作者：Raul Aliaga Diaz

社交游戏在社交网络之类的环境中运营，人们通常认为社交游戏开发有个最大的优势，就是你可以衡量所有想在游戏中设置的元素。因而，设计并不会遇到什么挑战，因为只要尝试各种选择并进行衡量，保留生效的元素即可。这种方法听起来就像是“无需考虑基础生化分析结果，只需对各种药物采取临床试验，然后观察哪种药物能够产生疗效即可”。

事实上，要进行此类测试，你需要有个合理的基础架构并做好因那些起先不甚确定的元素而流失某些玩家的思想准备。当你开发的是新游戏时，上述说法显得格外确切，因为你眼下还未获得任何度量数据。调查玩家体验不是让你学习如何设计游戏，而是让你学习如何使已经精心设计的游戏更能取悦用户。

因而社交游戏在发布前的设计需要良好地平衡游戏设计实践，考虑到你随后将获得真正的游戏度量和在线反馈。讨论游戏特色和设计相关问题时必须牢记的准则包括：

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多种玩法设计。你所设计游戏的用户群可大可小，但对于某个特别场景和游戏的核心机制以及作品带来的体验，还有现存的社交网络、智能手机平台的不同游戏玩法，你还并不知道哪种最适合自己的游戏。比如，某些玩家致力于优化游戏中资源的使用，有些人可能偏爱独自享受游戏的乐趣，有些人会很看重向好友展现自己的成就等。尝试在游戏设计中考虑到多种玩家，在设计改变可能影响这些玩家之间的平衡性之时不要将其忽视。你并非需要永远满足所有类型玩家的需求，但得权衡好各类玩家的需求，把握好这种平衡性。

社交化设计。这里并非想发起“哪些游戏不是真正的社交游戏”之类的大讨论，只是提醒你最好设计能与朋友一起玩的社交游戏。这不仅涉及到支持玩家互相帮助、竞争和协作的游戏内机制，通常还有更深层次的内容。需要考虑到玩家会问自己这个问题：如果我的好友知道我玩这款游戏会怎么说呢？通常玩家的同辈人不一定是游戏开发者或玩家，因而你的艺术风格、角色个性、游戏内的笑点和所有你设计出用于取乐或让你的玩家感到惊奇的细节，可能都会成为最有力的病毒性传播工具。这完全取决于你的玩家如何定义他们的社交体验，而不是将社交体验限制在游戏之中。

规模化设计。某些时候游戏设计得很棒，用许多让玩家感到很特别的奖励将他们牢牢地联系在一起。但你可曾想过，如果游戏中有1万名玩家，这些好处是否会烟消云散，或者特色依然存在但你酝酿中的内容或技术已不再支持你的想法（游戏邦注：指游戏中玩家数上千或上万后）。你的游戏特色和设计决定应当独立于体验游戏的玩家数量之外，如果也能独立于玩家在游戏中花的时间就更好了。

扩展化设计。你怀揣很棒的想法，可以不断对其改善和深化。相反，如果你有的是独特的游戏机制，某些情况下可能会打破与其他机制间的平衡性，你可能就无法找到将其扩展的方法。当玩家来到你的游戏中，他们带来了许多在其他社交游戏、传统游戏或其他应用中未曾见到的期望，也希望能够看到你的设置较为自然，而你必须通过核心机制来满足这些期望。但是一旦他们明白了游戏机制，如果你想要让他们留在游戏之中，就需要有让他们感到惊奇的事物、向他们已掌握的知识发起挑战并在游戏机制中增加更多微妙的复杂事物。所以别在一开始的时候就提供所有的内容，你会让玩家感到不知所措。留些许内容以待日后发布，让他们感到惊奇。

可衡量设计。这一点可能看起来很简单，但事实并非如此。你想要从游戏有限的数据流中得到最多的信息，就要在游戏设计时考虑到这个目标。如果某些内容受用户喜爱，将其以可衡量的特别形式构建到游戏中，期待能够提供数据。别做主观臆断，因为这不是个数据，你不能通过主观想法来衡量玩家在游戏中的参与度。

异步玩法设计。社交游戏的关键特征在于其融入玩家生活之中，而并非徘徊在生活之外。这也是为何农场类游戏会如此流行的原因，玩家在游戏中做出的约定让他们规划自己何时重返游戏，而且不会为此等行为感到厌倦。多人游戏通常需要同步玩法，但这可能很难在此类游戏中实现，因为异步玩法已深深扎根于社交游戏设计中。更深入地审视想法中多人体验所需的同步性，找到将其变为异步的方法。如果这显得“不自然”也没什么关系，因为玩家对这些做法不会产生怀疑。

长久化设计。你在控制器或PC上的单人游戏背景和体验让你轻松意识到那些游戏的优点在何处，但这在社交游戏中丝毫不起作用。比如，在游戏中设定故事模式，让所有玩家参与探索游戏中的秘密。当秘密被众人所知晓时，它只能成为已发生过的故事而已。随后玩家要玩什么呢？他们是否还会像秘密未公示前那样玩游戏吗？不是说你不能在游戏中添加此类事物，只是需要在小范围内用这种设计来取悦你的当前玩家，别让未来的玩家觉得他们已经错过了一切精彩的故事。

总得来说，这些只是我认为在发布前规划设计决定时可以采用的有效方法，你可以灵活应用根据用户需要来调整游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Some social game design principles before launch

Raul Aliaga Diaz

What’s generally regarded as one of the biggest advantages of developing social games, meaning that they run on a social network like environment, is that you can measure whatever you like. Thus, the design challenges shouldn’t be that hard because… ‘just try a few options, measure, and then keep what sticks’. That approach would be like ‘let’s just perform clinical trials on several drugs without basic biochemistry analysis and see what sticks’.

The truth is that in order to perform such tests, you need to have a reasonable infrastructure and be willing to alienate some players a little -with those things you’re not so sure in the first place. This is specially true when you’re developing a new game because, well, you don’t actually have metrics yet. It’s not like you can learn to design games at the players experience expense, but to learn how to please them even more with an already carefully designed game.

So designing a social game before launch requires a good balance of game design good practices and considering that you’ll actually have game metrics and live feedback afterwards. Some principles to have in mind when discussing features and several design related issues are:

Design for multiple styles of play. You may have a niche audience, or a very broad one, but given the particular setting and core mechanics your game has and the whole experience it can bring given the format -social network, smart phone- different styles of play can co-exist, and you don’t know yet which one will serve the game best. For example, some players will try to optimize the use of resources of your game, other might just enjoy expressing themselves through it, others will brag heavily to their friends about their achievements, etc. Try to think of the several things players might enjoy at a high level view and keep them in mind when design changes might affect the balance among them. Not necessarily you must satisfy all styles at once all the time, but be aware of the trade-offs involved in your decisions, so you can allow players to feel an overall balance of ways to enjoy your game, and then adjust and balance them better.

Design for social. Without entering in the whole ‘these games aren’t really social’ debate, this is just to remind you that usually these games are best enjoyed with friends, and this include having not only mechanisms in-game to allow players to help each other, to compete, to cooperate, but it usually goes beyond that. Consider your players asking implicitly to themselves: If my friends know I play this game, what it will say about me? Usually your players’ peers are not necessarily game developers or gamers, then your art style, the personality in your characters, the jokes in-game and all the details you design to surprise and delight your players might be your most powerful viral tools. It will all depend on how your players define their social experiences, and not how social experiences should be bounded within a game.

Design to scale. Sometimes your features are awesome, giving strong tights among players with lots of rewards that make them feel unique and special… but when you ask yourself ‘what if 10, 100, 1000, 10000 players are doing this?’ all those benefits seem to disappear, or they’re still awesome but your content pipeline or tech specs won’t support your idea beyond 10 or 1000 players. Your features and design decisions should be independent of the number of players that experience them, and hopefully also independent on how heavily they play them.

Design to expand. You have a cool idea, and then improvements, and then more, and more, and more. Conversely, you have a clever twist for a mechanic, but it somehow breaks the balance with the other ones, and you can’t possibly find ways to expand that twist. When your players approach your game, they will come with lots of expectations from other social games, ‘traditional’ games or other applications, and also expectations about ‘what feels natural’ regarding your setting, and you must address those expectations in the way you teach your players your core mechanics. But once they have learned them, and if you want to keep them engaged for some more time, you’ll need to surprise them, to challenge their learning and add more subtle complexities to your mechanics. So don’t give it all away at the beginning, you’ll overwhelm your players. Save some stuff for later and surprise them.

Design to measure. This one might seem rather obvious, but it’s not. You’ll want the maximum amount of information from the minimum set of data streams of your game, and when designing without considering this goal, you may end up adding some very cool features or content twists that you feel intuitively your players enjoy, and from what you see later on social media, forums, etc it will definitely feel like it, but remember to not forget your silent majority for the vocal minority. If some content twist is enjoyable, figure out an special way to ‘frame it’ within your game in a way it can be measured, and hopefully useful to provide data for several things to measure. Just don’t assume that because it’s not a number, you can’t figure out a way to measure your players engagement with it. Unless, of course, you’re afraid your unmeasurable quirks are not that funny.

Design for asynchronous play. A key aspect of social games is that they embed in players lives, not the other way around. This is why ‘crops’ and all their friends are so popular, these are appointments players make with the game allowing them to plan their schedule to play it, and not feel overwhelmed by having to actually be at an specific time playing it. Usually multiplayer-like ideas require synchronous play, but that might just seem to hard to achieve in these games, that are already loaded with the expectation of asynchronous play. Try decoupling the synchronicity of your ideas by keeping a high level view of that multiplayer experience and figuring out a way to make it asynchronous, it doesn’t matter if it’s ‘not natural’, player’s suspension of disbelief in these games will take place.

Design for long term. If your background and experience with games resides on single player games on consoles or PC, is usually easy to come up with ideas that are perfect for those games, but don’t make sense on a social game. For example, setting a whole story arc with your characters to engage all players to discover a ‘mystery’ in your game, and then when the mystery is solved, it’s just a shiny story in the past. What if players come to play afterwards? Will they enjoy the mystery knowing the answer before playing? It’s not that you can’t possibly add such things to your game, do it just on a small scale to surprise and delight your current players, but don’t let future players feel like they’ve lost everything you have to offer.

Summarizing, these are just some useful ways I have learned to frame design decisions balancing the tension before launch, giving you enough flexibility to have a carefully crafted experience that gives you freedom later to adjust the game smoothly to your most engaged audiences. (Source: Develop)