作者：Tak Fung

免费模式是否符合道德标准？

“免费模式”游戏在游戏社区中引起激烈反响，其中有人强烈质疑这一游戏设计方式的道德性，或者觉得这是翻版老虎机。在设计《Forever Drive》时，我们首次有机会尝试这一商业模式。更重要的是，我们积极尝试制作排除不道德机制的游戏。我相信我们完全能够基于免费商业模式创造出优秀的游戏作品，但这显然不是那么容易，我们需要避免若干误区。

Forever Drive from appdp.com

在设计和开发《Forever Drive》的过程中，我们非常关注如下方面，旨在防止游戏出现显而易见的“不道德”机制：

1. 胜利无法通过金钱购买

玩家无法掏钱购买获胜路径。

这非常显而易见，这对游戏设计影响巨大。在我们看来，避免让玩家在游戏中买到能够带来显著玩法优势的道具非常重要。例如，让玩家能够买到“更多时间”的优惠非常糟糕，这样在每个游戏回合中，相比没有掏钱的玩家，你就能够获得更高积分。

2. 没有加锁关卡

不存在以DLC形式大范围加锁的游戏内容。

这更适用于付费游戏，因为你定不希望让玩家觉得自己买到的是“缺斤少两”的游戏。但在免费游戏中，你可以通过解锁庞大DLC内容打开游戏（游戏邦注：就像解锁演示内容一样）。在《Forever Drive》中，人人都能够尝试游戏，完全不会觉得自己遭到冷落，因此整款游戏可以通过逐步体验进行解锁。

3. 没有缺席惩罚

玩家不会因没有体验游戏而受到任何惩罚。

引诱玩家返回游戏的一个常见机制是“惩罚”机制。举个例子，“农场”游戏就广泛运用这一机制，若你没有及时回去“收割”，作物就会“消亡”。这也是游戏经常向你的手机发送通知，提醒你返回游戏的绝佳借口。《Forever Drive》不存在这类型的惩罚，因为我们发现这会带来围绕“防止出现消极结果”而非促进积极态度的反馈循环机制。

4. 奖励街机技能

游戏融入技能元素。

我们积极设计需要即时街机技能的游戏。这样我们就能够回避围绕盲目点击的玩法机制——这令操作变得更像是任务，而非游戏。街机游戏本身都具有即时性质，因此我们很容易在赛车游戏中做到这点。

除这些要点外，免费商业模式还存在许多其他设计挑战。

制作更优秀的游戏

越多人能够基于这一模式创造有趣、公正的杰出作品，大家就会越快放弃那些讨人厌的机制，因为他们发现这些元素不再不可或缺，或者无法同新出现杰出作品匹敌。这是解决大家对于当前“不道德”游戏不满情绪的最终方案。

唯一缺乏可行性的可能是，采用免费商业模式令开发者无法设计出有趣、正当的作品。这依然有待进一步验证，我觉得我们的作品《Forever Drive》就是个反驳例证。我们很期待看到其他开发者也积极进行尝试。（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）

Four ethical principles we used when making Forever Drive

By Tak Fung

Is free-to-play ethical?

“Free-to-play” games have caused intense reactions in the gaming community, with strong views on whether it is an ethically sound way to design games or whether it is slot machines in disguise. When we designed Forever Drive, we saw the opportunity to experiment with this business model for the first time. More importantly, we took it upon ourselves as a challenge to create a game that was free of any unethical mechanisms. I believe that it is possible to create a great game sitting on the free-to-play business model, but it is certainly not obvious and care must be taken to avoid some pitfalls.

During the design and development of Forever Drive we kept these points in focus to mitigate any obvious “unethical” mechanisms from rising up in the game:

1. Victory cannot be bought

Cannot buy your way to winning

This is an obvious one, and one which has a big impact on the design of the game. It is important to us that you cannot purchase items in a game which will provide a significant gameplay advantage. For example, it would be bad if you could purchase a “more time” bonus so that for each run you’d accumulate a bigger hi-score compared to someone who didn’t buy it.

2. No locked levels

No part of the game is locked away wholesale in the form of DLC

This is more applicable to a Paid game, since you do not want to players to feel that they have bought a game only to be short-changed on content. However, for a Free game, it’s arguable that you could have one big DLC unlock to open up the game (i.e. much like unlocking a demo). For Forever Drive, we wanted everyone to be able to try it and not feel left out, so practically the whole game can be unlocked by playing it over time.

3. No absentee penalties

You do not get punished for not playing the game

One of the more popular mechanisms to entice people to return to games is a “penalty” mechanism if you do not keep returning to the game. As an example the “farm” games exhibit this quite a lot in that crops “die” if you do not come back to “harvest” them. It’s also a good excuse to keep popping up alerts on your phone to remind you to come back to the game. There is no punishment of this sort in Forever Drive as we find it makes for a feedback loop hinged on “preventing negatives” rather than promoting positives.

4. Reward arcade skills

There is a skill element in the game

We strived to produce a game which requires real time arcade skill to play. In this way we avoid the gameplay mechanic of mindless clicking for no real reason – whereby it becomes more like work than play. Any arcade game is intriniscally real time so it is easy to do this with a racing game.

On top of these points, there are many other design challenges that derive from adopting a free-to-play business model, and game designers should take care and indeed, take the challenge to make a great game based around it!

Make better games

The more people that can create a fun, fair and successful game on this model, the quicker more people will set aside the tiresome mechanics as they can see that they are no longer required, or indeed competitive, to the better games that come out. This is the ultimate solution to people complaining about the current crop of “unethical” games.

The only way this cannot happen is if for some reason adopting a free-to-play business model makes it *intrinsically impossible* to design a fun and fair game (there are already many successful games in terms of downloads and revenue). This has yet to be proven and I consider my work such as Forever Drive an effort to disprove this notion. It will be very interesting to see other developers also attempt this and I hope their efforts surpass mine!（Source：gamesbrief）