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电脑游戏设计师！听起来是不是很酷？！现在，这可是个热门职业，不少喜欢动漫和游戏的人应该都有这方面的职业愿景吧。本期滋味人生，就带你近距离接触一下著名3D游戏《战争机器》的设计者，让我们听听这位成功的电脑游戏设计师的成长经历吧。
Carie: Hello. My guest today is Cliff Bleszinski. He’s a computer games designer. Once regarded as a bunch of geeks unfit for real work, the gaming community now represents a multi-billion dollar business. So where are they going next? Cliff Bleszinski, welcome to the interview.
Cliff Bleszinski: It’s great to be here.
Carie: Now, Cliff, your most famous game is “Gears of War” in which the hero, Marcus Fenix, and other fighters try to save the human inhabitants of a fictional planet from an enemy army of monsters called the Locust Hoard. Is that a fair summary?
Cliff: It is. It’s … people sometimes get hung up on the
1)franchise and they’re asking, “Is this Earth?” and it’s “No, it’s its own planet.” It’s a, you know, one could say in a distant
2)galaxy, you know, a long, long time away, right, and we’ve created kind of our own very enjoyable, very fun but also very 3)visceral experience, and it’s…it’s done very well for us, and we’re currently working on the third chapter in the series, which should be quite over the top and enjoyable.
Carie: Tell us about when you were a child in the days before remote control. Did you already have a sense of where you were going?
Cliff: Very good there. You calculated my age very well, because I was in fact raised without a remote control initially. It was, you had the 4)crank on the television with the traditional kind of turn it, which my mother would yell at me for turning it too fast because, of course, we as children wanted to
channel-surf, we wanted to interact, but…. I remember, I was—Gawd it must have been one of my earliest memories—I was about six or seven years old, and we had this one neighbour in the neighbourhood who, their house wasn’t very nice but they were very good at spoiling the kids and having lots of random that you really didn’t need, like a
5)pinball machine in the basement, and things like that. And they were the first ones on the block to get an Atari 2600, which of course was one of the first video game 6)consoles—not the first, but one of the early ones—with a nice kind of 7)walnut finish on it to fit in with those lovely 80s home electronics. And we were in their basement and they fired up Space Invaders, which of course was one of the earliest games where you’re defending Earth against invaders and 8)whatnot, and the second I saw that controller moving and the fact that they were actually manipulating the screen, I was hooked. I was, like, this somehow on some sort of primal level, knew that this would be the future and that this was where I wanted to be. And years later (I) got a Nintendo entertainment system and fought my parents to make sure that I could have a computer and I had actually put together my first video game at the age of, I believe, 11 on my Apple computer.
Carie: That’s amazing to have your sense of 9)vocation from this visit to the neighbours, age six.
Cliff: It was kind of that moment, right? And I think the biggest challenge that anybody ever has in life is figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. I guess I was dumb enough or lucky enough to take the risks and work hard enough to sit there and say, at a young age, that’s where this is going to go and I’ve had people ask me; they’re, like, “Did you expect Gears to be this big?” and I’m, like, “Absolutely!” and they’re, like, “Did you expect you to be able to do all this and to go this far?” and I’m, like, “I’m not done yet, like, this is all part of the plan, and have a lot more work ahead of us. ” But it’s…I love games, I love film and I want to continue to drive it all forward.
Carie: And, you know, in the past obviously before video games then Hollywood was the 10)capital of American
film-making. And do you think that these disciplines that you’re describing and the way they are brought together in the gaming profession is almost challenging Hollywood’s 11)supremacy?
Cliff: Well, there was a 12)stat that came out several years ago that said that video games make more money than film, which was actually very incorrect and somehow wound up sticking with a lot of people. What had happened was the video game industry’s numbers, of however many billions of dollars, that is right now, actually beat Hollywood box office, and I believe it was just domestic box office. So they weren’t accounting for the fact that Hollywood, of course, is international box office, they have DVD and blue ray sales, they have HBO aftermarket things like that, and they… Hollywood’s very good at selling you a product multiple times. At the same time the industry’s continuing to grow and I think Hollywood’s really taken notice. You’ve seeing more films that are video game adaptations, you’re seeing more video game influence in movies, where you go and see the last Wolverine film and it feels like a kind of a giant Mortal Combat experience. And you’re, like, “Okay, what’s going on?” and what’s happening is that the directors, who are in Hollywood, have played video games or are familiar with them. They know their target audience understands video games. I mean if you look at what Zack Snider’s doing with that upcoming film, “Sucker Punch”, which is the one where it’s, like, four or five girls trapped in an insane 13)asylum and they use all these fantasy sequences to escape then evolve giant Samurais with Gatling guns and dragons and World War I bi-planes and things like that, that in many ways looks like a video game 14)trailer, which speaks to this current generation.
Carie: And do you want to be a games designer forever or you can [sic] imagine going and doing something slightly more 15)serene and 16)tranquil?
Cliff: My position at Epic is one that I’m not only being a game designer but also working at a high level where I am able to work on multiple projects and kind of sprinkle a little bit of that fun dust and a little bit of that magic on the various things. I love this industry and I like seeing it grow, when I personally see myself as an advocate for this industry, so that people may see what I’m doing and the fun I’m having and might want to do it. I have people respond to my Twitter all the time and say, “Wow, you’re living the life. I want to be like you when I grow up”, and it’s such a rush to see that; it’s so fun. And I could see myself doing this for a very long time, but at some point retiring at a very nice beach with a lot of comic books and some beers.
Carie: That is a good point to end on. Thanks so much for joining us.
Cliff: Thanks for having me.
凯莉：大家好。今天请到的客人是克里夫·布林斯基，一位电脑游戏设计师。他们曾经被认为是与现实世界格格不入的一群呆子，如今他们却成就了价值数十亿的游戏产业。那么，他们的下一步怎么走？克里夫·布林斯基，欢迎你参加我们的访谈节目。
克里夫·布林斯基：很高兴能参加这个节目。
凯莉：克里夫，你最著名的游戏作品是《战争机器》，讲述主人公马科斯·菲尼克斯以及其他战士为拯救一颗虚幻星球上的人类免受怪兽之众“蝗虫部落”侵扰的故事。这样总结准确吗？
克里夫：准确。它就是……人们经常会将内容自动代入，他们会问：“这是地球吗？”答案是“不，这是另外的星球。”它就是，你可以说在距离我们很远的另一个星系，我们创造了一个属于我们自己的、舒适的、有趣的内心体验。这一点，我们做得很好。我们最近正在研发《战争机器》系列的第三部，应该超越了以往的游戏，更具趣味性。
凯莉：跟我们谈谈你的童年吧，在遥控器还没出现的时候。你那时已经意识到自己未来要走的路了吗？
克里夫：这问题问得好。你把我的年龄算得很精确，因为我小时候的确是在没有遥控器的环境下成长的。在当时，电视仍是那种传统的手动转柄，通过旋转来选择频道。如果我把它转得太快，我妈妈就会大声喝止我，当然，作为小孩子，我们很想看看每个频道都在播什么，我们希望有互动，但是……我还记得，我当时——这应该是自我记事以来最早的记忆了——我大概六、七岁的时候，我们附近有个邻居。他们的房子并不漂亮，但他们对小孩倒是非常宠溺，家里经常有一些非必要品，比如说地下室就摆着一台弹球机，还有诸如此类的东西。他们是我们那个街区最早拥有雅达利2600（游戏机）的家庭，那在当时可算是第一代视频游戏机——不是第一部，但是走在当时前沿的——用设计精美的胡桃木手柄连着（20世纪）80年代那些家用电视。我们在他们家的地下室里玩起了“太空侵略者”，那是讲述保卫地球、赶走入侵者等诸如此类故事的早期游戏之一。当我看到游戏手柄的移动真正操控着电视画面的变化时，我深深被吸引了。我当时觉得，虽然还在初始的认识阶段，我知道这就是我想做的事情，是我的未来。几年后，我终于得到了一台任天堂游戏系统，又与父母争吵着买来一台电脑，我想，是在我大概11岁的时候，我在我的苹果机上第一次玩起了视频游戏。
凯莉：在六岁的时候到附近邻居家里玩竟然能有这种收获，真是神奇。
克里夫：那是个神奇的时刻，对吧？我一直觉得对于所有人来说，人生最大的挑战就在于找到你长大后想干什么这个答案。我想我是足够蠢钝，却也足够幸运才敢在我那么小的时候，冒这个险，然后一直努力，说，这就是我想要的未来。许多人问我，他们会问：“你曾经想过你的事业会这样成功吗？”我会说：“当然！”他们也会问：“你当时觉得你有能力做到这些，将事业推得这么远吗？”我会说：“我尚未成功，这些都是计划中的一部分而已。我们还有很多要做的事情。”但这个……我热爱游戏，我热爱电影，我希望能在这条路上继续走下去。
凯莉：你知道，在视频游戏还未问世之前，好莱坞是一切影像制作行业的重中之重。你觉得你所叙述的这种种规则以及它们在游戏行业中的运用会不会对好莱坞的霸主地位构成挑战？
克里夫：几年前有个数据显示说视频游戏比电影更赚钱，这其实是不对的，也误导了许多人。事实是，视频游戏行业所赚取的几千几百亿美元的数字，才刚好超过了好莱坞的票房记录，而据我所知，只是国内票房记录。人们忽略了一点，即好莱坞的盈利模式，既包括全球性的票房，还有DVD和蓝光光盘的销售，以及HBO播放等。他们……好莱坞非常擅长把产品一卖再卖。但是与此同时，游戏产业持续发展，我相信已经引起好莱坞的注意。我们现在看到许多电影都改编自视频游戏，我们也在许多电影里看到了来自视频游戏的影响，就比如说我们看《金刚狼》系列电影的时候，它看起来就是个真人快打游戏。你会想：“好吧，到底是怎么了？” 而事实是，好莱坞的导演们其实也玩过游戏，他们对游戏非常熟悉。他们明白，他们的目标观众懂得玩游戏。我是说，如果你看看扎克·施奈德即将上映的电影《超时空美少女战士》，里面讲述四五个被困在精神病院的女孩子，她们必须集齐诸如手握镭射枪的日本武士、喷火龙、一战时的战斗机等东西才能逃出生天。这电影怎么看都像是针对新生代观众所作的一个视频游戏预告片。
凯莉：你觉得你会一辈子当一个游戏设计师吗？还是你能想象自己从事一些安静祥和的工作？
克里夫：我现在Epic游戏公司所担任的职位不是单纯的游戏设计师，我也会同时参与许多项目，为这些项目增添点火花或者再施点魔法，让它们变得更有趣。我热爱这一行业，我喜欢看着它成长，我把自己当成是这一行业的宣传者，这样人们会看到我所做的事，会看到我所享受到的乐趣，也会因此走上这一条路。有许多人在我的推特上留言说：“哇，你才是真正地生活着。我希望我长大了也能像你一样。” 看着这些让我感觉很好，这很有趣。我想我还会继续工作很长一段时间，然后到了某个阶段，我会在一个美丽的海滩上看着漫画书，喝着啤酒，享受我的退休生活。
凯莉：这真是个完美的结局。感谢你来参加我们的节目。
克里夫：谢谢你们邀请我。
Carie: Hello. My guest today is Cliff Bleszinski. He’s a computer games designer. Once regarded as a bunch of geeks unfit for real work, the gaming community now represents a multi-billion dollar business. So where are they going next? Cliff Bleszinski, welcome to the interview.
Cliff Bleszinski: It’s great to be here.
Carie: Now, Cliff, your most famous game is “Gears of War” in which the hero, Marcus Fenix, and other fighters try to save the human inhabitants of a fictional planet from an enemy army of monsters called the Locust Hoard. Is that a fair summary?
Cliff: It is. It’s … people sometimes get hung up on the
1)franchise and they’re asking, “Is this Earth?” and it’s “No, it’s its own planet.” It’s a, you know, one could say in a distant
2)galaxy, you know, a long, long time away, right, and we’ve created kind of our own very enjoyable, very fun but also very 3)visceral experience, and it’s…it’s done very well for us, and we’re currently working on the third chapter in the series, which should be quite over the top and enjoyable.
Carie: Tell us about when you were a child in the days before remote control. Did you already have a sense of where you were going?
Cliff: Very good there. You calculated my age very well, because I was in fact raised without a remote control initially. It was, you had the 4)crank on the television with the traditional kind of turn it, which my mother would yell at me for turning it too fast because, of course, we as children wanted to
channel-surf, we wanted to interact, but…. I remember, I was—Gawd it must have been one of my earliest memories—I was about six or seven years old, and we had this one neighbour in the neighbourhood who, their house wasn’t very nice but they were very good at spoiling the kids and having lots of random that you really didn’t need, like a
5)pinball machine in the basement, and things like that. And they were the first ones on the block to get an Atari 2600, which of course was one of the first video game 6)consoles—not the first, but one of the early ones—with a nice kind of 7)walnut finish on it to fit in with those lovely 80s home electronics. And we were in their basement and they fired up Space Invaders, which of course was one of the earliest games where you’re defending Earth against invaders and 8)whatnot, and the second I saw that controller moving and the fact that they were actually manipulating the screen, I was hooked. I was, like, this somehow on some sort of primal level, knew that this would be the future and that this was where I wanted to be. And years later (I) got a Nintendo entertainment system and fought my parents to make sure that I could have a computer and I had actually put together my first video game at the age of, I believe, 11 on my Apple computer.
Carie: That’s amazing to have your sense of 9)vocation from this visit to the neighbours, age six.
Cliff: It was kind of that moment, right? And I think the biggest challenge that anybody ever has in life is figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. I guess I was dumb enough or lucky enough to take the risks and work hard enough to sit there and say, at a young age, that’s where this is going to go and I’ve had people ask me; they’re, like, “Did you expect Gears to be this big?” and I’m, like, “Absolutely!” and they’re, like, “Did you expect you to be able to do all this and to go this far?” and I’m, like, “I’m not done yet, like, this is all part of the plan, and have a lot more work ahead of us. ” But it’s…I love games, I love film and I want to continue to drive it all forward.
Carie: And, you know, in the past obviously before video games then Hollywood was the 10)capital of American
film-making. And do you think that these disciplines that you’re describing and the way they are brought together in the gaming profession is almost challenging Hollywood’s 11)supremacy?
Cliff: Well, there was a 12)stat that came out several years ago that said that video games make more money than film, which was actually very incorrect and somehow wound up sticking with a lot of people. What had happened was the video game industry’s numbers, of however many billions of dollars, that is right now, actually beat Hollywood box office, and I believe it was just domestic box office. So they weren’t accounting for the fact that Hollywood, of course, is international box office, they have DVD and blue ray sales, they have HBO aftermarket things like that, and they… Hollywood’s very good at selling you a product multiple times. At the same time the industry’s continuing to grow and I think Hollywood’s really taken notice. You’ve seeing more films that are video game adaptations, you’re seeing more video game influence in movies, where you go and see the last Wolverine film and it feels like a kind of a giant Mortal Combat experience. And you’re, like, “Okay, what’s going on?” and what’s happening is that the directors, who are in Hollywood, have played video games or are familiar with them. They know their target audience understands video games. I mean if you look at what Zack Snider’s doing with that upcoming film, “Sucker Punch”, which is the one where it’s, like, four or five girls trapped in an insane 13)asylum and they use all these fantasy sequences to escape then evolve giant Samurais with Gatling guns and dragons and World War I bi-planes and things like that, that in many ways looks like a video game 14)trailer, which speaks to this current generation.
Carie: And do you want to be a games designer forever or you can [sic] imagine going and doing something slightly more 15)serene and 16)tranquil?
Cliff: My position at Epic is one that I’m not only being a game designer but also working at a high level where I am able to work on multiple projects and kind of sprinkle a little bit of that fun dust and a little bit of that magic on the various things. I love this industry and I like seeing it grow, when I personally see myself as an advocate for this industry, so that people may see what I’m doing and the fun I’m having and might want to do it. I have people respond to my Twitter all the time and say, “Wow, you’re living the life. I want to be like you when I grow up”, and it’s such a rush to see that; it’s so fun. And I could see myself doing this for a very long time, but at some point retiring at a very nice beach with a lot of comic books and some beers.
Carie: That is a good point to end on. Thanks so much for joining us.
Cliff: Thanks for having me.
凯莉：大家好。今天请到的客人是克里夫·布林斯基，一位电脑游戏设计师。他们曾经被认为是与现实世界格格不入的一群呆子，如今他们却成就了价值数十亿的游戏产业。那么，他们的下一步怎么走？克里夫·布林斯基，欢迎你参加我们的访谈节目。
克里夫·布林斯基：很高兴能参加这个节目。
凯莉：克里夫，你最著名的游戏作品是《战争机器》，讲述主人公马科斯·菲尼克斯以及其他战士为拯救一颗虚幻星球上的人类免受怪兽之众“蝗虫部落”侵扰的故事。这样总结准确吗？
克里夫：准确。它就是……人们经常会将内容自动代入，他们会问：“这是地球吗？”答案是“不，这是另外的星球。”它就是，你可以说在距离我们很远的另一个星系，我们创造了一个属于我们自己的、舒适的、有趣的内心体验。这一点，我们做得很好。我们最近正在研发《战争机器》系列的第三部，应该超越了以往的游戏，更具趣味性。
凯莉：跟我们谈谈你的童年吧，在遥控器还没出现的时候。你那时已经意识到自己未来要走的路了吗？
克里夫：这问题问得好。你把我的年龄算得很精确，因为我小时候的确是在没有遥控器的环境下成长的。在当时，电视仍是那种传统的手动转柄，通过旋转来选择频道。如果我把它转得太快，我妈妈就会大声喝止我，当然，作为小孩子，我们很想看看每个频道都在播什么，我们希望有互动，但是……我还记得，我当时——这应该是自我记事以来最早的记忆了——我大概六、七岁的时候，我们附近有个邻居。他们的房子并不漂亮，但他们对小孩倒是非常宠溺，家里经常有一些非必要品，比如说地下室就摆着一台弹球机，还有诸如此类的东西。他们是我们那个街区最早拥有雅达利2600（游戏机）的家庭，那在当时可算是第一代视频游戏机——不是第一部，但是走在当时前沿的——用设计精美的胡桃木手柄连着（20世纪）80年代那些家用电视。我们在他们家的地下室里玩起了“太空侵略者”，那是讲述保卫地球、赶走入侵者等诸如此类故事的早期游戏之一。当我看到游戏手柄的移动真正操控着电视画面的变化时，我深深被吸引了。我当时觉得，虽然还在初始的认识阶段，我知道这就是我想做的事情，是我的未来。几年后，我终于得到了一台任天堂游戏系统，又与父母争吵着买来一台电脑，我想，是在我大概11岁的时候，我在我的苹果机上第一次玩起了视频游戏。
凯莉：在六岁的时候到附近邻居家里玩竟然能有这种收获，真是神奇。
克里夫：那是个神奇的时刻，对吧？我一直觉得对于所有人来说，人生最大的挑战就在于找到你长大后想干什么这个答案。我想我是足够蠢钝，却也足够幸运才敢在我那么小的时候，冒这个险，然后一直努力，说，这就是我想要的未来。许多人问我，他们会问：“你曾经想过你的事业会这样成功吗？”我会说：“当然！”他们也会问：“你当时觉得你有能力做到这些，将事业推得这么远吗？”我会说：“我尚未成功，这些都是计划中的一部分而已。我们还有很多要做的事情。”但这个……我热爱游戏，我热爱电影，我希望能在这条路上继续走下去。
凯莉：你知道，在视频游戏还未问世之前，好莱坞是一切影像制作行业的重中之重。你觉得你所叙述的这种种规则以及它们在游戏行业中的运用会不会对好莱坞的霸主地位构成挑战？
克里夫：几年前有个数据显示说视频游戏比电影更赚钱，这其实是不对的，也误导了许多人。事实是，视频游戏行业所赚取的几千几百亿美元的数字，才刚好超过了好莱坞的票房记录，而据我所知，只是国内票房记录。人们忽略了一点，即好莱坞的盈利模式，既包括全球性的票房，还有DVD和蓝光光盘的销售，以及HBO播放等。他们……好莱坞非常擅长把产品一卖再卖。但是与此同时，游戏产业持续发展，我相信已经引起好莱坞的注意。我们现在看到许多电影都改编自视频游戏，我们也在许多电影里看到了来自视频游戏的影响，就比如说我们看《金刚狼》系列电影的时候，它看起来就是个真人快打游戏。你会想：“好吧，到底是怎么了？” 而事实是，好莱坞的导演们其实也玩过游戏，他们对游戏非常熟悉。他们明白，他们的目标观众懂得玩游戏。我是说，如果你看看扎克·施奈德即将上映的电影《超时空美少女战士》，里面讲述四五个被困在精神病院的女孩子，她们必须集齐诸如手握镭射枪的日本武士、喷火龙、一战时的战斗机等东西才能逃出生天。这电影怎么看都像是针对新生代观众所作的一个视频游戏预告片。
凯莉：你觉得你会一辈子当一个游戏设计师吗？还是你能想象自己从事一些安静祥和的工作？
克里夫：我现在Epic游戏公司所担任的职位不是单纯的游戏设计师，我也会同时参与许多项目，为这些项目增添点火花或者再施点魔法，让它们变得更有趣。我热爱这一行业，我喜欢看着它成长，我把自己当成是这一行业的宣传者，这样人们会看到我所做的事，会看到我所享受到的乐趣，也会因此走上这一条路。有许多人在我的推特上留言说：“哇，你才是真正地生活着。我希望我长大了也能像你一样。” 看着这些让我感觉很好，这很有趣。我想我还会继续工作很长一段时间，然后到了某个阶段，我会在一个美丽的海滩上看着漫画书，喝着啤酒，享受我的退休生活。
凯莉：这真是个完美的结局。感谢你来参加我们的节目。
克里夫：谢谢你们邀请我。