作者：Cameron Kunzelman

此前，我曾发表博文评论战斗游戏的设计方法，指出战斗游戏的设计方法让玩家产生心胸狭隘的感觉，使他们易于向其他玩家发表歧视妇女和种族主义的论调。许多评论者反对称，任何竞争性运动都会产生我指出的这种影响。我同意这种观点，这也是为何我撰写此文进行说明的原因。

首先要澄清的是，我并不是说战斗游戏会让人们变成心胸狭隘的人。玩战斗游戏和散播歧视妇女等观点之间并没有直接的联系。我所表明的观点是，战斗游戏的设计方法营造出一种看待世界的独特方法，而这种看待方法会使人更倾向于做出阴暗的行为。

我相信所有的媒体都会对我们产生影响，无论我们是否喜欢这种媒体。它强迫我们以某种样式来思考，而这些样式中多数是阴暗的。人们通过模仿、重复和执行学到了这些样式，正如Jane McGonigal已经宣扬了数年的观点，游戏确实提供了这些学习要素繁殖的温床。

在以上观点的基础上，接下来我想要谈论战斗游戏题材中普遍存在且能够让玩家产生阴暗意识形态的4种不同的设计元素。我们可以将其称为“战斗游戏塑造玩家的4种方法”。

street-fighter(from manthony1984.blogspot.com)

1、世界形态

事实上，战斗游戏只发生在2D世界中。纵然存在些许3D战斗游戏，玩家在游戏中可以实现3个维度的移动，但所有的战斗游戏体验都是位于2D世界中。玩家看到的是角色的轮廓，以操作为基础向左或向右移动。战斗游戏的世界就是这样。比如，游戏《刀魂》塑造了充满神话和神秘色彩的宽广世界，但是玩家只能通过文字和视频产生互动。游戏中玩家真正的体验部分——游戏玩法只发生在2D世界中。战斗游戏在游戏世界中的位置很特殊，在少数游戏题材中，核心游戏玩法是玩家在游戏中的唯一体验，而战斗游戏正是此类游戏之一（游戏邦注：运动游戏也属此类，该题材存在许多与战斗游戏相同的问题）。

或许上文的表述难以理解。我的意思是，所有游戏体验，也就是所有电子游戏中能够被视为“游戏”的成分，都存在于屏幕上两个战斗者的冲突中。在《街头霸王2》中，玩家唯一的体验事件是按动按钮来攻击其他玩家。这是种赤裸裸的体验。相比之下，《使命召唤》的体验包括故事事件、互动行为时刻和过场动画。在那些游戏中，虚拟世界和游戏玩法机制时呈现给玩家。它们能够调和玩家获得的体验，将玩家对角色的控制和角色对虚拟世界的影响分隔开来。

这种分隔在战斗游戏中并不存在。它成为了严格的输入输出运算法则，也就是原因和结果。我之前写过些许与此有关的内容，总的来说，战斗游戏对“游戏世界”的理解是，它是个毫无现实性的纯功能性世界。这是承载特别种类对抗的严格规则之一，游戏世界的存在只是为了给这种对抗提供载体。玩家间不可能出现协作和联盟，也不存在终结暴力行为的协商。如果以上的论断是事实，那么就要考虑战斗游戏的另一个元素：战略。

2、深层次知识

在战斗游戏中，战略的形式较为特别。在象棋中，战略的形式是理解所有当前和后续移动可以采取的潜在移动方式。在拳击中，它不仅意味着要理解你以及对手作战的方法，还要知道自己以及对手的体力上限。战斗游戏的战略处在这两者之间，玩家既需要像想起那样全面理解规则和游戏世界，还需要了解对手角色及其能力。

Destructoid用户Nilcam曾发表博文阐述了战斗游戏培养玩家知识的方法。Nilcam做出了多个有关玩家必知内容的论断，对这些内容的理解能够最小化游戏中随机事件发生的可能性。游戏成了一种训练实践，成为协调监管游戏的规则系统和角色间的方法。Nilcam在博文末尾声称，所有这些知识和自我训练的输出都是对游戏的控制。这些都是战斗游戏中战略的一部分。

战斗游戏有着各种各样奇怪的规则，包括跳跃、空中连击和高踢/低踢攻击防御方法。擅长战斗游戏的玩家必须掌握比其他题材游戏更多的知识。这自然也就形成了游戏的速度。

3、游戏速度

有个关于《街头霸王》的视频将该系列游戏的发展分成数个阶段。有个评论者说道：“你逐渐掌握游戏的方法感觉有些怪异……需要通过训练才能精通游戏。”很显然，精通游戏确实同之前提到的知识和训练有关，但是它也同玩游戏所使用的技术有关。视频中还提到，能够识别操纵杆复杂移动的芯片的问世是战斗游戏发展史中的关键。我们沉迷于将事物制作得更快更精确，所有技术领域的发展都指向这个目标。

所以适应和深层次知识也与反应能力系统存在关联，游戏要求玩家在身体上更具适应性。自《街头霸王2》起，战斗游戏日益变得复杂，所以我们只能推出当代玩家比之前通过老式街机训练自己的玩家有更多的时间和精力投入到游戏中。在搜索和研究这个推论时，我找到了一篇有趣的博文。博文中写道：“Capcom已多次声明他们要开始让自己的游戏更吸引‘休闲’用户，以此来推动销售量，但是令他们不解的是，当他们以制作能够吸引这些人群的游戏为目标时，我认为这反而会影响到游戏的质量。”

我觉得这是玩家看待当代战斗游戏的普遍观点，更重要的是，它揭示了适应和自我训练对玩家产生的影响：它让玩家认为不愿意经历同样锻炼的人是在试图改变甚至摧毁游戏。事实上，我认为在99%的情况下，这是玩家潜意识的想法。从这篇博文可以看出，博主认为休闲玩家的存在会弱化自己的游戏体验，这种观点着实令人吃惊。

4、充满客观事实的世界

Miguel Sicart在《The Ethics of Computer Games》中写道，现实世界游戏和电脑游戏的根本区别在于规则的执行方式。在现实生活中，如果两名玩家同意都同意修改游戏规则，那么就可以做出修改。在电子游戏中，无论玩家想要如何修改得分的方式，其目标永远无法实现。电脑游戏中存在无法被打破的客观事实。尽管有些游戏（游戏邦注：如《铁拳》系列游戏）包含修改总生命数量等内容的选择，但是游戏期间的基本规则依然无法修改。游戏的规则永远是固定的。

这意味着，战斗游戏中的战斗与现实世界中的战斗有本质的区别。在现实战斗中，可以采取各种不被纳入战斗规则的做法。如果我被人挑衅，我可以选择逃跑。在战斗游戏中，你无法这么做。Roger Callois在他有关“玩”的想法的文章中表示，玩游戏会“伴随着一种特殊的第二现实或自由现实意识，与现实生活相反。”现实生活中充斥着各种各样无法用客观对错来衡量的问题。战斗游戏与现实生活相反，只含有对与错。它们使玩家以“客观的”态度来理解世界。在这里，游戏世界成了一个僵化的空间，其中存在玩家可以克服或击败的大量阻力（这会以攻击点和命值的方式呈现）。玩家是否安全取决于响应结果的正确与否，各种做法被客观地分成能够产生作用和不能产生作用的做法。

我们讨论了如此多有关设计的内容，现在让我们将它们整合起来。

在开发者制作的这个2D世界中，所有的空间都受到控制，存在能够解决所有问题的客观事实，这样的世界本身就存在问题。这是个充满实证主义的世界，缺乏人们的自我理解。当玩家习惯于这种思维方式时就会产生问题，因为游戏并非真实世界的反映。电子游戏是种媒介，能够影响我们对现实的理解，战斗游戏也不例外。

玩游戏所需的深层次知识和游戏速度之间存在相互联系，二者成为了玩家进入战斗游戏领域的技术障碍，并让已经成功成为该游戏群体的玩家拥有归属感。我希望自己的文章能够引起行业对这种游戏题材的反思。

我们应当思考游戏的设计方法及其对我们认知和体验现实世界的影响，努力让玩家和睦地一起玩游戏。这难道真得很难吗？

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2012年3月1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）

Some Design Elements in Fighting Games

Cameron Kunzelman

So I made a post in which I critiqued the way that fighting games are designed. In the post, I made the claim that the very way that fighting games are designed enables and engenders a sense of intolerance in players, which often takes the verbal form of misogynistic and racist comments made to other players. I wasn’t very clear about which design elements in fighting games made them sites for this kind of intolerance to occur and flourish, and that was a real oversight on my part; several commenters pointed out that any competitive sport could, and often do, cause the effects that I was pointing out. And I have to agree, which is why I am making this post to clarify my position a little.

To begin with, and to be absolutely clear, I am not saying that fighting games turn people into bigots. There is no direct causation between playing fighting games and saying misogynistic and bigoted things. Rather, the argument I am making is about the way that the design of fighting games creates a very specific way of thinking about the world, and that that thinking can make one more inclined to adopt problematic behaviors.

As a way of getting started, I want to talk about Lana Polansky’s comment on my previous post. She said that she does not believe that fighting games coax or encourage players to say the “precise things” that are misogynistic or racist (refer to the previous post for a eSportsman suggesting that “rape that bitch” is acceptable trash talk), and I agree with her. I don’t think that the game makes players say precise things, but I do think that all media, whether we like it or not, colonizes us. It forces us to think in certain paradigms, and mostly those paradigms are problematic. People learn through mimesis, repetition, and enforcement, and as Jane McGonigal has been shouting from rooftops for a couple years now, games certainly provide a place for those learning factors to proliferate.

With that said, I want to talk about four different design elements that are common to the fighting game genre that push a problematic ideology onto the players. So lets call this

Four Ways a Fighting Game Creates a Player

1. The Shape of the World

Fighting games really only occur in a 2d world. Though there are some that are 3d, in that there are three axes of movement, the way that all fighting games are experienced lends to a 2d world. Characters a seen in silhouette, striking to the right and the left respectively. The world of the fighting game is precisely this – for example, the Soul Caliber games make reference to a broader world of myth and mystery, but the only interaction that the player has with that is through text and video; the gameplay, the real experiential part of the game for the player, only takes place in that 2d world. A reduction is performed on the game world – fighting games are in a unique position in that they are one of the few genres (with sports games, a genre that shares a lot of fighting games’ problems) in which the core gameplay is the only experience the player has in the game.

I might be being a little unclear here. What I mean is that the whole game experience, everything that can be understood as the “game” in the video game, happens in the conflict between the two combatants on screen. In Street Fighter II, the only experiential event that the player will have is hitting buttons and attacking the other player. It is a barebones experience. In contrast to this, a Call of Duty game includes story interludes, moments of inactivity, and cinematic events. In those games, a fictional world and gameplay mechanics are presented to players at the same time; they mediate the experience that the player has, creating a “cushion” between the player’s control of the character and the macro- and micro-effects that the character has on the world.

This cushion disappears in fighting games. It becomes a strict algorithm of input/output, of cause and effect. I wrote a little about this in the previous post, so refer to it for more, but the takeaway is that the fighting game understanding of a “game world” is one that is purely functional with no virtual reality of its own. It is one of strict rules that govern a very specific kind of confrontation, and more, the game world exists only to embody this confrontation. There is no possibility of cooperative alliance between players. There are no treaties to end the violence. If this is true, then another element of fighting games comes into play: strategy.

2. Deep Knowledge

In fighting games, strategy takes a particular form. In chess, strategy takes the form of understanding all of the potential moves that can be made during the current and future turns. In boxing, it means not only understanding the way that you and your opponent fight, but also knowing your own physical limits and the limits of the person who you are attacking. Fighting games are somewhere in the middle of that, requiring the encyclopedic understanding of the rules and game world like chess would, and also necessitating an knowledge of your player opponent and her capabilities.

I think that this post on Destructoid user nilcam’s blog actually says a lot about the way that fighting games create a sense of knowledge in the player. Nilcam makes a number of assertions about what must be known to the player, and they really all come down to minimizing the potential for random occurrence in the game. It becomes a disciplinary practice, a way of turning the player/subject into a being that is most attuned to the rule systems that govern the game as well as the character she prefers to play as. And as Nilcam states blatantly at the bottom of the post, all of this knowledge and self-discipline has one output: control of the game. It is all a part of strategy.

This is what I mean when I responded to a comment on my previous post by talking about how fighting games are designed to be arcane. They have strange rules about juggling and air combos and high kick/low kick offense-defense paradigms. A player, to be good at the game, has to adopt a knowledge that is massive, much more than any other kind of game. This provides a convenient transition to…

3. The Speed of the Game

This video on the history of Street Fighter makes several points about the development of the series. One commenter says that “There was just something weird about the way that you had to get good at that game…the discipline that came with getting good at that game.” Obviously that has to do with the above knowledge and discipline, but it is also has to do with the actual technology of playing the game. The video that I linked a second ago also mentions the key development in the history of fighting games: the invention of a better chipset that could read the intricate movements of a joystick. Paul Virilio’s work on speed and politics is relevant here; we are addicted to making things faster and more accurate, and the process of development in any technological field is intimately tied to that desire.

So adaptation and deep knowledge are also tied to a system of developed reflexes – the game requires the player to physically become a better adaptive interfacing being; a cyborg in a Harawayan sense. The fighting game has only gotten more complex since Street Fighter II, and so we have to imagine that today’s medium-skilled player has more time and effort into the game than an old-school, arcade-disciplined player. While doing some googling to research this piece, I found this random (a little creepy) blog. The blogger writes that, and I’m not correcting any spelling or grammar,

Capcom has stated many times that they want to start making their games appeal to the “casual” audience to try and drive up sales, but what they don’t understand is when they make games to appeal to those people I find that it can sometimes hinder the game.

I think this is a common opinion of contemporary fighting games, and more importantly, it is also revealing about the effect that adaptation and self-discipline have on the player: it makes them think that the people who have not gone through the same training are actively attempting to alter, or maybe ruin, the game. I am not claiming that this happens on a conscious level – actually, I would say that this is subconscious 99% of the time, and the fact that the blogger was open enough to suggest that casual players make the game experience less for her/him is pretty amazing.

4. A World of Objective Truths

Miguel Sicart writes in his The Ethics of Computer Games that one of the fundamental differences between real-world, lived games and computer games is how the rules are enforced. Two players can agree to change the rules in real life and they change. In a video game, no matter how much Player 1 and Player 2 want to change the way things are scored, they cannot. There are objective truths about the game that cannot be broken. While some games, like the Tekken franchise for instance, have options in place to change life totals and things like that, there is no way to change the fundamental precepts of the game while playing. The rules of the game are written in stone as far as the player is concerned.

That means that a fight in a fighting game is distinctly different than a fight in the real world. In a real fight, there is a “counter” for everything that exists outside the rules of a fight. If I am accosted, I can run away. In a fighting game, that is impossible. Roger Callois, in his writing on the idea of “play,” says that play is “accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free reality, as against real life.” Real life is full of problems that cannot be solved with objective wrongs, rights, and plugged-in answers. Fighting games, existing against reality, only possess wrongs and rights; they foster an objective understanding of the world on the player. The world becomes a rigid space in which there are quantities of resistance that can be accosted and beaten down until the opponent is defeated – these are hit points or a life bar or whatever we want to call them. There are correct and incorrect responses which correlate to safe and unsafe ways of playing – there are moves that work and those that don’t.

So that was a lot of talk about design. Let’s bring it all together now.

The creation of a 2d world in which all space can be controlled and there are objective truths that can solve all of the issues in that world is problematic on its own. It reeks of Positivism and a lack of reflexive understanding of the self, and when that ideology is imprinted on the player, problems ensue. I’m not going to quote Nietzsche at length or anything, but it stands that the kind of reasoning and Being that fighting games engender is problematic because it does not reflect the real world. However, people who are colonized by the ideology of fighting games, people who have accidentally drank the Kool-Aid, experience this all on a phenomenological level. Video games are a medium that structures our understanding of reality, and fighting games are no different.

The deep knowledge required to play and the speed of the game are interrelated, both acting together to create a skill barrier to entry and a sense of belonging to the people who have succeeded in being a part of the game playing group. The work that I did above is more of a defense of the writing I did in my previous post, and I hope that those reading both see how the two arguments fit together.

So I still have to defend why I think these design elements create harassing and exclusive behavior. As a couple people have pointed out, there are subjective elements to harassment and violent language – a person who thinks those things are more likely to say them, after all. That is true and I agree with it 100%; this is not simply a “game tells you what to do, you do it” kind of thing. Rather, these elements feed back and forth and create an economy of desire investment.

That said, I am more than willing to said that the way fighting games structure reality definitely teaches players a certain way of viewing the world. I particularly think that the health bar mentality gets absorbed by a lot of players – if you can shout someone down and harass them enough, they have a limit where they will fail. Just like Ken will fall if you punch him in the knee enough, a human being will crumble under enough brute force assaults on their psyche. Both rhetorical and physical space become something to be controlled and asserted over, and so when Bakhtanians says that violent and exclusionary language is integral to the community, what he is really saying is that the language is part and parcel with the way fighting games frame the world. Other players, like virtual fighters, become objects to be dominated. Calling someone a bitch is the rhetorical equivalent to a punch in the gut.

And it is wrong. Polansky is correct in calling for ways of thinking outside of this, and I think the first step is for all eSport organizations to make strong rules against violent language. This policy could even be pretty lax – I can’t imagine that even the most hardcore libertarian would defend the moral right for a person to yell “rape that bitch” at a giant screen (I’m sorry I keep mentioning this, it is horrifying to me). We also need to make sure that people from all walks of life feel included in video game communities, and that requires good old fashioned self-policing. If you are reading this and you like to say misogynistic or racist things while playing games, I am telling you now that you shouldn’t. So stop.

Maybe that is really the key. Maybe making giant blog posts isn’t the real answer. Maybe the answer is being openly critical of the people who do these things. Another one might be actually thinking about the way games are designed and how that has an impact on the way that we play them and then experience the world afterward. Yet another is active inclusion – we should make a strong effort to make people feel good and to play games together. Is this really that hard? It is really that hard to not be a misogynist asshole?

In any case, this took a long time, so I hope you enjoyed it. (Source: this cage is worms)