在2010年的德国莱比锡游戏展（Games Convention Online）上我发表了一个演讲，是关于社交游戏设计的美学理论和衡量方法的关系，并尝试着去理解社交游戏（特别是Facebook游戏）背景下的“美学理论”。之前我就游戏设计和游戏研究文艺的相关美学理论做了一定的研究，而现在我希望能够从中得出一些较为实际的理论，即能够帮助游戏开发者设计出更好，且更高质量的社交游戏。

如今的游戏美学通常是指玩家对于游戏的感知和情感体验，或者可以说是玩家对于游戏的内外感受。然而，我认为还有一些更为特定的因素存在：

首先便是最为直接的社交背景，就像Facebook的社交图谱：通过好友状态向好友公布自己的动态等。这种功能可以说是社交游戏中的一大重要体验，如果玩家对于好友的状态更新做出了回应，那么就说明他们正在关注着这些好友。在这个过程中，玩家既能得到好友的社交认同，也能为他们创造同等的认同感。

其次，我认为社交游戏的潜在商业模式，即免费模式也影响着它的美学，因为这种商业模式始终围绕于游戏的设计中，并清晰地展现于玩家的游戏体验过程：不论是从游戏内容来看还是从游戏的收费模式看，社交游戏都是在“利用”玩家盈利，因此你必须考虑到在免费商业模式下以及虚拟经济模式下，社交游戏设计带给玩家的到底是怎样的游戏体验。除此之外，等级结构也是一个关键因素，它在社交游戏的用户留存率结构中占有很大的比重。

最后是社交游戏的美学标准，就像Steve Swink在《Game Feel》中提到的“游戏设置的触感标准”。通常的，玩家在社交游戏中都是在点击自己的“农场”，“咖啡屋”等等。我之前将这种行为称作“点击性”（clickability）。

social game-farmtown(from allfacebook.com)

因此，我认为社交游戏美学可以按照游戏体验划分为三个范畴：

点击性：“在Facebook上的一款社交游戏中，玩家通过鼠标进行一系列有趣的点击行动，并将这些行动直接通过用户界面的反馈出来。”这里所说的行动和反馈是玩家情感的表现，是他们在游戏过程中通过鼠标点击而产生的心理感受，就像获得奖励，为了获取目标而监视其他玩家的行为，做决策或者是与好友进行交流等等。

社交图谱：玩家通过更新好友动态，并获得好友的回应而得到所谓的“社会认同感”。这也就意味着玩家需要加入好友的游戏，例如在同一个农场游戏中活动，或者在竞争类的游戏中与好友进行“斗争”等。这种社交图谱可以说是社交游戏设置中必不可少的重要环节。游戏中的等级和周边系统作为游戏进程的测量和比较工具，对于美学标准也将产生重要的影响。

解锁功能：接受好友的帮助，购买一些特定的通关道具或者游戏的额外内容/功能等都是免费游戏中的重要环节，因此这对于社交游戏的美学体验具有较大的影响力。解锁功能也有助于玩家的个人表现，所以它也可以算是社交图谱中的一部分，例如玩家可以向好友炫耀自己的装饰品或者获取的成绩等。在大型多人在线游戏世界中，解锁功能常用于玩家的交易和开拓过程中，因此它对于社交游戏设置的美学理论也具有较大的影响力。

总之，社交游戏的美学理论仍然离不开玩家的感触体验，但是因为社交游戏的交互性以及免费商业模式对于玩家自由的约束，这种美学也具有一定的限制性。

所以如何做才能将这种美学理论真正纳入实践？

因为上述三大标准明确指出了社交游戏的设计领域，所以我们应该将传统视频游戏设计和社交游戏设计的特性进行比较，并作出进一步的思考和判断。让我们将上述三大标准置于社交游戏的设计项目中来看：

首先，游戏需要同时提供给玩家愉悦和悲伤两种体验，并将这种情感明确地体现在用户界面上，例如当他们在游戏中收割，收集，分配或者进行其它微管理行动时，都能够表现出自己内心真实的情感。

其次，游戏中的社交图谱必须包含游戏设计的核心内容，即不论它是周围好友的图谱，还是游戏排行榜，亦或者是对手图谱等，它都必须表现出共享和挑战的机制。除此之外，图谱中的成员必须能通过图谱了解到好友所进行的游戏，并受到激励而去体验那种乐趣。可以说这就是游戏的病毒式设计所在。

再次，解锁功能必须与游戏的等级结构设计紧密结合在一起，并且用于控制玩家的游戏进程以及游戏的功能和内容表现。除此之外，解锁功能能够帮助玩家获得一些虚拟道具，而这些虚拟道具则是开发者所设定的带有经济利益的“赚钱工具”，所以这个功能也是帮助开发者赢取利益的重要手段。

最后，处理好美学理论与游戏测量方法的关系也是极其重要的。你可以通过研究玩家的游戏体验，进一步测量游戏的日活跃用户指数以及每用户平均收入等数值，而对游戏的美学理论做出深入分析。除此之外还有一些较难测量的数据，需要你进行更多性质上的调查，例如在测量游戏小组的过程中，你可以通过观察小组成员在游戏中的成败频率进行分析。很多游戏在初期使用了病毒式的好友动态功能，但是却未能一直贯彻执行（即最终取消了这一功能）。可以说，这也是这些游戏在新手教程过程中便丢失了很多玩家的重要原因之一。

游戏邦注：本文作者Aki Jarvinen，原文发表于2010年5月7日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Aesthetics of Social Games

by Aki Jarvinen

I am giving a talk about the relationship of aesthetics and metrics in social game design this week (at Games Convention Online in Leipzig, Germany), so I’m trying to figure out what ‘aesthetics’ could mean in the context of social games, especially Facebook ones. I’ve gone through a number of takes on aesthetics in both game design and game studies literature, and now I am in the process of trying to distill something sensible and practical out of it. By practical I mean something that could function as high-level design drivers or principles in actual social game projects.

Now, in the literature aesthetics ends up usually referring to the sensory and emotional experience of interacting with the game; both the look and the feel, in other words. However, I think specific, additional things factor into the social game experience:

First, of course, there is the immediate social context, e.g. the social graph in Facebook: the prompts to notify your friends with wall posts etc. is a part of the experience of playing these games, or diving into them, when responding to a feed post from someone. In the process, the players are both acknowledging social proof from others and creating it for others to acknowledge (or ignore as spam).

Second, I think the underlying business model, in this case the freemium model affects social game aesthetics, because it is intertwined in the games’ designs and therefore present in the experience: Unlocking game content by grinding towards it or by paying for the convenience of having it immediately is a decision that social games keep on imposing on players, and thus it has to taken into account in any discussion of social game design, which ultimately is about designing an experience for the players within the freemium business model and the virtual economy model it often brings with it. Another element tied to this is the leveling structure, which accounts for the most archetypal retention structure in social games.

Finally, there is the dimension of aesthetics that, e.g,. Steve Swink talks about in his book Game Feel – the haptic and sensory dimension of gameplay. Usually, in social games this is about clicking away at your farm, cafe, etc. This I have previously defined under the concept of ‘clickability’ (see my earlier post and the definition below).

Thus, my working notion of social game aesthetics is anchored to three key dimensions of the social gameplay experience:

Clickability: ‘the routine yet enjoyable behavior of executing a set of game actions, with the mouse, and intuitively responding to the UI feedback, during a single social (Facebook) game session’. The actions and feedback mentioned here constitute triggers for emotional responses, thus integrating the haptic experience of clicking away with a psychological one that emerges from the game’s events, such as from getting rewards, monitoring one’s progress towards goals, making decisions, interacting with friends, etc.

Playing the social graph: How players acknowledge social proof by responding to viral feeds, and create it, by posting feeds. The means to visit your friends’ game, e.g. in the context of parallel play in the farming genre, or battle with them in a more competitive setting, account for the gameplay part of this dimension. The leveling and neighboring systems as means of measure and compare progress are instances of this aesthetic dimension.

Unlocking: The balancing act of grinding, possibly with help from your friends, or paying for shortcuts or exclusive content/features, is something that is inherent to the freemium model. Therefore it contributes to the aesthetic experience of playing social games. Unlocking also opens possibilities for personal expression, which then becomes part of playing your social graph, i.e. showing off your decorations, achievements, etc. In the MMO space, unlocking is often expanded by the possibility for the players to trade and craft, which contributes to the aesthetics of social gameplay as well.

In conclusion, essentially social game aesthetics is still about the look and the feel, but with emphasis on the feel of the social interaction, and the constraints that the freemium model imposes on the player’s freedom.

So what? How is this practical?

In general, it gives food for thought for comparisons between key characteristics of ‘traditional’ video game design and social game design, as the above three dimensions point to key design areas of social games. Let’s look at this from the perspective of what the above three dimensions mean in terms of game design tasks in a social game project:

First, the game needs to offer a mix of pleasure and pain – in the sense of slightly annoying grinding needs to be implemented in the level of the UI, as harvesting, collecting, allocating, or as other forms of micro-managing.

Second, the social graph needs to be literally included in the heart of the game design, whether it is a list of neighbors, a leaderboard, a map of opponents, etc., and any consequent social mechanics the graph affords, such as sharing or challenging. Furthermore, in order for the graph to function, its members need to know about the game and be motivated to join the fun – and this is where viral design comes in.

Third, unlocking relates to the design of level structure tightly embedded into how it governs players’ progress and access to features and content. Furthermore, unlocking opens up the task of designing an economy around virtual items, which is crucial in terms of monetization.

The final practical take-away is aesthetics’ relation to metrics. By analyzing the aesthetics of your game, you can identify which parts of the game, as it is experienced by players, you can validate by the quantitative nature of metrics such as DAUs and ARPUs. The remaining ones go beyond such metrics, and would need more qualitative exploration – such as focus group playtesting – to be evaluated in terms of success or failure. The reasons for initiating the sending of a viral post but nor carrying it through, i.e. canceling, would constitute an example of the latter; causes for drop-off rates during tutorial would present another. （source:gamasutra）