作者：Jon Shafer

我最近在PAX East的讲话是我对策略游戏怀抱最大的期许：降低准入门槛。实现这一目标的方式很多——无需牺牲游戏深度或复杂性。下面我将详细谈论几点，即：优质的教程、优秀的用户界面及精彩的演示内容。

指南教程一直是我最无法容忍的游戏元素之一。你会发现，多数游戏的指南教程都非常糟糕，原因非常明显：它们毫无趣味性可言，很难把握。但优秀的指南教程非常重要，值得你投入精力。

civ 4 tutorial(from imageshack)

虽然指南的潜在目的是教授新玩家游戏规则，但它们的地位仅次于另一目标——保持趣味性。用户体验游戏的主要原因是希望享受其中，第一印象会给他们未来的游戏体验带来深远影响。若你需要投入大把时间琢磨某些枯燥的内容，然后才能尝到甜头，何苦呢？还有其他游戏和娱乐形式供你选择，它们不会要求你支付这一“时间税收”。

有人觉得要将指南变得有趣很困难，这完全错误。你会问说为什么？答案很简单：将指南变成优先事项，将其设计得富有趣味。若你采取的策略是随意将信息抛给玩家，没有融入真正的玩法，那么指南就会变得和观看油画变干一样无趣。优秀指南通常会提供靠近核心游戏的体验。

若你的游戏围绕战斗内容，记得让玩家在决定如何进攻敌人方面享有一定话语权，而不是提供系列标注以什么顺序点击什么的准确、刻板指南。很多人每天工作时都持续被告知要做什么——他们不希望自己在休闲时间也处于这种境地。

要求玩家操作系列缺乏创造性或粘性的活动堪称是最糟糕的指南教程。不要忽略这样的事实：游戏作为娱乐媒介之所以如此受欢迎是因为它们让玩家能够对所进展的活动享有控制权。同时记住，指南是玩家在游戏中的初体验。选择在头一个小时的体验中放弃游戏的玩家要比在后期体验中退出游戏的玩家总数多很多。这一初体验必须是特色鲜明、令人为之眼前一亮的游戏组成内容。遗憾的是，真实情况往往与此相反。

CIVILIZATION 5 (from pcgamer.com)

恰当设定玩家需消化信息数量的一个绝佳方式将你的指南植入核心游戏体验中，而不是将所有指示信息放置在单独指南模式中。玩家进入游戏当中，逐步获得和体验有关的不同游戏元素。《文明5》中的典型例子是，每次玩家发现新资源，顾问就会立即出现，解释它的用途。我们不会告知玩家哪种铁或其他策略资源更适合（游戏邦注：直到这一资源变得具有关联性）。

有些人称，玩家需要整体把握整款游戏方能做出明智决策，这从某种程度看来有其道理。但真实情况是，多数玩家无法记住所有内容，无法初次体验游戏就应用所有游戏信息。玩家需要投入时间，反复进行体验，方能把握深层次的策略，在游戏各阶段都保持愉快感觉。这里的终极目标就是让尽可能多的玩家享受于游戏之中，一开始就抛出所有信息将严重破坏这一目标。

有些玩家依然希望获得正式指南的安全保障，所以将所有游戏帮助“打包”成按照设计师预期顺序安排玩家进入学习时刻的定制情境是明智选择。这是《文明5》及Stardock将问世新作《Fallen Enchantress》所采取的策略。

这一策略的一大弊端是，这需要我们完成很多工作。我们很难抵挡只消几天就收集颇多文本截图的诱惑，但不要忘记这里的重点：指南教程是多数玩家的切入点，作为开发者，你需要将其打造成游戏最杰出的内容之一。你是否希望首次体验游戏的玩家向好友介绍你的杰出作品，或只是希望得到若干你投入少许精力的文本截图？或者更糟得的情况，谈论游戏构思如何看起来颇为巧妙，但他们完全不知道这到底是怎么回事？

除完整指示机制外，方便玩家进入游戏的一个简单方式是，在一开始将他们引导至特定方向。“这是你需要处理的关卡任务，我们将分步告知你如何完成这一任务，但若你想要操作截然不同的任务，也是很不错的选择。”玩家希望享有自由，但很多人也希望得到至少些许的组织性和正强化，抛出随机目标是让所有玩家保持愉悦的最佳方式。

游戏界面（UI）在吸引新玩家方面扮演重要角色。最重要的界面条目应该在屏幕中处于最醒目的位置。尺寸至关重要，内容越突出，玩家越可能予以关注。在单个区域内对UI控制装置进行逻辑分组，将它们同无关内容区分开来。

务必确保按键看起来像按键，显而易见的是，玩家无法进行点击的内容将遭到忽视。出于某种原因，美工非常注重风格，但总会牢记最重要的用户界面特性是易用性。你定不希望玩家觉得自己需同游戏进行战斗，方能执行某些操作，或得到预期信息。

我想要谈论的最后一点是演示内容。我会这样进行总结：演示内容非常重要，所有游戏都应该在作品上架前向玩家展示一个演示样本。若你制作出一款优秀的作品，你定希望他人进行体验和讨论。相比售价30或60美元的游戏而言，玩家更可能尝试一款无需掏钱的游戏。采用免费模式是一个很大的跨越，显然不是所有项目都适合（游戏邦注：但每款游戏都会从演示样本中受益）。

这在策略游戏中表现得特别明显，其中演示样本是目前营销者持有的最佳武器。欣赏若干截图和真正体验游戏，直接接触具体内容之间依然存在很大差别。和优秀指南或UI一样，演示样本需耗费颇多精力，通常不是最令人兴奋的开发工作，但它们将给游戏曝光度、玩家乐趣和最终成就带来很大影响。（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 secret to a strong tutorial: Make it fun!

by Jon Shafer

Something I recently spoke about at PAX East was my number one hope for the future of strategy games: reducing the barrier to entry. There are several ways this can be done – without sacrificing a game’s depth or complexity. I’ll discuss a few in detail, namely: good tutorials, good user interface and good demos.

Tutorials have long been one of my biggest pet peeves. The ones you find in most games are terrible and the reasons why are obvious: they’re no fun to work on, there’s no glory in making a really kick-ass tutorial, and they’re really hard to get right. However, a good tutorial is extremely important, and well worth the required grunt work.

While the underlying purpose of a tutorial is to teach new players the rules of the game, this should really be secondary to another goal – being fun. The whole reason people play games is to enjoy them (duh) and their first impression will go a long way in shaping their future experience. If you have to spend a large chunk of time grinding through something boring in order to get to the good part – why bother? There are other games and forms of entertainment which don’t force you to pay this ‘time tax.’

Some might argue that it’s impossible to make a tutorial fun, but that’s absolutely false. How you ask? The answer is simple: by making the tutorial a priority and actually designing it to be fun. If all you do is haphazardly throw information at the player and don’t bother to incorporate actual gameplay, of course the tutorial is going to be as much fun as watching paint dry. The best tutorials always provide an experience very close to the core game.

If your game is about combat, let the player have some say in how to attack the enemy, instead of providing a list of precise, inflexible instructions noting exactly what to click in what order. (Most) people are told what to do every day from 9 to 5 (or so) – they don’t also want to be told what to do in their free time.

Forcing the player to perform a series of actions where there’s no room for creativity or engagement is the worst possible introduction. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the reason why games as an entertainment medium are popular is because they give the user control over what’s going on. Also remember that the tutorial is someone’s first experience with the game. More players quit a game in the first hour than the rest of playtime combined. The first experience needs to be the part of the game which stands out and shines. Unfortunately, the opposite is often the case.

A good way to pace the amount of information a player must digest is to embed your tutorial in the core game experience, instead of having all of the instruction take place in a separate tutorial mode. The player jumps right into a game and is provided information about the different elements of the game as they become relevant. A good example from Civ 5 is that every time a new type of resource is discovered by the player, one of the advisors pops up and explains what it does. We didn’t bother teaching the player what iron or other strategic resources were good for until it actually mattered.

Some might argue that you need to know the whole context of the game in order to make informed decisions, and this is true to some extent. However, the reality is that most players just aren’t going to be able to keep everything in their head and apply all of that information the first time they play a game. It takes time and experience to build up to an understanding of deep strategy, and to get to that point players have to feel comfortable at every stage along the way. The end goal is to have as many people enjoying your game as possible, and throwing everything out at the very beginning undermines this in a major way.

Some players still desire the safety net of a formalized tutorial, so it’s wise to also ‘package’ all of the in-game help into a custom-tailored scenario which ensures the player runs into all of the learning moments in the order the designer prefers. This is the approach taken in both Civ 5 and Stardock’s upcoming game Fallen Enchantress.

The big downside to this approach is that… well… it’s a lot of work. It can be hard to ignore the allure of needing to spend only a couple days whipping together a few screens of text, but don’t forget the important point from above: the tutorial is the entry point for a large percentage of players, and as a developer you need it to be one of the best parts of the game. Do you want first-time players talking with their friends about your cool game, or just the few screens of text that you only spent a fraction of the total effort on? Or worse, talking about how the idea seemed neat but they just couldn’t figure out what was going on?

Outside of a full-on tutorial system, an easy way to ease players into a game is simply to nudge them in a direction at the start. “Hey, there’s this quest you should probably go on, and we’ll give you step-by-step instructions on how to complete it, but if you want to do something completely different that’s cool too.” Players want freedom, but most also want at least a little structure and positive reinforcement, and throwing out a few optional goals is the best way to make everyone happy.

A game’s interface (UI) also has a huge role to play in bringing new players into the fold. The most important interface items should have the most weight on the screen. Size matters (at least with UI) and the more prominent something is the more likely a player is to pay attention to it. Organize logical groupings of UI controls in a single area, and section them off from unrelated ones.

Make sure buttons look like buttons, and that it’s obvious that everything you can’t click on is to be ignored. For good reason, artists like to play up style but always remember the most important part of a user interface is the usability. You don’t want players to feel like they’re fighting the game in order to perform actions or get the information they want. I’ll have more to say on the topic of UI in a future article.

The last thing I’ll talk about is demos. I’ll sum it up this way: demos are great, and every game should put one out before it’s available on store shelves (digital and otherwise). If you’ve made an awesome game then you want people playing it and talking about it. Someone is a lot more likely to try out a game that’s free than one that’s 30 or 60 dollars (just ask any free to play developer). Going free-to-play is a big leap and definitely not right for every project, but every game benefits from a demo.

This is especially true for strategy games, where demos are by far the best tool in a marketer’s arsenal. There’s a big difference between seeing a few screenshots and actually getting to play and find out first-hand what all the fuss is about. Like a good tutorial or UI, a demo takes quite a bit of work and is usually not the most exciting development task, but they all can make a huge difference in a game’s visibility, player enjoyment and ultimate success.（Source：gamasutra）