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开发者分享自身游戏开发的10个预期目标

在担任游戏新闻工作者8年及兼职从事游戏开发2年后,我对游戏产生明确想法:我喜欢它们。我还发现为什么我喜欢游戏及有时排斥它们的原因,还有就是我真正注重的方面。

我的游戏《Gunpoint》的制作已进展到一定阶段,让我清楚自己能够做到哪些方面。但我在此依然是新手。很多内容都是我在开发过程中发现的,《Gunpoint》本身并没有体现这些内容。所以这是个使命宣言:这让我能够详细了解我希望在游戏中实现什么目标,及计划如何实现。

1. 我希望制作带来杰出体验的游戏。

很多主流游戏将自己形容为“定向的动画体验”,以致我有时希望能够存在其他媒介,让用户能够通过电影手法引导内容。

你可以制作这样的动画:用户需要点击右键,方能查看下个情境,但这非常困难,成本很高,而且没有抓住要领。这些内容同样被视作“游戏”,就像棍子上的车轮曾被视作“玩具”一样,我们以同样悲喜交加的遗憾情感回忆它们。

游戏能够靠用户互动推动,它们表现出足够的复杂性和巧妙性,进行生成新鲜的惊人体验,就此做出回应。若你限制这一操作,以确保玩家获得预先包装的体验,那你就削弱这一媒介的作用,让其变得不那么有趣。

生成有趣内容的游戏会持续生成这些内容。若你第二年计划出售相同内容,这不是个聪明的商业策略,但我认为这很棒,我打算这么做。

2. 我想要制作能够让玩家富有创造性的游戏。

游戏应具有互动性,但在我看来,这远远不够。我希望游戏的互动性能够确保我在其中的操作全都源自我自己的想法。若我能够尝试开发者从未想过的内容那就太棒了—–若具有可行性,这就是不同内容。

当富有创造性的游戏将权力平衡关系由设计师转移至玩家身上时,游戏将演变成比其他媒介更复杂和更有吸引力的内容。

3. 我想要制作包含清晰规则和意外结果的游戏。

当你跑到街上,建筑在你面前崩塌,这也许令人意外。但这无法协助你把握游戏世界,无法让你找到未来情境的适当解决方案。事实上,开发者通常想要隐藏真实规则:建筑因为你跑到街上而崩塌。

Deus Ex from store.steampowered.com

Deus Ex from store.steampowered.com

若你在《杀出重围》中进行射击,你试图通过的加锁门就会突然转开。这是个惊喜,但这是你多半已知晓的规则所带来的结果:守卫可以听见枪声,这个禁区内有个守卫,守卫可以打开加锁门。

我们想要制作这样的游戏:所有规则都足够清晰,你可以计划自己的方案,但同时足够复杂,你无法总是预测出最终结果。

4. 我想要制作有些与众不同的游戏。

我不想要花时间模仿既有游戏。但我同时也不想否定游戏行业目前创造出的作品。游戏行业创造出《天际》、《人类革命》和《洞穴探险》之类的作品——游戏行业有很多方面依然很突出。

Gunpoint from whitakerblackall.com

Gunpoint from whitakerblackall.com

我的职责是把握我喜欢的游戏,从中进行充分学习,进而制作出呈现不同特色的内容。我喜欢《杀出重围》,我觉得自己明白其中原因。通过《Gunpoint》,我想要试图将此理解转变成新鲜的内容:主要围绕以创意方式破坏机制的游戏。游戏不如《杀出重围》那么杰出,但我希望它能够足够独特(游戏邦注:这样是否杰出就不是重点)。

若无法做到,那我就无能为力。

5. 我想要制作学习起来非常有趣的游戏。

若在我体验游戏时,你插入一个文本框指南,那你就完全破坏这一媒介的有趣、强大和杰出特性。游戏体验是最佳的学习方式。认为需要限制互动性,方能教授内容的想法愚蠢至极。

游戏应通过给予你安全的试验空间,温和呈现必要指示,及提供试验你理解能力的挑战内容进行教授。指南应成为游戏乐趣的一部分,而非棘手、过时的经验教训。

6. 我想要制作感觉良好但依然需要运用大脑的游戏。

奇怪的是,游戏经常被归类成“愚蠢但有趣”、“构思有趣,但玩起来棘手”。你多半认为,将互动活动变得感觉良好与给予玩家思考内容存在内在冲突性。

二者并没有冲突,你需要有意识地瞄准两者。优质游戏需要即时体验乐趣及若干需要玩家在体验过程中进行思考的内容。

7. 我想要制作重视玩家时间的游戏。

迫使玩家重复大块进程内容是错误之举。丧失进程就是丧失时间,这意味着你需要深入玩家的真实生活,从中“偷取”某些内容。若我无法在摆脱此威胁的情况下将游戏变得富有趣味,那么我就不会制作游戏。

当你能够保存进程时,我不会刻意进行限制,我不会要求你重复进行操作,以赚得奖励,我不会将任务变长以支撑游戏时间。所有这些都是支撑糟糕设计的元素,糟糕设计应任其奔溃。

8. 我想要制作能够让你选择挑战程度的游戏。

难度是游戏的一大问题,游戏对此不加重视。它们中有一半追求适合不同用户的奇妙最佳平衡点,另一半则要求你在尚不了解情况的前提下选择“易”或“难”模式。

如果用户的反应和空间意识没有达到我设定的特定标准,我不会驳斥他们的观点。我想要制作让所有玩家都能够顺利前进但同时又赋予你更艰巨的锁定目标的游戏。这些可以是可选目标、完美性能参数、提早应对后期游戏挑战,或是遵循个人体验风格。

用户各不相同。游戏属于互动模式,看起来我们在此需要投入些许操作。

9. 我想要奖励支持我的用户,而不是漫无目的地利用他们。

我想要持续做下去,就长远来看,这意味着内容需要自行承担费用。我认为吸引我的构思其他人也会从中得到乐趣。若我最终制作出用户愿意掏钱的作品,这将清楚说明我找准正确方向。

所以若我制作出结果相当不错的内容,我会将其出售。若你掏钱购买,我竭尽全力确保让你感到满意。若你给予我除此之外的支持,我将尽我所能地奖励你,表达我的感激之情。

我不会随意利用你,以此徒劳无功地反对盗版行为。这似乎有点显而易见,但我认为自己需要在此加以说明。即便我有高效操作方式,打扰真正用户实属自我毁灭,可谓愚蠢之极。

我清楚为什么盗版现象令游戏发行商心惊胆寒,但DRM是个奇怪的回应方式。盗版现象不会主宰世界(游戏邦注:主宰世界的是购买内容的用户)。你想要知晓为什么那些用户讨厌你吗?我自己本身也有些好奇,但我认为你多半不会喜欢。

10. 我想要制作令人兴奋的游戏。

我认为有趣远远不够。多数情况下,我们接触到的有趣游戏数量远超越我们的实际体验时间。若我制作的是有趣的游戏,我会非常高兴,但这不是最终目标。我想要制作真正令人兴奋的内容——也许不是对所有人而言,但是对某些人而言。

这种感觉(带来崭新的可能世界)是我成为玩家的原因。我认为所有充分感受过这种感觉的玩家将成为一体。这就像爱、旅行或魔术,这就是为什么相比其他艺术和娱乐形式,游戏对我来说更加重要。这里存在一个平行宇宙,我所能做的就是激活我的大脑。

我所要做的就是如何实现这一目标。

我的理论是,令人兴奋的游戏通常是有生产力的游戏,一个熟练、巧妙、令人满意的体验,包含惊喜、挑战和创意内容。也就是上述内容。(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 Suspicious Developments manifesto

After eight years as a games journalist and two as a part time developer, I have decided what I think of games: I like them. I’ve also figured out some of the reasons I like them, some of the reasons I sometimes don’t, and which of these things I really care about.

I’m far enough through making my own game, Gunpoint, to get a feel for which of these things I can actually do. But I’m still new at this. A lot of them are things I figured out during development, and Gunpoint itself doesn’t reflect them all. So this is a mission statement: a way for me to be specific and public about what I’d like to do in games, and how I plan to do it.

1. I want to make games that generate cool experiences.

A lot of mainstream games describe themselves as a ‘directed, cinematic experience’. So many that I sometimes wish there was some other medium where people could direct things cinematically.

You can make a movie where people have to press the right buttons to see the next scene, but it’s hard, expensive, and spectacularly missing the point. These things count as ‘games’ in the same way that a wheel on a stick once counted as a ‘toy’, and we’ll look back on them with same tragicomic pity.

Games have the power to be driven by player interaction, and they can be complex and smart enough to generate fresh and amazing experiences in response to it. If you hamstring that to ensure the player gets a pre-packaged experience, you’re crippling this medium to make it resemble a less interesting one.

Games that generate interesting and fun experiences generate them forever. That’s not a great business strategy if you’re planning to sell basically the same thing next year, but I think it’s cool and I intend to do it.

2. I want to make games that let the player be creative.

Games should be interactive, but for me that’s not quite enough. I want games to be so interactive that what I do in them can be genuinely my own idea. It’s nice if I can try something the developer never thought of – it’s something else if it works.

A game that lets you be creative shifts the balance of power from the designer to you, and that’s when games explode into something more complex and fascinating than any other medium.

3. I want to make games with clear rules but surprising results.

When you run down a street and a building collapses in front of you, it might be surprising. But it doesn’t help you understand the game world, not in a way that you can use to come up with cool solutions to future situations. In fact, the developer usually wants to hide the real rule: the building collapsed because you ran down the street.

If you fire your gun in Deus Ex, the locked door you’ve been trying to get through might suddenly swing open. That’s surprising, but it’s the result of rules you probably already knew: guards can hear gunshots, there’s a guard in that restricted area, and guards can open locked doors.

I want to make games where all the rules are clear enough that you can plan your approach, but intricate enough that you don’t always fully predict the result.

4. I want to make games that are a bit different.

I don’t want to spend my time trying to mimic games that already exist. But I’m also not interested in rebelling against everything the games industry currently produces. The games industry produces Skyrim, Human Revolution, Spelunky – a lot of the games industry is unbelievably cool.

My job is to understand the games I love, and learn enough from them to be able to produce something that’s good in a different way. I love Deus Ex, and I think I understand why. Gunpoint is me trying to turn that understanding into something new: a game entirely about subverting systems in creative ways. It’s nothing like as good as Deus Ex, but I’m hoping it’s different enough that it doesn’t have to be.

If not, I’m sort of boned.

5. I want to make games that are fun to learn.

If I’m playing a game and you interrupt it with a text-box tutorial, you have completely lost sight of what’s interesting, powerful and cool about this medium. Playing is the perfect way to learn. The mindset that interactivity has to be stopped in order to teach something is fucking insane.

Games should teach by giving you a safe space to experiment, showing any necessary guidance nonintrusively, and providing a challenge that tests your understanding. Tutorials should be part of the joy of a game, not an awkward, anachronistic lecture.

6. I want to make games that feel good but still use your brain.

It’s weird how often games divide into “dumb but fun” or “interesting idea, awkward to play”. You’d think there was some kind of inherent conflict between making interactions feel good and giving the player something to think about.

There isn’t, you just have to consciously focus on both. Good games need both an immediate pleasure to playing them, and something for the player’s brain to chew on while he does it.

7. I want to make games that value the player’s time.

Forcing the player to repeat a chunk of progress is wrong. Loss of progress is loss of time, and that means reaching into the player’s real life and stealing something from them. If I can’t make a game exciting without that threat, I won’t make a game.

I’ll never intentionally restrict when you can save your progress, I’ll never require you to do something repetitive to earn a reward, and I’ll never make a task take longer for the sake of bolstering play time. All those are crutches to hold up bad design, and bad design should be left to collapse.

8. I want to make games that let you choose how much challenge to take on.

Difficulty is a massive problem in games, and games are being incredibly dumb about it. Half of them are chasing some mythical balancing sweet spot that will somehow suit radically different people, and the other half ask you to commit to an ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ mode before you’ve had any experience of what that means.

I’m not interested in denying people what I’ve made if their reactions and spatial awareness don’t pass some standard I’ve just made up. I want to make games that anyone can progress through, but which always give you something tougher to aim for. That could be optional objectives, perfecting performance metrics, taking on a late-game challenge early, or adhering to a personal play style.

People are different. Games are interactive. Seems like we have something to work with there.

9. I want to reward anyone who supports me, instead of pointlessly fucking them over.

I’d like to keep doing this, which in the long run means that it’ll eventually have to pay for itself. And the ideas that excite me are the ones I think other people will get a kick out of too. If I end up with something people are happy to pay for, that’ll be the best possible sign that I’m on the right track.

So if I make something that turns out well enough, I’ll sell it. If you buy it, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re glad you did. If you support me beyond that, I’ll do everything I can to thank and reward you.

And I won’t, you know, randomly fuck you over as part of a futile attempt to fight piracy. That seems sort of obvious, but I guess it needs saying now. Even if I had a non-futile way of doing it, anything that inconveniences actual customers is self-destructive and insane.

I understand why piracy is scary to game publishers, but DRM is a bizarre response to it. Pirates don’t run the world. People who buy things do. You want to find out what happens when those people hate you? I’m kind of curious myself, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.

10. I want to make exciting games.

I don’t think fun is enough. Most of us have access to more fun games than we have time to play. I’ll be happy if I make something fun, but it’s not the ultimate goal. I want to make something that’s actually exciting – maybe not to everyone, but to someone.

That feeling, the buzz of a new world of possibilities, is why I’m a gamer. I think everyone who fully experiences it becomes one. It’s like love, travel, or magic, and it’s why games feel more important to me than other types of art and entertainment. There’s a parallel universe here, and what I can do in it sets my brain on fire.

All I’ve got to do is figure out how to make that.

My theory is that an exciting game is a generative game, a slick, smart and satisfying one, something surprising, challenging and creative. In other words, all of the above.(Source:pentadact


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