如何塑造好的虚拟世界？为何某些虚拟世界吸引玩家一次次回头？我们能从社交游戏中学到什么呢？本系列博文将回答这些问题，随着话题深入，我们还会细致剖析如何成功设计虚拟世界，本文主要探讨“虚拟成就”的设计。

每个人都想获得胜利者、成功者和英雄的感觉，你喜欢那种自己打败游戏的感觉！然而你的大部分受众没有足够登上排行榜前列的天赋，所以他们可能不想去做尝试。

这是虚拟世界真正面临的问题。如果你想要获得利润，就需要顾及数百万无法登上排行榜的玩家。所以要以多数玩家为目标设计游戏，取悦他们，让许多人觉得自己是个英雄！

我们可以通过向某些他们可以控制的事情提供奖励的形式来实现上述目标。他们可能并没有眼疾手快的优势，但每个人都可以控制他们花在游戏上的时间。为他们在虚拟世界中花投入的时间提供奖励。

当然，我们并不是贫乏地根据他们花的时间来给出奖励。站在房间中等待分数上涨，这不是个有趣的游戏！这种做法不妥当。每个人都有自主选择时间分配的权利，需要让玩家感觉到自己做了某些事情才获得奖励，只是要将这些事情设计得简单而且可重复，不会让玩家有挫败感。

treasure-isle-monkey-palace

以Zynga游戏《Treasure Isle》为例。对于那些不熟悉游戏的玩家来说，游戏很简单：探索许多岛屿并挖掘财宝。每个岛屿都被分割成许许多多的格子，玩家点击鼠标来挖掘这些格子。游戏引擎决定玩家找到财宝、钱币、水果或一无所获，几乎每次挖掘都会获得奖励，但财宝很少。

游戏不需要什么技巧，只是点击和挖掘而已。但游戏给人的感觉很棒。通过简单的重复性行动，玩家获得经验值、升级、找到财宝，Zynga用这些方式确保他们能够为每个细微的成功而庆祝。

确实，游戏中没有艰难的抉择，没有失败，没有令人感到困难的障碍。玩家做的事情很少，却能够获得丰厚的奖励。每个人都可以获得成功。（游戏邦注：这便是所谓的“虚拟成就”，很容易就可以获得成功）这对虚拟世界来说至关重要。

将此与《光晕》之类的游戏相比，在后者中我确实需要更有天分才能完成游戏。我需要学习如何计划展开攻击、快速射击、提高准确性，而且还要使用恰当的武器。对于许多休闲游戏玩家来说，要求实在太多了。

我并非想在此诋毁《光晕》，这是款极好的游戏，但并不适合成百上千万的休闲玩家，Zynga的《Farmville》月玩家数已超过8000万。尽管只有简单的点击和挖掘机制，该公司新游戏《Treasure Isle》发布两周后便获得了600多万玩家。休闲玩家的数量确实很庞大。

虚拟世界设计不仅只有像《Treasure Isle》那样简单的点击和挖掘，这篇博文讲述的只是虚拟成就的重要性。

玩家并非都很有天分，所以应该寻找某种简单到任何人都可以做的机制，然后为他们在游戏中花的时间提供足够的奖励。让所有玩家都有机会感到自己是个成功者。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Game Design part 1: No hard choices, no losing, only false achievement

What makes a great virtual world? Why do some worlds keep players coming back time after time? And what can we learn from social games? This is the first in a series of blog posts answering those questions, and more, as we dig into, and dissect, the design of successful virtual worlds. In this first post we’re going to look at ‘False Achievement’. Check out the other posts in our lessons learned series.

Everyone wants to feel like a winner, a success, and a hero; you want to feel like you’re beating the game! Yet the overwhelming majority of your audience are never going to be talented enough to reach the top of your leader-boards. So they just don’t bother trying.

This is a real problem for virtual worlds. If you’re going to make interesting revenues you’ll need to reach the millions of players who will never be the talented few at the top of the ranks. So design your world for the majority, delight them, and make the many feel like heroes!

We do that by rewarding them for something they can control. They might not have the natural hand eye coordination to excel at skill games, and they can’t change that, but everyone can control how much time they spend playing. Reward your players for the time they spend in the world.

Of course, we don’t really reward them for the time they spend. Standing in a room waiting for points to tick up is not a fun game! That’s going too far. Time is a proxy, players need to feel like they’ve done something to earn their reward, only make it something simple, repeatable, and something they can’t fail to succeed at.

Take Zynga’s new Treasure Isle game. For those unfamiliar, the concept is quite simple: explore a series of island and dig for treasure. Each island is split into a grid, players click to dig one of the grid cells. The game engine decides if the player found treasure, coins, fruit, or nothing at all – nearly every dig has some reward, few have the treasure.

There is no skill to the game, it’s a case methodically clicking and digging. But That’s the beauty. Through a simple repeatable action, players earn experience, level up, find treasure and along the way Zynga make sure they get to celebrate every little success.

Really, there are no hard choices, no losing, no difficult obstacles. Players are tasked with very little, but are rewarded handsomely. Anyone can succeed. It’s false achievement, success made easy. That’s a great thing for your virtual world.

Contrast this with a game like Halo – I actually have to become more talented to finish the game. I need to learn how to plan an attack, shoot faster, more accurately, and with the right weapon. For many casual gamers it’s all a little too much.

I’m not critiquing Halo, it’s a superb game. But it’s not the right game for the millions of casual gamers. And there really are millions of casual gamers; Zynga’s Farmville has over 80 million monthly players, and their latest game, Treasure Isle, with its simple click and dig mechanic, has achieved over 6 million players in it’s first two weeks. It’s huge.

There’s much more to games like Treasure Isle than simple clicking and digging, and this is only the first post in a series exploring the design of virtual world. But right now, I just want you to take away the importance of false achievement.

Not all players are talented gamers, so find a mechanic that’s so simple anyone can do it, and then reward them handsomely inline with the time they spend. Give all your players the chance to feel like a winner. (Source: Dubit Platform)