作者：Ernest W. Adams

制作电脑游戏来实现梦想。

某些游戏带有轻微的娱乐性，其设计目标是用谜题或小挑战消磨数分钟的时间。对于此类游戏，没有必要细节化地讨论其设计哲学。

但是较大型游戏的基本目标是将你带往某个绝妙的地方，让你做某些令人惊叹的事情。

这是书籍和电影无法实现的——它们可以将你带往某个绝妙的地方，但是无法让你做某些令人惊叹的事情。这便是交互行为的强大之处。也正是这点使得游戏这种媒介如此独特，如此重要。

因而，游戏设计开始时需要回答的问题是：“我想要实现什么梦想？”

梦想可能是探索布满怪物的地下城，可能是执教足球队，可能是成为时装设计师。无论是什么梦想，在你开始进行设计之前，你必须要构建出来，理解梦想，感受梦想。知道何人与你拥有同一个梦想以及原因。

dream(from fedbybirds.com)

交互行为是所有电脑游戏存在的理由。

下个问题是：“玩家想要做什么？”

我们过分地关注艺术、音效、音乐、肢体形态和视频内容，因而很容易忽略这个问题。交互行为是电脑游戏存在的原因。我们必须知道玩家将要做什么。哪些行为能够实现梦现？

除了行动外，玩家也有自己的目标。游戏听起来似乎只是个软件玩具，可以毫无目标地玩。但是在传统游戏中，玩家总是努力取得“胜利”。对于面向目标的游戏而言，确定胜利条件同确定能够取得胜利的行动有着密切联系。

在所有比谜题更为复杂的游戏中，玩家都扮演着某个角色。可能是中世纪的冒险家、军队指挥官、生意场上的大亨、运动员或者某些抽象的东西（游戏邦注：在投币游戏《Tempest》中，玩家是个携带机关枪的两腿蜘蛛）。确定角色，包括其目标、限制条件以及所有的行动，这是游戏设计的第二步。

游戏发生在某个世界中。

所有电脑游戏都在某种类型的世界中发生，包括物理空间、思维空间、情感空间、经济空间和道德空间。

物理空间描述所有的视觉和音效，也就是玩家可以在世界中看到、听到、触摸和交流的东西。用来勾勒世界的图片、音效和语言创造出的不只是它的自然形态，还有世界的风格和情绪。物理空间的确定有助于思维、情感、经济和道德空间的建立。

思维空间描述玩家的思考过程，也就是玩家需要去思考的东西。这个空间有可能极为复杂，也有可能极为简单，有可能极为抽象，也有可能极为具体。但是所有的游戏都有思维空间，就是游戏中的一整套规则。

情感空间描述玩家需经历的各种情感以及游戏中角色所呈现出的各种情感。游戏情感空间的常见元素包括恐惧、胜利感、沮丧、愉悦感和悬疑。当然还有挫败感，只是比较少见！

经济空间描述游戏中资源的流动。所涉及的不一定是金钱，可以是弹药、护甲强度、生命值点数、魔法力量以及其他根据玩家行为而改变的有价值的资源。经济空间中含有描述这些变量如何改变的数学模型，而该模型的精心设计对创造游戏的平衡性至关重要。胜利条件通常取决于经济空间中的元素。

道德空间描述游戏所采用的道德系统。如果游戏中含有人们可能产生道德感的概念（游戏邦注：如偷盗、破坏、杀戮、征服、保护无辜者等），那么必须在做出道德决断的时刻奖励、惩罚或忽略玩家所做出的选择。有时，忽略某个行动本身就可以传达出强有力的道德信息。

电脑游戏设计还涉及其他许多内容。游戏设计应当面向其目标用户，面向目标设备的功能，面向制作预算和时间表，面向开发者的能力和技术。所有这些都可能影响到所设计的游戏，但是上文提到的那些问题是我认为应当首先思考的。如果这些问题的答案模糊不清或者模棱两可，那么游戏设计可能会陷入困境。这些问题的答案要在制作游戏的过程中不断修改，但是应当被所有参与游戏开发的人清晰地了解。只有大家都理解了，我们才有可能通过合作来实现梦想。（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）

Design Philosophy

Ernest W. Adams

Computer games are made to fulfil dreams.

Some games are light entertainment, designed to while away a few minutes with a puzzle or a simple challenge. For those kinds of games, there’s no need to discuss a design philosophy in detail.

But the fundamental goal of a larger game, as I said on my home page, is to take you away to a wonderful place, and there let you do an amazing thing.

Books and movies can’t do that. They can take you away to a wonderful place, but they can’t let you do an amazing thing. That’s the power of interactivity. That’s what makes this medium unique, and that’s what makes it important.

Therefore, the design of a game begins with the question, “What dream am I going to fulfil?”

Perhaps it’s a dream of exploring a dungeon infested with monsters. Perhaps it’s a dream of coaching a football team. Perhaps it’s a dream of being a fashion designer. But before you do anything else, you must dream the dream. Understand it. Feel it. Know who dreams it with you and why.

Interactivity is the raison d’être of all computer gaming.

The next question is this: “What is the player going to do?”

We concentrate so much on the artwork, the sound, the music, the motion capture, the video, that it’s easy to lose sight of this question. Interactivity is the raison d’être, the reason for being. We have to know what the player is going to do. What actions, what activities, will fulfil the dream?

In addition to actions, the player also has goals. It may be that the game is really a software toy, and is meant to be played with without goals. But in traditional gaming, the player is trying to achieve something, a “victory condition.” For goal-oriented games, defining the victory condition is closely related to defining the actions taken to achieve it.

In any game more complex than a puzzle, the player is playing a role. It may be a medieval adventurer, a military commander, a business tycoon, an athlete, or it may be something abstract and almost indescribable. (In the coin-op game Tempest, the player was a sort of two-legged spider with a machine gun.) Defining that role — its goals, its limitations, and above all its actions — is the second step in game design.

A game takes place in a world.

Any computer game takes place in some kind of a world, by which I mean a physical space, but also an intellectual space, an emotional space, an economic space, and an ethical space.

The physical space describes all the sights and sounds, the things that the player can see and hear and touch and speak to in the world. Pictures and sounds and language are used to portray the world, and to create not only its physical appearance but also its tone and mood. The definition of the physical space helps to establish the intellectual, emotional, economic, and ethical spaces.

The intellectual space describes the thought processes that the player will take, the things that she will be required to think about. These can be extremely complex or extremely simple; they can be extremely abstract or extremely concrete. But all games have an intellectual space, a set of rules and ways of reasoning about the game.

The emotional space describes the kinds of emotions the player should experience and the kinds of emotions the characters in the game will display. Fear, triumph, sadness, amusement, and suspense are common elements of the emotional spaces of games. All too often, so is frustration, although rarely by design!

The economic space describes the flow of resources into, around, and out of the game. This need not be money; it can be ammunition, armor strength, “health points,” magical power, or any other valued resource which changes in response to the player’s actions. The economic space includes a mathematical model which describe how these variables change, and designing that model carefully is vital to creating the game’s balance. The victory conditions are usually defined in with reference to elements in the economic space.

The ethical space describes the system of ethics in place in the game. If a game involves concepts that people have moral feelings about (theft, destruction, killing, conquest, democracy, protection of the innocent, and so on), then it must reward, punish or ignore the player’s choices when confronted with a moral decision. Sometimes simply ignoring an action sends a powerful moral message in itself.

This is just the beginning.

There’s a vast amount more to computer game design. A game’s design is informed by its intended audience, by the features of machine it is being made for, by the budget and schedule for its production, by the strengths and skills of the people who are building it. All these things affect the way a game is designed, but the questions above are the ones I think about first. If there is ambiguity or uncertainty about their answers, the game is in trouble. The answers may be revised in the course of production, but they should always be clearly known by all the people building the game. Only through a collective understanding of the dream can they work together to fulfil it. (Source: Designer’s Notebook)