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从数学、艺术角度解析游戏设计之游戏理念(1)

发布时间:2012-07-18 14:39:11 Tags:,,,,

作者:Brian Powers

当Chloë问我是否有兴趣写一篇关于游戏设计的文章时,我接受了。虽然通过训练我成了数学家,论经验我可以当银行家,谈职业我是个教师,但我认为自己还是个业余游戏设计师。(请点击此处阅读本文第23部分

随着多种媒体生产形式的发展,小预算发行游戏对个人来说越来越容易。近年来,我们看到越来越多业余游戏设计师如雨后春笋般迅速成长起来。2008年,卡牌游戏的小成本经营从根本上说是没有出路的,但现在,像Superior POD和 the Game Crafter这类网站不仅使个人发行游戏成为可能,还简化了这个过程。然而,这并不意味着你可以靠游戏一夜暴富或一朝成名!哈哈!我们做游戏不是为了钱!我们是艺术家,我们为的是信仰!

但我们还是不要操之过急了,至少在我们发行游戏之前,我们得先设计,在设计之前,我们必须先明白一些概念。理念可以产生于任何地方——最无趣的地方也可能是灵感之源,但正如Ze Frank(游戏邦注:美国在线幽默表演艺术家)精僻地指出:我们应该先做点什么而不是等待灵感的出现。灵感无处不在。

idea(from zazzle.com)

idea(from zazzle.com)

我有许多游戏想法:有些我已经实现了,有些还搁置着。

Pensacola:在这款策略游戏中,玩家要好好经营养老院,防止养老院里的住户离开。

Crazy Celebrities:玩家在这款卡牌游戏中扮演超级名人(游戏邦注:如Tom Cruise、 Lindsay Lohan或Charlie Sheen等),要小心不要毁掉自己的星途。

Get Sick:玩家在这款卡牌游戏中装病欺骗老板,让自己请到病假。

Cult Classic:玩家在这款卡牌游戏中比赛找信徒,引诱到最多的追随者的玩家获胜。

Pathways:这是一款抽象的拼图游戏,玩家要在A和B两点之间联结路径。

Element Tower Defense:这是我几年以前做的一款新奇的塔防游戏,可以在《魔兽争霸3》中玩。

我的想法还不止这些。

在此我想谈的是在我脑中酝酿了一阵子的一个游戏理念。我还不知道怎么命名,但愿写完本文后我能完善它。在这款游戏中,玩家控制他们从各种行动中得到的奖励,然后有策略地采取这些行动。这是我能想到的最简单的描述了,但为了更深入的讨论,我想先谈谈什么是游戏理论。

博弈论是一个数学运算的集合,广泛运用于经济学、政治学、国际关系、社会学、生物学……总之,就是为了最大化或最小化某些对个体或集体本身有积极影响的结果,该个体或集体必须制定战略决策。这些情形对“游戏”来说比较抽象,且是用矩阵这类数学工具分析的,我们通常可以找到游戏的“解决方案”或理想的策略集合。“博弈论”这一用词并不恰当,因为该理论实际上并没有太专注于我们玩的游戏,但这么命名就是这么回事。

上面这些看起来太死板了,我们来列举一个经典的例子(其实是我最近才萌发的游戏概念):

假设有两个人,各有两个选择:友好或卑鄙。如果两人均选择做个友好的人,那么他们各奖励3分。如果他们都选择当恶人,那么各得1分。如果一个友好一个卑鄙,则友好者得0分,卑鄙者得5分(无论他们从事什么,卑鄙者都占优势)。我们可以将这种情形用矩阵描述出来。玩家1和玩家2的得分情况如下:

表

玩家1vs玩家2

这个情形就是所谓的“囚徒困境”。之所以是困境,是因为尽管你知道双方都能得到的最大利益产生于彼此都友好时,但双方都有强烈的变卑鄙动机。但是,如果双方都卑鄙,他们只能各得到1分,而双方都友好时各得3分。

关于囚徒困境的研究和文章已经非常多了。尽管我觉得很有趣,强烈推荐读者阅读Robert Axelrod写的《The Evolution of Cooperation》——不过在此我就不赘述这本书中的内容了。我感兴趣的是如何将这个形情变成一款桌面游戏。

如果能通过重复游戏变动奖励,这款游戏会更有趣得多。当你识破对手的策略时,你大概可以重新平衡奖励,或选择可以让自己占上风的行动。

我所面临的挑战是:

*使游戏适合2名或以上的玩家

*使游戏具有策略上的趣味

*使游戏具有美学上的享受

*使游戏不依赖无关紧要的游戏部件。

说这些是“挑战”可能太夸张了——只是需要执行但我还没执行的步骤罢了。我觉得这个游戏创意不错,希望行得通。

就这样,我们有了一个理念。下一步是想出游戏的机制!什么是游戏机制?

我们将在下篇文章中深入探讨游戏机制和游戏玩法设计的具体细节。(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

Math, Art and Game Design

by Brian Powers

Part 1: The Game Concept

When Chlo? asked if I’d be interested in writing a guest post on Real Life Artist about game design, I FIGURATIVELY jumped at the chance! Although I’m a mathematician by training, a banker by experience, and a teacher by occupation, I consider myself an amateur game designer.

As with many forms of media production, game publishing has become more and more feasible for the individual with a small budget in recent years and we’ve seen a burgeoning burgeon of amateur game designers coming onto the scene. In 2008 there were essentially no options for an affordable small run of a card game (one or two copies), but now websites like Superior POD and the Game Crafter make it not only possible but relatively simple to publish your own game. This does NOT, however, mean you will make money from the game or become famous! Haha! We don’t do this for money! We are artists! We do it for Zeus!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—before we publish a game, we have to design it, and before we design it, we need some sort of concept. The concept can come from anywhere—the most boring place is a flash of inspiration, but as Ze Frank nicely explains, we shouldn’t wait for inspiration before we make something. We can look for ideas everywhere.

I’ve had many ideas for games: some I’ve acted upon, and some are on the back burner.

Pensacola: A strategy game where players run competing retirement homes and try to make money before their residents “move on”.

Crazy Celebrities: A card game where players are celebrities trying to become crazy (like Tom Cruise, Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen) without destroying their careers.

Get Sick: A card game where you try to fake diseases to fool your boss into letting you take sick days.

Cult Classic: A card game where players compete to found cults and lure the most followers they can.

Pathways: An abstract tile-placing game where you build a connected path between points A and B.

Element Tower Defense: A novel tower defense computer game I made a number of years ago, to be played in Warcraft III.

And the list goes on.

The game that I want to discuss here is a concept that I’ve been playing with in my head for a while now. I’m not really sure what to call it but we’ll hopefully see it evolve as this series of blog posts develops. The game involves players manipulating the rewards they receive from various actions and then strategically taking these actions.

That’s the simplest way I can describe it, but I want to talk a little bit about Game Theory in order to delve further into it.

Game theory is a branch of mathematics with heavy applications to economics, political science, international relations, sociology, biology … any situation that involves one or more individuals or collectives making strategic decisions in order to maximize some sort of positive result for themselves. These situations are abstracted into a ‘game‘ and represented using mathematical tools such as matrices for analysis, and often we can find the ‘solution’ or ideal set of strategies for the game. The name “game theory” is a bit of a misnomer because the theory really isn’t so much focused on the games we play for fun, but that’s the name it’s stuck with.

This may all seem pretty dense, so let me present a classic example (in fact, the inspiration for this latest of my game concepts):

Consider two individuals. Each person has two options: be nice or be mean. If they are both nice then they are rewarded with 3 points each. If they are both mean then they are given 1 point each. If one is nice and the other is mean, then the meany gets 5 and the goody-two-shoes gets nothing (out of whatever deal they make – the meanie takes advantage). We can depict this situation as a matrix, with each box showing the points for player 1 and player 2 as an ordered pair:

Player 2

Nice    Mean

Player 1    Nice    (3, 3)    (0, 5)

Mean    (5, 0)    (1, 1)

This situation has come to be known as the prisoner’s dilemma. It is a dilemma because although you can see that collectively the greatest benefit for the pair is when both are nice to each other, both players have a tasty incentive for meanness. If both players are mean, however, they are stuck with each getting a low reward, a third as much as they would have got if they had been nice in the first place.

The prisoner’s dilemma has been studied and written about A LOT. Although I think it’s completely fascinating—and I can’t recommend enough the book The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod—I don’t want to dwell on it. What I’m interested in is how this could be turned into a board game.

The game becomes a lot more interesting if the rewards could be adjusted through repeated plays of the game. As you begin to recognize your opponent’s strategies, perhaps you can re-balance the rewards to favor yourself, or choose actions that will give you the upper hand.

The challenges I’m facing are:

make the game fun for 2 or more players,

make the game interesting strategically,

make the game aesthetically pleasing (in other words: fly!),

design it in such a way that it doesn’t rely on extraneous game pieces.

Calling these “challenges” may be too dramatic – they are just steps that need to be taken, and that I haven’t taken yet. I feel good about this game idea, and I’m eager to see it through. Hopefully the process will be interesting enough for you to want to read about.

So we have a concept. The next step is to figure out the game mechanics! What are game mechanics? Obviously they are little grease monkeys who play checkers all day. (If you have an infinite number of grease monkeys with an infinite number of checkers boards, would they design Monopoly? Maybe they need an infinite number of typewriters too.)

In our next installment we’ll get all into game mechanics and some of the nuts and bolts of game play design!
(You can go on to Part 2: The Game Mechanics now if you like!)(source:reallifeartist)


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