作者：Gavin Koh

我希望通过自己开通的两个博客提高知名度，获得游戏开发机会。

关于评论游戏

今天分享的内容同我的电子游戏新闻工作经历有关。短短9个半月，我的游戏评论网站所获得的成就超出我的预期。获悉网站拥有固定读者我非常高兴，他们关注我就170多款游戏所进行的交叉分析内容。

就如大家熟知的，博客非常有沉浸性，特别是当你全心全意投入创作。你会细心维护网站，投入大把时间，做出许多承诺。

现在我们就来谈谈这个话题。首先是关于游戏评论过程——它涉及如下日常要求：

* 彻底体验某款游戏（游戏邦注：有时超过几天时间）

* 沿途截取大量截图

* 构思评论内容

* 最重要的是剖析游戏设计——毫无拘束地罗列所有游戏利弊

剖析游戏设计

玩过许多游戏后，我发现一个固定模式。我从中学到的是存在系列共同元素令游戏或别具一格，或达到中等质量，或成为十足烂作。

以下是8大共同要素：

1. 故事

2. 有效指导

3. 游戏玩法创新

4. 提高沉浸性

5. 适当挑战

6. 辅助要素（视觉和听觉）

7. 游戏分辨率

8. 商业要素

我首先先谈论前两个要素。

故事

通常故事元素是游戏成败的最关键要素。缺乏故事元素就无法有效吸引玩家眼球，因为内容无法同玩家建立密切联系。缺乏粘性就会产生厌倦感，很快玩家就会离开游戏。

相反，太多故事元素也会令玩家生厌。我发现有些作品原本能够让玩家置身丰富和迷人的背景世界，但其设计师忽略一个元素——节奏。

每个专业小说家都非常熟悉节奏：你须有背景，你须介绍主角和敌手（游戏邦注：尽量不要引入过多次要角色），你须设置敌手需解决的冲突或问题，敌手须在故事中扮演反派角色，你须有强大游戏决心，而不是突然中断。

game tutorials from mobygames.com

有效指导

呈现少量指导信息的时代已一去不复返。如今许多游戏由于两个相反原因开始附着大量指导信息：

* 核心游戏的日益复杂需要内容呈现优秀指南解释从未见过的游戏功能

* 我们需要详细指导休闲玩家。这能够说服他们游戏非常简单和有趣，值得他们持续体验。

我看过大量指南，有些真的非常优秀，有些则非常糟糕。

优秀指南：

* 简单解释所有玩法要素（清晰）

* 给予玩家跳过或选择所需指南的选择权（控制）

* 引入供参照的充足基本策略（指导）

糟糕指南：

* 以蹩脚方式呈现指南——这多半归功于糟糕指南设计、糟糕排序或本土化问题（缺乏简洁性）

* 借助非互动视频会出现2种情况：视频过长会枯燥无味；视频过短可能会错失重要信息（缺乏控制性）

* 指南缺乏价值——缺少创建基本认知过程会流失大众玩家；他会因游戏过于复杂而选择离开（缺乏指导性）（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Dissecting Game Designs – Part 1

by Gavin Koh

Introduction

Ever since the beginning of this year when I knew that my life would change in the career department, I immediately started off on a plan to get myself noticed by game companies. After some brainstorming, I decided to start off two blogs, one on writing game reviews and another one on my appetite for coding. I was banking on these two web sites to help me net some exposure and hopefully place some opportunities on my plate for a career in game development.

I have tried four companies so far (all of them overseas), and hopefully something will eventually come my way. Despite the dearth of opportunities, I am not giving up.

About reviewing games

The focus of tonight’s knowledge sharing is related to my journey in video game journalism. In just nine and a half months, I have achieved a lot more than I expected for my game review site. It is really nice to know that I have regular readers for my review site and that they value my cross analysis of at least 170 games.

As some of you may know, blogging can be quite addictive, especially when you put your heart and soul into your creation. Before you know it, you will be nurturing your website with tender loving care, in addition to sacrificing loads of your time as well as sowing heaps of commitment.

But, I digress, let’s head towards the topic for today. First, a bit about my game review process – it involves the following daily commitments:

* playing a game quite thoroughly (sometimes over a couple of days),

* taking tons of screenshots along the way,

* thinking of what to write for the review,

* and most importantly, dissecting the game design – coming up with a list of all the pros and cons of the game, no holds barred.

Dissecting game designs

If you have read some of my articles, you know what I mean when I say “dissecting the game design”.

After playing through so many games like I have, you will start to see a pattern. What I have learnt are that there are common elements that help mark a game as one of great distinction, or one of average quality, or one of outright awfulness.

Here are eight common elements that feature very frequently:

1. Story

2. Tutoring effectively

3. Game play innovativeness

4. Elevating immersiveness

5. Suitable challenges

6. Ancillary factors – visual and aural

7. Game resolution

8. Business factors

I’ll cover the first two and return to cover the rest in part 2 of my article.

Story

Most often the lack of a story is one of the biggest factor to make or break a game. The absense of a story puts players off since there is no close bond established with them. This lack of bonding starts a buildup of ennui and very soon, players will just walk away from the game.

Conversely, too much of a story will bore your players to death. I have seen games where players are just thrown into what is supposed to be a rich and compelling background world, but the designers have forgotten just one word – pacing.

Every professional novelist is familiar with pacing: you must have a setting, you must introduce your protagonists and antagonists (and not too many secondary characters if at all possible), you must have a conflict or problem that the protaganists must overcome, the antagonists must be acting out their part as opposition in the story, and you must have a great resolution, not one that suddenly cuts off abruptly.

Tutoring effectively

Gone are the days when skimpy (or absent) tutorials were the norm. Most games nowadays come with extensive tutorials due to two surprisingly polar reasons:

* the rising complexity of core games require a good tutorial to explain new game features that have never been seen before, or

* there is a need to thoroughly instruct a casual audience. This will convince them that the game is simple and fun enough for them to stay for the long haul.

I have seen a huge range of tutorials, some really good ones, and some that have gone horribly wrong.

Some really good ones -

* explains all game play elements succintly (clarity),

* gives the player the option to skip or to select the tutorials he needs (control), and

* introduces just enough basic strategy to live by (coaching).

Some that have gone horribly wrong -

* presents tutorials in a shoddy manner – this is mostly due to poor tutorial design, poor sequencing, or localization issues (absence of clarity),

* the use of non-interactive videos can go either way, for example if a video is too long, it gets boring, or if a video is too short, you risk missing something important (absence of control),

* not value adding to tutorials – the lack of opportunity in building basic cognitive processes that a player may need would certainly alienate the average player; he may walk away complaining a game is way too difficult (absence of coaching). （Source：gamasutra）