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游戏教程应简单易懂 切忌产生大量”学习时间”

发布时间:2012-08-23 14:26:38 Tags:,,

作者:Josh Bycer

说到玩游戏,最困难的事就是学习新的游戏类型。因为玩家被迫回到起点,这可能会让玩家觉得受挫。学习各类游戏的不同特点是需要时间的,这些时间合计起来就会很多了。这段“学习时间”就是所谓的“gamer tax”,这是扩大(或缩小)玩家基础的重要因素。

当我们谈论gamer tax时,我们关注的是让玩家理解游戏的基本要素所需的时间。换句话说:从玩家进入游戏,到知道该怎么做需要玩家花多少时间。我们不是说到达精通游戏或打败游戏的程度,因为到那个境界的玩家肯定知道怎么玩这款游戏了。

举个现实的gamer tax的例子:某人买了一个烤肉架。这里的gamer tax就是这个人组装烤肉架和想出如何用它烤汉堡。而不属于gamer tax的部分就是,这个人想学习的是如何制作出自己的沙茶酱或如何给排骨加香料。

使gamer tax成为一个重要概念的原因是,它会影响玩家对游戏的接受度。如果玩家必须花上几个小时读手册或看指南视频才能知道如何玩游戏,那么可能他们就不会在这款游戏上逗留太久了。gamer tax对游戏的普及也有影响,因为最流行的游戏的gamer tax往往是最少的。

对于每个学习《使命召唤》基本要素的玩家,可能得花上至少5分钟的时间才能知道怎么射击。动作游戏有意减少gamer tax,因为要让玩家玩上几分钟后就能很快掌握游戏的基本要素。然而,策略游戏由于复杂和多重的系统,在人们理解其基本要素以前会产生更多的gamer tax。

call-of-duty-black-ops(from g4tv.com)

使命召唤(from g4tv.com)

做点算术

游戏有多少gamer tax与设计师如何在教程中解释游戏和避免累赘的设计大有关系。玩家越容易学会游戏,游戏的gamer tax就越少。

PopCap的所有游戏,都有意让新手能很快地理解游戏机制。在最近的游戏开发者大会上,《植物大战僵尸》首席设计师举了一个例子说明该团队如何利用非常微妙的技术让游戏容易理解,同时不会让策略型游戏玩家感到太简单。

例如,向日葵作为产生阳光(游戏中的资源)的重要植物应该第一时间种植。对于塔防游戏高手,他们知道要优先考虑资源生产者,但对于从来没有玩过塔防的人,他们是不会知道这一点的。

让向日葵成为第一种可种植的植物,玩家就会知道他们的应该先种一棵向日葵,这就保证了玩家种植其他植物所需的阳光来源。《植物大战僵尸》就是将教程流畅化以减少gamer tax的典型,而《最终幻想13》是需要大量gamer tax的案例。

植物大战僵尸(from iphoneincanada.ca)

植物大战僵尸(from iphoneincanada.ca)

在一开始大约20个小时的游戏里,设计师所做的就是慢慢地引入游戏的基本机制。这种技术的积极方面是,保证玩家在这段时间内能够充分理解游戏。

消极方面是,它产生了太多gamer tax,从而将许多人排斥在游戏之外。如果游戏迫使玩家在“游戏真正开始”以前还要经历一段时间的试玩,那么在玩家按你的意图开始体验游戏以前,你所做的就是不断积累gamer tax。

以《传送门》为例,其中的物理谜题的gamer tax却接近于0。原因是,Valve公司将教程与游戏的初始关卡相结合。也就是,用第一个概念测试玩家,如果玩家通过就给出新的概念。他们并不试图将所有东西一股脑地塞进一个谜题中,或用一个内容膨胀的教程确保玩家理解游戏机制。他们只是以稳定的节奏保持游戏进展。

Valve在最初的几分钟内向玩家介绍了产生所有谜题的基本机制,目的是让玩家尽早理解,然后设计师再进一步构建这些机制,同时保证了玩家知道自己应该做什么。在《传送门2》中,当设计师引入胶体的概念时,他们再一次用几个简单的谜题解释了这个基本要素。在这几个谜题之后,他们再将胶体和基于传送门的机制与同样的谜题相结合。

在此并不是说你不可以做复杂的游戏。而是在玩家刚开始玩游戏时,应该避免某些复杂度。举一个最近的例子:我曾花了几周的时间努力学习Paradox公司的《Crusader Kings 2》。

在阅读手册和观看教程以及YouTube上的“Let’s Play”视频之间,我花了3个小时学习这款游戏是怎么回事。这真是一笔大gamer tax,比较没耐心的人可能早就放弃了玩《Crusader Kings 2》,更别说精华的部分了。我仍然不太懂怎么玩这款游戏,因为游戏中的教程内容太多了。

说到学习新概念,使用视觉工具是最好的教学方式之一。因为大部分人类通过用眼睛看,能达到最好的学习效果。显然,电子游戏是一种视觉活动,这让教程做得不好的游戏更加令人感到厌烦。电子游戏不应该含有和大学认证课程一样难的教程。至于复杂的游戏,如策略游戏,如果设计师真心希望扩大玩家基础的话,就必须吸取这个教训。(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 Game Design Tax Man

by Josh Bycer

One of the hardest things to do when it comes to playing games is learning a new genre. As it forces the person to return to square one again and that can be frustrating for players. When you add up each genre with all the different quirks, this time can add up. This period of “learning time” has been dubbed around message boards as “gamer-tax” and is an important part of building (or diminishing) a fan-base.

When we talk about gamer tax, we’re focusing on the time it takes someone to understand the basics of a game. Or in other words: How long it takes for a player to be able to make informed choices when playing. We’re not talking about game mastery or beating the game, as by that point the player knows how to play the game.

As an example of real life gamer tax: someone buying a new barbeque grill. The gamer tax would be the person setting it up and figuring out how to cook some burgers. What wouldn’t be a part of gamer tax is if the person decides to learn how to create their own barbeque sauce or dry rub for ribs.

What makes gamer tax an important concept is how it repels new gamers from a genre. If someone would have to spend several hours reading manuals or watching tutorials just to figure out what is going on when they’re playing, chances are they aren’t going to stick around. Gamer tax also has an effect on game popularity, as the most popular games have the least amount of gamer tax.

Someone learning the basics of Call of Duty for the first time may have to spend at most 5 minutes figuring out how to move and shoot. Action games by design have very little gamer tax, as the player is learning the basics of the game very quickly over the scope of a few minutes of playing. On the other side of the equation, strategy games due to their complexity and multiple systems, have a much larger amount of gamer tax before someone can understand the basics.

Doing Some Accounting:

The amount of gamer tax a game has is correlated to how well the designer explains the game through tutorials and avoids cumbersome design. The easier it is for someone to follow the game, the less gamer tax there is.

If you look at any of PopCap’s games, each one is designed for someone new to comprehend the mechanics very quickly. At the last GDC, the lead designer behind Plants vs. Zombies gave an excellent presentation on how the team used very subtle techniques to make the game easy to understand, without simplifying it for strategy game experts.

For example, sunflowers which are important for getting sunshine (in game resources) are always the first plant available to be planted. For a tower defense expert, they know that resource producers are always the first thing to build, but someone who never played a tower defense game wouldn’t know that.

By making them the first ones available, a player would know that they should be planting one before anything else to make sure that they’ll have a source of sunshine coming in. While Plants vs. Zombies is an example of streamlining the tutorial to reduce gamer-tax, Final Fantasy 13 is an example of an enormous amount of forced gamer tax.

What the designers did was over the course of the first twenty or so hours of gameplay, they stretch out the tutorial by slowly introducing the basic mechanics of the game. The positive behind this technique is that it made sure that the player would fully understand the game by the time the designers finish holding their hands.

The negative is that it created so much gamer tax, that it turned away a lot of people. If your game has a period of time that the player has to play before “the real game begins” all you’re doing is piling on gamer tax before the player can start experiencing the game as you intended.

Portal for instance, even with the physics based puzzles had next to zero in terms of gamer tax. The reason is that Valve integrated the tutorial into the starting levels. Testing the player on one concept and giving them something new if they pass. They didn’t try to cram everything into one puzzle, or bloat out the tutorial to make sure that the mechanic was understood. They did just enough to keep the game moving at a steady pace.

Valve introduced the base mechanics that all the puzzles stem from within the first few minutes. Meaning that the player understood them early on, allowing them to build on those mechanics while making sure that the player knows what to do. In Portal 2, when they introduced the concepts of the gels, they once again went back to the basics with a few simple puzzles. Then after a few puzzles, they integrated gel and portal based mechanics into the same puzzles.

The point of this post isn’t that you can’t have complex games. But that complexity should be avoided when someone is learning a game. As a recent example: I’ve been trying to learn Crusader Kings 2 from Paradox for the last few weeks.

Between reading the manual and watching tutorials and “Let’s Play” videos on YouTube, I have about 3 hours of learning about what is going in the game. That is a lot of gamer tax and a less patient person would probably give up trying to learn Crusader Kings 2, and the best part? I still don’t know a lot of how to play the game, as the in game tutorials are cumbersome.

When it comes to learning new concepts, the use of visual aids is one of the best ways to teach. As the majority of humans learn best through vision. Obviously video games are a visual activity which makes games that have poor tutorials even more troubling. There is no video game that should require lessons on par with a college accredited course. And for complex genres like strategy games, it’s a lesson designers need to learn if they ever hope to expand their fan-base.(source:gamasutra)


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