作者：Tim Keenan

关于《A Virus Named Tom》

我喜欢和家人、好友一起玩合作性游戏。因此当我着手设计《A Virus Named Tom》时，我很清楚自己将会添加合作玩法。我不清楚的是要将此推向什么程度。

《A Virus Named Tom》是款动作益智游戏，在此你需要重新设置循环路径以传播病毒，同时避开反抗病毒的drone。你的操作目的是在一个乌托邦世界中展开蓄意破坏。你的创造者因在创造了上述未来乌托邦后被攻击而心存不快。

游戏中有一个单人模式，一个合作模式（游戏邦注：最多4位玩家），以及一个对抗模式。下面我将谈论自己在运行此合作活动过程中积累的收获。

摧毁一座城需要一个村庄的村民

“谜题不具合作性。”这是我所知道的信息。你不会看到成组玩家破解魔方，你不会在《时空幻境》中看到合作模式（《Portal 2》之前的作品也是如此）。合作操作旨在消灭恐怖分子、外星人和僵尸。

解决复杂谜题是件孤独的事情，这需要专注度。合作操作非常讨人厌，会带来阻碍。我还得知，益智游戏无需故事。我决定将两类元素都融入我的作品中，因为这是我的游戏，这是成为独立开发者的美妙之处所在。

被传染的城市 from gamasutra.com

4位玩家，只添加3位玩家？

着手制作合作性益智游戏非常简单。只需添加更多玩家！《A Virus Named Tom》的首个决策非常简单。我不想要进行分屏，或是处理共享镜头，所以整个电路需要位于单个屏幕上。电路有4个角落，所以各玩家可以从完美的安全位置起步，脱离电网。在我大脑深处，我觉得自己可以耍点把戏——我可以添加3位玩家，然后说，“看，如果你愿意，可以选择进行合作体验！”

起初，我试图忽略纠缠不休的提醒事项，这不是易事。显然，单玩家关卡对于合作模式来说非常有趣，但有些适合合作模式的关卡并不适合单人模式，反之亦然。要设计出适合1-4位玩家的关卡并不简单。

同时让我困扰的还有，整个合作活动可以通过单玩家模式攻克，而另外2-4号玩家都坐视不理。我告诉自己，这是个“特性”，因为不同技能的玩家可以在没有紧张感的情况下共同体验，但随着时间的流逝，这会变得越发空洞。我希望玩家互相需要，互相影响，进而创造更稳固的联系。

最后一根稻草是，我决定回过头去瞄准硬核用户。游戏起初是更倾向硬核类型的用户，瞄准享受于谜题和敏捷度挑战的玩家。随后，休闲市场逐步出现，我变得伤痕累累，决定将尽可能多的用户类型纳入在内，因此转而更多朝休闲风格迈进。

最后，这呈现的感觉并不正确。我清楚自己预期的游戏体验方式，不想要改变这一体验，我放弃转投休闲市场，重新回到我起初的硬核目标群体。这样我就不需要支持包含不同技能的玩家，要求其中至少有两位玩家是硬核玩家。

若能够制作108个关卡，为什么要制作54个？

将游戏的合作模式变成优先选项是个困难决定，但对此我非常满意。我们是个小团队，这意味着我们需要制作的关卡数量得翻一番，我们需要将合作功能添加至游戏中（游戏邦注：例如障碍），以在各关卡末尾推进合作和角色授予。

在某种程度上，这简化我的生活。能够在合作关卡中假定至少2位玩家，在单玩家关卡中设定1位玩家，让关卡设计工作变得更加有趣。

但这也加重我的非正式游戏测试工作。更糟糕的是，我的办公室没有很多人员，难以测试合作关卡。

唯一促使合作模式变得具有可行性的是，我置身于IGN Indie Open House活动中，在此David Rosen (Wolfire Games)、Alex Austin (Cryptic Sea)和Justin Woodward (Interabang Entertainment)等人士都花时间试验游戏的关卡，这样我就能够从中获悉哪些内容可行，哪些不可行。

我们还借助许多旧金山湾区的独立开发者，他们都反复给予我帮助，体验许多关卡内容。最后是我们的预定用户，他们有些愿意提早体验若干最后关卡，提供反馈信息。

由于其中困难性及需要完成前40个关卡以掌握所有机制的要求，这些关卡的测试用户更加有限。

创造障碍以聚集病毒 from gamasutra.com

成为玩家的贤内助

观看玩家玩你的游戏在游戏设计中具有强制性。“有趣”内容过于复杂，很难进行更新。倾听反馈信息也是类似，因为你可以了解玩家如何认知你的游戏以及存在的潜在问题。

这当然是把双刃剑。我认为由所有“评委”设计的游戏不会变成一款杰作，因为有时你得相信，你对于自己的游戏会有更好的整体把握。例如，虽然玩家会因某功能而感到沮丧，但若运用得当，沮丧感就长远来看就能够带来益处。

在《A Virus Named Tom》中，同样是在早期测试阶段，玩家常因玩家间的冲突而感到沮丧。他们告诉我，在破解谜题的同时避开drone令人觉得非常沮丧。关于此问题，普遍建议是，让玩家互相穿过。

成为游戏设计师就像是和玩家结婚；你需要倾听他们的看法，然后选择自己的战斗，且基于充分理由。这是我选择的战斗。在我看来，没有玩家冲突就像是在FPS游戏中关掉友军之火（即误向友盟开火）的模式。我将此游戏变成合作模式，这样你们就能够毫无保留地相互影响，无论好坏。如果厨房里有太多厨师，你们就要学习如何互相配合，像个平滑的机器般运作。

让玩家互相穿过是个错误之举。这促使游戏进一步朝单玩家模式靠拢，因为这意味着玩家无需在操作中考虑彼此，这可以说是《A Virus Named Tom》的半个玩法。逐步添加的难度促使玩家共同合作，他们通常因此变成更高效的单元。他们需要进行交流——想象这点。

和友军之火一样，能够影响其他玩家的一半趣味在于，他们彼此相互影响，即便这损及团队，因为这富有趣味！这就是为什么在90%的时间里，我和我的兄弟共同体验一款FPS游戏，在此首先发生的事情是，我们中有1人会射击对方。这非常有趣！

在初始阶段，我们的冲突不那么有趣。在初期版的《A Virus Named Tom》中，我们没有将反馈信息和情感放入冲突中。现在我们有反馈声音，TOM相互弹开，被击中的TOM看起来非常恼怒，诅咒（游戏邦注：以篡改的病毒语言）另一TOM。单此添加内容就促使冲突变得更令人愉快，推进悲伤情绪。

当玩家看到这点时，他们倾向以此方式继续“惹怒”他们的伙伴TOM，然后开怀大笑。我们随后继续我们的黑暗道路，就此添加角色奖励，给予将团队成员弹到危险之处，将其杀死的玩家成就回馈。合作模式的越轨行为尚有许多发展空间，毕竟，你是个病毒。

体验超越直觉

不加控制的直觉就是傲慢的猜测。直觉在找到初始位置方面作用显著，但不要骗自己说，你了解所有未起作用的元素。

我的直觉告诉我如下关于合作谜题关卡的事项：

* 我应该避开复杂谜题，因为它们需要许多深层次的思考，这最适合单玩家关卡。

* 关卡应更加庞大，以避开过多无意识的玩家冲突。

* 最好融入多种资源和路径，以让各种谜题得到解决。

* 避免将复杂谜题同众多drone结合起来。

我的发现是：

2/4的比例非常不错。较大面板和多种资源能够让关卡变得更加令人愉快，但回避复杂谜题或灵敏元素则就不是如此。就和单人模式一样，冲突和斗争将团队绑定在一起。玩家进入角色中，讨论复杂谜题，完成后猛烈举手击掌。

和单人模式一样，这里的关键在于，变化各关卡的谜题内容和敏捷度，这样喜欢特定关卡的玩家与自己所喜欢的关卡的距离就不会超过1-2个关卡，通常此节奏促使游戏变得富有趣味。

挑战熟练程度要求的合作关卡 from gamasutra.com

我发现的其他内容：

忙碌工作有利于合作模式，但对于单人模式来说就没有那么突出。在此，我的意思是，当进行合作体验时，面板上装满各种需要进行转动的部件颇有趣味。体验单人模式时，这就像是忙碌工作，因为你在操作时，没有人附和你。

你可以在合作模式中融入更复杂的关卡。起初，合作和单人模式的关卡都相同，因此引入好友的益处是，你可以通过更多想法更快解决关卡。但当我决定在合作模式中融入完全独立的关卡时，我发现，你不仅可以获得更多见解，某位团队成员更有希望会在非常棘手的关卡中“再来一次”。

此关卡的进程也会让人觉得更快速，因为玩家多半不会困在某个位置，因为团队成员的思维方式各不相同。最后，我将这些关卡变得更加复杂，因为我觉得自己是这类破坏者。

清楚你的角色

当我初次观看成批玩家玩游戏时，显而易见的是，所有人都不是谜题解决者。这在首个关卡中再明显不过。我起初在单人和多人模式中融入相同关卡，首个关卡是个电路组建配置错误的简单直线。各玩家会涌向此零件，将其同另一零件触碰。

虽然看到TOM相互弹开，露出愤怒表情，相互进行诅咒非常滑稽，但显而易见的是，这只会在某些关卡中保持趣味性。最后我需要解决的问题是，所有玩家试图通过旋转下个组件解决传染的主要来源。

我们进行此操作的一个方式是通过角色。我暂时给予不同TOM不同技能，如类别。我不喜欢这点，因为我会让玩家在抛弃之前看法的情况下选择类别（在FPS游戏中，你不清楚狙击兵角色将会是什么样子，但基于类别的益智游戏数量不多），我还希望玩家能够根据需要动态转变角色。因此我们所要做的就是，给予所有TOM各种技能，然后将玩家放在高压锅中，在此若他们都进行相同操作，他们就无法胜出。

我还推崇通过各种方法解决问题，所以除了要求玩家扮演不同角色外，我们还添加所谓的“角色结果屏幕”，在此玩家因在某角色最优或最差而获得奖励。这不仅突出让玩家扮演不同角色的理念，还增添些许竞争性，甚至是嘲讽某些没有全力表现的玩家。我们尝试让奖励图标变得有些荒谬，以保持趣味性，没有数据会从某关卡延续至下个关卡。我相信玩家最终会呈社交状态，有时你所需要做的就是，提供供玩家进行打趣的内容。

产生最佳构思 from gamasutra.com

PC世界的本地合作内容

我非常担心的一点是，基于PC平台制作本地合作游戏。无可否认的是，当我们着手《A Virus Named Tom》时，核心目标是主机和沙发游戏。当我们意识到自己无法负担在线游戏时，我就知道，尽管这是款10美元的游戏，我们将因要求PC玩家聚集在自己的显示器前而承受很多痛苦。

虽然这在一定程度上来说确实如此，但享受于沙发合作性游戏的玩家数量着实出乎我的意料。将电脑插入电视，同某些游戏手柄连接的过程逐年简化。坐在你的伙伴玩家身旁是件很棒的事情，有时你会忘记这种感觉。虽然我知道，对于有些人来说，这也许不在他们的选择之中，但对于那些享有此选择的群体来说，我觉得我们应该给予声援，支持这类游戏。我感谢所有给予《A Virus Named Tom》这类支持的玩家。

值得付出？

虽然在《A Virus Named Tom》中将合作模式变成优先选择对于小团队来说非常困难，但我必须要说的是，没有什么比观看成群玩家共同应对合作性关卡挑战更令人高兴。听到他们嘲笑他人的失败，就解决方案展开争吵，就伤害他人而发笑，在艰辛战斗后获得胜利的欣喜之情，所有这些都非常动人。这就像是额外添加的玩家会提高我观看此过程的乐趣。

由于添加合理合作玩法对于小团队来说工作量颇大，因此在下款游戏中采用单玩家模式着实非常有吸引力，但我不知道自己能否放弃这种感觉：站在一小队玩家背后，查看自己所创造的真实互动。你也许会说，这具有一定的传染性。（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）

Effective Co-Op Design

by Tim Keenan

What does it take to really implement meaningful co-op in your game? A Virus Named Tom developer Tim Keenan delves into the thorny issue — discussing the challenges and triumphs of building in the mode for his indie game.

About a Virus…

I love playing cooperative games with family and friends. So when I set out to make A Virus Named Tom, I always knew that I would add cooperative play. What I didn’t know was how deep the rabbit hole went.

A Virus Named Tom is an action-puzzler where you reconfigure circuits to spread a virus while trying to avoid anti-virus drones. You do this to cause absolute mayhem in a Jetsons-esque future utopia. Your creator, you see, is a bit miffed about being fired after creating said future utopia.

There’s a single player campaign, a cooperative campaign (with up to four players), and a vs. mode. Here, I’ll talk a bit about what I went through getting the co-op campaign up and running.

It Takes a Village to Destroy a City

“Puzzles aren’t cooperative.” That’s what I was told. You don’t see teams of people solving Rubik’s Cubes, and you don’t see a cooperative mode in Braid (this was also before Portal 2). Cooperation was for killing terrorists, aliens, and zombies.

Solving a complex puzzle is a solitary thing which requires concentration. Cooperation would just be annoying, adding a hindrance. I was also told puzzle games don’t need stories. I decided mine was going to have both, because it’s my damn game, and that’s pretty much the beauty of being an indie dev.

Four-player… Just Add Three Players?

Starting a cooperative puzzle game is easy. Just add more players! The first decisions in A Virus Named Tom were the easy ones. I didn’t want splitscreen, or to deal with a shared camera, so the entire circuit would have to sit on a single screen. The circuit has four corners, so each player could start in a nice safe place, off the grid. I think somewhere in the recesses of my brain I thought that I could somehow pull a fast one — that I could just add three players and say “look, if you want, there’s co-op play!”

Initially, I tried to ignore the nagging reminders that it wasn’t going to be that easy. Sure, the single player levels were fun for co-op, but some levels that would be great for co-op wouldn’t work for single player, and vice versa. Trying to design levels that worked well for one to four players wasn’t easy.

It also bothered me that the entire co-op campaign could be defeated with a single player, while players two to four sat idly by. I told myself this was a “feature”, because players of different skills could play together without the tension, but this felt hollow as time went on. I wanted players to need each other and affect one another, thereby creating a stronger connection.

The final straw was when I decided to go back to targeting a more core audience. The game started as a core game, targeting gamers that would enjoy a challenge in both puzzle and dexterity. As time went on, and the casual marketplace opened up, I got scarred and started making decisions that would be inclusive of as many player types as possible, therefore skewing more casual-friendly.

Eventually, this just didn’t feel right. I knew how I originally intended the game to be played, and didn’t want to alter that experience, so I abandoned the casual slant and returned to my original core target demographic. This removed my need to support players of very disparate abilities and required at least two of the players to be fairly core players.

Why Make 54 Levels When You Can Make 108?

The decision to make co-op in the game a first class citizen was a difficult one, but one I’m very happy with. We’re an extremely small team, and this meant doubling the number of levels I would have to design, as well as adding co-op specific features to the game, such as barriers, to force cooperation and roles awarded at the end of each level.

In a way, this made my life easier. Being able to assume at least two players in co-op levels, and only one in single player levels made the level designs much more interesting and fun to create.

This also, however, doubled my informal playtest sessions. To make matters worse, I did not have an office full of employees to test the co-op levels.

The only thing that made co-op possible was being in the IGN Indie Open House, where people like David Rosen (Wolfire Games), Alex Austin (Cryptic Sea), and Justin Woodward (Interabang Entertainment) took time out of their days to run through levels so I could see what worked and what didn’t.

We also had lots of other San Francisco Bay Area indies in, all of whom helped me time and time again by playing countless levels. Last but not least were our preorder customers, some of whom were willing to play some of the final levels of the game early to give feedback.

These levels had an even smaller number of playtesters due to their difficulty, and the requirement of having played the previous 40 or so levels to learn all the mechanics.

Being a Good Spouse to Your Players

Watching people play your game is imperative in game design. What’s “fun” is simply too complex to not iterate. Listening to feedback is similar, in that you can understand how the player perceives the game and possible problem areas.

This is, of course, a double-edged sword. I don’t know that a game designed by committee would result in a great game, because sometimes you have to trust that you have a better holistic understanding of your game. For example, while the player may feel frustration due to a feature, that frustration can be good in the long run if used correctly.

In A Virus Named Tom, time and again in early playtests, players were frustrated by inter-player collisions. They told me that it was simply frustrating to try to solve a puzzle and avoid drones when you got in one another’s way. The almost universal suggestion I got for this was to allow players to pass through one another.

Being a game designer is like being in a marriage with your players; you have to listen to everything they say, then pick your battles, and have a good reason for each one you choose to fight. This is a battle I picked. For me, not having player collisions is like turning off friendly fire in a FPS. I made this game cooperative so you would affect one another, for better or worse, warts and all. If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, you have to learn how to work together, like a well-oiled machine.

Allowing players to pass through one another is a step in the wrong direction. It takes the game one step closer to everyone playing the game as an individual, because it mens players don’t have to consider one another in their movement, which is arguably half of the gameplay in A Virus Named Tom. The added difficulty forces the players to work together, and they usually become a much more efficient unit because of it. They have to communicate — imagine that!

Not only that, but there’s the very real component of griefing! Like friendly fire, half the fun of being able to affect other players is screwing them over, even when it hurts the team, because it’s fun! This is why 90 percent of the time my brother and I start an FPS together, one of the first things that happens is one of us will shoot the other. It’s just fun!

In the beginning, our collisions simply weren’t fun enough. In the early version of A Virus Named Tom, we hadn’t put the feedback and emotion into the collision that we have now. We now have a sound, the TOMs bounce off each other, and the TOM that was hit looks really annoyed and curses (in garbled virus-speak) at the other TOM. This addition alone made collisions more enjoyable, and encouraged that sort of griefing.

When players see this they tend to continue to “annoy” their fellow TOMs this way and laugh out loud! We then continued down our dark path by adding a role award for this, and an achievement for bouncing a teammate back into harm’s way, killing them. There’s plenty of room for deviant behavior in cooperation, and after all, you are a virus.

Experience Trumps Intuition

Intuition left unchecked is arrogant guessing. Intuition is useful to find a starting place, but don’t ever fool yourself into believing that you understand anything you haven’t seen in action.

My intuition told me the following about cooperative puzzle levels:

* I should avoid complex puzzles, as they require a lot of deep thinking, which is best for single player levels

* The levels should be larger to avoid too many unintended player collisions

* Multiple sources and paths would be best to allow for multiple sub-puzzles to solve

* Avoid the combination of difficult puzzles with lots of drones

What I found:

Two out of four ain’t bad. Larger boards and multiple sources did help the levels become more enjoyable, but shying away from very difficult puzzles or dexterity did not. Just as in single player, conflict and struggle ties the group together. Players break into roles, talk through complex puzzles, and high five fiercely upon completion.

The key, just as in single player, is to vary up just how much puzzle and how much dexterity were in each level, so that players who enjoyed one over the other would never be more than a level or two away from a level they liked, and generally the pacing kept things interesting.

What else I found:

Busy work is good for co-op, not so much for single player. What I mean by this is that when playing cooperatively, having a board full of lots of pieces that need to be turned is kind of fun. Seeing how quickly a circuit can be re-configured when pooling resources is pretty cool. When playing single player, it simply feels like busy work, since no one else is whistling with you while you work.

You can have harder levels in co-op. Initially the levels in co-op and single player were the same, and therefore the benefit to bringing a friend is that you can solve the levels faster with more minds/thumbs. However, when I decided to have entirely separate levels for co-op, I noticed that not only did you have more minds, but a greater chance of one of the team members saying “one more time” on a particularly difficult level.

The progression through that level felt faster as well, because there was less of a chance of getting stuck down one rabbit hole, since each mind on the team worked differently. Ultimately, I made those levels more difficult because I felt that I could, and I’m a bastard like that.

Know Your Role

When I first watched groups of people play the game, it became clear that everyone couldn’t be the puzzle solver. Nowhere was this more evident than in the first level. I originally had the same levels for both single player and multiplayer, and the first level was a simple straight line with one circuit piece turned the wrong way. Every player would rush toward the piece to turn and collide with one another.

While it was absolutely hilarious to watch the TOMs all bounce off one another, get their angry face on, and curse at one another, it was clear that that would only be amusing for a few levels. Eventually I needed to solve the problem of everyone trying to solve the lead edge of the infection by turning the next piece.

One of the ways we did this was with roles. I momentarily debated giving different TOMs different abilities, like classes. I didn’t like this, because I’d be asking people to choose a class based off no prior knowledge (In an FPS, you’d have context for what a sniper character would be, but there weren’t many class-based puzzle games), and I also wanted people to be able to dynamically shift their roles based on the need. So what we did was give all of the TOMs various skills, and then put players in a pressure cooker, where they couldn’t win if they all did the same thing.

I also believe in attacking a problem in multiple ways, so in addition to making it necessary for players to take on various roles, we added what we called a “role results screen” where players got awards for being the best or worst at a particular role. This not only underscored the idea for players to take on different roles, but added a slice of competition, and even some mocking for players that weren’t pulling their weight. We tried to make the award icons a bit ridiculous to keep it fun, and none of the stats held over from level to level. I believe players are ultimately social, and sometimes all you need to do is give them something to banter about.

Local Co-Op in a PC World

One thing I worried a lot about was making a local co-op game for PC. Admittedly, when we started A Virus Named Tom, the core target was console and couch play. When we realized we didn’t have the money for online play I knew that, despite being a 10 dollar game, we were going to get a lot of grief for asking PC gamers to crowd around their monitors.

While this is true to an extent, the number of players that share my love of couch co-op surprised me. Each year it gets easier and easier to plug your computer into a TV, and connect some game pads. Sitting next to your fellow player is something amazing, and sometimes you forget what that’s like. While I understand for many it may not be an option, for those that can, I think we need to support games that make this part of their design by voicing our approval. I know I appreciate all those that have done so for A Virus Named Tom.

Worth the Pain?

While making co-op a first class citizen in A Virus Named Tom was difficult with a small team, I have to say there was nothing nearly as rewarding as watching a group of players taking on the challenge of those cooperative levels. To hear them ribbing one another’s failures, bickering over a solution, laughing over griefing one another, and the elation after a hard fought victory, was nothing short of moving. It’s as if each additional player multiplies my enjoyment of watching the process.

There’s a strong temptation to create a purely single player game for our next title because of the sheer amount of work required by a small team to add legitimate cooperative play, but I honestly don’t know if I can give up that feeling of standing behind a group of players and seeing the genuine interactions you’ve caused. Somewhat infectious, you might say.（Source：gamasutra）