下文节选自Paul Barnett的访谈内容，Paul Barnett是BioWare/Mythic高级创意总监，目前负责监管BioWare家族的若干项目，其中包括《Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes》和《BioWare Social》。

paul-barnett(from ultimaaiera.com)

首先先来谈谈什么是游戏设计？

如果我知道的话，那我就是百万富翁了。我赞成史蒂芬·金的看法，这多半是心电感应。我觉得关于什么是故事创作，心电感应是最佳答案就。游戏设计也许也属于心电感应。

在现代社会中，大家多半都有自己的想法，他们基本分为两派。那些竭尽全力试图创造简单构思的人士终于在经过长期努力后创造出《星球大战：旧共和国武士》之类的作品。构思简单。可以说是大型多人“星球大战”撞上“旧共和国武士”。但这需要众多人员、时间和资金，而且落实过程也非常困难。

另一极端例子是在家里编写代码，这种图队也许只有1、2或3位人员。你有具体的目标，期望有所成就。然后你开始埋头苦干。

我刚从史密森尼的“Art of Computer Gaming”展会回来。在此我被问到同样的问题，我借用詹姆斯·卡梅隆的话来阐述：“游戏设计师就是投身游戏设计的人士，无论他制作何种游戏类型，他人说些什么，游戏质量如何，谁想要试图阻止他。他们以自己的方式呈现作品，他们毫不在乎他人是否喜欢自己的作品，无论这是否能够给他们带来收益。他们只是投入制作当中，然后将其发行。”

从这个角度来看，他们就是游戏设计师。从那以后，他们生活中的其他事情都围绕范围、预算和构思。

所以就是纯粹的制作游戏，进行最后润色，然后将其呈现给他人。

是的，完全正确。进投入其中之后，所有焦点都围绕你是否擅长设计，是否发挥重要作用，是否从中创收。你是否表现突出？是否富有创造性？是否能够同他人合作？是否瞄准特定平台或构思？这些都是进一步延伸的问题。

设计就是创造性活动。提出构思，将其落到实处。其他一切都只是纸上谈兵。我有位朋友是作家，他也发表同样的观点，“大家手中都有一本书。只是我不太确定这些书籍是否是值得阅读。”但幸运的是，鲜少有人基于此撰写自己的书籍。因此我们得以免受煎熬。“

游戏设计师扮演什么角色？

这个问题习空见惯。在我看来：若你投身游戏创作，那你就是游戏设计师。你是负责音效、用户界面，还是加载页面完全无关紧要。这些都属于设计范畴。每个参与至游戏项目中的人员都是在进行设计工作。编写存储用户数据代码的人员也是在进行设计工作，无论你是否赞同这点。因为组合数据，存储数据，保持画面简洁性及简单性都属于游戏设计范围。

BioWare Social from social.bioware.com

设计限制条件通常会在游戏其他部分变成强制决策。

所以大家都是游戏设计师。这一可怜家伙通常经受最多磨难。因为他们处在最不公正的地位，他们所有的工作通常都遭遇反对、妥协、轻视、误解，并常眼睁睁地看着自己的作品被判死刑（并且通常是由他们亲手取消这些项目）。

所以痛苦是游戏设计师的一大要素？他们通常经受大量困难。他们就像是好莱坞的编剧家，就如威廉·戈登书中所述。他述说那些关于你闻所未闻的编剧家的故事，他们从未赢得过什么，他们从来没有出现在谈话节目中，他们从未得到过赞美。若你询问他人：“列举10位杰出剧作家”，大家能想到的多半不会超过4位。

但若是要他们列举导演，他们通常能够脱口而出。而列举10位演员，则“完全没有问题。”但若是真正创作故事的人员，“从没听说过他们。”

我喜欢设计。我喜欢和其他人一起设计内容。我喜欢帮助他人完成设计工作，这意味着需要承受许多痛苦。你也经受很多苦难。

是的。

痛苦，我喜欢这个答案。

是的，游戏设计是个痛苦过程。从某种意义上说，团队所有人员都是设计师。但主要的是真正构想出游戏的人员。

对此你怎么看？

在我看来，游戏设计师工作的最简单定义是，他们负责创造供用户欣赏、触碰及感觉的内容。因此他们承受最多磨难，因为我们很难就其他内容发表评论。我们很难就代码进行评论。在很多情况下，我们也无法就美工元素发表评论（游戏邦注：虽然有时候要评论这一内容非常简单）。

但在我看来，游戏设计师在组合内容，将其呈现给用户方面扮演着主要角色， 他们需要确保内容富有趣味。因此，这是大家能够轻松进行查看和评论的内容。优秀的内容能够让游戏或设计免受批评，这是最终面向用户的内容，是吧？所以越快越好。

在最近的Art of Computer Games座谈会上，我被问及一个有关游戏设计的问题。当时我给出的答案是游戏涉及3个要素。它是个双向沟通，同时体现卡尔·马克思的观点和Monty Python的看法，我觉得他们都触及游戏设计的根本之处。卡尔·马克思主要围绕疏远话题，他认为要避免出现疏远情况。我觉得游戏设计师的首要职责是让尽可能多的人员参与到项目中，了解即将制作的作品及其重要性所在。这样他们就不会被疏远。

他们需要受控于自己的信念。Monty Python主要给出如下建议：写下构思，然后将其传递给不了解情况或存在误解的团队成员，让他们写下自己对此的看法。然后这就会变得杰出的游戏构思。这有点像听不见的意外事件和乐趣。

概括首席设计师的词汇除痛苦外，还有爱和关心。每位杰出设计师都会倾注满满的关心。每位杰出设计师都深爱着游戏设计。将此比作爱情故事意味着你有时会显得有些无能为力。你有时会受到伤害。你有时会非常痛苦。你有时会欣喜若狂。你有时是能够摧毁众天神的挑衅之龙，而有时则受到孤立，处于不公平地位。

倍受尊敬的游戏设计师通常都是如此，他们不畏惧失败。我遇见过的优秀设计师总是持续设计内容。数量是他们的一个工作特性。他们不仅仅设计一款游戏。

我觉得人人都可以出色完成一项工作。杰出设计师的特点是，他们存在弱点，经历失败，但依然继续前进。优秀设计的最佳典范是温斯顿·丘吉尔，他屡遭失败， 但热情丝毫未受打击。

这非常有趣。

丘吉尔是个了不起的人物。看看他的遭遇，他屡遭失败，但热情却丝毫没有因此受挫。他后来拯救了整个西方世界。

这使我想到两个问题。1）为什么设计师会经常遭遇失败？2）为什么热情是成功的关键。

我们穷困潦倒。我们是唯一没有收入的人员。想想你碰到过几个富有的设计师，“几乎没有”，出于某种原因，公司所有者、财务人员或营销人员似乎都持有众多资金。我很难理解这点。我们并不是靠这些回馈驱动的。我们的刺激因素在于期望通过游戏设计进行沟通，表达自我。我们会因强烈坚持这些（游戏邦注：将此置于原则之上）而被炒鱿鱼。我们都是极端分子。我们发现要说服自己不关心游戏很难。我们在毫无疑义的疯狂事情上坚持不懈。这股热情源自渴望做某事的沸腾热血。我们为设计元素而奋斗，因为我们心里知道一切值得。

我还发现：出于预算和限制条件而进行某项目（他们觉得这是唯一出路）的设计师最终都会深陷遗憾之中。或在悲伤和遗憾之中离开项目，或最终退出项目，然后说道：“你知道吗？我最终有将项目推出，但我其实不该这么做。”

这非常有趣。我们就是这样。美工若被告知“画这一内容”，他们就会进行绘制，若代码员被告知“学习这种语言”，他们就会照此进行编辑。AQ会检验规定之中的各项内容，因为这就是他们的做事方式。但设计师每次只要偏离正确道路，进行我们并不相信的工作，我们就会将自己置于毁灭境地。诗人，我们是数字领域的诗人。

我们已经谈论很多有关游戏设计的挑战。在你看来，投身游戏设计的最大挑战是什么？

体现在功能、动作、资源和时间方面。功能、资源和时间就好比是三角形的三个顶点，动作置于三角形之中。作为设计师，你需要确定游戏功能，争取资源和时间，同时持续调整动作内容。

完全正确。

我在这些重要元素中投入众多时间，时时刻刻都没有松懈。

我觉得，当你进入社会，或者开始成长时，你通常会觉得这是个理想职业，充满激情，依靠纯粹的创造性。这些的确是重要元素。但是就如你所说的，没有人会给你一张空白支票，50位工程师及20位美工，然后说：“做你想做的事。我们相信你。这里有1亿美元。”

最奇怪的是，若出现这种情况，这最终也会变成一场灾难。

的确如此。

如果有人给你一张空白支票，建议你卷款走人，因为你最终多半会陷入困境。（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）

“What is Game Design?” with Paul Barnett

The following are excerpts from a conversation with Paul Barnett, Senior Creative Director at BioWare/Mythic.  Paul currently oversees a number of projects in the BioWare family, including Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes and BioWare Social.

To start with, what is game design?

Paul Barnett: Oh, dear, crikey. If I knew that, then I’d be rich. I’m with Stephen King. It’s probably telepathy. I thought that was the greatest answer to what is story writing is telepathy. Game design is probably telepathy.

People have ideas in the modern era they’re basically two groups. Lots of people trying desperately to get a straightforward idea made over a long period of time, for something like Star Wars TOR. Simple idea. Massively multiplayer Star Wars meets Knights of the Old Republic. But it requires hundreds of people, years, millions of dollars and it’s supremely difficult.

The other extreme is bedroom coding, where you just get one, two, three people maybe. You have a vision and generally just a desire to get something out to the industry. And you just do stuff.

I just came from the Art of Computer Gaming show at the Smithsonian. I was asked this exact question and I stole James Cameron’s quote, which is “A game designer is someone who goes out and makes games, any type of game, regardless of what anyone says, regardless of the quality, regardless of who tries to stop them. They make it available any way they can and they don’t give a damn whether anyone likes it, whether it actually made any money. They just make it and release it.”

And in that point, they’re a games designer. From then on, everything else in their life is merely about scope, budget and ideas.

So the sheer act of making game, finishing it, and putting it in front of another person.

Paul Barnett: Yes. Absolutely. Once you’re into that, then it’s all the arguments about, are you good at it, big at it, commercial at it. Are you smart at it? Are you innovative? Are you capable of working with other people? Do you work from certain platforms or certain ideas? They’re all just subquestions.

Design is nothing more than the sheer act of creativity. Taking an idea and making it available. Everything else is just talk. My friend’s an author and he says the same thing, “Everyone’s got a book in them. I’m just not too sure they’re books worth reading. Thankfully though, very few people have it within them to actually write their book. So we’re saved from torment.”

What is the role of the game designer?

Paul Barnett: It’s a title thrown around all over. I would say the following: if you are involved in the creation of a game, you are a game designer. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing audio, doing user interface, whether you’re doing the loading screen. It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the design. Every single person involved in the game is designing. A guy writing the code that is going to store the player data is designing. Whether they like it or not. Because how they put that data together, how it’s stored, how compact it is, how easy it is for us to see it is game design.

And what its limitations are often force decisions in other parts of the game.

Paul Barnett: So, everyone’s a game designer. The poor sod who actually has the title is generally the person who is the highest position of pain all the time. Because they are the person in rawest place because everything they do is thwarted, compromised, belittled, misunderstood and butchered, in front of their eyes, often by themselves.

So pain would probably be my number one thing of what is game designer? Someone who is in a lot of pain. They are the screenwriters of Hollywood, again, like in William Goldman’s book. He tells this great tale about all the screenwriters that you’ve never heard of, who’ve never won anything, they’re not on talk shows and they’re not lauded as greatness. If you pull someone aside and say, “Name me ten great screenwriters,” a lot of people struggle to get beyond four.

Whereas you ask them to name directors, oh, they’ll nail it. And ten actors, oh, “I’ve got that, no problem.” But the people who actually create the story, “No, never heard of them.”

I love designing. I love designing with other people. I love helping people to design and it means that I have had a lot of pain. You’ve had a lot of pain.

Yes

Paul Barnett: Pain, I like that answer.

Right. Game design is pain. It’s everyone on the game team is a designer in some sense. But then the person who actually gets the title…

Paul Barnett: What do you think?

I think that, to me, the easiest way to explain what a game designer does is that, they are the person responsible for what the user sees, touches, feels. And because of that, they are the person who’s in the most pain, because everything else is very difficult to comment on. The code is difficult to comment on. And a lot of times, much of the art is difficult to comment on, although sometimes it’s fairly easy.

But the game designer, I always feel like, is important for wrapping things up and putting it in front of a player and they’re responsible for making it fun. And so, it’s the easiest thing for anybody to look at and criticize. Which is good, because ultimately shielding a game from criticism or a design from criticism, well, it’s going to meet people eventually, right? So the sooner, the better.

Paul Barnett: I was asked a question recently at Art of Computer Games, I was on a panel with Ken Levine and some guy brought it up. I thought that game design was three things at that point. It was communication, both ways, and then it’s a point from Karl Marx and something Monty Python said, which I think sort of captures game design. Karl Marx was all about alienation, how you shouldn’t have alienation. And I think a designer’s number one job is to ensure as many people as possible are engaged in the project, understand what the hell we’re trying to make and why it’s important. So that they can stay away from alienation.

They’ve got to be vested in their belief. And then Monty Python, which was all about, you write down an idea, then it gets communicated to your colleagues, who miss-hear it, misunderstand it, write down what they think you said, and that becomes the great idea. And it’s sort of like that inaudible accidental happenstance and joy.

Words that would sum up lead designers or main designers, apart from pain… love, care. Every great designer gave a damn like you wouldn’t believe. Every great designer is in an eternal love affair with design. And accepts that it’s a love affair, which means, you’re at times powerless. You’re at times destroyed. You’re at times miserable. You’re at times elated and ecstatic. You’re at times challenging dragons, bringing down heavens and, at other times, are the most isolated and raw you can ever be.

The great ones, the ones that are really deeply admired generally do that, and they’re fearless of failure. The best designers I ever met, they design all the time. Quantity has a quality about what they do. They don’t just design one game.

I think anyone can pull off one thing and it can be cool. A great designer is defined by the weaknesses they have and the failures they have and the fact they carried on going. Great design is Winston Churchill, it’s going from failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm.

That’s funny

Paul Barnett: That’s Churchill. He’s an amazing man. You look at his life and it is failure to failure with no lack of enthusiasm. Then he saves the Western World.

That actually even leads me to two questions. One is, why do we designers fail so frequently? And two, why is that enthusiasm the key to ultimate success?

Paul Barnett: Because we’re all broke. That’s easy. We’re the only people who don’t get a payout. When you think about how many designers you meet who are rich, the answer is “hardly any.” They’re all people who owned companies and finance people, marketing people for some reason seem to have a lot of money. I never really understand that. And we’re not driven by those rewards. We’re driven by the desire to communicate, express ourselves through game design. We will get fired from projects because we believe in them so strongly, over a matter of principle. We’re lunatics. We find it very hard to design games we don’t care about. We fight for the craziest things that make no sense whatsoever. That enthusiasm comes from that boiling blood desire to do something. We’ll fight for design elements because we know in our heart they’re right.

I also know this: every designer I’ve ever met who has agreed to do something because of budget and restrictions because they thought it was the only way of getting it done, has ended up in deep regret. And has ended up either leaving a project through sadness and deep regret or bringing a project out and going, “you know what? I did get out over the line, but by hell, I probably shouldn’t have.”

It’s a funny thing. We’re the only people like that. Artists, if they’re told “draw this,” they’ll draw it and if a coder’s told “learn this language” they’ll code it. QA’ll QA anything that they’re told to do because QA are good like that. But designers, every time we go off the true path, every time we bother to do something that we didn’t believe in, we throw ourselves on the rocks of ruin. Poets. We’re digital poets.

So, we’ve talked a lot actually about already the challenges of game design. What do you think is the biggest challenge of being a game designer?

Paul Barnett: FART. Features, action, resource, time. So, features and resource and time being the three points of the triangle, action being in the middle of the triangle. Spells fart. The big fart is the single biggest thing a designer has to wrap their heads around. Because farts smell, no one wants to take the blame, no one wants to point at another person and suggest it’s happened. And, as a designer, that’s it. Deciding on your features, fighting for your resources, desperately trying to get the time. All the while, altering your actions.

And so if there’s anything that we do, farting would be top of the list. And it sounds sort… it’s cheeky. But, when I look back, I so very rarely got given a pen and told, “Okay, Paul. Off you go. Let’s go! What do you?”

Right

Paul Barnett: I’ve spent all my time dealing with the big fart. It happens minute to minute, day to day, week to week. So, if you do one thing, dealing with farts would probably be the big thing.

Yeah. I think when you’re on the outside, or when you’re growing up, it’s easy to think this is a dream job and a passion and it is pure creativity. And it is all those things. But, like you said, nobody ever gives you a blank check and 50 engineers and 20 artists and says, “Do anything you want. We believe in you. Here’s $100 million.” [laughs]

Paul Barnett: What’s weird is, I think if they did, it’d be a disaster.

Oh, absolutely.

Paul Barnett: Yes, if ever you get given an open checkbook, run, because you’re going to crash.（Source：famousaspect）