秘了，所以我直接就把僵尸設(shè)定成了你今天看到的五條通道的樣子。

Plants vs. Zombies is your second project with PopCap Games; prior to that you also worked with them on Insaniquarium. Was the process significantly different the second time around? If so, how?
植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸是你在 PopCap 做的第二款游戲，你之前還跟他們合作做過瘋狂水族館，在設(shè)計(jì)過程中有什么不同嗎？如果有，是怎么樣的不同呢？

I was freelance when working on Insaniquarium and didn't have the resources to hire a full-time team. As a result I had to wear many hats, as I did a majority of the programming and game design while writing some of the music as well as doing the concept art. During Plants vs. Zombies, I was a full-time employee of PopCap, so they helped me put a team together for the game, which really let me focus a lot more on just the game design due to having a team of programmer (Tod Semple), artist (Rich Werner), and musician (Laura Shigihara) working with me from pretty much the get go.

做水族館的時(shí)候我還是個(gè)自由職業(yè)者，也沒啥資源組建全職工作的團(tuán)隊(duì)。結(jié)果就我一手包辦了。我寫了大部分的程序、做了游戲的設(shè)計(jì)，給游戲配設(shè)計(jì)圖的時(shí)候還得找背景音樂。等到做植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸的時(shí)候我就是 PopCap 的全職雇員了，他們幫我組建了一個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)，因?yàn)橛辛藢ｉT的程序員、美工和音樂人，我就可以更專注做游戲策劃了。

瘋狂水族館

How much input did PopCap have on the game design process? Were there any game design choices that came as a direct result of PopCap’s suggestions?
PopCap 在游戲設(shè)計(jì)的投入有多少呢？ 有沒有什么設(shè)計(jì)創(chuàng)意是直接來(lái)自 PopCap 的建議的呢？

PopCap has this great internal forum where one can post in-progress versions of games and get a ton of good feedback from the rest of the company. This was of immeasurable help since there are a lot of smart people within PopCap.

PopCap 有一個(gè)內(nèi)部論壇，你可以在上面發(fā)布一款游戲正在開發(fā)中的版本，然后就可以從公司其他人那里得到超級(jí)多的反饋，對(duì)游戲開發(fā)的幫助很大，因?yàn)?PopCap 有很多聰明的家伙。

One of the critical points in the design process was when it was pointed out that the sun collection mechanic was hard to learn for players who had never played Real-Time Strategy games. These players would plant peashooters but not enough sunflowers, and often lose because of that. So we took the sunflower's price down from 100 to 50 (the cheaper price would encourage players to buy it over the peashooter). That one change required a rebalancing of the entire game, but it was well worth it.

在游戲的設(shè)計(jì)方面得到的一個(gè)批評(píng)是太陽(yáng)能量的收集，對(duì)于從來(lái)沒玩過實(shí)施策略游戲的玩家來(lái)說(shuō)很難理解它的重要性。他們會(huì)放很多的射擊豌豆，最后因?yàn)闆]有足夠的向日葵死掉了。所以我們把向日葵的價(jià)格從100降到了50。（價(jià)格便宜了玩家就會(huì)愿意買），這一個(gè)改變就需要重新調(diào)整整個(gè)游戲的平衡，不過這是值得的。

What were some of the games that influenced Plants vs. Zombies?
影響了植物大戰(zhàn)僵尸的游戲有哪些呢？

The 3 biggest game influences were:

影響最大的三款游戲是：

Warcraft III Tower Defense - inspired the whole idea stationary turrets gunning down hordes of enemies.

魔獸3塔防地圖—— 這是游戲用固定的東西去攻擊移動(dòng)的敵人這個(gè)創(chuàng)意的來(lái)源。

Insaniquarium - the resource system is lifted straight from this game. Also, the new plants are drip-fed to you at the same pace as Insaniquarium's pets, and you choose plants in a similar fashion to how you choose your pets at the beginning of each level of Insaniquarium.

瘋狂水族館—— 資源系統(tǒng)是直接從這款游戲中吸收過來(lái)的。新的植物就像水族館里的小東西一樣，以同樣的速度生長(zhǎng)，選擇植物的方式和水族館里每一關(guān)開頭選擇水族們的方式也是類似的。

Tapper - the idea of multi-tasking five different lanes of your lawn is similar to the gameplay of this old arcade game.

酒吧招待——這是五條通道同時(shí)運(yùn)行的靈感來(lái)源。

五通道的酒吧招待游戲

The team must have had a blast coming up with all the characters. What zombies and plant types are you most proud of?
整個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)對(duì)所有的角色都會(huì)有很多想法，最讓你感到驕傲的僵尸和植物分別是什么呢？

I like that the torchwood (the fiery tree-stump that ignites peas) makes you think about how your plants interact with each other. The cob cannon took a long time to design due to us coming up with so many variations in the search for the ultimate version. I think we landed somewhere good with that, though.

我最喜歡的是火炬木會(huì)讓你思考如何讓你的植物產(chǎn)生互動(dòng)。玉米加農(nóng)炮我們花了很多時(shí)間來(lái)設(shè)計(jì)，因?yàn)槲覀冊(cè)趯ふ医K極版本之前做了非常多的嘗試。我想我們做出了正確的選擇。

And the tall-nut just has so much character, standing there with his determined gaze, just shedding a single tear when hurt. My girlfriend can't bear to see that, so she immediately protects one with a pumpkin always. Keeping those pumpkins around the tall-nuts seems more important to her than passing the level sometimes.

還有大堅(jiān)果的性格很鮮明，它總是堅(jiān)定的站在那里，受到了傷害也只會(huì)灑一滴眼淚。我女朋友特別受不了這個(gè)，她總是用個(gè)南瓜把堅(jiān)果保護(hù)起來(lái)。對(duì)她來(lái)說(shuō)，有時(shí)候用南瓜把堅(jiān)果包圍起來(lái)比游戲通關(guān)更重要。

As for zombies, the pole-vaulting zombie is awesome for the sheer hilarity that takes place when I'm watching someone play for the first time. They always wonder "What is that guy going to do with his stick?" as they place a wall-nut down in hopes of blocking him, only to have the wall-nut promptly vaulted over.

就僵尸來(lái)說(shuō)，撐桿跳的僵尸很棒，我看別人第一次玩游戲的時(shí)候，他們總是會(huì)想“這家伙拿根棍子干嘛？”然后他們會(huì)把一個(gè)堅(jiān)果墻希望能阻擋住他，最后卻發(fā)現(xiàn)被跳過去了。

Can you give us any hints about your upcoming projects (besides your brilliant hidden object game)?
就你將要推出的游戲，能給我們透露點(diǎn)消息么？

Nothing I can specifically talk about, but I strongly value innovation in games, so I'm always looking to bring something new to the table with each game I make. The next game you'll see from me will likely be a whole new setting & new concept.

沒有什么特別值得提的，不過我特別看重創(chuàng)新，所以我總是會(huì)把新的想法加入我制作的每一款游戲中。我做的下一個(gè)游戲可能會(huì)讓你們看到一種全新的設(shè)定和概念。

Any last words for your fans?
最后對(duì)粉絲們說(shuō)句話吧

Thank you so much. Your love for games is what drives me to want to keep making 'em.

非常感謝大家，你們對(duì)游戲的熱愛是驅(qū)使我不斷制作游戲的動(dòng)力。

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