作者：Jared Lorince

Travis最近有关游戏运用进化心理学原理的帖子让我想起我和他之前进行的交谈。我近来在《连线》杂志读到这篇短文，文章提出系列有趣问题。我这里还没有任何答案。

《连线》杂志的文章很短，但其响应Travis和Jim所提出的某些游戏开发者以不甚道德的方式利用玩家奖励机制。文章内容本身没有采用进化心理学视角，而是称“某些传统游戏开发者认为Zynga的兴起是游戏开发的末日”（游戏邦注：这有点危言耸听）。Zynga对那些不熟悉该公司的人来说是近来新兴游戏典型代表《FarmVille》背后的工作室。此外，基于Zynga的点击、收集和邀请好友参与模式，社交网络游戏取得突出成绩：《黑手党战争》、《咖啡世界》，以及谷歌的上亿美元投资。

farmville from neoseeker.com

显然Zynga游戏及其背后的商业模式是棵名副其实的摇钱树。这些丰厚营收主要源自用户喜欢这些游戏，愿意在其中掏钱。但批评者觉得玩家并非真的喜欢这些游戏。“真实”情况是狡猾的游戏开发商在游戏中潜藏“尼古丁”，劫持我们的多巴胺运输通道，在我们给虚拟农场购买虚拟种子和牲畜过程中压榨我们的金钱，我们还一直鼓励Facebook好友参与体验，这样他们就能开展相同活动。

这显然有点夸大其词，但这也是我至今仍未批判Zynga的原因所在。不要误会我——我没法像其他“怀恨者”那样发现《Farmville》的趣味所在，我觉得游戏设计的道德标准非常重要，但还其他内容。游戏一直以来都是利用我们的神经奖励系统创收；其内容富有趣味，这也是为什么大家愿意掏钱体验游戏。道德问题已困扰游戏很多年，主要体现在游戏暴力和玩家成瘾性。我觉得EA Sports每年推出的优化版《疯狂橄榄球》（游戏邦注：玩家需掏出60美元）就存在道德问题。令我高兴的是Zynga的兴起促使大家开始更多关注游戏设计的道德问题，但《Farmville》等游戏最令大家感到气愤的地方在于？不是游戏流行程度或营收（虽然这些都相当令人错愕），而是玩法本身的性质。引用《孢子》Chris Hecker的话：

“当你玩《反恐精英》或是扔‘飞盘’的时候，你所进行的活动本身就很有趣。在Zynga游戏中，玩家只是试图获得更多内容，最终演变成“毒瘾”行为，逐步增加“药量”。这令我非常害怕。”

这似乎是玩家（特别是游戏设计社区）在《Farmville》中面临的主要问题。根据现代游戏的标准，《Farmville》的玩法相当简单，但许多玩家还是每天登陆Facebook进行体验。游戏在刺激我们的奖励系统方面似乎比其他游戏突出许多。但我不觉得Zynga策略富有独特性（游戏邦注：不妨参考《现代战争2》）。有款第一人称射击游戏符合Hecker的“本身有趣”定义，但很多运用刺激体验的游戏主要依靠复杂关卡和挑战机制。在游戏的在线体验中，你需通过70个关卡（从二等兵到指挥官），沿途获得不同头衔，让玩家能够获得醒目玩家标签。整个70关卡过程可重复10次（通过70个关卡的玩家能够获得“声望”和相关奖励），鼓励玩家投入更多时间。这利用两个原始驱动因素——社会威望（通过玩家标签体现）和积攒资源的欲望（头衔和徽章），就如《Farmville》所采用的方式。收集物品，向同辈吹嘘是人类基本活动。我觉得这两个刺激要素普遍存在于现代游戏的各个类型中，成为玩家奖励机制的主干。

这里我不会谈论过多细节，因为Jim已在游戏化议题中谈过类似话题，但我很好奇游戏趣味性多大程度取决于收集资源和向他人宣传这两方面。当然这关系到游戏本身的趣味性，但这只是其中一部分。我很高兴Hecker以《反恐精英》为例——我记得曾非常享受这款游戏，但后来逐渐厌倦，因为游戏缺乏较大刺激机制鼓励我每次停留久些。游戏机制非常有趣，但无法像成熟奖励机制那样吸引我的关注。也许Zynga模式（游戏邦注：关注奖励机制，而非玩法质量）表现如此突出潜在说明着什么。也许外在奖励和游戏趣味真实定义比我们想象的关系更密切，也许强烈评判Zynga的声音不再显得那么理直气壮。我并没有采取强硬态度，但我觉得这是个开放问题，需要我们给予更多关注。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2010年12月14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）

Another look at Zynga

By Jared Lorince

Travis’s recent post on games taking advantage of evolutionary psychology reminded me of a conversation he and I had a few weeks ago. I had recently read this short article in Wired Magazine, and it brought up some interesting questions I’d like to get out on the blog. I don’t have any answers here, but I’d to offer my $0.02 and get some input from you guys.

The Wired article is quite short (really just a blurb plus a few quotes by game industry types, to be honest), but it echoes the points discussed by Travis and Jim in terms of some game developers tapping into players’ reward mechanisms in ways that may not be all that ethical. Nothing in the piece takes an evolutionary psychology perspective per se, but suggests – in alarmist fashion – that “some traditional game developers think the rise of Zynga is a sign of the end of days…in terms of game making.” Zynga, for those unfamiliar with the company, is the studio behind the poster-child of the new wave in game design that’s been taking so much flak lately: Farmville. Also in Zynga’s click-happy, collect-all-you-can-and-get-your-friends-to-do-it-too, social network gaming crown: Mafia Wars, Café World, and…oh yeah…a $100 million dollar investment from Google.

It goes without saying, then, that Zynga’s games and the business model behind them form a veritable cash cow. If the numbers are anything to go by, people love playing these games, and are willing to spend money in the process. But wait, say the critics, people don’t actually love these games. What’s “really” going on is that the tricky game developers are sneaking digital nicotine into the game experience, hijacking our dopamine pathways and squeezing money out of us as we we buy new virtual seeds and virtual livestock for our virtual farms, all the while encouraging our Facebook friends to start playing so they can do the same.

Okay, so that’s an obvious exaggeration, but it does reflect why I’m wary to come down on Zynga as hard as some others have. Don’t get me wrong – I have trouble seeing the fun in games like Farmville as much as any “hater”, and I do think game design ethics matter, but there’s something else going on here. Games have been making money off our neurological reward mechanisms for as long as they’ve been around; they’re fun, and that’s why people are willing to pay money to play them. Ethical questions have abounded in game design for years, with respect to in-game violence, or players’ propensity to game addiction. I’d even say there’s a valid ethical question to be asked about EA Sports’ releasing a new, often only slightly-improved version of Madden football every year that players are seemingly compelled to trade sixty hard-earned dollars for the chance to play. I’m happy to see that the rise of Zynga has led people to pay more attention to ethical issues as applied to game design in general, but what is it about games like Farmville in particular that has people so riled up, even within the game industry? It’s not just the game’s popularity or the revenue it generates (though these are both pretty staggering), but rather the nature of the gameplay itself. To quote Chris Hecker, of Spore fame:

“When you’re playing Counter-Strike or even just throwing a Frisbee, the thing you’re doing is fun in itself. In Zynga games, you’re just trying to get more stuff. You’re caught up in this junkie behavior, and you have to keep upping the dose. That has me terrified.”

This seems to be the crux of the problem people – especially within the game design community – have with Farmville. By the standards of most modern games, Farmville’s gameplay is incredibly simple (and, many would argue, NOT in a good way), yet millions of users are compelled to log onto Facebook and play it every day. It would seem the game’s ability to tap our reward mechanisms is transparent in a way that it is not in other games. But visible or not, I’m hard pressed to believe that Zynga’s tactics are actually all that unique. Take a game like Modern Warfare 2 (a game I have more experience with than I’d care to admit). Here we have a first person shooter that would presumably meets Hecker’s definition of a game that “is fun in itself”, but a huge part of what makes it motivating to play (and I’m speaking from experience here) is its intricate leveling and challenge system. Playing the game online, you progress through 70 levels (from Private all the way up to Commander), all the while earning different titles and emblems that you can incorporate into your publicly visible gamertag. This entire 70-level process can be repeated ten times (each pass through the 70 levels is appropriately named a “prestige” and has associated rewards), motivating players to spend far more time playing the game than they would otherwise. This taps two fairly primitive drives – social prestige (advertised through your gamertag) and the desire to accumulate resources (titles and emblems) – in much the same way Farmville does. Collecting stuff and bragging about it to your peers are fundamental human activities (my lab at IU has done considerable work on foraging behavior, so I admit I have a vested interest in the topic). I would argue that these twin drives are pervasive across many modern games across widely varying genres, forming the backbone of their player reward systems.

Now I won’t delve into too much more detail here, since Jim just recently talked about similar ideas in the context of gamification, but I’m curious as to how big a part of what makes a game fun is driven by the twin drives of accumulating resources and advertising them to others. Of course it matters how fun the gameplay itself is (and here I’m echoing Jim’s distinction between outcome-oriented and process-oriented forms of motivation and engagement), but it’s only part of the picture. I’m glad Hecker used the example of Counterstrike – I remember enjoying the game considerably, but getting bored with it because there wasn’t a larger motivational structure encouraging me to play for more than a short while at a time. The gameplay was fun, but not enough to really hook me in the way games with a developed reward system could. Perhaps the fact that the Zynga approach, which focuses almost completely on the reward system instead of the quality of gameplay itself, is so effective has something to tell us. Maybe extrinsic motivation has more to do with the real definition of fun in the game context than we once thought, and so perhaps the backlash against Zynga is less warranted than it may seem. I’m not taking a hard line here, but I think this an open question that deserves more consideration than its been given. Thoughts?（Source：motivateplay）