作者：Christian Nutt

在GDC Online的演讲大会上，经验丰富的MMO游戏开发元老及现任Playdom创意设计副总裁Raph Koster呼吁台下的开发者去抓住社交媒体的掌控权，而不要反被它们掌控了。

Koster用一个童话故事贯穿着整个演讲。他将游戏世界比作一个魔法阵，而由有魔力的巫师去设定规则。

raph_koster(from metaversejournal.com)

他表示：“因为我们是巫师，所以我们喜欢待在这里！任何人都很难改变这个魔法阵里的东西。”

在这个魔法阵里，任何东西都是由算术构成的，遵循一定的规则，具有创造性并能够被操纵，而且最后也能为我们带来巨大的利益。虽然这个魔法阵对于我们这些不知道如何在现实中好好生活的人很有帮助，但是问题就在于：一些“地理学家”也会受到金钱的诱惑而进到这个圈子里。

Koster继续说道：“如今，现实生活中那个狂野的世界开始逼近魔法阵的边缘，使得两者间的界限越来越模糊。来自于现实生活与魔法阵内部的各种元素相互交织影响着。诚实地讲，我们真的被外部世界那些参杂近来的元素吓到了。”

“但是，从多方面看我们也应该去担忧那些渗透出去的现实数学元素。”

早期的大型多人在线游戏，如《Ultima Online》（Koster参与了游戏制作）便缺少了一些有活力的社交功能。有时候（当ICQ被视为直接的即时信息工具时）用户总是围绕着这一功能进行活动，但是有时候（迫于需求Koster也会自己编写代码）用户会要求开发小组根据其需求而适当调整游戏。

“如果我们不能提供这些功能，玩家也会主动要求我们这么做的，”Koster说道，即使这种做法“会影响游戏的‘游戏性’”。

“如果缺少了社交功能，我们便不能创造出较大的社交框架。游戏中的社交框架是指玩家只要点击游戏，便能够留下足迹。事实上，这只是一部分的观点。”论坛，聊天平台，交流社区等游戏外部领域也属于社交功能，而且这些社交功能的发展已经远超游戏了。

在哪里我们可以最大限度地尝试这种社会互动行为？Koster便提到“Facebook”。

开发者尝试着去控制游戏世界；也只有“疯狂的冰岛人会想办法”让现实世界进入到游戏中，说到这里我们便不得不提到《EVE Online》（游戏邦注：来自冰岛的游戏开发商CCP Games研发的太空题材在线游戏），以及它的玩家和备受瞩目的“the Council for Stellar Management”项目。

Koster表示：“在今天，你会很惊讶地发现无数游戏虚拟社区的存在，并且这些社区都转战到各个网站上，吸引你每天反复上网点击观察它们的动态。”

游戏正在简化并优化我们的现实世界，并指引它去遵循一些简单的规则。Koster说道：“我很喜欢Will（游戏邦注：Will Wright，《模拟人生》，《孢子》的首席开发者），但是当他开始在游戏中削减所有的人类体验，”即在开发《模拟人生》时，“他将这种体验进行了最大化的压缩。”

现在，这些游戏理念，包括成就和规则都被游戏化了。多亏了游戏，我们能够以更简单的视角去看待现实世界。

“狂野的现实世界开始操纵我们的游戏王国，同时，这个世界也逐渐参合着游戏元素而越具虚拟化了。”

但是我们所说的这些操作都太过于简单了。正如我们所说的，游戏并不只是分数和标记的集合体。

如果“游戏设计是关于如何约束玩家，”Koster说道，那么这种游戏便不再只是一种控制系统了。“游戏是有趣的，因为只有一小部分具有控制力，而更大部分内容是在教授你如何进行思考。”

“这就是优秀的艺术表现。而糟糕的艺术只会一步一步地欺骗你。当你沿着一定的路线越走越远时，你便很容易会陷进游戏模式中。”

他举了个例子进行说明，在减肥时，如果你使用的是以积分为基础的重量计算应用，有可能会因此减掉40镑的重量。但是如果是一款糟糕的应用，可能会直接要求你使用“节食”这种错误的激励方法。

Koster表示，他之所以开始设计游戏是因为想要进入“一个拥有两个月亮的世界。我想要感受到不一样的体验，并且也能够与现实世界中的人们维系在一起。”

根据他的观察，如今的Facebook不论是在群组，积分，个人档案，角色还是用户生成内容等方面都做得不错，并且比起游戏或者虚拟世界，用户能够在此更有效地与好友进行交流。

但如果“这个拥有两个月亮的世界有一个糟糕的用户转化率，我们就会撤离此地。”

那希望到底在哪呢？

Koster告诉观众：“你们仍然是巫师。游戏是一种社交媒体。一开始它是用来传授知识。即在游戏形势下，我们能够进行交谈。同时我们也不该忘记所有的这些改变，我们仍然拥有更多能力去塑造它们。如今的世界正在效仿游戏王国中的规则，而我们正是这些规则的创立者。“

如果现实世界越来越像游戏，“那么在地球上便没有人比你更加适合去探索并塑造更棒的游戏世界了。”

“所以，我们玩游戏并不只是为了积分，而是因为游戏有趣，因为我们能在游戏中与别人进行交流，了解他们，并相互发起挑战。我们还必须小心提防，不要让分数，规则，量化以及简化论等破坏了我们的乐趣，也不要受其影响而改变自己。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

GDC Online: Raph Koster Urges Developers To Take Back Control

by Christian Nutt

In a rabble-rousing speech at GDC Online, veteran MMO developer and current Playdom VP of creative design Raph Koster commanded the developers in the audience to take control of social media — not let it take control of them.

Koster framed his speech, in large part, as a fairytale. He compared the world of games to a magic circle where powerful wizards set the rules.

“We like living here because we’re wizards! It’s pretty hard for stuff to get in and out of this magic circle,” said Koster.

In the circle, everything is made of math, follows rules, is creative, and highly manipulable — and, as it turns out, highly profitable as well. Since the magic circle is comfortable for those of us who don’t know how to work well in the real world, this is a problem: money attracts “geographers,” he said.

“Nowadays the wild world is coming right up to the edge of the circle and the circle is looking a little faded here. Stuff is flowing in, stuff is flowing out,” said Koster. “And honestly we get really freaked out in here by the stuff that’s leaking in.”

“But a in a lot of ways we should be worried about the math that’s leaking out,” he said.

Early MMOs like Ultima Online, which Koster worked on, lacked robust social functionality. In some cases (ICQ messaging used as direct chat) users worked around it; in other cases (guilds, which Koster himself coded due to demand) the users forced the teams to accommodate their needs in-game.

“If we don’t provide these facilities, players will pressure us to provide them,” said Koster — even if they “erode the gameness of the game.”

“All of this ended up helping us build these big social structures,” he said. “Social structures in games, once they click, they leave the bubble. In fact, that’s part of the point.” Forums, chat, communities — all outside the games. But they have gone even further.

What form has this type of social interaction ultimately taken? Facebook, primarily, he suggested.

Game developers tried to keep absolute control of game worlds; only “some crazy people from Iceland even tried” to let the world into the game — referring here, of course, to EVE Online and its player government, the Council for Stellar Management.

“Today, you can take stock of how many of the core premises of virtual community design have been taken from games and moved onto the websites that you’re probably obsessively checking four times a day. It’s all of it,” said Koster.

Games simplified and quantified the real world, made it follow simple rules. “I love Will,” said Koster. “But when he attempted to reduce all of human experience” by building The Sims, “he reduced it to eight bars, one of which was needing to pee.”

And now these game concepts — achievements and rules — have taken the form of gamification. A simplified view of the world has been imposed on the real world, thanks to games.

“The keys to our kingdom had been handed over to the wild world. The wild world has become more like a game in virtually every way,” said Koster.

But these implementations are far too simplistic. Games, as we all know, are not just about points and badges.

And while “Design is about constraining people,” said Koster, games are not just systems of control. “Games are interesting, because they’re only partly in control — because they’re about teaching you how to think.”

“Good art does that. Bad art lies to you,” Koster said. “When you start going pretty far down the route of accessibility, it’s pretty easy to slip in this mode.”

He pointed out that by using a points-based weight tracking app, he’s lost 40 pounds. But a badly designed app could be “a straight road to anorexia, if your incentives are wrong.”

Koster pointed out that he got into designing games because he wanted to set foot into “a world with two moons… I wanted to have magical experiences and form real bonds with people.”

But by his estimation, today Facebook does groups better, points better, profiles better, roles better, has more user-generated content, and puts people in touch with their friends more effectively than games or virtual worlds have.

And, oh yeah — “the world with two moons has bad funnel conversion, so we cut it.”

So where does hope live??

“You’re still a wizard,” Koster told the audience. “Games are social media. From their inceptions, they have been tools for the transmission of wisdom. They’re how we talk to each other, in forms of play. We shouldn’t forget that regardless of how much all of this changes, we still have the power to shape this. We are the ones who set the rules that the world is copying.”

If the world is becoming more game-like, there is “no better group people on the planet to navigate and shape that than you in this room,” said Koster.

“It’s more than just points. We did it because it was fun. We did it because we hung out with other people, and got to know them; they challenged us, and we challenged them. That’s why we did the games. Let’s watch out not to let the pointsification and rulesification, quantification, and reductionism that we have always loved about what we do — let’s not let that change who we are.”  （source:gamasutra）