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游戏故事应给予玩家长期目标和主导权

发布时间:2012-08-06 17:32:20 Tags:,,,,

作者:Daniel Steckly

麦克卢汉有个著名的说法:“媒介即讯息”。但人们没有意识到的是,多数故事内容与其媒介密切相关。并非每个故事都可以从一个媒介转移到另一种媒介,这也是制作电影衍生游戏的开发者的切身体会。

我们通常会在这种媒介转换中丢失一些东西。著名导演Quentin Tarantino的任何一部作品若移除了电影文化氛围,那就不会有任何意义,因为电影信息离不开其搭载的媒介。虽然《守望者》是一部不错的电影,但是它在改编过程中几乎失去了原作的意蕴,因为《守望者》根本上就是一部漫画书。而拍摄以连环漫画册为题材的电影,并没有将其变成一个电影故事。让我们来讨论电子游戏的故事吧。

goals(from doap.wordpress.com)

goals(from doap.wordpress.com)

电子游戏的故事和其它故事的不同之处在于,电子游戏中至少会存在一个主人公去执行观众的意愿。虽然所有游戏行业的作者都知道一特点,但似乎极少有人意识到如何去运用它。其中基本存在的问题是,大多数时候,游戏的作者试图去讲述一个电影故事,因为那比讲电子游戏故事容易得多。

电影故事通常是以直线型顺序发展的,所以只对一些事件进行解释说明,电影的故事情节可以有幅度地跳跃,因此节奏更为简单;每个人都知道电影故事是怎么一回事,毕竟我们现代西方文化充斥着大量电影内容。

最终的结果是,大多数电子游戏的故事都跟随同一个模版:给予玩家一个目的地,他们必须在那里作战,然后他们会到下一关的目的地,重复刚才的作战模式。大多数时候,玩家不知道下一关的目标是什么,游戏中总有一些声音引导你进入一个又一个看得到的视野。你可能会想,沙盒游戏不会受到这些困扰,但是它们的情况通常更糟。

我认为自己目前为止从未玩过一款比《侠盗猎车手4》更漫无目的,只是让人在暗中摸黑前进的游戏。虽然我喜欢《刺客信条2》,但如果你用一把枪指着我的头,要我把游戏中发生的事件按一定顺序排列下来的话,我是做不到的,因为我根本记不住。这不仅仅是个学术问题,假如玩家觉得自己只是在不知故事情节将走向何方的情况下越过层层关卡,那么他们就会丧失在故事中的投入感,因为这并不是他们自己的故事。

因此,我们要如何解决手把手引导玩家的问题呢?那就是我们要让玩家控制情节向前发展。必须让玩家感觉到他们不只是在过场动画之间做些琐事,他们的行动以及选择可以促进故事向前发展。在我阐述如何克服这一障碍之前,让我们来仔细分析一款把该功能做得非常完美的游戏:《质量效应2》。

《质量效应2》的故事为玩家展现了一个长期目标:他们得穿过Omega-4 Relay,打败了Collectors。但是为了完成这项任务,首先必须完成另一个长期目标:准备。完成这一目标占据80%以上的《质量效应2》游戏玩法,并且玩家可以自主决定如何完成任务。玩家可以选择征募成员的顺序,决定和哪个成员的关系更密切,以及其他一些较小的选择。

所有的这些内容都是为了给予玩家一种真实代理体验。游戏情节极少迫使玩家做一些特殊的选择,当这种情况发生的时候(尾声的开始),都是温和地惩罚他们的失败操作,而不是完全否定他们的选择。玩家总是知道自己的目标是什么,为什么这是他们的目标,他们要如何去完成它,目标最重要的部分是什么。他们总会认为这是自己的想法。比起其他让玩家坐在副驾驶位上观光的游戏,《质量效应2》是让你坐在驾驶座上,给你钥匙和地图,并且告诉你如何向目标前进。

Im-in-Control(from mygeekopinions.blogspot.com)

Im-in-Control(from mygeekopinions.blogspot.com)

因此,设置一个优秀的电子游戏故事的核心要点有哪些呢?以下列出几项:

给予玩家一个长远目标

或者,更确切的说,是给予玩家长远目标。告诉他们游戏的最终目标是赢得胜利。也许是杀死Bill Williamson,也许是从寂静岭中逃走,也许是从库巴那救走公主。告诉他们必须打败游戏才能完成任务。在一定程度上,那些方法会让他们知道情节的最后发展方向。可是,如果你知道如何制造出一种探索的神秘感,你可能就不会提供一个确切的目标,比如在《银河战士》中。也就是说,甚至是《银河战士》也在最后给予玩家一个长远目标(发现并杀死了所有boss),除非你是在做一个实验游戏,否则你就该至少给予玩家一个具体的目标,或者在《Minecraft》这类游戏中,允许玩家创造自己的长期目标。

让玩家不断地为目标奋战

如果你没有让玩家在试图完成目标,只给他们一个长期目标只会造成相反的效果。让我以《荒野大镖客》为例,它是一款拥有长期目标的游戏,但却患上了“手把手引导”综合症。我仍然不知道为什么我需要去墨西哥。如果玩家不得不做无关紧要的动作,比如说在准许执行某项操作之前为某人跑腿,这样可以让自己更接近目标,这就会让他们产生一种脱离情节之感。必须让玩家明确知道为什么他们要做目前的这些动作,否则他们就会丧失在故事中的沉浸感。

让玩家决定如何完成目标

这是适用于大量关卡的好方法。首先,如果玩家可以决定如何去做某事,他们会在结果中投入更多精力,他们可以获得到一种明显的成就感。设立一个目标并完成它是一件令人愉快的事情,这也是人们玩《FarmVille》的原因。其次,如果玩家已经做出决定,他们必须明白为什么要这么做,如果玩家理解为什么要做这些,他们就不大可能会在游戏中失败。可是,如果迫使玩家在不知情的前提下做出决定,他们在故事中的投入感就会荡然无存,因为他们在此只体会到无知感。

虽然你还有许多其他做法可以提供玩家在故事中的投入感,但其中多数选项要视情况而定,还有一些做法却是通用原则。现在,你可能会疑惑,线性游戏又是怎么一回事呢?并非所有游戏都是拥有非线性叙述方式的沙盒游戏。

但这些原则仍然适用于这种情况。《半条命》就属于遵循了这三项原则的典型:给予玩家长期的目标(逃离Black Mesa),让玩家不断地为目标奋进(永不止步),虽然它并没有让玩家决定如何完成目标,这但却明确告知玩家游戏只有一个可行选项(杀出一条血路)。

我相信随着游戏故事的发展,这些情况终会发生好转。在NES时代,开发者知道如何讲述电子游戏故事,因为他们别无选择。我相信我们正在经历这样一个游戏设计阶段,即我们认为自己的游戏看起来跟电影一样出色了,所以它们基本上等同于电影。但事实并非如此,同之前其他媒介一样,我们仍然需要探索不同的讲故事方式。

在未来的50年,所有控制玩家并且手把手引导他们闯关的游戏将只存在于学术领域,学者们将把它们视为一代艺术家努力找到作品立足点的创作遗迹。但那些给予玩家控制权,充分实现交互式媒介的潜能,将玩家牢置于故事前进驾驶座的游戏,才能繁衍出真正的游戏。(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

The Driver’s Seat

by Daniel Steckly

Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message”. What many people don’t realize is that many, if not most stories are bound up in the medium in which they are told. Not every story can be adapted from one medium to another, as developers of movie tie-in games often learn firsthand.

Some things are lost in translation. Any of the works of Quentin Tarantino, removed from the cultural context of film, would make no sense; their message is inseparable from their medium. While Watchmen wasn’t a bad movie, it lost almost all of its meaning in the adaptation, because ultimately, Watchmen is about comic books. It is a comic book story, and filming a comic book story does not make it a film story. Let’s talk about video game stories.

Video game stories are distinct from all other stories in that at least one of the characters exists to execute the will of the audience. While (hopefully) all writers in this industry know this, very few seem to realize how to apply it. The fundamental problem is that, most of the time, the game’s writer is trying to tell a film story, because that’s quite a bit easier than telling a video game story.

Film stories are totally linear, so only one series of events needs to be accounted for; film stories can freely jump around, so pacing is much easier; and everybody knows what a film story is like, since, living in our modern Western culture, we are inundated in film.

The ultimate result is that the story of most video games follows the same structure: The player is given a destination, they must fight their way there, then they receive their next destination, repeat. Most of the time the player has zero clue what the objective after the next will be, and the game consists of a voice on the radio holding your hand and taking you on a sightseeing tour. You might think that sandbox games wouldn’t suffer from this, but they often have it much, much worse.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with a more directionless, meandering, groping-in-the-dark plot than GTA4. And, while I love Assassin’s Creed 2, if you put a gun to my head and told me to put the events of the plot in sequential order, I wouldn’t be able to do it, especially since I don’t remember any of them. This isn’t just an academic problem, if the player feels like they’re just jumping through hoops without any idea of where the plot’s going they lose investment in the story because it isn’t theirs.

So, how do we escape the trap of hand-holding syndrome? We need to give the player control over the advancement of the plot. The player must feel that their actions, their choices, are what drives the story forward, and that they aren’t just doing busywork between cutscenes. Before I do a point-by-point breakdown of how this can be achieved, let’s dissect a game that does this really well: Mass Effect 2.

Mass Effect 2’s story presents the player with an over-arching, long-term goal: Go through the Omega-4 Relay and defeat the Collectors. However, to accomplish this, you must first accomplish another long-term goal: Prepare. Accomplishing this goal makes up over 80% of the gameplay of ME2, and how the player accomplishes it is at their discretion. The player is allowed to choose the order in which they recruit party members, which party members they become close to, and a variety of other minor choices.

All of this works together to give the player the feeling of genuine agency. The plot very rarely railroads the player into a particular choice, and when it does so (initiating the endgame), it does so softly, imposing penalties for failing to follow rather than denying the option entirely. The player always knows what their goal is, why it’s their goal, and how they’re going to accomplish it, and the best part is: they always think it was their idea. Where other games let the player ride shotgun on a sightseeing tour through the countryside, Mass Effect 2 puts you in the driver’s seat, hands you the keys and a map and tells you to go for it.

So, what are some core points for making a good video game story? Here’s a few:

Give the player a long-term goal.

Or, more accurately, give the player the long-term goal. Tell them what the ultimate goal of the plot is, the win-condition. Maybe it’s to kill Bill Williamson, maybe it’s to escape Silent Hill, maybe it’s to save the princess from Bowser. Tell them what they must accomplish to beat the game. That way, on some level, they’ll always know the plot’s eventual direction. However, you might not always want to give an explicit goal if you want to create a sense of mystery or discovery, like in Super Metroid. That said, even Super Metroid eventually does give the player a long-term goal (find and kill all of the bosses), and unless you’re making an experimental game, you should at some point give the player a concrete goal, or, in the case of a game like Minecraft, allow the player to create their own long-term goal.

Let the player work toward this goal constantly

Giving the player a long-term goal can actually be counter-productive if you don’t let the player actually try to achieve it. I used Red Dead Redemption as an example of a game with a long-term goal, but it suffers awfully from hand-holding syndrome. I still have no idea why I needed to go to Mexico. If the player has to do unrelated actions, like say, run errands for people before being allowed to perform an action that will move them closer to the goal, they will almost certainly lose the thread of the plot. The player must always know exactly why they are performing their current actions or they will lose their investment in the story.

Let the player decide how to achieve their goal

This is good writing on a number of levels. First of all, if the player decides how to do something, they have more investment in the outcome; they can derive a very palpable feeling of accomplishment. Setting a goal and achieving it is pleasurable, this is why people play FarmVille. Secondly, if the player has made the decision, they must logically understand why they made it, and if the player understands why they are doing something, they are far, far less likely to get lost in the plot. However, if a player is forced to make a decision without understanding why they made it, their investment in the story can be killed, since now their lack of understanding has been brought front and centre.

While there are many other things you can do to improve the player’s investment in the story, many of them are situational, whereas these are universal. Now, you’re probably wondering, what about linear games? Not every game can be a sandbox game with a non-linear narrative.

However, these rules can still apply. Half-Life followed all three: it gave a long-term goal (escape Black Mesa), it let the player work toward this constantly (keep moving forward), and while it didn’t necessarily let the player decide how to achieve it, it made it clear that there was only one realistic option (shoot your way out).

I believe that this is something that will get better in time, as games develop their own story vocabulary. In the days of the NES, developers knew how to tell video game stories because they had no other choice; I believe that we’re currently just going through a phase in game design, where we think that because our games look as good as movies, that they are basically movies. They aren’t, and just like every medium before us, we’re still working out how ours tells stories differently.

In 50 years, all the games that held the player’s hand and led them from plot point to plot point will be remembered only by academics, who will look on them as relics of a generation of artists trying to find their legs. But in the games that put the player in control, the ones that fully realized the potential of an interactive medium, the ones that firmly put the player in the driver’s seat of the story; in them lies the seed for what games will be.(source:gamasutra


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