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The following post was written by Steffen Kabbelgaard, CEO of indie studio BetaDwarf. At the end of this post you can watch a short video interview with Steffen from Unite Nordic 2013

以下帖子由独立工作室BetaDwarf的首席执行官Steffen Kabbelgaard 撰写 。 在这篇文章的结尾，您可以观看来自Unite Nordic 2013的Steffen的简短视频采访

Hi, I’m Steffen Kabbelgaard. My partner Kenneth and I started BetaDwarf 2 ½ years ago while studying for our master degrees at Aalborg University in Denmark. We had nothing at the time—no money, no experience—but we’re here today with a studio, a successful Kickstarter campaign under our belt, finishing up our first game, Forced.  At Unite Nordic I told our story of starting with nothing and ending up with everything we hoped for, and I thought it could be fun to share what we’ve learned so far with the wider Unity community.

嗨，我是Steffen Kabbelgaard。 我和我的搭档肯尼斯(Kenneth)在2½年前就开始了BetaDwarf，当时他在丹麦的奥尔堡大学攻读硕士学位。 当时我们一无所有-没有钱，也没有经验-但是今天我们在工作室里，在我们的支持下成功完成了Kickstarter广告系列，完成了我们的第一款游戏Forced 。 在Unite Nordic，我讲了一个从无到有，以我们希望的一切结局的故事，我认为与更广泛的Unity社区分享到目前为止所学的知识可能会很有趣。

演示地址

We knew what we wanted to do from the start

我们从一开始就知道我们想做什么

Kenneth and I wanted to found a start-up studio with a team of around 10 people. We wanted to make big, ambitious games. Kenneth dedicated himself to becoming a badass programmer; I focused on becoming a design and business guru. I spent months planning a team structure, what kind of people we needed and what they would do. I also wrote a game bible for our game, which was always changing, but it allowed us to have a detailed fundament. Now, we just needed to find the rest of the team.

我和肯尼斯(Kenneth)想建立一个由大约10人组成的团队的创业工作室。 我们想要制作大型的，雄心勃勃的游戏。 肯尼斯(Kenneth)致力于成为一名坏蛋程序员。 我专注于成为设计和业务专家。 我花了几个月的时间来计划团队结构，我们需要什么样的人以及他们会做什么。 我还为我们的游戏写了一个游戏圣经，该圣经一直在变化，但是它使我们拥有了详尽的基础。 现在，我们只需要找到团队的其余成员。

Then we set out to get exactly who we wanted

然后我们着手确定我们想要的人

We were teacher assistants at the time, so we knew who the brightest and best were in our classes. We had to get the right people interested in our idea. We had to motivate them to work hard without an immediate pay-off. We invited some exceptional students to an exclusive meeting. We told them we had chosen them to join our special project, based on their awesome dedication and skill. We shared our vision of making games with them. And we told them that we couldn’t pay them. At the end of that first meeting we already had a team of 9 and it was time to start developing our game.

当时我们是助教，所以我们知道谁是我们班上最聪明的人。 我们必须让合适的人对我们的想法感兴趣。 我们必须激励他们努力工作，而不要立即得到回报。 我们邀请了一些杰出的学生参加独家会议。 我们告诉他们，基于他们的敬业精神和技能，他们选择了他们加入我们的特殊项目。 我们分享了与他们制作游戏的愿景。 我们告诉他们我们不能付钱。 在第一次会议结束时，我们已经有9人组成的团队，该是时候开始开发我们的游戏了。

The team in 2012

2012年的团队

Making games was a lot harder than we thought

制作游戏比我们想象的要难得多

Half a year passed and we realized that being nine noobs on our virgin game journey equalled an extreme challenge. We underestimated the work it would take to establish a proper pipeline to create a beautiful 3D game. And, getting 9 people to work efficiently without bottlenecks was, and is, a challenge.

半年过去了，我们意识到在我们的处女游戏旅程中成为九个菜鸟等于一个极端的挑战。 我们低估了建立适当的管道来创建漂亮的3D游戏所需的工作。 而且，要让9个人高效地工作而不遇到瓶颈是而且也是一个挑战。

We realized that to get this done we had to focus exclusively on our work.

我们意识到要做到这一点，我们必须专注于我们的工作。

We broke some rules to get what we needed

我们违反了一些规则以获取所需的东西

Dedicating ourselves full-time to game development without a salary required us to skip classes. We also started to camp out in an empty classroom during the summer vacation. By some miracle no one discovered our “camp”. So we stayed, for seven months. Some of us actually moved out of our apartment to take up residence at the University. We had a gym, baths and a kitchen in the teacher’s room—everything we needed.

全职致力于游戏开发而没有薪水，这要求我们跳过课程。 暑假期间，我们也开始在空荡荡的教室里露营。 出于某种奇迹，没有人发现我们的“营地”。 所以我们住了七个月。 我们当中有些人实际上搬出了公寓，到大学住了。 我们在老师的房间里设有健身房，浴室和厨房-所有我们需要的东西。

Then one morning, a teacher randomly walked in and saw 8 guys brushing their teeth in their underwear. We were kicked out of course, but those seven months of living together had turned us into a team. We proved to each other, and ourselves, how committed we were to making our game.

然后，一个早晨，一位老师随机走进来，看到8个男人穿着内衣刷牙。 我们当然被踢了出去，但是在一起生活的七个月使我们变成了一个团队。 我们彼此以及我们自己证明了我们对制作游戏的投入。

Camping out on campus

在校园露营

Our work became our life

我们的工作成为我们的生活

After getting kicked out of the university, we decided that the whole team would move in together and share the rent. We Googled the cheapest place to live in Denmark, and a few weeks later we were living in a massive house with 3 floors, far away from our families and friends.

被踢出大学后，我们决定整个团队一起搬进去并分担租金。 我们用谷歌搜索了丹麦最便宜的住所，几周后，我们住在一栋三层楼的大房子里，远离家人和朋友。

It felt so awesome to finally have our own place without worrying about being kicked out. We lived and worked together in the house for a year. In that time we changed, from a group of friends, to a team of professionals. At one point we were 16 people living together, which resulted in unforeseen problems. Like the massive amounts of garbage (we ate a lot of frozen pizzas that year) to the arguments about cleaning up that we often took in our team meetings. But we managed it pretty well. We all wanted the same thing, to release our game.

终于拥有自己的位置而不必担心被踢出局，真是太棒了。 我们在房子里一起生活和工作了一年。 那时，我们从一群朋友变成了一支专业团队。 当时我们只有16个人一起生活，这导致了无法预料的问题。 就像大量垃圾(那一年我们吃了很多冷冻披萨)一样，我们在团队会议中经常参加有关清理的争论。 但是我们管理得很好。 我们都想要同一件事，发布我们的游戏。

Working from home

居家办公

Money was always a problem but that’s OK

钱总是一个问题，但是没关系

How did we manage to get so far on so little money? First, we didn’t get paid for our work. We’ve reached the point of (almost) finalizing our game with the help of 30 developers who have received no salary. Second, we had a couple of key breakthroughs with funding. We got a much-needed cash infusion when the Danish Film Institute gave us almost $40,000. We used that money on team transportation, the rent for our house, hardware, software and conferences.

这么少的钱，我们怎么能做到这么远？ 首先，我们的工作没有得到报酬。 在30名未领薪水的开发人员的帮助下，我们已经(几乎)完成了游戏的定稿。 第二，我们在资金方面取得了两个关键突破。 丹麦电影学院给了我们近40,000美元时，我们急需现金注入。 我们将这些钱用于团队交通，房屋租金，硬件，软件和会议。

We also launched a Kickstarter project in October 2012. With only one week to go we still lacked 35% of the funds. We put out a photo album that told the story I’m telling here. It gave our project the emotional punch we needed to get more backers, and just 8 hours after posting the album we surpassed our funding goal.

我们还在2012年10月启动了Kickstarter项目。仅一周的时间，我们仍然缺少35％的资金。 我们发行了一个相册 ，讲述了我在这里讲的故事。 这给我们的项目带来了情感上的冲击，我们需要获得更多支持者的支持，而在发布专辑后仅8小时，我们就超过了筹款目标。

New challenges and new milestones Currently we are in a new office in Copenhagen. We now have 10 full-time developers and one part-timer. There are new hurdles to jump, such as how to get on Steam. There are also new rewards, like winning for Best Danish Game Developer 2013.

新的挑战和新的里程碑目前，我们在哥本哈根设有新办事处。 现在，我们有10名全职开发人员和1名兼职人员。 有许多新的障碍需要克服，例如如何上Steam。 还有一些新的奖励，例如获得2013年最佳丹麦游戏开发者奖。

In my opinion being an indie studio can be just like being a professional football team; it’s full of financial uncertainty yet requires boundless dedication and a love for what you do. Realize that, and start failing so you can start winning.

在我看来，成为独立工作室就像职业足球队一样。 它充满了财务上的不确定性，但需要无限的奉献精神以及对所做工作的热爱。 意识到这一点，并开始失败，以便您可以开始获胜。

演示地址

Video: A chat with Steffen Kabbelgaard at Unite Nordic 2013
视频：在Unite Nordic 2013与Steffen Kabbelgaard的聊天

Our story continues at http://forcedthegame.com/story/

我们的故事继续在http://forcedthegame.com/story/

翻译自: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/07/03/from-camping-in-the-classroom-to-a-real-game-dev-studio/

海坨山露营