游戏邦注：本文原作者是英国游戏设计者Tadhg Kelly，他在《What Games Are》这篇博客中提出了“公平是一种个人看法”的观点，并探讨了游戏玩家是如何理解“公平”对于他们体验游戏影响，以及游戏如何通过提供有形奖励而让玩家产生“公平”错觉的现象。

对于一款好游戏来说，“公平性”极其重要，但是却很少有游戏会直接表现出这种“公平”。或许一个游戏规则是公平的，但是玩家可能会因为输了游戏而觉得事实并非如此，这也正是游戏设计过程中的棘手问题之一。

“公平”是主观而非客观的概念。即使游戏奖励只是一种公平性的假象，玩家也还是会认为只有获得相应的有形回报，他们才会觉得游戏规则是公平的。

公平的行动与公正的结果

有人建议英国的公民投票权从相对多数代表制（游戏邦注：得到相对多数、但并不一定过半数选票的候选人当选）改为备择性选举制（游戏邦注：选民可在选票上说明对几个候选人的优先选择次序的一种投票制度）。

这里先撇开政治不谈，我们来看看这两种制度的支持者是如何为他们所认为的“公平”辩解的。他们都认为自己支持的制度是最公平的，殊不知他们所定义的“公平”却是完全不同的概念。

支持前者的辩论者说到，在相对多数代表制中，选民把投票放进投票箱中，他们选择自己所支持的议员，得数最多的议员因此当选。每一个选民的选票分量相当，所得的结果就是公平结果，没有任何投机取巧的行为，所以这是一种“公平”的行动。当选的议员即使他并未获得绝大多数选票，但是他获得了议员中最多的选票，所以他将代表整个选区，要对所有选民负责。因为在这种投票制度下，每个选民都只有一张选票，所以很显然这种行动是非常公平的。

相反的，支持后者的辩论者主要从“公平”的结果中进行辩论。在备择性选举制度下，当选的议员必须获得超过一半的选民投票，并且这些选民是按照自己的喜好进行选择的。这种选举制度主要是想挑选更多通过人民普选出来的议员。因为过去的相对多数代表制允许少部分人管理整个国家（游戏邦注：已经很久没有一个执政党的人民普选票数超过40%了），所以他们认为备择性选举制所追求的“公平”结果是不公平的。

结果比行动更难与“公平”扯上关系（游戏邦注：这就是为什么相对多数代表制能获得更多英国公民支持的原因）。“公平”是很“情绪化”的概念，所以很多游戏设计理念往往更重视玩家所采取的行动而并非结果。玩家希望自己能是游戏中的操纵者，如果他们感觉被某款游戏操纵了甚至是玩弄了，他们将变成像迷宫中的老鼠那般无措。

适当地调整“公平性”

当玩家像只被困在迷宫中的老鼠，周围只有围墙，转换器和“目标食物”时，它们会变得更敏锐更有意识。这对老鼠来说可能并不是坏事，但人类是更有意识的动物，并非深知自己的处境，所以这种情况对他们来说就不好玩了，这种游戏只会让玩家觉得完全不公平。

Tiny Wings

《Tiny Wings》是一种典型的例子，这款充满趣味的iPhone游戏中有一只不会飞翔但是会跳跃的小鸟。玩家只需轻轻一触屏幕，小鸟就能在山丘上跳跃，滑行并加速。这是一款以“行动”为主的游戏，给玩家们带来了很多非凡的乐趣。

但是它的问题在于游戏级别和奖励布局是随意性的，所以玩家们并不清楚在哪个地区降落才是最好的选择。因为玩家不能准确预测降落区域，也不能确定加速度，所以它的玩法更多取决于玩家的运气而非其掌握的技巧。在这里，玩家不会像受困的老鼠那般无助，而是会期待有更好的迷宫让他们穿越。

这款游戏的开发者始终致力保持游戏“场地”的有趣性和挑战性，并提供给玩家耳目一新的休闲体验。同时他还尝试以较少的时间创建出最丰富多彩的“岛屿”布局，这点正是许多小型独立开发游戏所无法达到的境界。但问题在于，它的游戏结果并不是那么“公平”。

汤姆·查特菲尔德(Tom Chatfield) 以管理大型多人游戏中的道具掉落概率为例，描述了玩家对于游戏奖励的心理反应。为了完成游戏中的任务，玩家也许需要收集15个道具，而这些道具的出现频率是10%。但是如果在最后一关，道具的出现频率仍然是10%，那么玩家满心欢喜，但却未能如期找到最后的道具时，他们就将会认为这款游戏具有欺骗性（虽然事实并非如此）。玩家就会认为这款游戏不“公平”，并再也没有兴趣继续玩游戏了。解决方法其实很简单，只要开发者把最后几个道具的出现频率提高到15%或者20%甚至是25%即可。虽然这样做是“不公平”的，游戏结果是“扭曲”的，但是这却能站在玩家的角度，帮他们顺利完成游戏任务。玩家也会因此觉得自己的行动确实获得了回报，从而继续推动游戏进程。

玩家的“投资性”问题

像《Sega Rally》和《Mario Kart》这类型的赛车游戏一直通过积极“欺骗”玩家，帮助他们能够追赶上其他玩家。可以说新玩家非常喜欢这种“欺骗”，但是那些投资型玩家（游戏邦注：铁杆玩家）却会认为这种行为是“不公平”的。

比起“公平”的行动，投资型玩家更想要看到“公平”的结果。他们花费了大量的精力，时间和金钱于游戏上，如果游戏的结果并不能回报他们的付出，他们将会很郁闷。他们很讨厌那些从这种“欺骗”中获益的玩家，也很讨厌那种以玩家为借口进行“欺骗”的游戏，因为对他们来说这个游戏世界意义非凡，他们不想失去这种意义。

新玩家和投资型玩家对于游戏的关注是不一样的。新玩家希望能尽早并频繁地从游戏中获取奖励，而投资型玩家则更希望能从中获取一些实质性的东西。比起轻松地赢得胜利，这些投资型玩家更想成就一番“伟业”，所以游戏开发者应该更认真地思考一下这些投资型玩家的想法。

eve-online

这就是为什么《EVE Online》能够吸引这么多死忠用户的原因了，因为这款游戏很好地诠释了“公平”这个词。它给玩家提供了一片领域，并且不去干涉他们，玩家可以自由转弯，自由交易，自由射击，自由“耍诡计”与他人竞争等等。虽然《EVE Online》赢得了很多忠实用户，但是它同样也“欺骗”了很多局外人。虽然它为刚接触这款游戏新玩家时提供了一块较为安全的区域，但是与其他大部分多人游戏相比，它对新玩家的“宽容”远远不够。但是对于《EVE Online》的用户群来说，这一点才是最有效的做法。比起新玩家，CCP Games（游戏邦注：《EVE Online》的开发公司）更倾向于照顾他们的投资型玩家，这一点可是久经时间考验的明智选择，不过并非每款游戏都适合这种操作。

“欺骗”玩家的策略

如果一个玩家想要在游戏上进行“投资”，那么他就必须掌握一定的游戏技巧。一般来说，游戏开发商最好的做法就是努力去解决那些“不公平”问题，通过降低游戏中的随机性，提高玩家的游戏技巧。

不论是通过调整游戏级别，还是解决游戏内部的阻碍因素以提高玩家的胜算率，其结果都是相同的：即随机性会减少，控制力会增强，这些变化将能使玩家拥有更多胜算，并使他们觉得游戏是“公平”的。《Tiny Wings》如果能有一个更固定的游戏关卡，并更好按照sun rule（太阳能规则，时间越久能量越大）那样执行，这个游戏可能还会比现在更受欢迎。

对于个人游戏或者合作型游戏来说，处理好“公平性”问题其实很简单，但是对于竞争性游戏来说，要做到这点却并不容易。有时候玩家玩游戏仅仅只是为了消遣（像《Tiny Wings》带给玩家的就是最简单的娱乐方式），他们往往没有任何动力将一个复杂的游戏玩到头，所以游戏开发者就更需要带给新玩家一种“公平”的感觉，让他们愿意接触这些游戏。

有些游戏为了解决这种背离“公平”的窘境就采用了“欺骗”策略，还有一些游戏则是通过改变游戏模式或者提高游戏级别来改变玩法。如果一款游戏能使玩家产生继续行动的想法，那么它就可以算是很好地解决“不公平”的问题了，同时这也将使离开游戏的玩家清晰地回想起游戏的魅力所在。所以游戏开发者们，请尽管使用一些小窍门吧，只要能吸引玩家留住玩家，这些“计谋”是不伤大雅的。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Opinion: Fairness Is A Perception

[In this opinion piece originally found on Tadhg Kelly's What Games Are blog, and reprinted in full with his permission, UK-based game designer Kelly looks at how a player's perception of what is fair can affect his or her enjoyment with a game, and how the game can cheat to provide tangible rewards.]

Fairness is one of the most important aspects of a good game, but it is rarely straightforward. While a game’s rules might be balanced, the player may feel that the experience is not fair, and this is a source of design tension.

The reason is that fairness is not an objective quantity. It’s subjective. Games are fair when the player sees that his actions in the game are achieving tangible rewards, even if the game is cheating to provide them to him.

Fair Actions vs Fair Outcomes

A referendum in the United Kingdom proposes to change voting from the first past the post system to the alternative vote system.

Political leanings aside, the interesting part of the debate (for this blog) is the argument over what fairness is. Both sides claim that their method of voting is the most fair, but they mean very different things.

The first past the post system argues that the vote at the ballot box is a fair action. You pick your horse, and the MP who gets the most votes wins. My vote carries equal weight to yours because we all get to check a box or pull a lever, and the result is the result.

The elected MP represents the whole constituency, but the implicit understanding is that even though he may have not achieved an overall majority, his responsibility is to all. It’s easy to explain to the voter that everybody has one vote, easy to show that each is equal, and so the activity of voting feels fair.

The alternative vote argument, on the other hand, is about fair outcomes. It argues that every MP who gets elected should have won support from more than half the people in their constituency even if that means using preference-based voting.

Their view is that Parliament should have a number of MPs that is more in line with the popular vote than historically has been the case. First past the post tends to allow minorities to rule the country (no ruling party has had more than around 40% of the popular vote for a long time) and so their position is that the outcome is unfair.

Outcomes are harder to relate to than actions (which is why the first past the post campaign is likely to win the referendum). Fairness is emotional, so from a game design perspective it’s the actions of the player that matter, not the outcome. The player needs to know that he is the active agent of change. If he feels at the mercy of the game, or that the game is toying with him or being opaque, then he feels like a rat in a maze.

Adjusting for Fairness

A rat in a maze is trapped by a series of arbitrary walls, switches and food pellets. While that may be perfectly fine for a rat, a human being is generally more perceptive and aware of their situation. The sensation is not one that is enjoyable. Far from feeling fair, the game that does this feels arbitrary and unfair.

Tiny Wings is an example of a game with this problem. It’s an iPhone game in which you play a little bird that can’t quite fly, but can swoop. Positioned correctly, the bird can use the curvature of the land as acceleration ramps achieve a sort of flight, and the action of doing this well is a real thrill.

The issue is that the game’s level and reward layouts are randomised, so it’s impossible to get to know the landscape of the islands better. You can’t reliably predict where the right zones are to drop down from the clouds, how to achieve sequences of boosts, and so succeeding in the game relies more on the luck of a good level layout than any particular act of skill. It’s places the player in the role of a rat hoping for a good maze.

I can see why the developer has done this. He is trying to keep the islands in the game interesting and continually challenging, to provide a refreshing casual experience. He is also trying to do so without having to spend a lot of time manually creating island layouts, which for any small indie game is an issue. The problem is that the result eventually feels unfair.

Tom Chatfield uses an example of how massive multiplayer games manage item drops to describe the psychology of rewards. A player may need to collect 15 items in order to complete a task, and those items have a 10% chance of appearing. The player gathers the items at a steady rate, but as he approaches the finish line, the last couple of items do not appear as the he expects. He thinks that the game is cheating, but it isn’t. It’s still using the same 10% chance.

But still the player feels as though the game is not being fair, and so dislikes playing. The solution is fore the game to raise the chances of the last few items to drop to 15%, 20% or even 25%. It deliberately cheats on behalf of the player to make it more likely that he will complete the task. The actions now feel fair, even though the outcome is skewed, the player feels as though they are progressing toward something great by dint of their action.

Investment Issues

Racing games like Sega Rally and Mario Kart have long used active cheating to help poorer players catch up to better ones and keep the races close. This is great for new players, however for invested players (those who have played the game for a while) this sort of adjustment often feels unfair.

An invested player expects the game to have fair outcomes more than fair actions. They feel that they had to put a lot of work, time and money into the game, and so should everybody else.

Invested players get angry if they feel that all of their hard work is for nothing. They hate the sense that other players are cheating, or that a game is cheating on their behalf, because

the game and its world means something to the invested player. They don’t want that meaning to feel futile.

The concerns of new vs invested players are often very different. A new player tends to want the game to award them early and often and feel as though they are empowered, whereas an invested player wants to achieve things that matter to them. They are motivated by the personal goal of the epic win rather than the simpler wins of ordinary actions, and at some point their concerns need to be your concerns too.

This is why a game like EVE Online has attracted a significant core of die-hard fans. EVE is famously strict in its interpretation of fairness. It gives players a universe to play in, but essentially tells them that they are on their own. Players are free to wheel, deal, shoot, scam and otherwise compete with each other and EVE will not intervene.

EVE has a very loyal base of users as a result, but is also imposing for outsiders. While it does have safe areas for new players to get to grips with the game, it’s a lot less forgiving on the whole than many other massive multiplayer games.

And for the EVE audience, that is exactly how things should be. CCP made the choice to look after their invested players more than their new players, and over the long term this has proved to be a very smart choice. For other games, the opposite choice is the right one.

Cheating for the Player

It’s important for a player to be able to achieve some amount of mastery in a game because that is how they become invested in it. In general, the best course of action to try and solve unfairness and promote mastery is to reduce randomness.

Whether through adjusting level content, or manipulating hidden factors to increase chances of winning, the result is the same: Less randomness and more control lead to greater opportunities to achieve, and so it all feels fair. Tiny Wings with fixed levels and a better implementation of the sun rule, for example, would be a much better game to play over the long term than it currently is.

It’s easier in a single or co-operative based game to manage the perception of fairness, but in a competitive game especially it’s very easy to get it wrong. At some point the game experience has to be about more than just the simple joy of action (as Tiny Wings illustrates) or else there is little reason to carry on, but at the same time there is the need to keep the new players feeling fair too.

Some games solve this quandary by allowing active cheating options to be turned on or off. Another solution is to have different game modes, or difficulty levels, that alter how the game plays.

It’s better, if you can, to not make players formal choices for which they have no context. It helps retain some sense of charm in the idea of the game if the player is kept away from switches and dials that tune the game, as they often serve to remind that the game is just a system. It is, but a little showmanship to cover over the components never hurts.（source:gamasutra）