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游戏设计不是训练,而是一种教育

发布时间:2012-07-14 16:27:34 Tags:,,,

作者:Lewis Pulsipher

(游戏邦注:Lewis Pulsipher设计过六款已发行的桌面游戏,教学经验超过1万7千个课时。他的书《Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish》将于下半年出版。)

当我沉浸于自己的思考时,我们的系主任突然走进来评估我的游戏设计课。正在这时,我灵光一现。

当时我并不是在给学生们“讲课”,而是让他们做游戏项目(这节课不是入门课)。她看起来好像很惊讶我居然不讲课。大约是因为她教的是计算机运用入门式的课程,比如,如何使用Microsoft Office。

教授某种办公软件的课程或多或少可以使用“死记硬背”的教学法:如果你想把字体加粗,你可按Ctrl+B或点击粗体按钮。如果你想改变页边际,你可以执行类似操作。

Monkey_Looking_Book(from monkeymucker.blogspot.com)

Monkey_Looking_Book(from monkeymucker.blogspot.com)

虽然这些软件入门课不一定完全按死记硬背的方法来教,但是它们有一个共同点,即用的都是我所谓的“猴书”。这些书让学生跟着步骤完成某事,但学生往往把注意力放在完成速度上,所以当他们完成时,经常不知道自己做了什么,并且学到的东西也不多。

这就像猴子,如果让猴子随意地写,爱写多久写多久,他们写得出莎士比亚名著吗?学生可以从猴书里学到东西,但是除非他们愿意学并且努力学。

游戏设计的教学不是也不可能是死记硬背。这种机械的教学法是训练,而不是教育。

教育是让学生理解自己在做什么、为什么做、为什么这么做有效或无效。训练其实是教会学生如何完成某件特定的事(我认为不是所有人都认同这两个定义,但我发现区分二者的差别是有意义的。定义教育和训练时,因为不同人带着不同目的,所以做出的定义会有差异)。

游戏设计的教学性质是教育,不是训练。游戏设计是一种批判性思考,且大部分是思考,而这与训练是相反的。你可以通过训练学会完全不经思考而机械地做某事。(Reiner Knizia设计了上百款已经发行的桌面游戏和若干电子游戏,他最近在Twitter上写道:“总结我的经验:设计是一种思考方式!”)

学习电子游戏制作(不是设计)的初期是可以死记硬背的,因为当时学的是如何使用特定的软件,比如Maya或3DS Max,学习如何编程。从长远来看,这里有教育的过程,特别是编程; 而对于短期的入门课,因为很多内容是简单明了的,没有多少是关于游戏设计的,所以可以通过机械性地训练来学习。

在我灵光一现时,我想到了一个类比可以用于区别电子游戏和益智游戏。益智游戏有一个解决方法或者也可能是几个解决方法。一旦你想出益智游戏的本质特点,你就可以想出一直管用的一个或几个解决方法。

所以你可以用机械的方法教会别人按照必要的步骤完成益智游戏。可能这些步骤需要某种技能如手眼协调能力,而这个人的能力还没达到要求。但是,当他们达到这个技能水平,他们就可以根据解决方案做,每一次都能完成益智游戏,或者说“打败游戏”。

这就是为什么那么多硬核电子游戏玩家很鄙视游戏的随机性。玩家希望能够找到一种总是管用的解决办法;有些玩家(对游戏烂熟之后)会使用这个办法“极速通关”。等到这时,他们就已经“打败游戏”了,可能之后就不再玩这款游戏了。

游戏没有这类解决办法,不可能被“打败”。擅长游戏需要的东西更类似于教育而不是训练。玩家必须明白自己在做什么、为什么这么做以及什么时候怎么做最好,怎么做最糟。

游戏中当然存在问题–解决模式,但不存在总是管用的解决方法。这往往就是玩家对手与没有对手或只有电脑对手的区别,尽管电脑对手仍然是比较好的对手。在益智游戏中也存在这种区别。益智游戏一方面存在完整信息或可以变得能够预测、特有的不确定性,另一方面,也存在不可能预测或通过简单的数学计算过程就可以解释的不确定性——这种不确定性的产生是因为对手是人类玩家。

你可以教会别人过死记硬背然后赢一字棋或甚至《俄罗斯方块》,如果有人已经完全解决了极端复杂的益智游戏,那么死记硬背也能赢国际象棋。比如,就我的理解来看,电脑程序Chinook(游戏邦注:Chinook是第一个在国际象棋中赢得冠军头衔的电脑程序)就是机械地执行步骤,从当前位置开始计算,走的每一步都指向最可能取胜的位置——不需要理由。你不可能教别人这么赢《文明》或《魔兽争霸3》(玩家对抗玩家模式)、《Britannia》或《Dragon Rage》、《Diplomacy》或《Risk》,他们必须先明白游戏的运行规则,然后等到真正开始游戏时再思考。

机械性游戏与什么最有关联?在社交网络中。普通的社交游戏机械性玩法太简单了,基本上不需要教就会玩了,何况系统会告诉玩家要做什么(游戏邦注:作者认为《Farmville》、《Cityville》、《帝国与同盟》、《Yoville》等游戏就属于这种类型)

更重要的是,玩这类游戏的玩家很高兴能机械般地游戏,他们不想明白、也不想思考要做什么。这就是“大众市场”,也是《大富翁》、《Sorry》和《游戏人生》的游戏受众。当然,如果玩家的手眼协调能力和洞察力够强,

许多最流行的“硬核”游戏或多或少也可以机械性地玩。有些硬核游戏最需要强大的理解能力,但它们不是最畅销的游戏。(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

Opinion: Don’t train students on game design – educate them

by Lewis Pulsipher

[Designing games is about critical thinking and why you are doing things, rather than learning the rules for a particular outcome and repeating them automatically without thinking, argues lecturer Dr. Lewis Pulsipher.]

As I was thinking about a time when my department head came to my game design class unannounced to evaluate my teaching, I had a “eureka” moment.

When she visited, I wasn’t “lecturing” to the students. They were working on game projects. (This was not an introductory class.) She seemed surprised that I wasn’t lecturing, but that may be because she typically taught introductory computer literacy style classes such as how to use Microsoft Office.

Classes that teach use of specific office software can be taught more or less by rote: if you want to make something bold you highlight it and press control-B or click the Bold button. If you change margins you do thus and so. And so forth.

These intro software classes don’t have to be taught entirely by rote but commonly they are, complete with what I call “monkey books”. These books have students follow steps to accomplish something, but students tend to focus on getting through as rapidly as possible, and when they’re done they often don’t know what they did and haven’t learned much.

Like the monkeys who, if they randomly type long enough, will type Shakespeare’s works, you can learn from monkey books, but only if you want to learn and make the effort to learn.

Designing games is not and can never be taught by rote. Teaching by rote is training, not education.

Education is about why you do things, why some things work and others don’t, about understanding what you’re doing. Training is about exactly how you get a particular thing done. (I recognize that not everyone follows those definitions but I find it very useful to make this distinction, and other people with other purposes when defining education and training may make different distinctions.)

Designing games is about education, not training. Designing games is about critical thinking, and much of it is thinking, which is the antithesis of training. You’re trained to do things automatically, without thinking. (Reiner Knizia, designer of hundreds of published tabletop games and some video games, on Twitter recently said, “To summarize my experience: Design is a way of thinking!”)

Video game production (not design) at the outset can be taught by rote because people are learning how to use particular software, for example Maya or 3DS Max, or they’re learning how to program.

In the long run there is a process of education there, especially for programming, but in the short run for introductory classes a lot of it is simple, straightforward “this is how you do it”.

There just isn’t much of that in game design.

But where the eureka moment occurred was when I realized that an analogy can be made from this to games and puzzles. A puzzle is something that has a solution, or perhaps several solutions, with the defining characteristic that once you figure it out the solution(s) always works.

So you can teach someone by rote how to beat the puzzle by teaching them the steps required. Possibly those steps require certain skills such as hand-eye coordination levels that the person may not have attained, but once they attain those skill levels they can follow the solution and complete the puzzle every time, or as it is said in video games, “beat the game”.

This is why so many hardcore video game players despise randomness in their games, they want to be able to find a solution that always works, and some of them (after becoming familiar with the game) then do their “speed runs” where they apply a solution very rapidly. They have “beaten the game” and probably stop playing it soon after.

A game does not have these kinds of solutions, and cannot be “beaten.” To be good at the game requires something much more akin to education than training. You have to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and when that isn’t the best thing to do, when something else is the best thing to do.

There is certainly problem-solving in games, but there aren’t solutions to the game as a whole that will always work. Frequently this is the difference between having human opponents and having no opponent, or a computer opponent, though computer opponents continue to become better players over time. Frequently this is the difference between, on the one hand, perfect information or uncertainty that can become predictable, typical in puzzles, and on the other hand uncertainty that cannot be predicted or accounted for by simple mathematical processes – the kind of uncertainty that comes from having several human opponents.

You can teach someone, by rote, how to win at Tic-Tac-Toe, or even Tetris, and you could for chess if anyone had completely solved the extremely complicated puzzle. The checker program Chinook, as I understand it, plays by rote, playing what it knows to be the move most likely to lead to a win from whatever the current position is – no reasoning required. You cannot teach someone by rote how to win at Civilization or Warcraft III (when played against other people), Britannia, or Dragon Rage, Diplomacy or even Risk, they have to understand how it all works and then think as they actually play.

Where is this especially relevant? In social networking games. Run-of-the-mill social network games are so easy to play by rote that few people need to be taught — or the game tells them what to do. (I’m thinking of games like Farmville, Cityville, Empires and Allies, Yoville, and so forth.)

More importantly, the people who play them are happy to play by rote, they don’t want to have to understand, to think about what to do. It is the “mass market”, the same kind of terrain occupied by  Monopoly, Sorry, and Game of Life. Even many of the most popular “hard core” software entertainments can be played more or less by rote, if you have the hand-eye skills and perception skills. Some  of the best require a strong understanding, but they’re not the ones that sell best.

[Dr. Lewis Pulsipher is the designer of half a dozen commercially published boardgames, and has over 17,000 classroom hours of teaching experience. His book "Game Design: How to Create Video and

Tabletop Games, Start to Finish" will be published later this year by McFarland and Company.](source: gamasutra)


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