我们此前参加了印度海得拉巴的游戏和动画NASSCOM峰会，这是英国文化委员会Young Interactive Entrepreneurs 2009项目的行程之一。会议不仅汇集印度游戏和动画领域的人士，还通过各种论坛和座谈会展开有趣对话。

会议第二天的主题演讲发言人是Ernest Adams，他是游戏设计领域的权威人士，是位作家，同时还是国际游戏开发者协会的联合创始人，及游戏开发者大会的定期演讲者。下列是他主题演讲的若干要点。

Ernest以一个简单但颇为重要的话题切入：游戏如何娱乐玩家？

他接着罗列若干创造娱乐价值的元素。这些元素并不适用所有游戏作品，但杰出游戏通常包含其中若干基本要素。

* 玩法依然是最重要的元素。内容为王。

* 故事在吸引用户方面也同样重要。

* 探索内容带来必要的挑战和好奇元素。

* 持续发展：难度和新角色。

* 风险&回馈：同样是用户体验的基本要素

* 新颖性

* 学习过程

* 创造性

* 角色扮演

* 社交互动：随着社交游戏平台的发展，无论是在社交网络，还是在其他日益遍布的连网平台，近来这逐渐变成越来越重要的元素。

在Ernest谈及的话题中，对印度游戏领域的的发展来说至关重要的一点是，制作持续较久的游戏作品（游戏邦注：是指超过12-15小时的游戏）。所以这就带来了一个显而易见的问题：如何将游戏变得更持久？

* 主题&变化

* 新挑战&复杂性

* 持续发展：难度应稳步提高。角色更新——能量补充和新移动操作

* 合理的节奏：高级活动和低级活动的周期

* 变化设置

* 玩家成就改变故事情节（适应性游戏）

Ernest突出的一个根本问题是，简短游戏的核心DNA不同于持久游戏。你无法将一款简短的游戏扩展成杰出的持久游戏。根本原因在于二者游戏的设计目的差异：简短游戏&持久游戏。

* 简短游戏旨在让玩家进行重复体验，但游戏初始应该有所不同（游戏邦注：如重新洗牌）。

* 持久游戏属于单程体验，玩家不会重复操作。游戏需融入富有挑战性的实际目标。

那么持久游戏的独特之处何在？什么促使它们变成独特的游戏类型？

* 持久游戏是逃避现实的出口——将梦想变成现实

* 奖励玩家的投入时间。让他们经历现实生活无法实现的情境（例如，经营农场，管理团队，成为F1赛车手）

* 照顾玩家——用户界面和易用性是关键

* 500-1000万的常规预算（EA、育碧和Namco）

围绕玩家的游戏设计：动作和玩法源自玩家的选择。

动画也是游戏设计师应该谨慎对待的内容，尤其是在当前竞争日益激烈的环境中。

玩家可能会进行出乎意料的操作，开发者需做好心理准备。平稳过渡至关重要。

例如：当角色进行跳跃，用户点击Crouch时，会出现什么情况。在此做好准备。

在故事叙述中，动画会受到约束。但在游戏中，动画需要适应玩家的需求变化。

动画数据存储在对象中，而不是游戏。各个对象都有自己的动态机制、行为和程序动画。

这带来如下开发周期特点：

* 反向运动学——带来活动动画（例如，角色在上楼时，双脚不应陷入地板中）

* 布偶物理系统——降落和重力

* 真正的运动——角色移动的速度应匹配他们双腿移动的速度。

（如今游戏创造动态角色动画。但其中通常包含预先渲染的动作画面）。

游戏领域只有两家电影公司制作过这类动画：Lucas Arts和迪斯尼。这是因为他们真正把握软件工程，而不仅仅是创造性和动画。

Ernest还谈及印度游戏领域面临的主要挑战：“如何从外包转移至IP开发？”

* 设计品牌

* 从角色入手——创造能够变成游戏主要标识的角色（例如，Lara Croft）。

* 更多将自己视作游戏发行商，而非游戏服务供应商。

* 各个要素都至关重要，都可能影响作品的成败。

* 熟练的游戏制作人——若团队缺乏此类人员，不妨寻求外部援助（在国际范围内）。

* 测试、调节和完善——在此投入50%的时间。优秀游戏和糟糕游戏的区别之处在于QA及精致程度。

* 若开发周期是N天，那么测试和完善时间就是2N天。

* 不要给予空头支票：若无法做到，就不要破坏自己的信誉。通过诚实手段获得成功。

* 了解用户的口味。把握当地的娱乐风格——游戏若在印度具有可行性是因为它适合当地的习惯模式。你不能采用西方思维或操作方式。例如，德国游戏不应融入血腥元素。英式幽默不同于美式幽默。

* 不仅要吸引玩家，还要吸收游戏开发者。

* 不要抄袭——而是要有所提升。

* 但融入新功能并非所谓的提升。

* 若你无法将事情做好，那么就干脆不做。小型的精致游戏要胜过普通的持久游戏。

你要如何在短短几年内（例如，5年，而不是30年）转变成游戏发行商：

* 关于游戏开发的教育：学校可以让学生能够在没有风险的情况下犯错，进而获得成长。

* 专业游戏开发培训：有专家和自由职业者教授如何进行大型资产管理、SCRUM管理及任务划分。

Ernest总结表示，印度的发展潜力依然很大，这体现在三个层面：

1. 人才：这个国家存在很多优秀人才，包括艺术、工程、设计、语言和教育领域，还有就是印度是个英语国家。

2. 市场：不要只将美国和欧洲视作目标市场。印度的市场也非常广阔。印度25%的人口就超过整个美国市场。初期市场推动者已准备就绪。不妨瞄准印度本土市场开发游戏。

3. 文化：不要忽略印度本土文化。印度创造了国际象棋、《蛇和梯子》及双骰游戏等作品，游戏是印度文化的组成要素。

目前的核心问题是，印度游戏设计领域缺乏经验——但这可以通过培训和时间进行弥补。待到那时，通过关注内外环境，吸引必要人才，发展游戏设计文化是明智之举。

游戏公司通常都是基于北美及些许日本故事制作游戏。全球其他地方的故事都尚未被游戏领域采用。摩诃婆罗多和罗摩传等神话故事将有很大的发挥空间。

谈及他最喜爱的热门游戏作品是什么时，他的答案是：“《俄罗斯方块》。这是款非常完美的游戏作品，内容非常简单。任何改变都只会让游戏变糟。”

游戏邦注：原文发布于2009年11月11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）

Essentials of Game Design – Key Note Speech by Ernest Adams at NASSCOM 2009 Hyderabad

We attended the NASSCOM Summit in Hyderabad, India this past week (November 6th & 7th) on Gaming and Animation as part of my trip arranged by the British Council for UK’s Young Interactive Entrepreneurs 2009 program. The conference was a good gathering of the who’s who in the gaming and animation sector in India and also brought about some interesting dialogues through the various forums and panels.

The key note speaker on Day 2 was Ernest Adams who is a well known authority on game design, author, co-founder of the International Game Developers Association, and a regular lecturer at the Game Developers Conference. Ernest has been a lead designer at Bullfrog Productions, and the audio/video producer on the Madden NFL product line.

He has developed games for the IBM 360 mainframe, the Playstation 2, and many other platforms. He is a member of the International Hobo game design and narrative consultancy. Adams’ is the author of “Break Into The Game Industry: How to Get A Job Making Video Games”. He also wrote two books with Andrew Rollings. Their 1st was “Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design”. They followed it with “Fundamentals of Game Design”, part of the “Game Design and Development Series” in 2006.

Summarized below are some of the points from his keynote presentation. While we disclaim that this is an effort to capture all his key points, we hope its a useful summary of his speech (His lectures can be found here)

Ernest started with a very simple but important topic: How does a game entertain its players?

He went on to list some of elements that help create that entertainment value. These might not all apply to all games, but its easy to see that most successful games have covered several of these bases.

* Game Play remains the most important aspect. Content is king.

* Story is equally paramount to get the user to be entrenched in the game

* Exploration adds the required challenge and curiosity

* Progression: Hardness, new avatars

* Risk & Reward: Again fundamental to user experience

* Novelty

* Learning

* Creativity

* Role Playing

* Socializing: This is becoming a bigger factor in recent years with the growth of social gaming platform whether on social networks or otherwise with increased connectivity.

One of the issues that Ernest reasoned is important in the growth of the gaming industry in India is to be able to start creating long games (those that are beyond 12-15 hours). So it raised the obvious question of how to make games longer?

* Themes & Variations

* New Challenges & Complexities

* Progression: Difficulty should increase steadily, not spikily. Character upgrades – Power Up, New moves

* Good Pacing: Periods of high activity, low activity

* Change Setting

* Player Achievements changes story plot (adaptive games)

One fundamental issue that Ernest highlighted was that the very core DNA of short games is different than long games. You cannot just extend a short game to make it a successful long game. And the rationale is in the purpose with which each of these type of games are made: Short games vs Long Games

* Short games are intended to be played repeatedly, but yet should be different at every start (i.e.: shuffle a deck of cards)

* Long games are once through and never back. Should be realistic goal – but yet challenging.

So what is so unique about Long Games. What makes them its own special class of games?

* Long games are a means of escaping reality – bring a dream to live

* Reward the investment of time from the player. Let them live something they cant do in live (e.g.: own a farm, own a team, be a F1 racer)

* Take care of your players – User Interface and usability is key

* Usual budgets of about 5-10mm (EA, Ubisoft, Namco)

Player-Centric Game Design: Actions and game play arise out of the players choices

Animation is also something that game designers have to be extra cautious, especially in this increasingly competitive environment.

Expect users to try to do weird things. Smooth transitions are your saviour.

e.g.: what happens when a character is jumping, and a user presses Crouch. Be ready for that

In Story Telling, animation is controlled. However in gaming, animation has to be ready to adapt to changing demands of the users.

Animation data is stored on the objects, not on the game. Each object has its own dynamics, behaviour, procedural animations.

This has led to the following features in the development cycle:

* Inverse Kinematics – Produces graphics on the go (i.e.: the characters shouldn’t have their feet sink into the floor as they walk up the stairs)

* Ragdoll Physics – Falling and Gravity

* True Locomotion – Speed of character moving should match the speed at which their legs are moving (i.e.: the Skating effect is unwanted)

(Games now create character animations on the go. However there are often pre-rendered motion graphics).

There are only two film companies that have made it in the game area, Lucas Arts and Disney. And this has been because they understand software engineering and not just creative and animation.

Ernest also talked about major challenge for the Indian Gaming industry is: “How do you go from Outsourcing to IP development?”

* Design a brand

* Begin with characters – create a character that is a strong symbol of the game (i.e.: Lara Croft)

* Requires more dedication as a Game Publisher than a Game Service Provider

* Everything matters, anything can make it fail

* Skilled game producers – if you don’t have them, get them from somewhere (internationally)

* Testing, tuning and polishing – spend 50% of time on this. The difference between a good game and a bad game – is the amount of QA and refinement

* If development is N days. Then testing & polishing is 2N day.

* Don’t promise what you cant do: Don’t hurt your reputation if you cant do. Honesty wins

* Know your audience tastes. Understand local styles of entertainment – what works in India is because India works that way. You cant just bring in western thinking and implement. e.g.: German games don’t have blood. British sense of humour is different than American.

* Don’t hire just gamers, hire game developers (its a different thing)

* Don’t copy – improve

* New features alone are not improvement. Do things better, faster, richly, cleaner. Fix the issues – don’t just add things.

* If you cant do a thing well – then don’t do it all. A smaller beautifully built and polished game is better than an average longer game

How do you transition into a Game Publisher in a couple years (i.e.: 5 years rather than 30 years):

* Education towards Game Development: Education provides a place where students can make risk free mistakes and grow.
(See Ernest Adams 10 Game Development Commandments)

* Professional game development training: There are experts and freelancers to teach large scale asset management, SCRUM management, division of tasks

Ernest concluded that the promise of India is still very much there and infact its threefold:

I. Talent: This is a country with a lot of very talented people: arts, engineering, design, language and education. And it helps that India is an English speaking country

II. Markets: Don’t just aim at the US & EU are target markets. There are sufficient pockets in your own country. The top 25% of Indian population is larger than the entire US. The early market movers are ready to take advantage. Make games for your own market.

III. Culture: Don’t overlook your own culture. India invented Chess, Snakes & Ladders, Pachisi… game is part of the Indian culture.

The core issue right now is that Indian game design industry needs experience – but that will come with training and time. Till then its prudent that they the steps to help foster the culture of game design by looking inwards as well as outwards and attract talent where required.

Game companies are mostly making games based on North American stories (i.e.: Tolkien) and a bit from Japan (medieval & shogun). The rest of the world’s stories never make their way into game. What happened to Mahabharat, Ramayana… the opportunity beckons…

P.S.: Of the all the questions he got at the end of the speech, probably the most interesting one was about some of his all time favourite games. To which he replied: “Tetris. Its absolutely perfect. Its simple. If you make any changes to it – you will make it worse”（Source：fabriqate）