发家致富新方式——游戏制作与设计
From making their own games, to broadcasting live online, to playing professionally in packed stadiums – how entrepreneurs in their teens and twenties earn a living on video games.
靠设计制作自己的游戏，当在线游戏主播，又或者在人山人海的体育场里参加职业联赛—今天跟朋友们一起看看那些青少年或者二十几岁的青年创业者是如何靠电子游戏发家的吧。
Alex Balfanz is an 18-year-old student at Duke University in North Carolina.
艾利克斯.巴尔凡茨是北卡罗莱纳州杜克大学的一名18岁学生。
Every day he has lectures or seminars, followed by assignments.
每一天他都要去听讲座或者研讨会，然后完成作业。
Like many students his age, he devotes a couple of hours per day, and many more at weekends, to video games.
跟很多同龄学生一样，每天他都会花几个小时来玩电子游戏，周末的时候甚至更多。
But he’s not just playing them – he’s making them. And making a lot of money doing it.
不过他不仅仅是玩游戏—他还自己制作游戏。还通过它大赚了一笔。
“In the 10 months that Jailbreak has been released, it has already yielded seven figure profits,” Balfanz says of his cops-and-robbers adventure game released last year.
“在《越狱》这款游戏发行的十个月里，它已经转到了七位数的利润，”巴尔凡茨说起了自己去年发行的警匪冒险类游戏。
A few weeks ago, it was played for the billionth time.
几周前，它已经被玩了上十亿次。
Balfanz is just one of thousands of young gaming entrepreneurs in their teens or twenties making money in an industry that made $36 billion last year.
在那些还在青少年或者二十几岁时就在业内发达的青年创业者中，巴尔凡茨只是其中一员，这个行业去年的总收益是三百六十亿美元。
It's offering new ways to make a living that didn’t exist 10 or even five years ago, even within the games industry.
这样便产生了十年或者五年前，甚至在游戏行业内都还不存在的新生行业。
Another 18-year-old student, Andrew Bereza, is the creator of Miner’s Haven and Azure Mines, two games he made over the last two years for Roblox, a kids-focused platform that allows children to build their own games and publish them online – it's the same platform that houses Balfanz’s Jailbreak.
另一个十八岁的学生，安德鲁.贝雷扎则是《矿工天堂》和《天蓝矿山》的设计者，这两款游戏是他去年为Roblox制作的，Roblox是一个为儿童创立的平台，这里孩子们可以制作自己的游戏并且把它发布到网上—巴尔凡茨的《越狱》就在这个平台里。
“While I’m not in the annual millions like a couple of my colleagues have recently hit, I’ve been steadily earning six figures every year since I started,” he says.
“尽管没能像我几个同事那样年收入过百万，我入行以来每年也有六位数的稳定收入，”他说。
He is using his earnings to pay for university, where he is studying computer science.
他正用这笔收入来交大学学费，在里面他学的是计算机科学专业。
If he didn’t have a platform to distribute his games, “I don’t know how I ever would have been able to afford college or the ability to do full-time game development”, he says.
要不是有这个平台来发布自己的游戏，“我都不知道我怎么能上得起大学，又或者如何去做全职的游戏开发，”他说。
Today, thanks to online sales platforms like the App Store, Steam or Roblox, anyone with the right idea and some development nous can reach more than a billion people.
如今，借助像App 商店，Stream 或者Roblox这样的在线销售平台，任何有合适的想法和研发技能的人都可以拥有十亿多的受众。
But while the technology and ecosystem to reach this vast customer base has only appeared in the last decade, the DIY mentality of young app developers is nothing new: it’s actually not too different from wannabe rock stars starting bands in their garages in the 1970s, or aspiring directors filming home movies on a VHS camcorder in the 1980s.
不够尽管这种到达大量消费者基础的技术和大环境只在最近十年才有，年轻的app开发者的DIY心理却不是什么新东西了：实际上它与那些1970年代想当摇滚明星的人建个车库乐队，或者1980年代立志当导游的人利用家庭录像机录制家庭电影并没有什么不同。
“With creative industries, that’s always been the case, particularly in young people,” says Roger Altizer, co-founder of the entertainment arts and engineering programme at the University of Utah.
“在创意行业里，情况一直都是这样的，特别是在年轻人当中，”罗杰.阿尔蒂泽说，他是犹他大学娱乐艺术与工程项目的一名联合成立人。
He says that young people have always come up with creative expressions and have tried to monetise them.
他说年轻人总是能想出有创意的各种形式，并试图将其变现。
With video games specifically, Altizer points out that in the 1980s, young designers made their own video games, stored them on floppy disks and put them in plastic bags, then sold them physically at stores, capturing a certain entrepreneurial spirit.
特别是对电子游戏来说，阿尔蒂泽指出在1980年代就有年轻的设计者将自己的电子游戏储存在软盘上然后放到塑料袋里在商店里实体售卖，非常具有创业精神。
Today? We have indie games like Flappy Bird that become worldwide sensations, achieving overnight success.
如今呢？我们有像《愤怒的小鸟》这样全球知名的，一夜走红的成功案例。
However, there are now so many being published, it’s becoming an ever-more crowded market.
不过，如今发行的游戏如此众多，以至于市场有点饱和了。
Still, the idea of possible success in this field fuels dreams.
不过，在这个行业类取得成功的想法还是激励着很多梦想家。
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