作者：Mike Simpson

Creative Assembly（游戏邦注：下文简称“CA”）的设计方法有些非同寻常。《全面战争》系列游戏的设计是“基于功能”而非“基于关卡”。

随着玩家不断在游戏中进展，他们探索的不仅是新内容，他们还会解锁有些新游戏机制的新功能。游戏一般都含有大量的功能。这意味着，我们没有那么多的时间花在每个功能的迭代和平衡上。

大多数的功能需要在游戏开始之初便发挥作用。在CA中，指导我们设计行为的正是帮助实现这个目标的准则。

第一个准则是：设计体现在细节中。高层次的设计想法很容易产生，但是可能几乎完全没有价值。

在我们的行业中，做出的许多决定都基于高层次设计的质量，这让我感到大为惊奇。概念的质量和结果的质量之间并没有必然的联系。

全面战争(from myzone999.blogspot.com)

风格和主旨

几乎所有的质量都来源于对概念的细致化执行。

我们将设计划分为风格和主旨两类。没有风格的游戏干涩呆板，玩家不会沉浸其中。没有主旨的游戏根本就不能算作是游戏。

复杂游戏需要风格和主旨双方面，但是设计师会将注意力放在某个方面，于是就衍生出了美工和工程师两类人，但很少有人同时关注两个方面。

设计功能有4种可用的基本方法：剪切粘贴、寻找感觉、利用首要准则、以及利用反馈参数来设计。所有这些方法都是有效的，而且它们可以被混合使用。

复制粘贴方法是指将其他游戏中运转良好的功能移植到你自己的游戏中。你移植的是功能的概念，而并非执行方法，“设计体现在细节中”这项准则的含义是功能仍然需要在你自己的游戏中重新执行。

你从复制中得到的好处时，虽然你确定某个游戏想法很管用，这并不等同于它也适用于你的游戏项目和执行背景。使用剪切粘贴方法也存在某些风险。比如，从你玩过的任意游戏巨作中借用想法似乎并非像你想象的那样美好。

“寻找感觉”设计即使用你的想象力作为快速制造原型的工具，考虑高层次概念可能产生的结果。

不幸的是，大脑在处理想法的风格层面时显得很睿智，但是却很容易忽视细节，而后者正是体现质量的地方。

设计游戏的风格层面固然不错，但是需要将核心游戏玩法同重复相结合，而我们并非总是有时间来做这件事情。

准则带来的麻烦

“利用首要准则设计”就像是“寻找感觉”和迭代的结合，但是你要做的是得出概念能够发挥作用的原因，而不是想象它能够如何发挥作用。

这使得我们在一开始就可以得到或多或少正确的复杂功能，在无需迭代的情况下马上提供强大的游戏玩法。

对于《全面战争》游戏，最重要的准则是“对位法”。

这是个简单的想法，在游戏玩法的核心，我们向玩家提供的每个选项都有个不去执行的理由。游戏玩法在玩家不断对正确和错误选项的探索中显现出来。

比如在某FPS游戏中，花时间瞄准目标会让你击杀敌人，但是如果花的时间过多你就会被杀死。

每项功能的每个元素都可以用这种对位法进行分析。如果过于强大，那么这个选项就没有选择的价值。如果过于虚弱，那么选项便转变成一种强制性的无聊任务。只有当强弱刚好时，功能才可以得到平衡。

我们的游戏机制设计师在“对位法领域”中工作，不断将因素分离和重组。这更像是工程动力学而非创造性过程，需要考虑到积极和消极反馈、阻碍和滞后因素。

“利用反馈参数指导设计”是80年代起设计师引进的新方法，而且我们并未将其忽视。我们使用数据来指导游戏的更新和未来设计。

《全面战争》系列游戏或许非同寻常，但是我认为我们使用的这些游戏设计基本准则可以运用到所有的游戏中，从最简单的桌游到最为复杂的PC游戏均不例外。

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年9月23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，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The art of feature-lead game design

Mike Simpson

The Creative Assembly’s approach to design is a little unusual. The Total War series of games is ‘feature based’ rather than ‘level based’.

As players progress through the game, it’s not just new content they explore; they get to unlock new features with new game mechanics. We often have a huge feature set compared to an average game. That means we don’t have as much time to spend on iterating and balancing each feature.

The vast majority of them have to work first time. At CA our design efforts are guided by principles that help to achieve this.

The first is: ‘The design is in the detail’. High-level design ideas are easy to generate and almost entirely without value.

It still amazes me that in our industry many decisions get made primarily based on the quality of a high-level design pitch. There is little correlation between the quality of a concept and the quality of the outcome.

STYLE AND SUBSTANCE

Almost all of the quality comes from the fine-grained detail of exactly how a concept is actually executed.

We divide design into style and substance. Without style your game is dry and mechanical; players will not get immersed in it. Without substance it’s quite simply not a game.

Complex games require both style and substance, but designers tend to focus on style or substance, being artists or engineers, but rarely both.

There are perhaps four basic approaches to designing a feature – cut and paste, gut feel, design by first principles and the newcomer – design by metrics. All are valid and they can be mixed.

The cut and paste approach takes a feature that works well in another game and transplants it to your own. It’s a concept you’re taking, not an implementation, and the ‘design is in the detail’ principle means that the feature still needs to be re-implemented for your own game.

All you get from copying is proof that the idea can be made to work, not that it will actually work in the context of your game and implementation. There are some real risks with cut and paste. It’s far too tempting, for example, to pull in ideas from whatever masterpiece you’ve just played.

‘Gut feel’ design uses your imagination as a rapid prototyping tool; take a high level concept and imagine how it might play.

Sadly, the brain is brilliant at assessing the style aspects of an idea, but tends to skip over the details where the quality is found.

It’s great for designing the style aspects of your game, but for core gameplay it has to be combined with iterating; something we don’t always have the time to do.

A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE

‘Design by first principles’ is like ‘gut feel’ and iteration, but you work out why a concept should work instead of imagining how it plays.

It allows us to get complex features more or less right first time, giving strong gameplay without iterating.

There isn’t space here to go through everything we do, but for Total War games, the most important principle is ‘counterpoint’.

It’s the simple idea, at the heart of gameplay, that for every choice we put in front the player there needs to be a reason not to take it. Gameplay emerges in the player’s exploration of right and wrong choices.

In an FPS for example, taking time to aim carefully will get you kills, but taking too long will get you killed.

Every element of every feature can be analysed for counterpoint. If it’s too strong, the choice is never worth taking. If it’s too weak, the choice turns into a compulsory chore. When it’s just right, the feature is balanced.

Our game mechanics designers work in ‘counterpoint space’, pulling apart and re-assembling the factors that feed into player’s choices. This is more like engineering dynamics than a creative process, with positive and negative feedback, damping, lag and so on being considered.

‘Design by metrics’ is the first addition to the designer’s toolbox since the ‘80s, and we’re not ignoring it. Our games are instrumented, and we use the data to guide updates and future designs.

The Total War series may be unusual, but I think the basic principles of game design we follow can apply to all games, from the simplest board game to the most complex PC epic. (Source: Develop)