1. You worked for EALA and helped develop some Command&Conquer titles such as Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3. How do you appraise these titles? What do you think about them? What was good?
您曾在EA洛杉矶工作，并协助开发了一些《命令与征服》系列的游戏，比如《泰伯利亚战争》和《红色警戒3》。请问您如何评价这些游戏？您觉得它们怎么样？是否优秀呢？

This is a somewhat tricky thing for me to answer. In truth I was probably the harshest critic of our games on the EALA RTS team. I got started with C&C back in '95 and was instantly hooked. I loved the story, loved the gameplay, loved the setting, and loved Kane (in a totally platonic way). For me C&C was something of a sacred game and I desperately wanted to do the series justice with all the C&C games I worked on. Unfortunately although we had a very talented team of passionate gamers, EA simply would not give us the time we felt we needed to make a truly great C&C game. In the case of C&C:3 our development cycle was something like 11 months. Compare that to Blizzard or Relic who was spending 3-6 years on their RTS titles. Our longest development cycle was 18 months on RA3, but at that time the team was split in half and added another platform (PS3), so the extra dev time was kind of a wash. EA simply needed us to keep cranking out games to keep the LA studio afloat while many its other teams floundered. So to answer your question I was not happy with how C&C3 or RA3 turned out, our games were always rushed, our engine technology aged and degraded over the years, our path finding was horrible, our online implimentations were embarassing, and ultimately our games did not, in my view, live up to the orginal C&C, or RA2, or Generals (which I also worked on but in a very lowly capacity).
这对我来说可能有点棘手。实际上，我可能是EALA的RTS团队里我们游戏最严厉的批评家。我早在95年就开始玩《命令与征服》了。我喜欢这故事、喜欢这游戏玩法、喜欢设定、也（完全柏拉图式地）喜欢凯恩。对于我来说，《命令与征服》是一个神圣的游戏，而且我很想通过我参与的所有《命令与征服》游戏来公正地对待这个系列。但不幸地是，EA压根没有给我们足够的时间来制作一款真正出色的《命令与征服》游戏。就《命令与征服3》而言，我们的开发周期大概有11个月。相比之下，暴雪和水雷在RTS游戏上都花了三到六年的时间。我们最长的开发周期是红警3项目的18个月，但当时团队也分成了两半，还添加了另一个平台（PS3），所以额外的开发时间也有点浪费了。EA只是需要我们不断地搞（新的）游戏，以维持洛杉矶工作室的生存，而其他很多团队已经陷入困境了。所以就回答你的问题来说，我对《命令与征服3》或者《红警3》的成果并不满意，我们的游戏（开发）总是很匆忙，我们的引擎技术多年来老化退步，我们的寻路很糟糕，我们的在线联机也令人尴尬。最终在我看来，我们的游戏没有达到以前《命令与征服》、《红警2》或者《将军》［的水准］（我也参与过这些，但是权限很低）。

I do however have to give credit to the development team. Given the circumstances under which we were making these games, (crappy tech, super compressed schedules) I think what we were able to ship was quite impressive. Unfortunately the gamer who just spent $50 on our games doesn't have any clue how much time we had to spend on them or what the internal politics of EA were at the time, they can only see what is in the box.
不过，我必须夸一下开发团队。考虑到我们制作这些游戏的环境（蹩脚的技术、超级压缩的时间表等等），我觉得我们能够发布的内容已经令人印象深刻了。可惜刚刚花了50美元买了我们游戏的玩家并不会知道我们在这些游戏上花了多少时间，也不知道当时EA内部的政治生态是啥样，他们只能看到盒子里是什么玩意。

2. You were the balance designer for Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3. You had opportunities to bring some ideas from the fan community to the game directly. What was important and which propositions were taken seriously?
您曾经是《泰伯利亚战争》和《红色警戒3》的平衡设计师，您也有机会把粉丝社群里的一些想法直接带到游戏里（实现）。那么哪些（方面）是比较重要的，哪些提议又被重视了呢？
I worked very directly with the community. As many of you probably know we would fly in "pro" C&C players from all over the world to help play and balance the game. In addition to that I would monitor many of the C&C forums daily, especially GameReplays.org, to get the "pulse" of the hardcoore multiplayer community. I took every idea seriously as long as that idea was presented with a logical arguments and reasoning behind it. Unfortunately by the time the community actually knew enough about the game to make suggestions, it was already too late for us to implement them due to our short development schedules and late betas.
我和社群合作都是直来直去的。你们很多人可能知道，我们会让来自世界各地的「职业」CNC玩家，玩游戏协助平衡工作，除此之外我每天都会观察很多《命令与征服》的论坛，尤其是GameReplays.org，以了解硬核多人游戏社群的「脉动」。只要这个想法背后有逻辑论证和推理，我就会认真对待每个想法。可惜当社群真正了解游戏并且提出建议的时候，由于我们的开发时间表很短，而且内测也比较晚，所以我们实施这些建议的时候也为时已晚了。
My only real regret with the fan-community is that I don't speak/read German and couldn't monitor the big German community sites. I always felt like I was probably missing out on a bunch of great information.
我对粉丝社群唯一的遗憾就是我不会德语，没法观察德国这边的大型社群，我总觉得我可能错过了很多重要的东西。

3. Is it difficult to balance a game properly? Were you able to balance out every glaring balance error you saw in the titles you worked on as Lead Balance Designer?
游戏平衡很难吗？作为首席游戏平衡设计师，您是否能够平衡好您在游戏里看到的每一处错误？
It is extremely difficult to balance a game right. Its not just a matter of finding the proper math, playing the game and iterating on it, but the game design has to carefully account for the balance. If the game is not designed to be balanced, no amount of tuning or tweaking can fix it. Unfortunatly our schedules usually meant we couldn't do any real iteration on the design. We were essentially shipping out "first pass" work as final across all areas of the project, balance and design included. Additionally the schedules precluded us from having meaningful multiplayer betas. This was always a huge source of frustration and disappointment for me. I can not blame everything on time pressure though, Dustin Browder was under similar time pressure with Generals and that game had great multiplayer.
要平衡好游戏是很困难的。这不仅是做数学题、玩游戏并更新的事情，游戏设计必须仔细考虑平衡。如果游戏的设计不平衡的话，那再多的调整也救不了它。可惜我们的日程安排经常让我们没法对设计搞任何的迭代，我们基本上是让项目上的所有事情（包括平衡和设计在内）「一次过」的。而且我们也没时间安排重要的多人游戏测试，这一直是我感到沮丧和失望的原因。不过，我不能把所有锅都扣在时间安排紧上，隔壁达斯汀．布劳德在《将军》项目里也有类似的时间压力，但那游戏的联机就搞得挺好的。
With every game I've worked on ultimately all I can see are it's flaws. Its hard to not look at something every day and just see the problems. Pathfinding and UI responsiveness were the two things that always drove me nuts with the sage engine.
对于我做的每一款游戏，最后我只能看到它的缺陷，每天看不到一点干货但只能看到问题还是挺难受的。SAGE引擎的寻路和UI响应问题是最经常让我感觉头疼的两件事。

4. Looking back what would you have changed in your work at EALA or CNC. What were your best moments at EALA?
回顾一下您在EALA和CNC项目工作中经历的改变，您觉得在EALA最美好的时刻是什么呢？
There are too many things to list in terms of what I would have liked to change in our games. I did, however, love working on C&C and had a great deal of respect and admiration for the RTS group at EALA. I think my favorite game to work on, surprisingly enough, was BFME2. It was a lot of fun to be working on a game no one really cared about and just having a good time with it. Working on C&C meant a lot of self imposed pressure and expectations to be met. BFME 2 was just us having fun making a silly game about elves and dwarfs.
就我希望在我们游戏里改变的事情来说，东西太多就不一一列举了。不过我确实喜欢在《命令与征服》的工作，我也很尊重钦佩EALA的RTS团队。不过比较惊讶的是，我觉得我最喜欢的游戏是《中土战争2》。制作一款没有人真正关心的游戏并且享受其中的乐趣是非常有意思的。在《命令与征服》中工作会有很多自我施加的压力和需要满足的期望，但《中土战争2》只是要我们做一款关于精灵和矮人的沙雕游戏而已。

5. How were the ideas and propositions of the fan community submitted to you?
粉丝社群的想法和主张是怎么传达给您的呢？
I either found them myself while reading the forums, or another team member would find something and bring it to my attention. The community team (Apoc mostly) also gave us regular updates on the community and the hot forums threads.
我看论坛的时候自己发现的，或者团队其他同事找到一些东西引起我的注意。社群团队（主要是Apoc他们）也会定期地给我们提供最新的社群和热门论坛话题。

6. Your departure from EALA was met with great dissappointment by C&C game players and fans. For what reason did you leave EALA?
CNC玩家粉丝们对您离开EALA感到非常失望，您是因为什么事辞职的？
It was not an easy decision for me to leave, EA is where my career in game development got started, but ultimately I needed to do something new. By the time I left EA many of my good friends from the RTS team had gone. EA had broken many promises to us and was continuing to make bad decisions at the expense of the C&C franchise and over the protests of the development teams. I just needed a break from the EA insanity.
对于我来说，离开注定不是一个轻松的决定。EA是我职业生涯的起点，但我还是需要做一些新的事情。当我离开EA的时候，RTS团队的很多朋友都已经提桶跑路了。EA违背了给我们的很多承诺，并且继续做出错误的决议，要牺牲《命令与征服》为代价，无视开发团队的抗议。我只是需要从EA的疯狂中解脱出来。

7. Do you miss EALA? If yes, what do you miss most?
您会想念EALA吗？如果会，那什么是您最想念的？
I don't miss working at EALA but I do miss working with the people there, and of course I miss working on C&C. My new office is less than a mile away from the EALA campus so I still see it and think about it every day when I drive to work.
我一点都不怀念在EALA的工作，不过我确实很想念和那里的人共事（的日子），当然我也很怀念在《命令与征服》中的工作。我的新办公室距离EALA园区不到一英里，所以我每次开车上班路过的时候都会看到的，然后想一想这些事。

8. What do you think about Command&Conquer 4? Many people are state C&C 4 is not a game true to the C&C franchise.
您怎么看待《命令与征服4》？很多人都说命令与征服4配不上《命令与征服》系列。
It's unfair of me to pass judgement on C&C4 as I did not work on it nor have I played the final game. I was however at the studio during much of C&C4's development and have played pre-release builds. The important thing to know is that C&C4 was never meant to be a true Tiberium universe canonical game, but rather an experiment in online play. It originally started as out an Asian market online-only version of C&C 3. At some point the company executives decided it made the most business sense to add a single player campaign, call it C&C4, and put it in a box. The team of course protested this change in direction but the decision stood. The team did what they could to make a good game given the realities inside EA, but ultimately it was the product of a dysfunctional corporate culture.
对我来说给《命令与征服4》做出评价并不公平，因为我没有参与它的制作，也没玩过最终成品。不过《命令与征服4》开发的大部分时间，我还是待在工作室的，而且我玩过预售版本。重要的是你要知道，《命令与征服4》从来就不是一款泰伯利亚宇宙的正作，而是网络游戏的实验性产品，它最初是给亚洲市场的《命令与征服3》线上版本而已。团队当然抗议过这种方向的改变，但决议依旧存在。考虑到EA内部的现实情况，团队还是竭尽全力试图制作一款优秀的游戏，最终却成了功能性失调的企业文化产物。

9. How much does C&C and its community mean to you?
命令与征服和它的社群对您来说意味着什么？
C&C has been an immensely important part of my life and its very significant to me personally. C&C is the first PC game I ever bought. The C&C community is the only video game community I was ever active in. C&C is and will always be one of my favorite games of all time. Working on C&C games was like a dream come true (although once in a while dreams can be nightmares )
命令与征服是我生命中极为重要的一部分，对我个人来说意义重大。命令与征服是我买的第一款电脑游戏。命令与征服的社群是我唯一活跃过的电玩社群。从事命令与征服游戏的工作就像是梦想成真。（尽管这梦想也会变成噩梦）

10. Now you are working with some other famous people at Zygna. Please tell us something about your new job!
如今您在Zygna和一些大佬工作。请跟我们讲讲您的新工作！
Myself and a few other C&C team members opened up a studio in LA for Zynga. We're currently working on an unannounced project for which I am the Lead Designer. Unfortunately I can't say much more than that.
我和其他一些命令与征服团队成员在洛杉矶给Zynga 开了一个工作室。我们目前正在进行一个未公开的项目，我是该项目的首席设计师。但不好意思，我不能透露更多。

11. Was it difficult for you start at this new developer-studio (Zygna)? How difficult was it for you to introduce yourself to Zygna's people?
换了新工作室有遇到困难吗？向Zygna的同事介绍您自己难不难呢？
As one of the founding members of the studio, and having founded it with many friends from EA, it was not at all difficult starting at Zynga. Zynga is a very different company from EA but many of the people there I've worked with for years so it felt very comfortable.
我是工作室的创始人之一，我和很多来自EA的朋友一块组织起来的。在Zynga起步倒不是很困难，虽然Zygna是一家和EA有很大区别的公司，但是里边有很多处了很久的人，所以我觉得还是比较适应的。

I've also had a chance to meet and work with some industry legends. Getting to brainstorm with Brian Reynolds for instance (who just released the awesome new FrontierVille) was an amazing moment for a strategy game geek like me.
我还有机会见识一些行业里的传奇大佬，和他们一起工作。比如说，对于我这种策略游戏极客来讲，和布莱恩．雷诺兹（他刚刚发布了很棒的新作《FrontierVille》）一起头脑风暴是一个奇妙的时刻。