作者：Ben Abraham

作为一名游戏设计师，育碧的Jason VandenBerghe一直在寻找能够帮助他做出有趣游戏设计决策的元素，他最终也发现了玩家动机是其中最重要也是最有效的一个元素。因此他投入了许多时间去研究玩家动机并将其真正应用于游戏设计决策中。

心理学中有5大人格特征，其首字母可缩略成“O.C.E.A.N.”，即指人类行为的五大“动机”：开放性（Openness），严谨性（conscientiousness），外向性（extroversion），亲和性（agreeableness）以及神经质（neuroticism）。以下我们将通过正反面例子解析这五大人格特征：

开放性：开发性的显著代表是《爱丽丝梦游仙境》中的爱丽丝，她一直在尝试各种新鲜事物，出于好奇跳进了未知的兔子洞中。而反面例子则是一心只是想着“回家”的Samwise Gamgee（游戏邦注：指环王中的角色）。

严谨性：应对控制并进行冲动调节。赫敏·格兰杰（《哈利波特》中的主角）便拥有极高的自律性，反面例子是《抹杀绿脚趾》的花花公子。

Big Lebowski from entertainmentearth.com

外向性：VandenBerghe发现这一特征其实是游戏产业中两大独立理念的结合体，即渴望寻求刺激以及渴望与别人进行社交并寻求对方的陪伴。正面例子便是《王牌大间谍》，而反面例子则是《剪刀手爱德华》，

亲和性：这是我们对于合作与社会和谐的反应。高度亲和性的代表是《萤火虫》的Wash。而反例则是《纽约大逃亡》中的Snake。

神经质：基于人类对于负面情绪的反应。这是一种感觉情绪，如焦虑、沮丧等。最能够表现出神经质特点的便是Woody Allen在影片中所扮演的角色（游戏邦注：他常常扮演一些自我关注，伴有神经衰弱的人物）。而鲜有神经质特点的则是欧比旺·克诺比（游戏邦注：《星际大战》中的角色），他能够勇敢地接受自己悲催的命运。

Obi Wan Kenobi from girls-gone-geek.com

VandenBerghe希望能够将这些动机转变成有益模式，帮助他做出有趣的游戏设计决策。所以他便展开了一些定性研究，即对具有这5种不同人格特征的人进行测试，并让他们谈论己所玩过的游戏类型。他希望从各种答案中确定同类型玩家是否是出于相同原因而进行游戏，或者是否是受到游戏中的相同元素的激励。

现在，他可以很自信地回答道“是的”。

VandenBerghe说道：“游戏能够弥补玩家在现实生活中难以做到的许多事。”举个例子来说，就像较低亲和性的玩家会为了忘却现实中的悲伤而在线游戏。

VandenBerghe用游戏设计师所熟悉的另外五个单词映射出这五大特征：开放性对应“创新性”，严谨性对应“挑战”，外向性对应“刺激”，和善性对应“和谐”，神经质则对应“威胁”。

VandenBerghe也承认这些内容并不能立刻帮助设计师做出合理的日常决策，相反地他们应该将这五大特征都分解成六个更小的“元素”。

首先是开放性的六个元素：

元素1：想象力。那些想象力非常丰富的人的内心世界就比他们的真实世界更加多彩。

元素2：艺术兴趣。对于这类型的人来说，美丽的事物更具有吸引力；而事物的实际价值则不是很重要。

元素3：情绪性。情感较丰富的人了解自己的感受，并能够描述出来；而情感不怎么丰富的人则琢磨不透自己的想法。

元素4：喜欢冒险。喜欢冒险的人重视惊喜与乐趣；而不喜欢冒险的人则更加循规蹈矩，总是重复相同的事情，并强调任何事物的预见性。

元素5：思维逻辑。具有较高思维能力的人喜欢各种谜题，并热衷于思考和解决问题。而缺乏思维能力的人则总是将自己遇到的问题牵扯到其他人或其它事物身上。

元素6：自由主义。高度自由主义之人总是高瞻远瞩，喜欢接触不同文化与价值观。而非自由主义之人的想法则总是停留在过去。

Jason VandenBerghe总结了自己在这几大元素中的表现，并最终发现：自己喜欢新鲜事物，但同时也追求规律性（即在元素4中分数较低），这就意味着“如果你想要提供给我一个新内容，你就必须确保它是符合我的时间安排。”

然后VandenBerghe根据对玩家的访问结果确定他们所对应的不同元素，并因此推断出他们的游戏动机。

第一位受访者不能理解“为何人们要为幻想世界/现实世界而争论，”他是属于“想象力”丰富的玩家，即VandenBerghe所说的“内心世界比真实世界更多彩”型。而当被问道对于游戏剧情的想法时，受访者回答道，在游戏中“最好不要让角色哭泣”——这就反应了该受访者并不看重情节内容。

而第二位受访者则具有很强的“挑战”动机。VandenBerghe说道，每一次当这类型玩家玩游戏时，他们都不会轻易停下游戏，直到最终能够完整玩完游戏（即使面对的是《王国之心》这类型的游戏）。

通过访问各种类型的玩家，VandenBerghe得到一些惊人的结果。他也总结表示，要想将人格5大特征变成游戏设计的重要工具就必须更加深入地研究其中的30个要素，而这是更加费时费力的工作。

VandenBerghe得出了三大结论：首先，“同类型玩家会出于相同原因玩游戏。”其次，我们应致力于研究不同游戏模式，并观察它们覆盖了哪些动机范围——例如，大多数开放世界或“大型游戏”所覆盖的动机范围较为广泛。最后，“如果你想要吸引更多玩家，你就必须同时吸引每个要素的两类极端玩家。”

VandenBerghe过去曾经听到有些设计师说，“玩家喜欢这样！”那时候的他并没有给予回应。而现在，他会明确回复：“没错！一半玩家喜欢这样，但另一半玩家喜欢那样！”

这5大人格特征令VandenBerghe得以将谈论焦点转移至注意力和用户话题上。（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 2012: Applying psychology principles to game design

by Ben Abraham

As a designer, Ubisoft’s Jason VandenBerghe wants something to assist him in making game design decisions, and he’s found that one of the most important or useful ones is player motivation. Accordingly he has spent a lot of time translating player motivation into game design decisions.

Psychology’s Big 5 model, known via the acronym “O.C.E.A.N.,” refers to five “motivations” for human behavior: Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. “Groupings of human motivation” with each describing a “spectrum.” The Big 5 are:

Openness to experience: High openness is exemplified by Alice from Alice in Wonderland, who is willing to try anything, go down any rabbit hole. On the other end of the spectrum, Samwise Gamgee only ever wanted “to go home”.

conscientiousness: Deals with control and impulse regulation. Hermione Granger has high conscientiousness, and at the other end is The Dude from the Big Lebowski.

Extroversion: VandenBerghe noted that this is the conflation of two ideas usually separate in the games industry: the desire to both seek out excitement and to be social and seek the company of others. A high end example is Austin Powers, at the low end is Edward Scissorhands.

Agreeableness: Reflects how we feel about cooperation and social harmony. High agreeableness is typified by the character of Wash from Firefly. The low end is Snake from Escape from New York.

Neuroticism: Reflects a tendency to experience (or not experience) negative emotions. It’s about feeling emotions like anxiety, depression, etc. At the high end we have Woody Allen’s character for whom every insult is personal. Low neuroticism is the figure of Obi Wan Kenobi, who accepts his fate fearlessly.

VandenBerghe is interested in figuring out how to translate these motivations into a useful model for making decisions about game design. So he did some qualitative research by testing people against the Big 5 and talking to them about the kinds of games they played. He was searching for an answer to whether or not players play for the same reasons they live – or whether or not they are motivated by the same things inside a game as out.

So far, he feels confident in saying that the answer seems to be that they do.

“Play turns out the be a great way to satisfy motivations that you can’t fulfill in your ordinary life,” said VandenBerghe, giving an example of the low agreeableness person who went online to meet this motivation through griefing.

VandenBerghe mapped the Big 5 motivations to other terms that may be more useful or familiar to game designers: “Openness” becomes “Novelty,” “Contientiousness” becomes “Challenge,” “Extroversion” is the search for “Stimulation,” “Agreeableness” is about “Harmony,” and “Neuroticism” he translates into “Threat.”

But VandenBerghe acknowledges this doesn’t immediately help designers make decisions day-to-day, as each of the Big 5 is broken down into six smaller “facets.”

Looking at the facets of Openness to experience:

Facet 1: Imagination – someone high in imagination likes their inner world better than the real world.

Facet 2: Artistic Interest – high scorers like beauty and beautiful things. Low scorers like the practical value of a thing.

Facet 3: Emotionality – high scorers know how they feel and can tell you all about it. Low scorers don’t have the information about how they feel.

Facet 4: Adventurousness – High scorers value surprise, delight. Low: Routine, predictability, the same thing over and over.

Favet 5: Intellect – People with a high score like puzzles, mentally solving problems in their head. Low scorers need their problems to be related to people and things “or what’s the point?”

Facet 6: Liberalism – high scorers look forward, want to change culture and values. Low scores prefer the past, what has come before, etc.

Jason VandenBerghe then plotted his own scores for these facets, and demonstrated the kinds of insights it generates: He loves new things, but also loves regularity (Scoring low on Facet 4) saying that “if you give me a new thing you’d better give it to me on a schedule.”

VandenBerghe then gave the audience a string of interview examples showing how even some of the things they said indicated their scores, and by inference, their motivations.

The first interviewee could not understand “why people argue about fantasy/reality,” and his score for “imagination,” which VandenBerghe associated with a fantasy/reality preference, was about even. When asked about drama in games, the interviewee responded saying that “It’s not okay if characters cry” in a game – which reflected the interviewee’s low melodrama score.

Second interviewee was high scoring in every facet of the “Challenge” motivation. This person, VandenBerghe said, plays one game at a time, and refuses to stop until that game is 100% complete, even if that game is Kingdom Hearts.

VandenBerghe went through a number of interviews he had carried out like this, with startling results. He concluded that the only way to turn the Big 5 into a strictly useful tool for design is to use the detailed 30 facets – a rather exhausting and labour intensive job.

VandenBerghe wrapped up with some conclusions: first was that “We tend to play for the same reasons we live.” Second, we can look at patterns of play and see how well they are covering the motivation spectrum – for instance, a lot of open world or “large games” tend to cover a large range. His third conclusion was that “If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to both ends of each facet”.

When VandenBerghe used to hear designers say “Players want this!” he never used to have an answer. Now when this is said, he has the answer, replying “That’s true! Half of them want that. And the other half want this!”

The Big 5 motivational framework has given him a way to change those discussions from arguments into discussions about appeal and audiences. (source:GAMASUTRA)