作者：raph   koster

我一直在寻找各种方式，让自己变成更优秀的游戏设计师，我之前读到一篇题为“50种方式，让你化身更优秀设计师”，这使我萌生撰写有关游戏设计话题文章的想法，内容不甚详尽，但是我自身的经验总结。

1. 以简单元素呈现有趣内容

这是包含抽象图画或复制图像的模型。或者是纸笔、卡片和骰子。强化艺术元素后，很多方面都会得到很大提高。这无法替代缺少的趣味元素。若你能够通过最简单的表达方式呈现出颇有趣味的内容，那么完善表现方式，内容将变得更有趣。

2. 隐喻方式

确定游戏“涉及”什么内容能够让你剔除没有关联的元素。可以参考更简单的游戏类型，棋盘游戏（游戏邦注：如果这能够让你直击要害）。这是款“投标游戏”，还是“领土游戏”，抑或是“定时游戏”。

3. 划分游戏

若你制作的是款大型游戏，不妨将游戏看作共享同个背景的若干小型游戏集合。机制间过度相互依赖会让游戏难以保持平衡性。

4. 总结

你要懂得提取游戏设计构思中的关键动词和词组，归纳整个游戏构思。若无法做到这点，定是哪里出现问题。

5. 品牌

优秀游戏作品应该是主题、机制和表现方式的结合体。这将带来强大的品牌。不要忽视品牌战术的作用。

6. 避免冗长会议

特别是创意会议，在这类会议中，你希望与会人员精力充沛，而不是疲惫不堪，显得有些愤世嫉俗。冗长会议通常都是采用集体讨论模式，过于复杂化。要保持设计会议的紧凑性和简洁性。

sketchbook from mikedawsoncomics.com

7. 使用绘图本

草图对游戏设计来说是非常强大的工具。屏幕或黑板通常会呈现众多有关游戏状态的信息，所以尽早快速描绘用户体验非常重要。快速绘制玩家将看到和进行操作的内容。在空白处填充标识。

8. 不要仅在编码时设计内容

不妨骑车于街上晃荡时试着设计内容，或者在洗澡的过程中，或划船的时候。在其他地方设计内容。不要担心自己无法将设计构思记录下来，而是应该更多着眼于把握有趣的核心内容。场所的变化能够激发创造性。

9. 沟通和倾听

新鲜想法或者甚至是陈旧构思以出乎意料的方式发生碰撞能够激发创造性。你通过倾听让这些新元素相互交错。你通给出自己的看法进行交换。构思不是什么值钱的内容，不要将它们藏起来。

10. 每个人都有独特的看法

若安排12个人制作一款有关“星际贸易的太空游戏”，你将得到12款不同的游戏（游戏邦注：无论游戏构思多么具体）。

11. 游戏资产

尽早考虑游戏资产；计算游戏或机制所需要的音效或图像数量颇具启发意义。

12. 借鉴和参考

游戏机制并非神圣不可侵犯。它们是创造最终成品的工具。若开放式牌组是个有效的机制，那么不妨大胆进行运用，即便你有在其他游戏中看到这一机制。若你对生命值感到厌烦，只有你自己会在意，其他人毫不在乎。

13. 尽早及频繁进行游戏测试

若游戏作品尚未成形前，首个控制机制就颇具趣味，那就太好了。若非如此，那你就需要注意。若在规则尚未确立前，在棋盘上放置棋子就颇有趣味，那再好不过。若不是这种情况，那你就遇到麻烦。

14. 不同玩家采用不同体验方式

不要只基于同组玩家进行游戏测试，而是要混合不同玩家。

15. 不要发表意见

观看他人体验游戏时，不要发表任何意见，而应只是静静观看，然后记录下他们所进行的愚蠢操作，因为是你没有突出正确的操作方式。

16. 进行体验

你无需逐一完整体验大家讨论的所有游戏。但你需要进行尝试。10分钟就足够，但如果能够完成第一个boss回合会更好。

17. 保持简洁性

若你融入众多游戏机制，确保在各机制中融入简单的数据。若你持有简单的机制，将焦点放在数据上。

18. 算法而非静态数据

优秀游戏都在算法风格上富于变化，有些玩法源自潜在的排列组合；这和依靠系列静态数据的游戏截然不同。尽量采用前种模式。

19. 保存所有内容

包括草图、初期草稿文档、陈旧模型、棋盘游戏版本及替换规则组合。你永远不知道自己什么时候会需要它们。

20. 不要局限于任何艺术元素上

若游戏富有趣味，尝试融入不同艺术风格。

21. 不要运用失真数据

Photoshop图层面板是很好的工具。高分辨率也能够起到显著的作用。记住保存原始内容。

22. 聘请编辑人员

他们能够在你呈现无价值内容时提醒你，即便他们是你的忠实粉丝。

23. 注释

6个月后，你将不记得为什么37.5是幻数。在代码中标识注释，在设计文档中解释其中逻辑。

24. 庞大设计文档毫无价值

这些通常是没有人会真正执行的详细构想。有关具体内容的符号列表会更有价值。

25. 回到开始

每获得一次突破性进展，都要回去比较自己的原始构想、主题和目标。我们完全能够改变这些原始想法；我们已在不知不觉中改变这些想法。

26. 清楚何时停下脚步

我们很容易因添加过多元素而毁掉一个项目。多一个机制，多一个变量，甚至是在游戏棋盘上多设一行，这些都会破坏整个项目。

27. 亲自进行体验

体验自己的作品。若你觉得自己能够从中收获乐趣，那你就把握到重点。

28. 把握抽象概念

学会发现设计的潜在数学运算（游戏邦注：而不是表面修复）。查看力量的投射，影响的范围，隐藏投币模式，以及每秒击键次数。你将更深入地把握实际玩法。

29. 学习美工、编程和营销

你越清楚其他学科所涉及的内容，你越能够更好地进行设计。你无需精通这些学科——只需把握若干基本技能。

30. 不要和玩家争辩

在体验中他们总是正确的。告诉他们情况并非如此完全就是浪费时间。这里真正的关键在于思考他们为什么会这样想。

31. 融入细节内容

杰出的细节内容通常能够让游戏脱颖而出，让玩家从中感受到乐趣和激情。

32. 叙述故事

你需要向潜在玩家或投资者推销自己的游戏，而达成这一目标的方式就是讲述故事。

33. 局限性是积极元素

很多创造性元素都来自于限制性的操作。若你陷入困境，试着给自己设定限制条件，看看自己能够从中收获什么。

34. 放任置之

游戏只要发行后就不再属于你。摒弃所有有关游戏“应该”如何体验的观念。

35. 付出实际操作

更多人只是谈论游戏制作，而没有真正付出实践。所有人都可以通过剪纸和蜡笔制作出游戏。无论你给自己找什么借口，这些定都不是什么好理由。这里你只是向前迈出一步，除非你最终有真正越过终点线。你需要持续向前迈进。

36. 不要停滞不前

我们太容易就感到疲惫和沮丧，然后迁就糟糕的内容，降低自己的标准。这给最终产品带来的影响将非常巨大。只有在这种情况下我们才能够做出让步：妥协无法避免，能够提高作品的质量。但停滞不前通常都会带来毁灭性的影响。

37. 基于玩家的视角

若你开始着手机制设计，不妨描绘玩家所要进行的操作。设想他们将采取的路线。练习要实现目标所要进行的系列活动。将他们实现目标的路线形象化。基于玩家的视角思考问题，不要基于这样的观点：“要进入下个关卡需要完成30个杀敌数”。你是基于玩家，而不是自己设计游戏。

38. 奖励

若玩家完成正确的操作，给予他们奖励线索。一抹光亮，欢呼的声音，或是醒目的反馈。

39. 采用列表

查看要创造趣味性所需的关键要素清单：准备挑战要素，领土/环境要素，如何解决问题的选择，挑战性质的变量，损失风险，执行技巧，避免劣质内容，及各种可能的成功状态。你也许有自己的清单，但这是我自己总结出来的内容。

40. 避免原地踏步

我们应剔除任何出于“不得不这么做”理由而生成的游戏元素，或者至少我们应严肃进行看待。沉闷是趣味性的最大敌人。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2006年6月26日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（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）

40 ways to be a better (game) designer

I’m always looking for ways to become a better game designer. I frequently think I am no good at it, after all. (Just ask in random forums such as Blue’s News or the Fires of Heaven guild forums). So it’s with interest that I read articles like 50 ways to become a better designer.

Much of the list isn’t directly applicable, but some of it is, and it inspires a list of my own, centered around games. Not exhaustive, and probably not even accurate, but stuff I have often helped myself with. Many are cribbed and adapted.

1. Blue squares

Prototype with abstracted graphics or stolen graphics. Or pen and paper, cards, and dice. Art enhances, multiplies, improves. It does not replace missing fun. If you can get to something fun with minimal presentation, it will get more fun with good presentation.

2. Metaphors

Deciding what your game is “about” can help you cut out the extraneous stuff. Think about simpler games, board games, if it helps you cut to the quick. “A bidding game.” “A territory game.” “A timing game.”

3. Compartmentalize

If you’re working on a big game, perceiving your big game as actually being a collection of smaller games that share a setting can help a lot. Excessive interdependence between systems makes a game really hard to balance anyway.

4. Summarize

You should be able to pull out key verbs and phrases from your game design concept, and boil down the idea. If you can’t do this, somewhere you’ve gone awry.

5. Brand

The best game is going to have a marriage of theme, mechanic, and presentation. This is what makes a brand strong. Don’t look down on the exercise of branding.

6. Long meetings suck

Particularly creative meetings, where you want people to leave energized, not tired and cynical. Long meetings trend to groupthink and overcomplication. Keep design meetings tight and relatively brief.

7. Use a sketchbook

Sketches are an extremely powerful tool for game design. So much information about game state is conveyed via the screen or board that doing quick sketches of user experience early is critical. Draw a quick pic of what the player will see and do. Doodle logos in the margins.

8. Don’t design in the code/with the pieces

Design on a bike, riding down the street. Or in the shower. Or on a canoe. Design somewhere else. Worry less about what you might lose because you cannot write it down, than about keeping the core essence of what excited you. A change of scenery drives creativity.

9. Talk and listen

Fresh ideas colliding, or even old ideas colliding in unpredictable ways, is where creativity comes from. You get these new things to rub together by listening. You trade by giving ideas of your own. Ideas are cheap, don’t hoard them.

10. Every snowflake is different

If you assign twelve people to create “a space-based game about intergalactic trading” you will get twelve different games — it doesn’t matter how specific the idea is.

11. Assets

Think about assets early; doing the exercise of calculating how many sounds, graphics, and so on you’ll need for each given game or system is often eye-opening.

12. Steal and borrow

Mechanics are not sacred. They are tools towards an eventual game. If open draw card piles is a useful mechanic, use it even though you have seen it in other games. Nobody but you cares if you are sick of the health bar.

13. Playtest early and often

If your first control mechanic is briefly entertaining even before you have a game, great. If not, worry. If it’s entertaining to lay out the pieces on the board even before the rules are settled, cool. If not, worry.

14. Different players play differently

Don’t playtest with only the same old group of people. Mix it up.

15. Shut up

Don’t say anything when watching someone else play. Just watch and note down all the stupid things they are doing because you were stupid and didn’t make the right thing to do really obvious.

16. Play

You don’t have to finish the games people are talking about. But you do need to try them. Ten minutes is often enough, but through the first boss is better.

17. KISS

If you have a lot of systems, make each one simple with simple data. If you have one simple system, spend on the data.

18. Algorithms, not static data

The best games have an algorithmic style of variation, where gameplay emerges out of the possible permutations; this is as opposed to games which rely on a supply of static puzzles you supply. Shoot for the former — you may not make it (which is fine) but you’ll probably be forced to be cleverer.

19. Save everything

The sketches, the early draft docs, the old prototypes, the boardgame version, the alternate ruleset. You never know when you will need it.

20. Don’t marry any art

Once the game is fun, try out an art style on it. Then try another. And another.

21. Don’t use lossy data

Photoshop layers are your friend. High res is your friend. The link to the website with the free textures. The screencap you cut up. Save the originals!

22. Have an editor

Someone who can tell you when you are full of crap even though they are a fan.

23. Comment

Six months later, you won’t remember why the magic number is 37.5. Put a comment in the code and explain the logic in a design doc.

24. Giant design docs are useless

They are usually overelaborated piles of daydreams that nobody will actually implement. A bulleted list of specifics is far more fruitful.

25. Back to the beginning

Every milestone you hit, go back and compare against your original vision, your original theme, and your original goals. It’s OK to say you want to change them because you really do want to change them; it’s not OK to say you want to change them because you drifted off without realizing it.

26. Know when to stop

It’s easy to spoil something by adding too much. One more mechanic, one more axis of variables, even an extra row on the game board, and it might all break apart.

27. Eat your own dog food

Play your own game. If you find yourself playing it for enjoyment, you are onto something.

28. Learn abstraction

Learn to see the underlying mathematics of your design, rather than the dressing. See the projection of force, the spheres of influence, the hidden slot machine and the number of keystrokes per second. You will understand the actual play much more deeply.

29. Learn art. And coding. And marketing.

The more you understand what other disciplines bring to the table, the better you will design. You don’t need to master these — just acquire some degree of basic competence.

30. Don’t argue with players

They are always right about their experience. Telling them that it isn’t actually that way is a waste of time. The question is why they think it is that way.

31. Be frivolous

Frivolous bits that are there just because they are cool are often what puts a game over the top, making the player feel the enjoyment and passion that went into something.

32. Tell a story

A prospective player or a prospective funder — either way, you need to sell them on the game, and the way to do that is with a story.

33. Limitations are good

A lot of creativity comes from working within limits. If you’re stumped, try giving yourself some more limits and see what pops out.

34. Let go

Once it’s out there, it’s not yours. Abandon all notions about how it “should” be played.

35. Do the work

A lot more people talk about making games than actually make games. Anyone can make a game with some cut up paper and a few crayons. Whatever excuses you are making for yourself are bad ones. You just put one foot in front of the other until you cross the finish line. And once you make one, make another. And another. Keep doing it.

36. Don’t settle

It’s all too easy to be tired and frustrated and accede to something dumb and lower your standards. The impact can be truly massive on the final product. It’s one thing to compromise: compromise is inevitable and will often improve the product. Settling, however, is frequently fatal.

37. See out of player eyes

When you work on a system, picture the movements the player makes. Envision the path they take. Practice the sequence of actions to reach a goal. Visualize the route they take to reach that goal. See from the player’s point of view, not from the point of view of “it should take 30 kills to reach the next level.” You design for them, not you.

38. Reward

When a player does something right, give them a reward cue. A splash of light, a cheerful sound, a bit of feedback that sticks out.

39. Use the list

Check against the list of key pieces required for fun: preparation for a challenge mattering, territory/environment mattering, choices in how to solve a problem, variations in the nature of the challenge, risk to loss, skill in execution, no bottom-feeding, and multiple possible success states. You may have your own list, but this is the one that has worked for me.

40. Eliminate marking time

Anything you do in the game “because you have to do it” should be cut or at the very least get a seriously hard look. Tedium is the enemy of fun.（Source：raphkoster）