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每日观察:关注游戏元老的关卡及故事设计理念(8.16)

发布时间:2012-08-16 14:27:52 Tags:,,

1)据《华尔街日报》报道,Zynga最近正游说加州和华盛顿尽早开放美国在线博彩政策(目前美国仅有数议处支持这一提案),以便公司顺利执行在线博彩游戏计划。

zynga casino(from games)

zynga casino(from games)

据报道在今年第2季度,Zynga已向在线博彩等游说提案上投入7.5万美元,甚至派出顾问针对相关法案展开游说行动。如果该州通过了相关法案,Zynga就有可能与顺利进入博彩游戏领域,但该法案目前受到美洲印第安部落成员的反对。

2)《真菌世界》开发者Kudolf Kremers在日前的GDC欧洲大会上发言指出,对于预算有限的独立开发者来说,“少即是多”原则极适用于关卡设计。

真菌世界(from joystiq.com)

真菌世界(from joystiq.com)

例如在《Spelunky》、《Minercraft》以及《真菌世界》这类独立游戏中,过程生成技术可以节省游戏相关内容的大量开发时间。销量达25万份的《真菌世界》在整款游戏中就仅使用了9个不同的简单纹理,其视觉元素就是由这些简单样式而生成。

除此之外,开发者还可以通过用户生成内容充实游戏关卡内容,《真菌世界》所提供的关卡设计和脚本工具不但令玩家创建了自己的游戏关卡,而且还塑造了与主要内容截然不同的游戏体验,例如横向卷轴射击游戏。

Kremers称设计师在创建游戏世界时应考虑负空间(即实体周围的空间)概念,以便利用较少的资源和设计时间完成项目。《地狱边境》、《Journey》以及《Nightsky》就属于这种利用了负空间概念充实游戏的典型。

3)《杀出重围》和《传奇米奇》开发者Warren Spector最近表示,行业过度重视暴力及高端视觉效果的倾向让他很受挫。

warren spector(from techinvestornews.com)

warren spector(from techinvestornews.com)

他认为id software的John Carmack以及Epic Games公司的Tim Sweeney等行业元老在渲染技术或模拟暴力内容上花了太多时间,他们应该把这些精力用于创建基本的人类交互和关系培养上。

在他看来,当前行业着重突出暴力游戏机制,因为这类操作更容易通过一个按键实现,而创建虚拟对话则更为复杂,但这却是值得开发者一试的追求目标。

4)Creative Assembly首席设计师James Russell在最近的GDC欧洲大会上发言表示,游戏给予玩家的选择必须有趣而引人思考,否则这些选择就不存在意义,并且会让玩家丧失在游戏中的沉浸感。

total wars(from nowgamer.com)

total wars(from nowgamer.com)

他称如果设计师给予玩家带有明确正确答案的选择,那么这就只能算是“虚假的选择”。例如在《罗马:全面战争》中,玩家若想快速敛财就可以简单地最大化城市的税率,但却不会引起市民的反抗和暴动。这种设置就不能算是真正的选择。但《帝国:全面战争》却采用了另一种做法,玩家若选择低税率则可获得长期的利益。

5)Frictional Games联合创始人Thomas Grip(游戏邦注:其代表作包括《失忆症:黑暗后裔》和《半影》)在发言中表示,他认为游戏中的故事绝不仅仅是情节,这种故事应具有交互性,要让玩家与故事互动,而非只是观看内容。

Thomas-Grip(from finearts.concordia.ca)

Thomas-Grip(from finearts.concordia.ca)

他奉行游戏故事极简主义,认为这一元素的成功关键在于保持系统的简单性,并充分运用玩家的想象力。有许多游戏设计元素可以强化故事内容以及游戏世界的连续性。这些设计元素包括一致性世界的理念(玩家在某处的操作可能影响另一处内容),以及“可被认同的结果”(某些按钮的作用可能与玩家的预期不同,但却可以执行让他们觉得合理的事情)。另外设计师还应该避免一种情况——迫使玩家观看说教式的过场动画,以及其他强迫性的内容。

6)Funcom Montreal创意总监Craig Morrison在最近的GDC欧洲会议发言上指出,MMO设计师不应过于关注玩家在游戏中想做什么事情,而应重视他们为何要在游戏中投入如此多时间。

Golden-Circle(from gamasutra)

Golden-Circle(from gamasutra)

他认为MMO设计师需注意三个要点,即“How”(系统如何呈现在玩家面前),“What”(玩家想干什么)和“Why”(玩家首次玩游戏时为什么要做出这些选择)。

Morrison称玩家每次登录游戏时必有一个原因(即Why),因此设计师需首先考虑这个原因到底是什么,玩家体验游戏的动机何在。如果不能弄清玩家体验游戏的原因,那么不就可能知晓他们的需求是什么。(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

1)Zynga thinks U.S. online gambling is moving too slow, starts lobbying

by Joe Osborne

The FarmVille maker isn’t satisfied with how slowly it’s taking for more states to recognize the “power”of online gambling. So, according to The Wall Street Journal, Zynga has began investing in state and federal lobbying to help ensure that it’s smooth sailing for online gambling in the U.S. So far, just a handful of states are support the practice that was outlawed years ago.

The investments took place in California and Washington, D.C. could prove crucial to whether Zynga’s very public ambitions of creating successful online gambling games actually pans out. (The UK and Europe is nice, but the UK and Europe … and the U.S. would be even nicer for the developer.)

According to WSJ citing public documents, Zynga has reported spending about $75,000 in the quarter ended this past June on lobbying at the federal level around issues including online gambling. The company even had Platinum Advisors in California to lobby around the Internet Gambling Consumer Protection and Public-Private Partnership Act of 2012 in the same period.

If passed, this bill would allow $30 million licenses for gambling outfits that Zynga could potentially partner in its move into gambling games. However, the bill has met opposition in Native American tribes whose businesses stand to suffer from the onset of online gambling. Lobbying or not, the ghettoization of social gaming online gambling is still a ways away.(source:games

2)Taking the ‘less is more’ approach to level design

by Mike Rose

Eufloria’s Kudolf Kremers believes that “less is more” is the perfect approach for indie developers on a budget when it comes to level design, and his GDC Europe talk today described the various ways this approach can be achieved.

Procedural generation in particular, as seen in such indie titles as Spelunky, Minecraft and Kremers’ own Eufloria, can help free up development time for other areas of your game, and is “a great way to create enormous amounts of content” in a short space of time, he argued.

The 250,000-selling Eufloria, for example, only uses nine very simple textures throughout the entire game, with visuals procedurally generated from these simple patterns.

User-generated content is another area in which developers can look to build up a huge library of levels with little input themselves. The provided level design and scripting tools that come with Eufloria have seen players making not only their own levels for the game, but also entirely different experiences from the main game, such as art applications and side-scrolling shooters.

“Empower your fans and they will reward you 1,000 times over,” noted Kremers. “Players can create more content than you can ever imagine — or compete with!”

Kremers also urged designers to consider the concept of negative space when creating game worlds — the idea of focusing on the area around the main focus, and using what is not there to help define what is there. Utilizing negative space means using less resources and less design time.

Titles such as Limbo, Journey and Nightsky are great examples of games that have used the concept of negative space to the fullest degree, said Kremers.(source:gamasutra

3)Warren Spector: Let’s make believable characters, not believable guns

by Tom Curtis

“Can you imagine what games we would have if [id's] John Carmack decided he wanted to create a believable character as opposed to a believable gun?”
- Deus Ex and Epic Mickey creator Warren Spector expresses his frustrations with the industry’s focus on violence and high-end visuals.

Spector says that he’s been “actively trying to shame” developers like Carmack and Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney, as he believes they spend too much time working on rendering techniques or finding new ways to simulate violence, when they could focus their efforts on recreating basic human interactions and relationships.

He notes that it’s understandable that the industry has a tendency toward violent game mechanics, as those actions are easy to map to the press of a button. While creating something like a virtual conversation is certainly more complex, Spector thinks it’s a goal that’s at least worth pursuing.

“We focus a little bit too much on violence, but we all know how to do it. It’s easy. And a lot of players seem to like it. It isn’t all we can do and it certainly isn’t all we should do.” (source:gamasutra

4)Avoiding ‘false choices’ and giving your players real trade-offs

by Mike Rose

James Russell, lead designer at Creative Assembly, is a big fan of player choices and trade-offs in video games — an obvious sentiment for those who have dabbled in his company’s Total War franchise.

However, he noted during his GDC Europe session this week that these choices actually have to be interesting and cause the player to really think, otherwise they become meaningless and won’t do anything to immerse the player in your game’s universe.

“When a decision is put to the player which has an obvious right answer, it’s not really a decision,” he argued, calling these types of situations “false choices.”

Through his work on Total War, Russell has seen first-hand how this can affect your game. In Rome: Total War, for instance, players could simply set the highest tax rate possible on settlements without townspeople rioting, and that was always the best solution to earning the most money. It was obvious that setting taxes low had very little upside to it, and hence this wasn’t a real choice.

However, with Empire: Total War, Creative Assembly mixed things up a little, providing long-term benefits if you did decide to go with lower taxes. This meant that players now had a real choice and could really immerse themselves in the decision making process.

Russell also discussed the pros and cons of real-world simulation, providing examples from the Total War series that demonstrated how giving players accurate depictions of real-life war can lead to either great experiences, or poor balancing.

One particularly striking example involved cannonball trajectory — the team realized that cannonballs fired from ships that were further away did more damage to enemy ships than those fired at point blank.

It quickly came to light that the trajectory of point blank shots would go straight through an enemy ship, while shots fired from far away would arc and then plough through into the base of the enemy ship, potentially sinking it from beneath.

Hence, it was necessary to alter the cannonball trajectory model such that it conformed with what players would believe is the best tactic — getting close up to enemies — rather than what was actually occuring via real-life based trajectory physics.(source:gamasutra

5)’Why hasn’t story in games advanced?’ Amnesia’s designer has some opinions!

by Simon Carless

In his incredibly animated talk at GDC Europe on Wednesday, Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip (Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Penumbra) discussed horror and storytelling in games, explaining his personal theory of what’s vital in telling game stories.

His prime thesis is that in games, “story is not just the plot.” In fact, regarding what’s important in interactive storytelling, Grip postulated: “We want the player to play through the story, not just sit through it.”

In a complex talk, Grip suggested that similar games separated by 20 years like Uncharted and Another World have, in the end, relatively similar types of gameplay and storytelling combined.

In that case, both titles have things like running, followed by jumping and cutscenes — Grip argued: “This is weird… why haven’t we advanced?” He suggests: “The main culprit is how most of these games are designed.”

Using his own games as examples, Grip expressed his thesis: “Tell stories where you play all the way through the games, not just the bits where the designers tell you to.”

Overall, Grip is definitely an explicit game story minimalist — he suggests that the key to success is to keep systems simple, and rely on the player’s imagination. And multiple game design elements will enhance the story and coherence of the universe.

In particular, a couple of those game design elements include the concept of a consistent world (“what you do somewhere should work somewhere else”), and that of “agreeable outcome” (buttons doing perhaps not exactly what the player wanted to do, but doing something that feels right to them). Designers should also avoid failsafes — “herding” players into particular didactic cutscenes and other forced explanations.

Grip concluded of his passions: “Don’t try to beat the game, try to live the game” — and said that Frictional Games is “trying to push this as far as we possibly can” with its next, as-yet-unannounced game.(source:gamasutra

6)MMO designers need to focus more on the ‘why’, not the ‘what’

by Mike Rose

MMO designers need to stop focusing so much on what players want to do in online games, and instead hone in on why these players choose to put so many hours into the MMOs they play.

Funcom Montreal creative director Craig Morrison referred to author Simon Sinek’s “golden circle” theory (shown below) as part of his GDC Europe talk today, noting that the “how” (the systems provided to the players) and the “what” (what the player wants to do) all boils down to exactly “why” these players are making those decisions in the first play.

“Everytime a player logs in, they need a ‘why’,” noted Morrison. “What we really need to be thinking about is the why – it’s the bit that we don’t really consider enough. Players need a reason to be playing it. What is motivating them?”

MMO designers need to stop focusing so much on what players want to do in online games, and instead hone in on why these players choose to put so many hours into the MMOs they play, says Funcom Montreal creative director Craig Morrison, who has worked on Age of Conan and The Secret World.

The key issue with this angle in MMOs is that, while the range of different types of players is narrower in more focused games such as Call of Duty, there is a wide range of player types in MMOs, and therefore ‘whys’ — from those players who choose to boot your game up every day to progress through the game and level up, to those who are playing to be part of a community.

“No one is your perfect player in the MMO space,” he added, meaning that you need to provide a huge number of diverse gameplay elements to satisfy as many players as possible.

A lot of games go wrong trying to focus on the one type of player that is in the majority, he suggested — “but for that person to enjoy it, they need to be part of the ecosystem that involves all the types of players.”

He showed Simon Sinek’s “golden circle,” which in his interpretation suggests that without understanding the “why” that lies at the core of a player’s motivation, it’s impossible to understand what players actually want.

Morrison also cited Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as an example of what MMO designers should be looking to cover with these whys. In particular, the “belonging” segment was done really well in early MMOs because “you needed a network of people to achieve anything,” he said.

However, many MMOs now attempt to focus more on the “self-esteem” section, losing a fair portion of the belonging in the process. “Unless you expose the players to the community and encourage community interactions, there’s not that much difference between your game and a single player game,” Morrison noted.(source:gamasutra


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