作者：Clint Hocking

重玩性是游戏开发方面的一个饱受争议的概念。开发商们重视重玩性是因为我们认为玩家需要它。理由是，重玩性高的游戏的价值更大，所以我们应该把尽量提高游戏的重玩性作为目标。当开发和营销AAA大作的成本可以高达1亿美元时，要保证这些钱不是白花的，最好办法就是让用户也这么觉得。

clint_hocking(from edge-online)

但“重玩性”是什么意思？这个词本身暗示了一个明显的意思：游戏在整个重复玩的过程中，都可以保持玩家的的兴趣。然而事实上，有数据显示，玩家几乎不会从头到尾玩遍我们最大的游戏，更别说玩上几遍。

我认为以上对于重玩性的定义过分简化了几个概念，而这几个概念是值得仔细推敲的。对于这些概念，一个更好的解释可以帮助开发者提高他们为玩家提供的价值，避免在面对“增加重玩性”时提高游戏开发成本。

首先，我认为我们必须摒弃这个观念，即重玩性是衡量玩家游戏进程的指标，或者是指玩家从头到尾玩遍游戏的次数。《荒野大镖客》是一款重玩性很高的游戏，但我很震惊地发现，超过40%的玩家玩到了最后，超过10%的玩家得到了所有成就。面对这两个数字，我们很难反驳这款游戏的重玩性不够的说法。所以我们需要更站得住脚的定义，以免我们误以为有人投入1亿美元做出了一款糟糕的游戏，而游戏测试报告却说玩家没有完成游戏。

从理论上看，我认为重玩性的最佳预测指标是“深度-可耗竭比率”。“深度”，我特指的是在平衡性良好的系统之间互连的丰富程度；“可耗竭”，我指的是一款游戏对静态内容传递信息的依赖程度。这个简单比率的内在要求是，以更多的系统的深度和更少的静态内容对应更高的重玩性。

我们来看看经典游戏象棋或围棋，因为它们都是互连丰富、系统平衡性良好的游戏，且实际上没有内容，所以我们可以根据这个比率预测，它们应该具有几乎无限的重玩性。事实上正是如此。相反地，像《Dragon’s Lair》这种游戏，内容丰富但没有系统，应该几乎不具有重玩性。一旦你玩尽了游戏的内容，主角得到了达芙妮公主的吻，重玩几乎没有任何意义了。

在现代游戏市场，深度-内容的率往往比较平衡，我们可以拿《文明》作为例子。这款游戏包含大量内容，但传递内容主要依靠极端丰富的系统。结果，它的重玩性也接近象棋或围棋的程度。在多人游戏领域，《文明》（或其他游戏）甚至提供了更高的重玩性，因为人类玩家自己就是系统空间的组成元素。如果其他因素都相同，忽略设计上的失误，多人游戏的重玩性总是比单人游戏更高。这就解释了这么越来越多游戏倾向于多人模式，因为多人游戏的重玩性一般不会低。

所以如果我们要增加重玩性，只需要提高互连丰富、平衡性良好的系统对静态内容的比率，那我们为什么还纠结呢？当生产静态内容的成本呈直线上升，而设计强大的动态系统的成本保持相对固定，这一点就尤其令人疑惑了。但我觉得，要接受这个显而易见的解决方法，存在两个主要的障碍。

第一，我们可以预见以非线性增长的成本生产静态内容。越来越多经验更丰富、制作方法更先进的人可以更好地管理不断增长的预算。容易耗尽的、以内容为中心的游戏大作，一个周末就挣了数亿美元，虽然之后被人们淡忘了，但及时推出续作，相比为了制作出有深度、互连的系统而需要反复经历失败，这种开发方式更受欢迎。当人们不太理解利用不断重玩来实现数年盈利的方法时，这一方式就尤其是真理了。

但开发商还得正视第二个障碍：我们通过静态授权内容传递信息的工具越来越强大了——也越来越吸引人。经过数十年的呼唤文化关联，我们往往看到，最容易获利的方法就是通过静态内容传递授权信息，这也是音乐家或作家选择的道路。毕竟，毫无疑问，当500万粉丝疑问你是不是“艺术家”时，你就与文化关联扯上了。把重玩比率提高到无限的问题是，我们是否乐意以及是否能够承认这种合法性——放弃生产对玩家有意义的东西的文化相关行为。我认为这是前所未有的最高价值命题。（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）

Replay value: what does it really mean?.

by Clint Hocking

Replayability is an oft-debated concept in game development. Developers value it because we have the impression that players want it. The reasoning goes that highly replayable games represent greater value, and thus we should aim to make our games as replayable as possible. At a time when the cost to develop and market a triple-A blockbuster can reach $100 million, one of the best ways to make sure your money is well spent is to make sure the customer feels theirs is as well.

But what does ‘replayability’ even mean? The word itself implies an obvious definition: that the game can sustain player interest over the course of multiple playthroughs. Yet in a practical sense, data shows that players rarely finish our biggest games, never mind play them multiple times.

I think the above definition of replayability is an oversimplification of a couple of concepts that deserve closer scrutiny. A better understanding of these concepts will help developers increase the value they provide to players and avoid the kind of feature creep that can inflate development costs in the face of pressure to ‘add replayability’.

First, I think we need to dismiss the idea that replayability is a measure of how far players progress, or how many times they replay a game all the way through. Red Dead Redemption was highly replayable, but I’d be shocked to learn that more than 40 per cent of players got to the end, or that over 10 per cent got all the achievements. When faced with such numbers, it’s hard to refute the idea that the game isn’t replayable enough. So we need a more robust definition, lest we get strong-armed into making a worse game by someone with $100 million and a playtest report who says players aren’t finishing the game.

In a theoretical sense, I think the best predictor of replayability is the depth-to-exhaustibility ratio. By ‘depth’, I mean specifically the degree of rich interconnection between well-balanced systems. And by ‘exhaustibility’, I mean the degree to which a game relies on static content to deliver a message. The inherent claim of this simple ratio is that more systemic depth and less static content corresponds to greater replayability.

By this measure, we can look at classic games such as chess or go and predict that since they are entirely richly interconnected, well-balanced systems with virtually no content, they should exhibit almost infinite replayability. And they do. By contrast, a game such as Dragon’s Lair – virtually all content and no systems – should exhibit almost no replayability. And once you’ve exhausted the content and had your kiss from Princess Daphne, replaying is almost pointless.

In the modern market, where the depth-to-content ratio tends to be more middling, we can look at examples such as Civilization, which contains a great deal of content, but principally delivers it in the service of many extremely rich systems. As a consequence, it approaches the degree of replayability of chess or go. In the multiplayer domain, Civ (or any game) offers even higher replayability, because human players themselves become elements of the system space. With all other factors being equal, and barring degenerate strategies in the design, multiplayer games will always have higher replayability than singleplayer games. This explains the unfortunate trend towards tacked-on multiplayer as an attempt to mitigate the risk of low replayability.

So if all we need to do to increase replayability is to improve the ratio of richly interconnected, well-balanced systems to static content, why are we still floundering? This is particularly puzzling in an era when the cost to produce static content is rising non-linearly, and the cost to design robust dynamic systems remains comparatively fixed. But I feel there are two major hurdles to embracing this obvious solution.

First, even non-linear increases in the costs of producing static content are predictable. More people with more experience and better production methodology allow for predictable management of ever-increasing budgets. An easily exhausted, content-centric thrill ride that has a billion-dollar launch weekend and then fades from memory in time to start marketing the sequel is increasingly attractive when compared with the requirement to iterate through productive failures in order to create deep, interconnected systems. This is especially true when the methods for monetising years of continuous replay are poorly understood.

But developers also have a hurdle to acknowledge: our tools for delivering messages via static authored content are increasingly powerful – and seductive. After decades of yearning for cultural relevance, it often seems the easiest path to fame and wealth is to deliver authored messages via static content the way musicians or authors do. After all, there is no doubt you are culturally relevant when five million fans are arguing over whether you’re an ‘artist’. The question that arises as the replayability ratio approaches infinity is whether we’re willing and able to recognise the legitimacy of the culturally relevant act of abdicating the generation of meaning to players – which I believe is the highest value proposition that has ever been made.(source:edge-online)