游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

从还原论角度思考游戏组成要素

发布时间:2012-07-17 15:27:22 Tags:,,,

作者:Brent Gulanowski

多年以前,为了了解游戏的运行机制,我开始对游戏分析产生兴趣。我想学习一些关于游戏设计的东西,但我想知道的主要是如何在软件中创造游戏。虽然我认为自己是个有创造性的人,但我对世界存在的思考方式是实际的、实用的和科学的。我是一名工程师。当人们制作东西时,他们是从一部分一部分开始做的。在游戏的运作中,各个部分都有特定的目的和作用。

但不幸的是,我所发现的各种关于游戏开发和制作的讨论要么太过于理论,要么不够理论。

一方面,游戏学家把游戏当作文化现象来探索。他们把游戏当作文化产品,赋予其象征性的意义层面。他们饶有兴趣地将游戏与其他艺术形式、社会科学和人类天性联系起来。虽然他们喜欢理论,但他们对游戏内部运作的理论并不感兴趣。他们看似对游戏如何发挥社会性功能更感兴趣。尽管我觉得这也挺有趣,但我并认为社会性功能对制作游戏有什么用处。

另一方面,有一类叫作游戏开发者的人。他们既是设计师又是实干家,通常,他们的兴趣在于发现自己的游戏如何像或不像其他已经存在的游戏。他们看起来好像并不太关心游戏的的内在属性。至少,他们在那方面或我所意识到的方面,谈的或写的并不多。

但是,我所读到的大部分东西都与电脑和电子游戏开发特别有关系。游戏开发者通常单纯地关注特定的游戏的需求和如何制作特定的游戏。他们制作的游戏严重依赖于符合这些类型的游戏案例。类型是指普遍认同的风格分组,所有游戏都可以归入这一类型或那一类型。无论游戏的创作者主要是设计师还是工程师,类型都是一样的。当然,他们承认并且力图开发用于游戏制作的软件,即图像、物理、AI、声音、网络等不同部分之间的相似点,但似乎并不关心这些部分如何关联成更普遍的游戏概念以及游戏独立于实现媒介之外的运作方式。

在这两类人中,我都看到了极端。一类人的焦点太宽泛,而另一类人的太狭隘。我要找的是中间地带。但我从来没有找到。大概是我找得不够努力。但就我所知,我可以自己创造一个中间地带。即使游戏设计理论不是我的兴趣所在,但我对软件有热情:特别是,用于将生活带入幻想世界(大多存在于游戏中)的软件。

reductionism(from theaunicornist.com)

reductionism(from theaunicornist.com)

将游戏还原为组成部分

当我想到游戏时,我就像在思考一种复杂的物体。我从科学的观点和最基本的科学手段——还原论开始思考。换而言之,我想到了游戏的组成部分:规则、玩家的角色、小部件和游戏空间。因此,游戏及其组成部分从根本上说是存在于玩家的想象中。但在许多形式确定的游戏中,有些部分也存在于外部空间里,既有身体的(游戏邦注:例如,桌面游戏的游戏面板、卡片游戏的桌面台和体育运动的场地)也有信息的(例子:高尔夫球的记分表、计算机化的游戏的整体)。

游戏空间

假定所有游戏都发生于一个实际空间中,以简化我所谓的游戏空间。为此,我将信息游戏的游戏空间当作真实空间的模拟。当然,在一些游戏中,其实应该假设游戏的物理表现形式不是它的主要表现形式,但用作一种存储辅助。我们也可以想象游戏发生在一个超过三个维度的空间中,但这种空间很难在现实世界中构建。这种游戏只能存在于信息空间中。但这类游戏是很少的,因为我们的大脑更适应于思考物质世界。

如果游戏小部件的内部状态可以当作额外的维度,那么事实上所有计算机化的游戏都是高维度的。然而,我们可以这么理解。以棒球这项团体运作为例。棒球的描述通常包括器材、运动员位置和关于投掷、出局、跑垒和得分的规则。没必要详细解释个体玩家如何影响特定游戏的结果,但玩家在决定游戏收益上即使不比规则多,也至少相当。

再想想电脑游戏。现在,想象在现实世界中玩某款游戏。如果你需要案例,就想想真人角色扮演游戏(LARP)。在LARP中,玩家是角色,所有角色都由玩家表示。玩家与他们的角色的内部状态,心理(个性、态度、忠诚、渴望、偏好)上和身体(健康、能力、天赋)上的,保持直接的联系。

在游戏中,玩家(通常)不是在扮演角色;他们并不需要分别记住角色的心理和身体状态,因为他们就是角色本身。我想解释的是,这种运动与其他发生在实际游戏空间中的游戏都严重地受到信息内容的影响。无疑,真正的游戏与电脑游戏一样复杂。当你考虑到玩家的心理状态时,你会发现他们更复杂,是无法测量的!让电脑游戏与众不同的原因,很大程度上是主题装饰和参与者的绝对数量,虽然大多数参与者都是虚拟的。

但为了便于讨论(即使任何讨论其实都将其主题当作信息),还是用物理学术语更容易些。所以,甚至当讨论电脑和具有幻想场景和不存在于现实的角色的电子游戏时,就我们所知,暂时将这些东西视作真实的、有实体的物体,会更简单的。之后,我们可以将它们还原为信息状态和代表性的符号。

游戏参与者

让我们来看看组成游戏的东西:规则、小部件和游戏空间。别忘了还有玩家!事实上,我更倾向于使用更普遍的术语,这样我们可以将虚拟角色和通常构成电脑游戏的其他实体——参与者纳入其中。“参与者”还包括调解人、计分员和其他运行于游戏中和执行规则的人(或程序)。

为了探讨,还可以将非玩家参与者视作一个单一实体,即“游戏管理员”。尽管是不同参与者(人、电脑或程序),他们都带着共同的目标起作用。他们以个体形式活动,但因为这一集合体在任何时候都协作达到一个共同的目标,所以我们也可以将其视作整体。

在大多数电脑游戏中,游戏管理员是一个运行在单一电脑上的单个程序。它有许多不同用途,但通常遵循一个整体原则:一个目标(强化游戏的规则),一个身份。(你可能会说玩家在很大程度上内化了游戏规则,所以也充当了游戏管理员。但那是一个被调解人监督而产生的副作用,因为不希望被游戏处罚或赶出游戏。不难假设,如果玩家希望获胜,那么遵守游戏规则就是强制的,至少在游戏过程中是如此。我们得想得简单一点。)

游戏是由玩家玩的,要遵守规则,要在某类空间中受到游戏管理员的监督。我还没详述游戏小部件或规则的本质,我也还没提及目的。喔,我刚刚提到了。

“游戏”的两个意思

让我们再想想,基于我的目的,如何定义“游戏”这个词。事实上,我必须将这个词做两个定义,因为存在着两种游戏。我从软件工程中借用了术语。第一类游戏是游戏的“种类”,第二类是某些种类游戏的“实例”。我认为这是思考游戏的正常方式,但我只是增加了一些形式术语。

对于任何种类的游戏,从我所说的可知:大多数是由规则,即将游戏的不同部分定义为一个系统;而系统是指组织不同部分的不同方式(游戏系统的各种状态),这些组织从一种转变为另一种的方式,和哪一种组织方式——或组织序列——代表了胜利或目标状态(或者平局状态和失败状态)。

baseball_player(from sbsa.org.sg)

baseball_player(from sbsa.org.sg)

例子很简单。棒球游戏由一个菱形(游戏场地)、球和球棒、手套和其他设备(部件)、击球手、内场手、外场手和捕手(玩家)、包括击球、短打、好球、坏球、垒、跑、出局(结束规则)在内的术语、以及合法活动如投掷、挥舞、跑垒、扔和尾随(转换规则)。

第二类游戏,即实例,是从头到尾玩游戏的实际过程。游戏的开始包含游戏空间中的游戏部件的初始配置、当玩家执行合法活动(也可能是非法活动,可能会导致玩家受到游戏管理员的惩罚)时经过的无数个转变阶段、以及最终达到一个结束状态,即可能由胜利、失败或平局组成的结果。

我放过读者们(还有我自己,因为我不是棒球的爱好者)吧,不再谈棒球游戏了。

“游戏”的定义

游戏是一种玩家有目的地作用于另一玩家或系统的活动。游戏是由规则定义的,而规则描述了游戏中的材料元素和逻辑元素。

这里的材料包括游戏空间、小部件和由玩家控制的角色(也可能包括设备)。

这里的逻辑元素描述的是材料元素的初始配置或状态;一系列重新组织它们的合法活动;对非法行为执行的惩罚;一系列可能的结果(有玩家渴望得到的,也有玩家不愿意得到的);和一系列当小部件出现时会引发的一种或更多种结果的状态。

游戏为玩家组成挑战。通过执行合法的行为,他们的必须努力将游戏的物理元素重组成一种理想的状态,一种带有理想结果的状态。有些游戏是由一系列更小的游戏组成的,按顺序或同时玩。许多游戏包含得分设定,也就是计算玩家(或团队)达到理想状态的频率。大多数游戏具有一种或多种游戏结束时产生的结果状态。结果可以出现胜者、败者或平局,或者产生最终得分(在单人游戏中,玩家可能胜利、失败或平局。通常,他们已经达到某个得分,这个得分用于对比他们与其他玩家的表现,以衡量他们的相对成就)。由更小的游戏组成的游戏,其结果状态往往根据是各个结果统计产生的。

游戏作为数学对象

在电脑科学中,游戏相当于各种计算机器中的一种。(这些“机器”是概念上的,不需要真正的机械计算机来表示。)根据游戏的规则,游戏可能被分为状态机器、下推自动机器或全面图灵机器(游戏邦注:push-down automaton,简称PDA,即下推自动机,是一种用于临时数据存储的自动机器;Turing machine,图灵机器,是一种理想化的计算机设备)。游戏的物理组件与这些机器的状态一致。玩家根据机器识别出来的语言可以执行的活动引起机器在不同状态之间实现转换。

任何游戏都以一个结果作为结束。结果存在于所有可能的结果范围中,而游戏行为存在于所有可能的游戏行为范围中。对于许多游戏,结果的集合通常不会太大(甚至包括可能的得分),但可能的游戏行为的集合往往相当庞大。

所有游戏(这里作者指的是决定所有可能的游戏行为的“种类”)存在于一个所有可能的游戏的抽象范围中,但那个范围完全没有界限。那个无限可能性的范围导致我们在不使用还原论时很难理解游戏的本质。如果我们不缩小我们的范围,我们在分析游戏时能做的至多是观察现有的游戏的种类和实例(我们用于游戏“种类”的还有另一个意思,在软件工程中表示游戏的“总纲”。总纲是指一个大类,因为它是抽象的,所以不存在真正的实例,但却描述了不同游戏的种类共享的元素。我们可以称之为“超类”,可以认为是对应了游戏的“类型”)。

结论

将游戏还原成它们的组成部分,我们至少可以罗列大量可能的游戏元素,包括材料元素和逻辑元素,根据组成游戏的元素来考虑不同的游戏种类。通过组成这些元素——这些游戏玩法的原子——我们可以创造出新的游戏种类,且有望发现全新的游戏和新类型。另一方面,如我们不可以,那可能是因为所有游戏的种类都已经被发明了。但是否如此,通过检查所有的这些元素和所有的元素的基本组合,我们才能下结论。为了限制可能的类型集合,即由简单但足以描述且由玩家体验的游戏组成的类型,我们可以对组合的数量制定更高的上限。(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

Game Mechanics

by Brent Gulanowski

Introduction

Many years ago, I started taking an interest in the analysis of games in order to understand how they functioned. I wanted to learn something about game design, but mostly, I wanted to know how to construct games in software. While I consider myself a creative person, my ways of thinking about the world as it exists are literal, practical and scientific. I am an engineer. When people make things, they make them out of parts. Each part has a specific purpose and role in the game’s workings.

I didn’t have a lot of luck. I found the various discussions of game development and construction either too too theoretical, or not theoretical enough.

On the one hand, ludologists were exploring games as cultural phenomena. They saw games as cultural artifacts, imbued with layers of symbolic meaning. They were interested in relating them to other art forms, to the social sciences, and to human nature. While they like theory, the didn’t seem interested in theories about how games function internally. They seemed to be more interested in how games functioned socially. While I find it interesting, I don’t find it helpful in trying to make games.

On the other hand, there were game developers. Either as designers or implementors, they were mostly interested in how their games were like or unlike other games that already existed. They didn’t seem to worry too much about their internal nature. At least, they didn’t much talk or write about that aspect, or in terms that I recognized.

Granted, almost everything I read was related specifically to computer and video game development. They were often focussed purely on the needs of a specific game and how it was made. At best, the more general works examined genres, but they were heavily dependent upon examples of games that fit into them. Genres: the commonly recognized stylistic groupings into which all games are shoehorned in one way or another. It was the same whether the authors were principally designers or engineers. Certainly they admitted to, and sought to exploit, similarities between different parts of the software used to make computer games: graphics, physics, AI, sound, networking, etc., but they didn’t seem to care how those related to more general ideas of games and the way games work, independently of the medium of implementation.

In both cases, I found extremes. One group’s focus was far too wide, and the other’s was far too narrow. I was looking for something in the middle. You might say, I was looking for the Goldilocks zone. I never found it. Possibly, I’m not looking hard enough. But as far as I’m concerned, I can do it myself. Even though game design theory is not my passion. Software is my passion: specifically, software whose purpose is to bring to life imaginary worlds (which are mostly found in games).

Reducing Games to Their Component Parts

When I think about games, it is as I think about any complex subject. I start with a scientific outlook, and the most basic tool of science: reductionism. In other words, I think about the parts of games: the rules, the role of players, the pieces, and the game space. Games, and therefore their component parts, exist primarily in the user’s imagination. But in many formally defined games, some of the parts also exist in an external space, either physical (examples: a board game’s playing board, a table top for card games, and a field for athletic sports) or informational (examples: a score sheet in golf, the entirety of a computerized game).

Play Spaces

I would like to simplify by proposing that all games take place in a physical space. I will do this by treating informational game play spaces as simulations of real spaces. Of course, in some games it would actually be better to assume the opposite: that the physical manifestation of a game is not its primary manifestation, but is used as a kind of memory helper. It’s also possible to imagine a game played in a game space with more than three dimensions, which would be difficult to construct in the real world. Such games can only exist in information space. But such games are rare, because our brains are adapted to thinking about the physical world.

If the internal state of a game’s pieces are considered additional dimensions, virtually all computerized games are hyper-dimensional. However, we can get around that. Consider a team sport, like baseball. A description of the game of baseball will usually include a list of the equipment, the player positions, and rules about hits, outs, base running and scoring. It will not necessarily mention the details about how individual players affect the outcome of a particular game, but the players determine how a game proceeds as much as, if not more than, the rules do.

Think of a computer game. Now, imagine playing that game in the real world. If you need examples, look at live action role playing (LARP). In LARP, the players are characters, and all the characters are represented by players. The players keep track of the internal state of their characters, both mental (personality, attitude, allegiances, desires, preferences) and physical (health, abilities, talents).

In sports, the players are not (usually) role playing; they don’t need to separately remember a character’s mental and physical state: they are their own character. All I want is to demonstrate that sports and other games which take place in physical game spaces are also heavily influenced by informational content. Real games are easily as complex as computer games. When you take players’ mental states into account, they are immeasurably more complex! What sets computer games apart is mostly the thematic dressing and the sheer number of participants, even if most of them are simulated.

But for the sake of discussion (even though any discussion implicitly treats its subject as information), it is still easier to use physical terminology. So, even when talking about computer and video games, which often feature fantasy settings and creatures which don’t (or can’t) exist in reality, as far as we know, it’s simpler to treat those things as real, physical things, for the moment. We can reduce them to information states and representational tokens later.

Game Participants

Let’s review the list of things that make up a game: rules, pieces, and the game space. But don’t forget players! In fact, I prefer to use a more general term, so that we can include virtual characters and other entities that so often populate computer games: participants. “Participants” also includes referees, score keepers and other people (or programs) which run the game and enforce its rules.

It is possible, for the purposes of discussion, to treat the non-player participants as a single entity, known as the “game master”. Despite being a collection of different participants (people, computers or programs), they all act with a common goal. Any time a group work together to achieve a single aim, they are acting as one, so if it’s easier to treat them as one, we might as well.

In most computer games, the game master is a single program running on a single computer. There are lots of variations on use, but generally, the collectivism principle applies: one goal (enforcing the rules of the game), one identity. (You could try to argue that players to a great extent internalize the rules of a game, and so also act as part of the game master identity. But that is a side effect of being watched by referees, and not wanting to get penalized or thrown out of the game. It’s easier to assume that player’s want to win, and that adhering to the rules is an imposition for them, at least while playing. We have to simplify.)

So where are we? Games are played by players, according to rules, overseen by a game master, in some kind of space. I haven’t elaborated on the idea of game pieces or the nature of the rules, and I have yet to mention objectives. Oh, I just did.

Two Meanings of “Game”

Let me stop for a second to define the word game for my purposes. In fact, I have to define it twice, because there are two kinds of game. I will borrow terms from software engineering. The first type of game is a “class” of game, and the second is an “instance” of the some class of game. I think this is a normal way of thinking about games, but I am just adding some formal terms.

For any kind of game, you know it by the parts that I have mentioned: mostly made up of the rules, which define the physical parts of the game as a system: the different ways they can be arranged (the various states of the game system), how those arrangements can be transformed from one into another, and which arrangement—or sequence of arrangements—represents the winning or goal state (and, optionally, a tie state; any other state is a losing state).

Examples are easy. The game of baseball consists of a diamond (the play space); bats and balls, gloves and other equipment (the pieces); batters, infielders, outfielders and the catcher (players); terms including hit, bunt, strike, ball, base, run, out (terminology rules); and legal actions like pitch, swing, base run, throw, and tag (transformational rules).

The second kind of game, an instance, is an actual play through of a game, from start to finish. The start involves an initial configuration of the game pieces within the play space, goes through numerous stages of transformation as players perform legal actions (and possibly illegal actions, which may or may not result in penalties enforced by the game master), and finally arriving at an end state which may or may not constitute a resolution such as a win, loss or tie.

I will spare you (and myself, since I’m not a fan) a summary of a baseball game.

Definition of “Game”

A game is a activity which in players engage one another, or a system, with purpose. A game is defined by rules which describe the material and logical elements of the game.

The material elements include the play space, the pieces, and the roles occupied by players (which may also include equipment).

The logical elements describe the initial arrangement, or state, of the material elements; a set of legal actions for rearranging them; optional penalties for illegal actions; a set of possible consequences (some desirable, others not); and a set of states of the pieces which invoke one or more consequences when they occur.

A game constitutes a challenge for its players. By performing legal actions, they must attempt to rearrange the physical elements of the game into a desirable state: one with desirable consequences. Some games are composed a set of smaller games, played in sequence or in parallel (or both). Many games include the idea of scoring, which is a count of how often a player (or team) has reached a desirable state in their favour. Most games have one or more resolution states which determine when the game ends. Resolutions can declare winners, losers, or a tie, or may assign a final score. (In single player games, the player might win, lose, or neither. Often, they will have achieved a score by which they will compare their performance to other plays of the game in order to measure their relative accomplishment.) The resolution state of a game composed of smaller games is often based on the aggregate results of their separate resolutions.

Games as Mathematical Objects

In computer science, a game corresponds exactly to one of a variety of computational machine. (These “machines” are conceptual. They do not require an actual mechanical computer to represent them.) Depending on the rules of the game, the game might be classified as a state machine, a push-down automaton, or a full-scale Turing machine. The physical elements of the game correspond with the states of the machine. The actions which players can perform correspond with the language recognized by the machine which causes the machine to transition between states.

Every play of a game ends with an outcome, when that play is resolved. Outcomes exist in a space of all possible outcomes, and plays exist in a space of all possible plays. For many games, the set of outcomes is usually not too large (even including the possible scores), but the set of possible plays is often vast.

Every game (and here I mean the “class” which determines all possible plays of that game) exists within an abstract space of all possible games, but that space is completely unbounded. This space of endless possibility is the primary reason why it is difficult to understand the nature of games without depending on reductionism. If we don’t narrow our scope, the best we can do in our analysis of games is to look at existing games, both classes and instances. (There is another meaning of the word “class” which we can use in games, which in software engineering would represent a “superclass” of games. A superclass is something like a category. It is an abstraction that, in this case, has no real instances, but describes common elements shared by a group of different classes of game. It might also be called a “meta-class”. It roughly corresponds to the idea of game “genres”.)

Conclusion

By reducing games to their component parts, we can at least enumerate a large number of possible game play elements, including both material and logical elements, and consider different classes of games based on the elements that compose them. By the act of composing these elements—these atoms of gameplay—we can invent new kinds of games for consideration, and hopefully discover entirely new games, and new genres. On the other hand, if we can’t, it would be because all classes of games have already been invented. But we can only determine that by doing the work of examining all of the elements and all of their basic combinations. We can set an upper limit on the number of combinations in order to limit the set of possible genres that we can come up with that consist of games that are simple enough to describe and be played by regular people.

In a future blog post, I plan to begin a list of game actions which I consider the atoms of all game mechanics.(source: gamasutra)


上一篇:

下一篇: