如今风险已变成游戏中最重要、最复杂的元素。它影响我们体验和制作的所有游戏。它帮助我们定义“休闲”玩家和“硬核”玩家。它是促使游戏或过于冗长乏味，或过于简单的关键元素。它是“游戏”概念不可或缺的组成要素，但我们通常鲜少对此予以关注。

什么是风险？不妨将风险定义成玩家输掉比赛可能遭遇的相应损失。这可能小至在街机游戏中的丧失住所，大到剥夺角色右臂，让你只能想法设法通过无需右手的操作完成游戏。下面是常见的若干风险形式。

1. 消耗金钱：这种类型通常只指直接通过夺走微交易资金，消耗玩家金钱的游戏。需要指出的是，任何游戏若是促使玩家每月向开发商支付X美元，逐步耗费自己的资金，然后要求他们在失败时在游戏中投入更多时间，那么它就属于“浪费时间”的类型，因为玩家在此鲜少会意识到这里的金钱风险。街机游戏是这类风险最典型的代表，随着在线街机游戏的问世（游戏邦注：想想Xbox Live），这类风险很可能会重新浮出水面，但传统街机游戏绝非唯一适合“消耗金钱”风险的游戏类型。《安特罗皮亚计划》就是创造性运用这一风险类型的典范。

2. 角色损害：当你在以角色损害作为风险元素的游戏中失败时，角色会遭受负面影响。你的游戏角色会受到削弱，因此剩余游戏体验会变得更具挑战性。传统《Ultima》游戏和《Mordor》系列就充分利用这一惩罚类型。

Origin System's Ultima III from gamasutra.com

3. 回天乏术的阻碍：这种类型的惩罚如今不再那么盛行；这种阻碍会促使你无法在游戏中继续前进。当你遭遇束手无策的阻碍时，你通常不得不放弃游戏，不再进行体验，或者重新从零开始。采用这种风险类型的游戏包括：你因无法运用某道具而困在某个房间中的游戏；因遭遇角色损害，你的角色变得过于脆弱，无法抵御眼前挑战的游戏；你享有固定生命值，当你丧失最后一个生命值时，就要重新开始的游戏（游戏邦注：如《暗影之门》、《Mordor》和任天堂时代的《超级马里奥兄弟》）。早期探险游戏经常因意外融入这类风险元素而深受其害，它们坚不可摧的障碍成了游戏设计的副产品，而非精心设计的功能。有人甚至称这正是促使探险题材游戏走向没落的原因。

4. 耗费时间：任何会在失败时将你退回至先前游戏环节的游戏都是在耗费你的时间。虽然在包含这类风险元素的游戏中，这是最具挑战性的元素，因为失败后，之前你的所有体验投入将化为灰烬，你需要重新投入时间。这和束手无策的障碍截然不同，因为在顽固障碍类型中，若你选择通过相同步骤返回障碍，障碍就依然无法被攻克。几乎所有现代游戏都属于这一类型；从《荣誉勋章》到《魔兽世界》，再到《皇牌空战》，我们发现这一风险类型遍布现代游戏领域的各个角落。

那么为什么风险元素如此重要？作为游戏设计师，我们总是想方设法融入各种元素，让游戏更具趣味性，其中一个元素就是风险性。若角色能够死去无数次，我们就不会在乎丢失游戏的沉浸感。若我们觉得自己就是在“走过场”，也就是说我们通过重复进行众多不费吹灰之力的操作进入下个情节点，那么我们多半会厌恶这块游戏内容。我们并不觉得它“有趣”或“富有挑战性”，相反我们觉得这既乏味又浪费时间。这个时候我们完全不会产生任何肾上腺素（游戏邦注：毫无兴奋感可言），当我们完成这块内容后，我们会松口气，暗自“庆幸终于结束”，而没有收获胜利喜悦感。我们会在下班时“庆幸终于结束”，但这不是游戏该有的情绪。

那么问题出在何处？体验游戏的回馈应该是游戏本身。我们经常忽略这一事实，以结束游戏或获得升级或能够探险新领域作为回馈。这促使我们希望玩家能够接触到这些回馈。

安全游戏

在一款玩法非其终极目标的游戏中，阻碍玩家实现游戏目标就变得有失逻辑，甚至显得有些荒谬。不妨这样想想：你在什么情况下会希望进行乏味且困难的操作，而且最终你发现自己不过是在浪费时间，你需要重新开始游戏？没错，你完全不希望遇到这种情况。因此我们制作安全游戏。

安全游戏是这样的游戏类型：在X小时的时间里，玩家会战胜游戏，获得奖品（就如前面所述，或完成所有关卡，或最终看到优质的CGI）。在安全游戏中，失败促使玩家必须重复从游戏初始到失败环节之间的相同乏味操作。

Xenosaga Episode III from gamasutra.com

安全游戏只有一种失败形式，这算不上一种游戏。就很多方面来说，安全游戏和电影或是主题乐园旅程存在更多相似性，它主要着眼于体验的非交互式元素，而非“游戏”核心——交互元素。

那么我们为什么要制作安全游戏？在我看来，这是因为制作这类游戏非常简单。我们通过安全游戏掩盖设计存在的瑕疵。要制作出杰出的游戏作品绝非易事，相反制作优美影片，将其附着在40小时的乏味操作之后要简单得多。你想要了解什么？有时游戏体验非常值得。有时冗长重复操作后的最终回馈颇令人满意，让我们觉得所投入的时间物有所值。我佩服所有CGI奇才、富有创意的作家及别出心裁的关卡设计师，他们让我能够暂不考虑玩法，心满意足地离开游戏——但这不是我们的工作，我们是游戏设计师，我们的工作是制作游戏。

风险&回馈

游戏之所有富有趣味是出于以下两种原因：或以期望的方式向我们发出挑战，或让我们充满失败的恐惧感及有所收获的希望。优秀的游戏作品通常会很好地平衡这两个元素，让我们通过自己的游戏技能调节风险系数，但同时又不降低回报性。

想想这样的情况：自己手持无限量资金玩赌轮盘，或是玩填字游戏，但答案就出现在问题后方。这些游戏虽然颇具趣味，但玩家无法通过这种方式收获乐趣。第一种赌轮盘游戏完全不是凭技巧取胜的游戏，因此当我们移除游戏的风险元素时，它们就变得枯燥乏味。在第二种情况中，只要我们移除填字游戏的挑战元素，我们就会对其失去兴趣，因为其中没有吸引我们的风险元素。这在现代电子游戏中亦是如此。

若游戏只融入静态回馈，但没有包含风险元素， 那么玩家在游戏中就没有提高自己的动力。若玩家并不在乎自己是否在游戏中获得进步，那么他们就丝毫没有感受到挑战性。所以我们移除游戏的风险和挑战元素，将其变得“毫无趣味”。

平衡关系

奖励是风险的天然平衡元素，但若我们将奖励设置成常量，我们也就限制了自己引入风险元素的能力。因此我们的游戏引入的不是风险元素，而是若干二元障碍（游戏邦注：有的可以攻克，有的无法攻克）。这里的标准游戏设计方式是，让玩家能够顺利攻克A挑战，然后通过X障碍促使B挑战变得难以攻克，直到玩家完成A挑战。只要完成A挑战后，游戏就会发生相应改变，让B挑战变得能够顺利被攻克。挑战将继续下去，直到玩家完成X挑战，获得完成游戏的奖励。即便非常杰出的游戏作品也会采用这一戏法，但这一方式仍存在不足。

我们很容易将直线型的游戏同包含各种奖励元素的游戏混淆起来，但避免这种情况非常重要。不妨将你需要穿过门A获得门B钥匙的游戏同简单的填字游戏进行比较。填字游戏的目标是破解字谜。你所填充的每个单词都会带给你线索，告知你如何破解其他字谜。若你非常擅长填字游戏，能够轻松填充所有方框，你完全不需要这些线索，但多数时候，我们需要通过它们解决棘手的字谜。因此正确填充一个单词的奖励就是获得填充其他单词的线索，但填错的风险是，会干扰你完成其他相关单词。

Ico. from gamasutra.com

这里的差别在于钥匙。熟练的填字高手会快速完成字谜，忽略所有提示，在记录时间内实现自己的目标，若填字者的技术没有自己想象的那么高超，他会促使自己陷入混乱的境地，白费所有时间，或者也许是所有努力。而置身门类型游戏的玩家则没有选择，他必须穿过门A，即便他们已经掌握所有破解门S的必要技能。

若你查看最近的更新版《塞尔达》系列或是任何PS2时代《寂静岭》游戏，你就会清楚地发现这点。这些游戏都在游戏空间中散布飘渺的奖励，但这两款作品中，奖品更像是玩家不得不跨越的里程碑，而不像是真正犒赏玩家技能的奖品，或是向他们呈现挑战元素的独特方式。

这里我们先来看看某类游戏开发者的申诉——RPG开发者。你也许会愤愤不平称自己的游戏像个字谜，提供给玩家的是设备和关卡，而不是线索，但这一问题的微妙之处显而易见。许多RPG都通过引入关卡和设备元素避开挑战和风险问题。多数RPG采用这样的模式：“若统计数值≥ X，那么怪兽Y就被击败”，其中统计数据主要取决于被打败的怪兽（游戏邦注：然后从中获得设备和关卡）。我们可以发现这一问题的循环性。

双重路线

假设我们意识到风险元素，我们希望将其融入游戏中，充当动态元素：我们如何在不推开玩家的情况下做到这点？这里我们就进入到双重路线。

为了引入风险元素，我们需要设置奖励，但务必设置真实的奖励。不要将其设置成“到达终点”之类的奖励，而是采用“在X小时内到达终点”模式。现在X必须是可变量。它不是每分钟都发生变化，但是个可变量。比如，若要列举真实数据，那就是8小时和40小时之间的差异。

现在我们已植入刺激因素，接着就轮到风险元素。风险可以是上述任何类型的风险，但这里我们采用时间类型。现在你的时间是个赌注，整个机制变得更有趣。

我们已植入风险和奖励元素；接着就来谈谈玩法机制。喜欢风险，相信自己和自身游戏技能的玩家会采取简短路线，尝试充满危险和刺激而晦涩的8小时制胜路线。是的，他们错过某些游戏内容，他们刻意回避这些内容，但从中获得快速的挑战，这将充分考验他们的娴熟技能。而稳扎稳打的玩家则会选择40小时路线。虽然这也许无法充分考验他们的水平，但他们能够充分享受整个游戏世界，从容地吸收所有内容。

设计得当的游戏将让玩家选择期望的风险程度，然后从中获得相匹配的适当挑战和回馈，赋予所有玩家他们理想的体验。最理想的情况是，玩家在体验过程中，随着自身水平的提高，逐步调整风险/回报平衡关系，进而全方位地体验到8-40小时的玩法模式。

总结

风险绝非游戏的唯一要素，但这是所有游戏的必备元素。值得注意的是，我们需要意识到它的存在，我们不要将其视作无法控制的元素。也许经过仔细研究后我们会发现，自己的某些基本假设是错误的。

无论如何，意识到这一元素的存在是这里的问题所在。我们有必要竭尽全力地设计出最优质的游戏作品，但若忽略玩家的失败风险，我们将无法做到这点。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2006年9月12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）

The Importance of Risk in Basic Game Design

Risk is one of the most important and most confusing factors in gaming today. It affects every game we play and every game we create. It helps us define the “casual” player and the “hardcore” player. It is one of the key factors in what makes a game too tedious to play or too easy to endure. It is an inescapable part of the concept of ‘game’, and yet, too often, it seems barely considered.

What is risk? Let us define risk as that which the player stands to lose if they lose[1] at a game. This can be something as simple as losing your quarters at an arcade to something as devious as crippling your character’s right arm and making you find ways to get through the game using only actions which don’t require it. Perhaps a brief list of some of the most common forms of risk is in order.

1.Waste of Money: Consider this category to include only games which waste your money directly by taking micro payments. Any game that slyly parts you from your money by making you pay its makers X dollars a month and then forcing you to invest more time in the game every time you lose fits in the “waste of time” category as the monetary risk is rarely what the player is aware of. Arcade games are the clearest example of this type of risk and it seems likely that this risk type will see somewhat of a resurgence with the invention of the online arcade (think Xbox Live), but traditional arcade style games are by no means the only area in which the “waste of money” risk is applicable. Project Entropia is an admirable example of innovative use this risk type.

2.Character Damage: When you fail in games that use character damage as a risk something bad happens (or has a chance to happen) to your avatar as the result. Your in-game character becomes in some way crippled and the rest of the game becomes more challenging as a result. The old Ultima games and the Mordor series used this punishment type to great effect.

3.Impassible Impediment: This type of punishment is becoming less popular these days; the impassible impediment is the punishment which keeps you from continuing (and thus finishing) the game. When you run up against an impassible impediment you are forced either to set down the game and never pick it up again or to start afresh from the very beginning. Examples of this type of risk would be: games in which you fail to pick up an item and become stuck in a room, games where, through character damage, your character became to weak to overcome the challenges presented it or, simply, games where you have a set number of lives and when you lose the last one the game resets (i.e. Shadowgate, Mordor, NES era Mario Brothers games). Often early adventure games would fall prey to including this type of risk without intending to by letting impassible impediments enter the game as a byproduct of the design rather than a considered feature. Some might say that this contributed to the decline of the genre.

4.Waste of Time: Any game which sets you back a certain amount for failure makes you risk your time. While, in games with this type of risk, nothing becomes more challenging because you failed and everything you did to get to the point you where you lost should work to return you there, you still have to reinvest the time. This is substantively different from the impassible impediment as, in the case of the impassable impediment, if you choose the same course of action to return to the impediment the impediment will remain insurmountable. Almost all modern games fall into this category; from Medal of Honor to World of Warcraft to Ace Combat we find this risk type scattered across the modern gaming landscape.

So why is risk important? As game designers we are always looking for what makes a game enjoyable, one of those factors is risk. If a character can die a million times and we don’t care we lose the immersive experience of the game. If we feel as though we are “going through the motions”, that is if all we are doing is repeating some mindless action in order to get to the next plot point, then we resent that section of the game (anyone who’s played through a Final Fantasy or a Xenosaga or a .hack understands this feeling). We don’t find it “fun” or challenging, we find it tedious and time consuming. There is no epinephrine released during this time — there is no excitement — and when we complete such a section in a game we breathe a sigh of relief, inwardly saying “glad that’s done” rather than feeling the exaltation of victory. “Glad that’s done” is okay to say when you get off work, it’s not alright when talking about a game.

So what’s the problem? The reward for playing a game has to be the game itself. We often overlook this fact, making the reward the ending or leveling up or getting to explore new areas. This causes us (perhaps rightly) to want the player to have access to the reward.

The Safe Game

In a game where the game-play isn’t the telos (raison d’etré) of the game the idea of preventing the player from achieving the real goal of the game becomes illogical, almost absurd. Think of it this way: under what circumstances would you want to do something that is both tedious and difficult only to find out that you wasted your time and have to start all over again? Correct, never. Thus we create the safe game.

The safe game is any game where given X hours (with minor variance for skill) any player will beat the game and get the prize (as stated earlier this can be anything from hitting the level cap to getting to see the great CGI at the end). In the safe game, losing entails repeating some amount of the tedium in between starting the game up and getting that hungered for reward.

The safe game fails in only one way…it isn’t a game. In many ways the safe game bears more resemblance to a movie or, at best, a theme park ride. It focuses on the non-interactive parts of the experience rather than on the interactive element that is the core of the ‘game’.

So why do we make safe games? I’ll just say it…because it’s easy. We use the safe game to cover up a flaw in our design. It is very difficult to make a good game, it is much simpler to make a pretty movie and stick it on the end of forty hours of tedious trigger twiddling. And you want to know what? Sometimes the experience is worth it. Sometimes the reward at the end of the long bland tunnel of repetitious game-play is fulfilling enough to justify the time. My hat comes off to all the CGI wizards, creative writers, inventive level designers who can make me come away satisfied regardless of the game-play — but that’s not our business, we are game designers, our job is to make games.

Risk Versus Reward

Games are enjoyable for one of two reasons: either they challenge us in a way that we enjoy being challenged (say throwing a football for the player who likes physical challenges or making the right move in chess for the player who enjoys mental ones) or they fill us with the fear of loss and the hope of gain. The best games balance these two aspects, allowing us to modulate our risk by using our skill at the game without reducing our reward.[2]

Imagine playing roulette with an unlimited supply of play money or doing a crossword puzzle where the answers were given right after the questions. These games, while enjoyable under normal circumstances, cannot be enjoyed in this manner. The first case, roulette, was never a game of skill, thus when we remove its risk it becomes dull and boring. In the second case, once we remove the challenge from the crossword puzzle we lose interest as there is no risk to captivate us. This is analogous to modern video games.

If a game has a static reward but no element of risk then there is no incentive for the player to improve at the game. If the player does not care if they improve then the player cannot be challenged. Ergo we’ve removed both risk and challenge from the game and made it “unfun”.

Balance

Reward is the natural balance to risk but, if we confine reward to one invariable constant, we limit our ability to introduce risk. Instead of risk our game consists of a series of binary obstacles, passable or impassable. The standard game design solution to this is to make challenge A passable and challenges B through X impassable until A is complete. Once A has been completed something within the game changes to make B passable. This continues until the player completes X and gets the reward for finishing the game. Even games that are otherwise excellent can succumb to using this legerdemain (take for example Ico) but this is not an adequate solution.

It is easy to confuse an exceedingly linear game for a game with multiple rewards but it is important not to do so. Compare the game where you go through door A to get the key to door B to a simple crossword puzzle. The object of the crossword puzzle is to complete the crossword. Each word you fill out give you clues on how to solve the other words. You do not need any of these clues if you are good enough at crossword puzzles to simply fill in all the boxes but, for the most part, we use them to help us solve the words we are stuck on. Thus the reward for filling in a word correctly is assistance filling in the other words but the risk you run in incorrectly filling out a word is the confusion that ensues when you try and complete the words connected with it.

The distinction here is key. The skilled crossworder can blaze through the crossword ignoring the hints and reaching his goal in record time but, if the crossworder’s skill is not quite what he thinks it is, he may get himself muddled, costing him time or perhaps the whole endeavor. The player in the door game on the other hand has no choice but to go through door A, even if they have acquired all the skills necessary to conquer door S.

This becomes clearer if you examine the recent iterations of the Zelda series or any of the PS2 era Silent Hills. Both of these games have illusory rewards scattered throughout the game but in both cases these rewards serve more as milestones which must be crossed by every player who completes the game than as true rewards for a player’s skill and unique approach to the challenges presented them.

Before we move on it is important that I address the cries of one specific field of game developers…the RPG developer. You may decry that your game is like the crossword, offering the player equipment and levels instead of clues, but here the subtlety of our problem really shows through. Many RPGs use the acquisition of levels and equipment to avoid the problem of challenge and thus of risk. Most RPGs use the formula “if stats are ≥ X then monster Y is defeated” (with a lot of window dressing to make the player think that they are doing something) with stats largely depending on defeating monster (thus earning equipment and levels). One can see the circularity of this issue. I’ll refer you to Progress Quest for further study.

The Bifurcated Path

Let us assume at last that we are cognizant of risk, that we want to include it as an active element in our game: how do we do so without driving players away? Thus we come to the bifurcated path.

In order to have risk we have to setup a reward, but let’s make it a real reward. Instead of the reward being “get to the end” let’s make it “get to the end in X hours of game-play” (there, after all that we don’t even really mind the reward being the end of the game). Now X must actually be variable. Not minutely variable but truly variable. Let’s say, for the sake of having real numbers, the difference between eight hours of game-play and forty.

Now that we have our incentive let’s set up a risk. This risk can be any of the risks listed above but let’s use time. Now that your time’s a wager that whole system becomes a lot more fun.

We have our risk and our reward; now let’s talk about game-play. The gamer who likes risk, who believes in themselves and their abilities qua the game, can take the short path, trying for that elusive eight hour victory wrought with danger and excitement. Yes they miss out on some of the content of the game, which they have conveniently skipped, but they get the rush of a challenge which tests their finely honed skills to the limit. The true die-hard slow and steady gamer on the other hand will take the forty hour route. While it might not test them to their limits (which is probably something they don’t want from a ‘game’ anyway) they get the experience of enjoying the whole world, soaking up the content at a leisurely pace.

If we have designed the game well it will allow players to match the level of risk they want to the appropriate challenge and reward, thus giving each player the experience they desire. Optimally the player will play through game tweaking their risk/reward balance as they play and improve, thus allowing a player the full spectrum from 8 to 40 hours of game-play.[3]

A Few Concluding Words

Risk is by no means the only factor in games, but it is a factor in every game. It is important that we be aware of it and that we don’t dismiss it as an element that we can’t control for. Perhaps after careful examination we will conclude that some of our fundamental assumptions are mistaken (does more ‘game-play’ hours really make for a better game)? Perhaps we will find out we were right all along.

Either way awareness is really what is at issue here. It is our jobs to design the best games possible and that cannot be done without considering the risk the player faces for losing.

But, I will confess, my reasons for writing this article are to some extent selfish. I’ve given you my thoughts and ideas on the subject of risk as best as I am able, now I would like to hear yours.（Source：gamasutra）