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分析竞争性游戏玩法对不同玩家的影响

发布时间:2011-08-20 17:51:28 Tags:,,,,

作者:Danc

近期,我专注于研究睾丸激素。过去十年来,科学家让玩家置身于竞争性境况中,然后研究如何通过睾丸激素的起伏状况来预测其行为。从这些研究中你可以发现,当玩家置身于控制力、运气和友谊可以预测的系列境况中,赢家和输家都会离开游戏。

实验分析了以下4个问题:

1、与朋友玩游戏会对赢家和输家的睾丸激素产生何种影响

2、与陌生人玩游戏会对赢家和输家的睾丸激素产生何种影响

3、察觉运气或技能对结果的影响会对玩家的睾丸激素产生何种影响

4、倾向社交和倾向控制力的玩家的偏好有何不同

competitive play(from 210.6.90.160)

competitive play(from 210.6.90.160)

1、与陌生人玩游戏会对赢家和输家的睾丸激素产生何种影响

当陌生人在玩侧重技能的竞争性游戏时,测试结果符合通常对输赢状况的理解。

赢家的睾丸激素增加。控制力或侵略性行为增加。控制力是意图获得或维持优势地位的行为。身体能量增加(游戏邦注:某些状况下玩家变得极度兴奋)。胜利令人感到兴奋。

输家的睾丸激素减少。输家会避免同相同的对手对抗,甚至在某些挑战与之前毫无相关的境况中也不例外。

这是竞争性游戏中对赢家和输家的传统描述。赢家从击败陌生人中获得极大的快感,而输家只会灰溜溜地回家。

优点

打败陌生人可以保证玩家能够从中获得乐趣。如果你想以某种相当可靠且廉价的方式让游戏充满趣味性,那么就在侧重技能的游戏中让许多陌生人参与进来(游戏邦注:游戏需要的是哪类技能并不重要)。要让玩家的情绪进一步高涨,你可以给赢家赋予很高的地位。也就是说,至少可以让赢家获得片刻的乐趣。

通常来说,设计师先为游戏寻找其“趣味性”,然后围绕我们寻找到的内容来构建游戏。我们可以轻易地从胜者的脸上看到骄傲的表情,这便是乐趣的信号。这种隐蔽的信号驱使设计师创造出数百款竞争性游戏。因为玩家所呈现出的快乐的强大,所以竞争性玩法受到设计师的重视。

缺点

使用这种设计方法显然也有缺点。输家会离开游戏。首先,他们知道自己无法通过游戏来获得想要的地位,尤其是与那些赢家对抗。其次,赢家之间的交流方式会让输家感到很屈辱。如果他们觉得无法逃避的话,输家可能会转而采取防御性的行为。特别是那些只有部分人能够成为赢家的游戏中,这种设计会影响到玩家的留存率。

这种设计的结果是对玩家社群进行提炼。只有那些赢家才会留在游戏中。这种精华的玩家社群产生更具竞争性的环境,从而创造出更多的输家。与游戏资深人士相比,那些尝试进入游戏的新玩家的技能自然相对较差,因而很快就会沦落为输家。他们也就会离开游戏。竞争性游戏会慢慢将玩家社群提炼成少部分对游戏非常忠诚的精锐玩家,但是却对用户数量增长有害。

2、运气或技能对结果的影响会对玩家的睾丸激素产生何种影响

应当注意的是,上述情况只适用于那些侧重技能的游戏。当玩家觉得他们正在玩的是侧重运气的游戏时,睾丸激素的反应会发生改变。

赢家的睾丸激素没有增加,赢家觉得他们的胜利并没有真正体现出自己的优越性。

输家的睾丸激素没有减少,输家觉得他们还有在游戏中获得胜利的机会。

运气指的是超乎玩家控制之外的无法预测的环境因素。如果人类每次都对因天气或意外事故而迷路感到恐慌,那么我们可能就不会成为生存时间如此之长的物种。运气将失败转变为对环境或游戏机制的理解,而不是让输家觉得其他玩家凌驾于自己之上。正因如此,我们内在的社交控制力系统才不会产生干扰,失败带来的社交惩罚也同样得到避免。

优点

将运气成分引进游戏中可以减轻失败的副作用。输家通常会想要再进行尝试。事实在于,人类对他们成功的可能性的判断能力很弱,即便是技术很差的玩家都认为自己有获胜的机会。

缺点

赢家无法从游戏中获得胜利的快感。在侧重运气的游戏中与陌生人一起玩,许多人会认为游戏根本没有真正测试玩家的技能。许多高端竞争性玩家会刻意避开那些有着大量运气成分的竞争性游戏,因为这些系统会减少胜利的喜悦感。在这种类型的游戏中,打败陌生人根本无法展现自己的控制力。

Testosterone(from lostgarden)

Testosterone(from lostgarden)

单纯依靠运气的竞争性游戏很少令玩家感到讨厌,这其中有一定的原因。它们可以保持将输家留在游戏中,但是游戏的趣味性也很难体现出来。某些赌博游戏(游戏邦注:比如赌马)可能很刺激,但事实情况是,大部分玩家是输家。

示例

《Mario Party》便是一款高度依赖运气因素的竞争性游戏。游戏随意并且疯狂地给玩家提供各种奖励,许多游戏最终的结局是,最后一名玩家因为刚好到达适当的方格而获得了胜利。因为运气成分,输家会认为其他人获胜无关紧要。游戏过程几乎不会改变玩家间的相对地位。

3、与朋友玩游戏会对赢家和输家的睾丸激素产生何种影响

到目前为止,以上两个对竞争性的研究结果应该都不会令那些设计过竞争性游戏的人感到惊奇。但是,当玩家把其他人当做朋友时,他们的反应也大为不同。以下便是与朋友一起玩竞争性游戏时发生的情况。

赢家的睾丸激素减少。从本质上来说,如果你在朋友面前获得胜利,控制力行为会急速下滑。朋友通常都是那些你需要在生活中和谐相处的人。想象下,如果你在游戏中获胜后对朋友吆五喝六,那么他们可能在游戏后就不再是你的朋友了。我们内在的社交反应是压制人性本能对控制力的迫切要求,以期不要破坏同朋友的友谊。

输家的睾丸激素会在短时间内下落,随后又会恢复。输家受到了可能出在较低地位的威胁。然而,当他们知道自己应该相信好友后,他们就不会害怕了。

如果没有了控制力反应,那么乐趣从何而来呢?通常情况下,你会看到赢家和输家都会关注竞争性游戏中的共同行为。

他们讨论游戏中共享欢乐的时刻。共享体验在玩家间产生共有的领域,他们会在将来的生活中提及这些内容。

他们相互间的恭维也是乐趣来源。恭维通常是种报答,创造出构建相互尊敬的机会。

赢家会说自己是出于运气。这种说法否认了赢家有某种控制力或更高地位的观点。他们给游戏加上了运气这个框架,使得输家的感觉更好些。

通常情况下,赢家会尽其所能避免在其他玩家的面前炫耀胜利。输家会尽其所能来走出失败的境地。我们甚至还给这些有着不恰当控制力行为的朋友玩家起了名字。我们把他们叫做“差劲的赢家”和“差劲的输家”。那些以某种方式做出有益于共享行为的玩家称为“好赢家”。你几乎听不到“好输家”这个词语,因为输家总是值得同情的受害者。

彼此之间的挑衅话语也是种共享的形式。这通常会让未受过训练的观察者感到无所适从,因为好朋友通常会使用挑衅话语来假装他们正在进行控制力行为。然而,这只是个伪装而已。当挑衅话语确实侵犯到玩家对现有状态的期盼时,玩家的情绪会发生很大的改变。你通常会看到有些玩家指责别人太把游戏当真了。玩家会信任朋友的控制力话语,但是不希望看到真正在朋友间产生控制力行为。

共享需要某些交流形式。诸如《Mario Kart》和《Carcasonne》之类桌游等在卧室中玩的游戏里,玩家交流的机会很多。在PC游戏中,文字是常见的交流渠道。在主机游戏中,聊天满足了这个目标。游戏机制也可以用作游戏内交流的形式。《反恐精英》中的标记就是个绝佳的范例,这项游戏机制可用来显示状态或分享社交关系。

优点

随着Wii沙发游戏和Facebook等平台上社交游戏的普及,理解朋友间竞争性动态是创造成功游戏的重点所在。

最为重要的是,我们通常与竞争性游戏联系起来的“趣味性”典型形式在这种情况下要么减少要么转变成消极的体验。朋友间的竞争性游戏的胜负成分减少,更多的是分享性体验。这是种完全不同的感觉。向玩家讲述故事,让玩家交流、讨论和互相开玩笑,这些都是可以向玩家传达游戏价值的核心做法。从某种意义上来说,真正的竞争性是次要的,最重要的是玩家游戏行为的分享性。与朋友一起玩游戏带来的“趣味性”与同陌生人一起玩游戏产生的“趣味性”完全不同。

缺点

同样,你不能再依靠那些陌生人竞争性游戏设计来吸引玩家。从陌生人到朋友的转变导致玩家的心理发生改变,现在你需要重新思考你的奖励和交流机制。

《Unreal Tournament》之类游戏的机制对陌生人或朋友来说基本相同,玩家在游戏中移动并射击。但是,游戏体验却完全不同。结果表明,游戏中存在的社交关系和周围交流方式和关卡设计以及子弹一样,也是游戏的一部分。我经常看到设计师构建游戏,同开发团队中的同事一起玩。团队成员彼此都很熟悉,因此可以因胜利而大喊大叫,最终都会从游戏中获得大量的乐趣。随后,同样的游戏发布到网络上,陌生人间瞬间开始有了胜负之分,创造出带有侵略性的环境。测试玩家的社交图表与真正的玩家并不相同。所以,游戏的测试结果可能产生谬误。

下图可以直观地放映出上述差异:

Testosterone(from lostgarden)

Testosterone(from lostgarden)

示例

让我们回到《Mario Party》这款游戏中来。为何会有人玩这种基于运气成分而且只为胜利提供些许奖励的竞争性游戏呢?线索之一是,《Mario Party》常常是人们坐在同一张沙发上玩。这是款可以改善友谊的社交游戏,玩家的目标并不是打败其他人。因为游戏是由玩家个体在玩,所以玩家间有着大量的交流,而几乎所有交流关注的都是分享体验。游戏玩法主要关注的是社交趣味性,而不是硬性趣味性。

任天堂多人专属游戏慢慢转移到网络世界中,这可能并不是什么令人惊奇的事情。多数任天堂游戏的设计目标都是让玩家和朋友一起玩游戏。因为时间安排的不一致和同步的玩法模型,多数主机游戏都是与陌生人一起玩。改变组成游戏核心的趣味性主导类型能够改变你给玩家呈现的价值主张。这种品牌失谐很可能需要创造出全新的专属游戏(游戏邦注:比如《光晕》),不是细微的设计改变就能够解决。

4、倾向社交和倾向控制力的玩家的偏好有何不同

要使问题更为复杂化,就要意识到在所有这些研究中,存在两种截然不同的玩家群体。一种是倾向控制力的玩家,他们更倾向于以支配的方式来对应对各种境况。在他们的系统中,这类玩家有着更高水平的睾丸激素,而且激素水平的升降很大程度上取决于他们的胜负。

第二类群体是倾向社交的玩家,他们更喜欢以关注友谊构建的方式来应对竞争性境况。通常情况下,这类玩家的睾丸激素水平较低。有趣的是,他们不会陷入失败的苦恼中。从某种意义上来说,他们玩游戏的目的不是为了胜负,所以他们根本不介意在游戏中的失败。事实上,某些研究显示当这类玩家处在较高地位时,他们甚至会感到压力增加,而且会减少他们在复杂认知任务中的行动。对他们来说,获胜好似是种惩罚。

年龄可能也是一大因素。睾丸激素的水平在二十几岁的年轻人中最高,过三十岁后就开始平稳下滑。到40岁后,47%的男性可以归入低睾丸激素类别。

缺点

从游戏设计角度来看,这种玩家群体的分裂性存在些许有趣的含义。当你创造的游戏只为胜利的玩家提供奖励时,你就忽略了两个群体的玩家。其一当然是输家,其二是倾向社交的玩家,他们的动机更多地是在游戏中产生友谊而不是炫耀自己的状态。你可以向这些人提供成为赢家的机会,但是他们或许对这些奖励并不在意。

Testosterone(from-lostgarden)

Testosterone(from-lostgarden)

推荐

这些竞争性的样式给设计师提供了某些很有用的工具。

注意点1:你的设计应当明确地区别对待朋友和陌生人

你需要首先在设计中区别对待朋友和陌生人。如果你无法区分这两个人群,最终便会创造出不受多个群体玩家待见的系统。每个群体使用交流渠道的方法会产生许多问题。

如果你创造的游戏是针对朋友的,那么:

陌生人赢家会使用本来用于构建友谊的交流渠道来展现他们的控制力和侵略性的欲望。这种行为可能导致输家离开游戏。

陌生人输家会使用交流渠道来诽谤赢家,或声称真正产生作用的是运气或环境因素。这使得赢家离开的可能性上升,因为他们得到的不是期盼的肯定。他们获得的不是肯定和名声,众人给他们戴上的是“作弊者”或“幸运儿”的帽子。

如果你创造的游戏只针对陌生人,那么:

因为交流渠道的缺乏,所以获胜的朋友没有方法来减少他们胜利带来的伤害。这便有可能永久摧毁玩家与输家之间的友谊。

通过将朋友同陌生人区分开来,你可以向每个群体的玩家提供他们希望获得的奖励和游戏机制。陌生人赢家将在独自的空间内受到恭维。陌生人输家也可以获得强调境况的运气成分以及将来胜利可能性会增加的反馈。同时,向朋友提供交流工具,允许他们分享乐趣和体验。

注意点2:专注于朋友群体的游戏会带来更强大的用户留存率。

朋友们会鼓励其他的朋友加入游戏,因为他们希望能够与他们分享体验,以加强友谊。

朋友们会鼓励现有玩家更多地玩游戏,因为他们想要深化这份友谊。

只有一类玩家在这种面向友谊玩法中感到不适,那就是倾向控制力的玩家,他们不会也不希望同朋友在游戏中友善相处。毫无疑问,这类玩家非常多(游戏邦注:14至39岁的男性玩家中50%属于此类)。但是,与总人口相比,这类玩家的数量显然很小。

这也是为何异步社交网络能够成长得如此迅速的部分原因。人们通常喜欢同朋友一起玩游戏,并且倾向于交流他们的游戏体验,而且有复制这种行为的社交压力。相比之下,陌生人间的竞争性行为的结果是使玩家数量稳步下滑。

注意点3:分别对陌生人和朋友进行测试

只在朋友间测试得到的数据并不准确。要进行更大范围的网络测试,允许陌生人在其中互动并察觉他们如何控制和侵犯他人,这会让你对许多竞争性多人游戏系统的文化有更加清楚的理解。

注意点4:如果你必须在网络游戏中加上交流渠道,那么就尝试寻找将陌生人转变成朋友的设计。

如果你在竞争性游戏中加入了丰富的交流渠道,那么陌生人会利用它们来展现自己的控制力。避免这个问题的方法是明确地创造出人们像朋友那样相处的群体。即便在竞争性游戏中,这种做法也能够产生协作性。

将玩家分在相同的阵营中。《反恐精英》中每个任务开始时,玩家都可以选择加入某个阵营。

创造一个共同的目标:《战争机器》中的Horde模式让玩家相互配合在大屠杀中生存下来。

创造共同的苦恼或娱乐体验:在《Eve Online》中,玩家可以参与到大范围的毁灭性战争中。即便惨遭各种失败,同伴之间仍然很团结,因为这种失败给他们提供了加强他们友谊的共同体验。

提供互助的机会:在《生存之旅》中,玩家可以帮助处在困境中的其他玩家。

提供交流渠道:在《Farmville》中,玩家可以在游戏中或通过Facebook通知向他人发送信息。这帮助玩家通过分享体验来加深友谊。

允许个人选择:在《魔兽世界》的公会中,玩家可以选择参加哪个团队。玩家可以自由进行选择,比起被迫依靠其他玩家的游戏来说,前者使玩家间的交往更进一步。我发现,那些要求玩家进行协作以提升个人表现的游戏设计,比那些玩家不协作便要受到惩罚的设计更好。

结论

当我们设计游戏的时候,我们总是在不断寻找游戏的趣味性。但是,我们识别和增加趣味性的能力的出众程度与我们对理解何谓趣味性的认知程度相同。我们的对竞争性的常识模型高估了赢家表现出的乐趣,低估了其他玩家群体的反应。通过采纳赢家和输家如何在各种境况下做出反应的更为复杂的模型,设计师就有更有可能认识到为何他们的设计出现偏差,需要采取何种方式进行纠正。

我在上文中所列举的数据并没有包含所有的玩家群体。比如,关注女性睾丸激素如何变化的研究就很少。虽然我们通常都认为睾丸激素是种男性荷尔蒙,但是两性确实都会产生这种激素,而且在控制力方面似乎有着相同的作用。但是,并非所有在男性上调查出的行为就能完全套用在女性玩家群体上。而且,对于老年玩家、不同文化群体或幼年玩家的研究也不足。科学家似乎更偏向使用男性大学生作为研究对象,因为符合这个条件的人数较多,而且检测他们的睾丸激素也更为容易。但是,这种做法可能使结果出现偏差。现在可以使用的解决方案是,以上述这些指导意见为出发点,然后继续测试你的有关竞争性玩法的想法。让不同种类的玩家体验你的游戏设计,然后看看他们是否做出你预想的反应。通过对更多心智模型进行调查,你的实验将指导游戏设计朝着正确的方向发展。

我对这些研究的个人看法是,倾向社交的竞争性游戏有着很大的潜力。游戏市场曾经在短期内有过异样的改变:

1、早期的主机游戏通常是2到4个人聚集在电视机前一起玩。玩游戏是种主要的社交行为。

2、随着在线游戏和低一致性平台的涌现,我们失去了对与朋友一同玩游戏这个领域的关注。自从我们同陌生人开始玩游戏起,趣味性的来源就转变成游戏中的控制力。

3、社交游戏的兴起再次让我们将在线多人游戏的目标对准朋友。

现在,我们有机会设计出和善的竞争性游戏,有利于构建起玩家间的友谊,而不是将其打破。

游戏邦注:本文发稿于2009年11月3日,所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Testosterone and Competitive Play

Danc

Lately I’ve been digging into research on testosterone. Over the past decade, scientists have been placing players in competitive situations and then measuring how their testosterone fluctuations predict future behavior. What you find from looking at the studies is that both winners and losers will leave your game if they are placed in a set of predictable situations involving dominance, luck, and friendship.

There are four points that have experimental support:

How playing with friends affects the testosterone in winning and losing players

How playing with strangers affects the testosterone in winning in losing players

How perception of the role of luck or skill in the outcome affects the testosterone of players.

How players differ by pro-social or pro-dominance inclination.

1. How playing with strangers affects the testosterone in winners and losers

When strangers play a competitive game based off skill, the results fit the common sense understanding of winning and losing.

Winner testosterone increases. Dominance and/or aggressive behavior increases. Dominance is defined as behaviors that are intended to “gain or maintain high status” (ref) Physical energy increases (and in some cases men become aroused.) Winning is exciting.

Loser testosterone decreases. The losing player attempts to avoid fighting the same opponent, even in situations challenges unrelated.

This is the classic description of winners and losers in a competitive game. The winners get a huge rush from beating the strangers and the losers are sent home with their tail between their legs, humiliated and subdued.

The upside

Beating strangers is a guaranteed source of entertainment. If you want a highly reliable, inexpensive means of making your game fun, toss some strangers together in a game of skill (it barely matters what sort). To boost the emotion even further, place the winners on a high status pedestal. Voila, instant fun, at least for the winners.

Typically designers look for ‘fun’ in a game and then build the game around what we find. The hard fun or fiero is easily detectable on the faces of the victors and acts as a clarion signal of fun. This overt signal has driven designers to create hundreds of competitive games between strangers. “Hark! Here be fun!” and we flock like moths to the flame. Our fun finding, hill climbing algorithm is predisposed to overemphasize competitive play due to the strength of the delight exhibited by winners.

The downside

Yet there are clear tradeoffs that occur when we go down this design path. Losers leave. First, they know that they cannot gain status by pursuing the game, especially against the winning players. Second, if there is some way for winners to communicate, losers are subjected to degrading displays of status. Losers may react in turn with defensive behaviors if they feel they cannot escape. Especially in games where only a few people can be winners, your player retention will suffer.

The result is an intriguing purification of the community. Only the elite winners stay around. This elite community creates an even more competitive environment that in turn creates and drives out more losers. New players attempting to enter into the community are inevitably of low skill compared to the hardened veterans and are immediately classified as losers. They also leave. Competitive games slowly boil their community down to an elitist core that actively resists and inhibits audience growth.

2. How perception of the role of luck or skill in the outcome affects players

Notice that the above case applied only to games where the loser felt that they were participating in a game of skill. The testosterone response changes when players feel they are playing in a game of luck.

Winner testosterone does not increase: Winners feel that their victory was not a true demonstration of superiority.

Loser testosterone does not decrease: Losers feel like they still have a chance of winning.

Luck is another name for an unexpected environmental factors outside the control of the player. If humans were to fall into a funk every time they lost due to the weather or an unexpected mishap, we would not have survived very long as a species. Luck turns a loss into a lesson about the environment or game mechanics, not a lesson about which player is superior to another player. As such, our innate social dominance systems fail to kick in and the social penalties from losing are avoided.

The upside

By introducing luck into a game, you can mitigate the ill effects of losing. Losers are often willing to give the game another shot. The fact that humans are notoriously poor at judging their probability of success plays out in the game designer’s favor, since even poor players will think they still have a chance of winning.

The downside

Winners fail to feel the rush of victory. Strangers playing against one another in a game of luck will often complain that the game is ‘cheap’ or ‘not a real test of skill’. Many highly competitive players will consciously avoid competitive games involving a high amount of luck since such systems reduce the psychological benefit of winning. What is the point of playing against strangers if you can’t beat them into a pulp and demonstrate your dominance?

Pure competitive games of luck between strangers are rare beasts and for good reason. They manage to keep losers around, but the games hardly ever considered fun. Some gambling games may qualify (such as horse betting), yet it is telling that the vast majority of players lose.

An example

Mario Party is an example of a high luck competitive game. The game awards crazy bonuses that appear arbitrary and many games end up with the person in last place winning because they happened to have landed (randomly) on the correct square. Due to the high degree of luck is easy for losers to claim that the victory doesn’t matter. The relative status of players barely changes over the course of the game.

3. How playing with friends affects the testosterone in winners and losers

So far, the the previous two studies of competition shouldn’t be of much surprise to folks that have designed competitive games. However, the response of players is quite different if they consider one another to be friends. The following is what occurs if friends face off in a competitive game.

Winners testosterone decreases. In essence, dominance behavior dips sharply if you win in front of friends. Friends are generally are people you need to get along with in order to live your life. Imagine for a moment, if you were to win a game and then yelled at them to lick your boots (and you meant it). They probably wouldn’t be your friends for very long. Our innate social response is to repress our instinctual dominance urge so as not to damage our friendships.

Loser’s testosterone briefly falls and then recovers: The loser is under threat of being put in a low status position. However, once they receive signals that their trust in their friend is justified, they have no reason to fear a loss of status.

If dominance responses are missing, where is the fun? In general, you see both winners and losers focusing on bonding activities after a competitive game.

They discuss the great shared moments in the game. Shared experiences create a common ground between players that they can reference in the future.

They compliment one another. Compliments are often reciprocated, creating an opportunity to build mutual respect and indebtedness.

The winner claims they got lucky. This defuses the notion that the winner is in some way dominant or higher status. They frame the game as one of luck which makes the loser feel much better.

Typically, the winner does everything they can to avoid rubbing their victory in the face of the other player. And the loser does everything they can to not dwell on their loss of status. We even have names for friends that engage in inappropriate dominance behaviors. We call them ‘poor winners’ or ‘poor losers’. Players that behave in a manner conducive to bonding are called ‘good winners’. It is rare that you hear the term ‘good loser’ since the loser is the victim to be consoled.

Mutual smack talk is a form of bonding: This can be confusing for the untrained observer, because good friends will often act like they are engaging in dominance behavior by using smack talk. Yet this is just for show. The moment the smack talk actually infringes upon existing expectations of status, the mood of players will change abruptly. You’ll often see accusations of one player ‘taking it too seriously.’ It is a good demonstration of trust to play at dominance, but to actually assert dominance between friends is considered out of bounds.

Bonding requires some form of communication channel. In a game played in a living room such as Mario Kart or a board game like Carcasonne, there are plenty of ambient opportunities. In PC games, text is the common channel. In console games, chat serves this purpose. Game mechanics can also be used as a form of in game communication. Tagging in Counterstrike is a good example of a game mechanic used to demonstrate status or shared affiliation.

The upside

With the increased popularity of couch gaming on the Wii and social gaming between friends on platforms such as Facebook, understanding the dynamics of competition between friends is critical to creating a successful game.

The most important realization is that typical form of ‘fun’ that we associate with competitive games is either reduced or turned into a negative experience. Competitive game play with friends becomes less about winning and more about shared experiences. This is a very different emotion. The ability to tell player stories, communicate, discuss and joke with one another are all features that enable the core delivery of value to the player. In some sense, the actual competition is secondary to the bonding that occurs around the activity. The ‘fun’ that comes from playing with friends is completely different than the ‘fun’ associated when playing with strangers.

The downside

Again, you can’t rely on ‘hard fun’ to deliver the same jolt as you would in a competition between strangers. The simple switch from playing with strangers to playing with friends results in such a shift in player psychology that you now need to rethink your reward and communication mechanisms.

It is easy to be fooled. The mechanics of the game like Unreal Tournament when played with strangers or friends are apparently identical; you shoot and you move. Yet the experience ends up being radically different. It turns out that existing social relationships and ambient communication methods are as much a part of the game as is the level design and the bullet physics. All too often I see designers building a game that they play with their buddies on the dev team. The group knows one another, can yell out in victory and ends up having an immense amount of fun. Then that same game is released online and immediately strangers begin griefing one another and creating an actively offensive elitist environment. The social graph of the playtesters is not the same as that of the actual players. As a result, the playtest sample is massively flawed.

Here’s a little chart to keep it all straight:

An example

Let’s return to Mario Party. Why would anyone play a luck based competitive game that provides poor rewards for winning? One clue is that Mario Party is always played with people sitting together on a couch. It is a social game about improving your friendship, not about beating the snot out of someone. Due to the game being played in person, there is immense communication between players and almost all communication is focused on bonding over a shared experience. The key gameplay yields is social fun, not hard fun.

It is perhaps not surprising that Nintendo multiplayer franchises have been slow to move into the online world. Most Nintendo games are designed to be played with friends. Due to low concurrency, synchronous play models and a lack of scheduling, most console gaming services are populated by strangers playing with strangers. Changing the dominant type of fun that forms the core of your game changes your value proposition to the player. This is a major brand mismatch that likely needs an entirely new franchise (such as Halo), not a minor design tweak.

4. How players differ by pro-social or pro-dominance inclination

To complicate matters, there are in fact two distinct populations of players in all these studies. The first are pro-dominance players who are predisposed to react to situations in a dominant fashion. They tend to have a higher base level of testosterone in their system and their level rise or fall more strongly in situations where they win or lose.

The second group are pro-social players who are predisposed to react to competitive situations with a focus on relationship building. In general, they have a lower base level of testosterone. Intriguingly, they do not experience the same misery of failure. In some sense, they aren’t playing to win so they don’t mind losing. In fact, some studies suggest they even experience increased stress and reduced performance on complex cognitive tasks when they are thrust into a high status position. Winning is a punishment.

Age may also be a factor. Testosterone peaks in the late twenties and drop steadily after age 30. By age 40, 19 to 47% of males fall into the low testosterone category, depending on the accepted cut off.

The downside

From a game design perspective, this split in your population has some interesting implications. When you create a game that rewards players by winning alone, there are two groups that you fail to address. The first is of course, the losers. The second however, are pro-social players that are motivated more by forming relationships than by demonstrating status. You can give them opportunities to ‘be the winner’, but these rewards will fall flat.

Recommendations

These patterns of competition give designers some useful tools.

Note 1: Your design should explicitly differentiate between friends and strangers

You need to differentiate up front between friends and strangers in your design. If you fail to separate these two populations, you’ll end up creating system that inevitably alienate multiple segments of your player base. Many of the problems stem from how communication channels are used by each group.

If you create a game for friends:

Winning strangers will use the communication channels intended for building reporte to instead act out their dominance and aggression urges. Teabagging is an example of a humiliation behavior that tends to encourage losers to leave.

Losing strangers will use the communication channels to denigrate the winners or claim luck or environmental issues were at work. This makes the winners more likely to leave since this is not the ‘good job!’ pat on the back they were hoping for. Instead of bowing and fame, they are greeted with yells of ‘cheaters’ and ‘lucky’.

If you create a game targeted exclusively at strangers

Due to lack of communication channels, winning friends will have no way to reduce the bite of their victory. There is the risk of permanently damaging your relationship with the loser.

By separating friends from strangers, you can offer each population rewards and game mechanics appropriate to their desires. Winning strangers can be complimented in isolation. Losing strangers can be given feedback that emphasizes the luck of the situation and their increased future chance of victory. Friends can be given communication tools that allow them to bond.

Note 2: Games that focus on playing with friends result in stronger retention across a broader audience.

Friends encourage other friends to join since they want to share the experience with them in order to increase their bond.

Friends tend to encourage existing players to play more since they want to deeper their bond.

There is only one class of player that is alienated by bonding oriented play: pro-dominance players that are not able or willing to play amicably with friends. This is arguably a big group (upwards of ~50% of males age 14 to 39) Yet this is distinct minority in comparison to the broader population.

This insight gives some indication why asynchronous social network games grow so rapidly. People typically play with friends and are predisposed to communicate their game experiences and feel social pressure to repeat them. In contrast, competitive activities between strangers tend to result in a steady decline in player populations.

Note 3: Test with strangers and friends separately

As tempting as it is to test your multiplayer game with the readily available team playing within shouting distance, understand that you are fatally polluting your data. Larger scale online tests that allow strangers to interact and figure out how to dominate and insult one another will yield a much more realistic understanding of the culture that will evolve out of many competitive multi player game systems.

Note 4: If you must include communication channels in your online game, create a design that turns strangers into friends.

If you include rich communication channels in a competitive game, strangers will use them to exert their dominance. The way around this is to explicitly create groups where people act as friends. This leads to bubbles of cooperation even within a competitive game.

Assign players to a common affiliation. Counterstrike does this by having sides that you join from the start of each mission.

Create a common goal: Horde mode in Gears of War does this by giving players the goal of surviving the onslaught together.

Create a common experience of suffering or joy: In Eve Online, players partake in vast highly destructive battles. Even after vicious losses, companies still stick together since the suffering gives them a visceral common experience that strengthens their bonds.

Offer opportunities for reciprocation: In Left 4 Dead, players can help one another if they are in trouble.

Provide channels of communication: In Farmville, players can send messages to one another in game and via Facebook notifications. This helps players negotiate group norms and bond over shared experiences.

Allow individual choice: In WoW guilds, players actively choose to participate in a particular group. Players that allowed to choose freely will have a greater affiliation than players that are forced to rely on other players. I find designs were performance is improved with other players works better than ones where players are punished if they do not cooperate.

Conclusion

When we design a game, we are constantly on the lookout for ‘fun’. However our ability to identify and augment fun is only as good as our mental model of what fun looks like. Our commonsense models of competition overvalues the delight expressed by winners and undervalues the reactions of other player populations. By adopting a more sophisticated model of how winners and losers react in various situations, a designer has a much better chance of knowing why their design fails and how they might fix it.

The data I’ve covered is not complete for all populations. For example, there are fewer studies looking at how testosterone changes in women. Though we commonly think of it as a ‘male hormone’, testosterone is actively produced by both sexes and appears to serve similar purposes in regards to dominance. However, not all behaviors found in men have been reliably produced in studies involving women. Nor have all the studies been validated on older populations, different cultures or children. Scientists have a tendency to use male college students because they are readily available and it is much easier to measure their testosterone. This can skew the results. The solution is to use these guidelines as a starting point and then continually test your hypothesis about competitive play. Put your game designs in front of a diverse group of players and see if they react as you expect. By looking through the lens of a richer mental model, your informed experiments will guide your game in the right direction.

My personal take on these studies is that there is vast potential for new pro-social competitive games. The market took an odd turn for a short while:

Early consoles involved 2 to 4 players gathered around the TV. Play was primarily social.

We lost the focus on playing with friends with the advent of online play and low concurrency platforms. Since we were playing with strangers, the primary class of fun switched to games of dominance.

The advent of social networks again allows us to target online multiplayer games at audiences guaranteed to be friends.

Now we have a fresh opportunity to design friendly competitive games that build relationships instead of breaking them down. (Source: Lost Garden)


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