作者：Brad Kane

在早前的“Why We Play Games: The Four Keys to Player Experience”大会上，XEODesign创始人妮可·拉扎罗从研究视角谈及游戏情绪。准确的说，她主要谈论机制推动的情感体验以及描述源自游戏活动的4种玩家情绪。

lazzaro from fastcompany.com

故事推动Vs.机制推动情绪

拉扎罗通过区分故事推动和机制推动情感体验开始会议。她表示，多数有关游戏情绪的谈论只关注故事推动情绪，然而源自游戏机制的情绪其实是更普遍、更相关的体验。

拉扎罗表示很多游戏都缺乏玩家情感共鸣，但有少数作品能够形成强烈情绪反应（游戏邦注：也就是少数问鼎热门榜单的作品）。拉扎罗试图探究在此表现突出的作品，获悉其他游戏应如何效仿其成功。

每个参与拉扎罗研究的玩家都体验自己最喜爱的作品（游戏类型纷繁复杂，有《光晕》、《侠盗猎车3》之类的动作游戏，也有《俄罗斯方块》、《怪投射波》之类的益智游戏），然后拉扎罗用摄像机记录他们的面部表情，接着就他们在各时刻对游戏的情绪反应进行分析。

玩家体验电子游戏的4大原因

拉扎罗发现诸如题材、授权、难度和截图之类的因素同玩家所形成的情绪反应关系不大。相反，是游戏体验（也就是体验游戏时“对所发生事件产生的感觉”）引起最大情绪反应。

拉扎罗将这种感觉分成4大不同类型：

* 源自困难趣味的情绪：富有意义的挑战、策略和谜题。有些玩家因热爱挑战和刺激而体验游戏。这些玩家喜欢挑战愤怒、沮丧之类的“刺激”情绪，偏好《Need for Speed: Underground or Unreal Tournament》之类的游戏。同样，他们喜欢发泄体验，希望能够战胜逆境。

* 源自简单趣味的情绪：引人注目的歧义表达，不完整表述及细节陈述。其他玩家偏好令人兴奋型趣味，游戏蕴含的无限美好事物和不可能性带给玩家崇敬或惊讶感觉。在这些情况下，探索体验而非挑战感觉促使玩家形成某种情绪状态。这类游戏包括《光晕》、《星球大战：星际》和《迷雾之岛》。

* 源自状态变更的情绪：认知、思想和情感的变化。有些玩家将游戏视作一种疗法，他们借助游戏进行放松、寻找刺激，或者相反，逃避现实。不论是通过《侠盗猎车手 3》追求兴奋刺激，还是借助《俄罗斯方块》获得某种精神能量，其共同之处在于都是希望改变自身情绪或精神状态。

* 源自他人的情绪：竞争、合作、表现和引人注意。上述四类情感都和游戏分享体验有关（游戏邦注：不论是同身处同个房间的其他玩家，还是通过在线游戏）。这里的普遍情绪包括消遣、竞争和为好友成就感到自豪。其联系纽带是社交互动，例子包括《刀魂2》、《疾风滑雪板》和《无尽的任务》。

类型汇总：广泛吸引力

研究最有趣的发现是，大多热门电子游戏（游戏邦注：诸如《光晕》和《侠盗猎车手 3》之类的作品）都分布在上述4大类型之中，这说明这些游戏都受到各类玩家的喜爱。

拉扎罗表示，这是创造成功作品的关键——徘徊于困难和简单趣味之间，能够变更玩家认知状态，鼓励令人愉快的社交互动。符合这些标准的游戏将涵盖所有潜在游戏体验，因此能够掳获广泛潜在玩家的芳心。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2004年3月26日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Postcard from GDC 2004: Why We Play Games: The Four Keys to Player Experience

by Brad Kane

At “Why We Play Games: The Four Keys to Player Experience,” on Friday afternoon, Nicole Lazzaro of XEODesign spoke about emotion in gaming from a research-oriented perspective. Specifically, she focused on gameplay-driven emotional experiences, and delineated four types of emotion that players derive from their games.

Story-Driven vs. Gameplay-Driven Emotion

Lazzaro began the session by distinguishing between story-driven and gameplay-driven emotional experiences. Most discussions of emotion in gaming deal only with story-driven emotion, she said, but emotion that stems from gameplay is in fact the more common and relevant type of experience.

Many games induce a notable lack of emotion in gamers, Lazzaro said, but a notable few generate strong emotional reactions – the same few that rank among the most popular. Lazzaro wanted to discover what those games are doing right, and how other games can emulate their success.

Each participant in Lazzaro’s research study was asked to play their favorite video games – games that ranged from action titles like Halo and Grand Theft Auto 3 to puzzle games such as Tetris and Snood – while cameras recorded their facial expressions. Lazzaro then analyzed players’ reactions to the games on a moment-by-moment basis.

The Four Reasons that People Play Videogames

Lazzaro found that factors such as genre, licensing, difficulty, and presence of cut scenes had little bearing on which games caused a player to react most strongly. Rather, it was the experience of a game – the “feeling of what happens” when a person plays – that caused the emotional reaction.

Lazzaro was able to divide that feeling into four distinct types:

* Emotions from Hard Fun: Meaningful Challenges, Strategies, and Puzzles. Some players are drawn to games by a love of challenge and excitement. These players enjoyed overcoming “hot” emotions such as anger and frustration, and tended to prefer games such as Need for Speed: Underground or Unreal Tournament. The common thread was the desire for a cathartic experience and an opportunity to triumph over adversity.

* Emotions from Easy Fun: Attention-Grabbing Ambiguity, Incompleteness, and Detail. Other players prefer a more spine-tingling kind of fun, one in which the immense beauty or improbability of a game produced feelings of awe or wonder. In these cases, it was not so much the challenge of the game as the experience of exploring the world within that created the emotional state. Games in this category included Halo, Star Wars Galaxies, and Myst.

* Emotions from Altered States: Changes in Perception, Thought, and Behavior. Some players saw gaming as a form of therapy, in which they used games to relax, become stimulated, or otherwise escape from the real world. Whether enjoying an adrenaline rush with Grand Theft Auto 3 or entering a state of mental focus with Tetris, the common theme was a desire to alter one’s emotional or mental state.

* Emotions from Other People: Competition, Cooperation, Performance, and Spectacle. The fourth category of emotion related to the shared experience of gaming, either with other players in the same room, or with online games. Common emotions here included anything from amusement, to rivalry, to pride at the accomplishments of friends. The connecting thread was social interaction, and examples included Soul Caliber 2, SSX Tricky, and Everquest Online.

Category-Crossers: The Broadest Appeal

The most interesting point of the study, though, was that the most popular video games – titles such as Halo and Grand Theft Auto 3 – appeared in all four categories, meaning that these games were enjoyed by players of every type.

That, said Lazzaro, is the key to creating a successful title – cycling between hard and easy fun, allowing opportunities for altered states of perception, and encouraging enjoyable social interaction. A game that does that, she said, will cover the range of potential gaming experiences, and thus appeal to the broadest number of potential gamers. （Source：gamasutra）