作者：Jamie Madigan

最近我一直在玩《Trials Evolution》，而在面对每一轮比赛时我的脑中总会萌生出一个问题，即这款游戏是如何诱发玩家产生竞争心理。《Trials Evolution》是一款突出物理元素的横向卷轴摩托车游戏。

玩家可以通过操纵控制器去启动摩托车的油门和刹车，但是真正的诀窍还是使用左手的大拇指去控制驾驶员向前或向后倾斜。冲力和汽油量将决定你的摩托车是否会翻车并输掉游戏；或者更准确的说是决定你何时会被淘汰。因为当你输掉了游戏后，你有可能会两次，三次，甚至是上百次重新回到游戏中。这便是这款游戏的特色。

trials-evolution(from redlynx.com)

在众多游戏元素中，《Trials Evolution》开发商RedLyne特别突出了社交竞争元素。游戏中设有排行榜单，明确地标注着玩家间的较量，并且开发者似乎更希望玩家能够选择与好友或认识的人而不是陌生人进行竞争。

这是著名的“社会比较理论”（心理学）中一大重要组成部分。最先提出这一理论的是社会心理学家Leon Festinger（1954年提出的），在这之后又有许多人进一步扩展并深入阐述了这一理论，但是不管怎样其要旨还是关于人类总是希望能够获得与自己相关的信息，而如果不能获得这些信息我们也只能退而求其次去与其他人进行比较。

但却不是随便的任何人。研究人员所明确的一项内容是，人类更喜欢与小群组的人进行比较——也就是所谓的“frog pond”效应（应该是根据Antonio Frog教授及其在美国康乃迪克州所创造的越野赛车游戏而命名）。并且，我们总是喜欢与那些我们所熟悉的小群组的人进行比较，因为这种比较更有意义且能够带给我们更多信息。这也是为何开发者会在《Trials Evolution》的排行榜中默认地显示玩家在Xbox Live中好友列表的主要原因。

玩家并不需要到达终点线才知晓自己的成绩。当你进行每一轮比赛时，好友的赛况都将以点状的形式散布在比赛道上。这种方法非常有效——比起呈现“xxXTrialzd00d42Xxx”（世界记录保持者）所在的点好多了。因为他只会在你的屏幕右侧边缘占个位置，而不可能提供任何有意义的比较信息。

重要的是我们还可以深入挖掘更多原理，因为从心理角度来看，排行榜上两个靠近的排名并不意味着他们双方的距离就很接近。举个例子来说吧，当我注意到自己拍在最后一位或者是第二位时，我便会更加努力地去缩短时间以争取攀上排行榜的最高位置。

Stephen Garcia，Avishalom Tor以及Richard Gonzalez于2006年在美国期刊杂志《Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin》上发表的一篇文章便对此做出了解释。他们指出我们的向上比较倾向取决于一个有意义的标准，也就是最高点的位置。但同时也存在着其它标准，如最低点的位置。除此之外，当我们越靠近这些标准，彼此双方的社交比较也将越加强烈，从而导致我们更倾向于竞争而不是合作。

为了测试这一理论，研究人员展开了一系列8项研究，让研究对象扮演企业经理，慈善家，扑克玩家或摇滚歌星等角色。为了测试理论中所包含的各种元素并排除其它可能的解释，研究人员在研究过程中变换了各种细节要素，但是不管怎样他们都让研究对象有机会与别人进行合作或竞争。如果一方选择了合作，他们便能获得比竞争更有利的优势，但是同时他们的对手却能够获益更多并登上排行榜之首。让我们看看其中一个小组所获得的指示：

假设你正在与500名玩家一起挑战为期1天的扑克竞赛。在最后一轮中，你将决定是否与对手进行合作。策略A：如果你选择独自比赛，你和对手的比赛收入都将提高5%。策略B：如果你选择与对方合作，那么你的收入将提高10%，但是与此同时对手的收入却将提高25%。

如果研究对象在比赛中排在第3名，而其对手排在第4名时，他将选择哪种策略？而如果他的排名是第6名而对手是第7名情况又是怎样？还或者他是第24名而对手是第25名？

Trials-leaderboard(from xblafans.com)

结果表明，当人们更加接近有意义的标准，如扑克玩家的最高排名或作为公司CEO在财富500强名单中的前列，他们便更愿意选择竞争。尽管按照绝对值估算，合作能够为他们挣得更多收益。有趣的是，为了避开排行榜的底端，玩家都会表现出同样的非理性行为。就像在《Trials Evolution》中，当我排在排行榜单的第二位（而不是第5位或第8位）时，我更有可能去撞击“Physics Factory”赛道的砖墙。

如果游戏开发者的目标是激发玩家的竞争性或创造出更有意义的合作选择，他们便可以利用这种原理。像《Trials Evolution》游戏中这种精心设计的排行榜便是一个很好的开始，但是如果开发者希望游戏能够获得进一步的发展，他们便需要在玩家的前进跑道上设置额外的目标，从而让玩家不会只关注于第一位和最后一位。例如跨越阀值而获得总分数中的四成分值便是一大典例，或者添加像“火箭发射装置的破坏力度”等指标也非常有效。更重要的是，如果你能够提醒玩家他们即将逼近好友所创造的最高值，他们便会鼓足100%的动力去追赶对手。

游戏必须能够推动玩家间进行这种社交比较，特别是当玩家正处于最高点或最低点时。如此将带给玩家更多引以为傲，或者是引以为耻的内容。（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）

How Trials Evolution makes your brain crave competition

by Jamie Madigan

I’ve been playing a lot of Trials Evolution lately and this question kept occurring to me as the results of my run at each track came up. For those of you unfamiliar, Trials Evolution is a (mostly) side-scrolling, motorcycle driving game with a heavy emphasis on physics.

Your controller triggers map to the bike’s throttle and brakes, but the real trick is using your left thumb stick to control how far your little driver dude leans forward or back. This, along with your momentum and how much gas you give it, will determine if you crash and eat it. Or rather, when you eat it. Because not only are you going to eat it, you’re going to go back for seconds, thirds, and a hundred and fifths. It’s that kind of game, and it’s awesome.

Among the several things that the game’s developer, RedLynx, really nails with Trials Evolution is the social competition aspect. The game is replete with leaderboards and indications of how well you’re competing against others, and one insight the developers seemed to have was that it’s more meaningful to compete against our friends and people we know instead of strangers.

This is one of the tenants of what’s known in psychology as “Social Comparison Theory.” First proposed by social psychologist Leon Festinger back in 1954, the theory has since been elaborated upon and expanded, but the gist is that we like information about our performance, and if we can’t get that information directly we’ll compare ourselves against other people to get the next best thing.

But not just any other people. One thing that researchers have determined pretty clearly is that we prefer to compare ourselves against smaller groups of people — the so called “frog pond” effect named, I think, after Dr. Antonio Frog and his work with motocross racers at of the University of Pond, Connecticut. Even better, we like to compare ourselves to smaller groups of people we know, because those comparisons are more meaningful and give us more information. This is why Trials Evolution is smart to show leaderboards consisting of people on our Xbox Live friends list by default.

But you don’t have to wait until the finish line to compare your performance. Each time you run a track the game shows you where your friends were on their best run by moving a little dot with their gamer tag attached along the track with you. It’s amazingly effective — much more so than showing you a dot belonging to “xxXTrialzd00d42Xxx,” the world record holder for that track. Because he’d simply zip off past the right edge of your screen and not offer any kind of meaningful comparison.

So good job, Trials Evolution people. The thing is, though, that we can drill down even further because two neighboring leaderboard rankings are not always equidistant from each other, psychologically speaking. For example, I kept noticing that I was much more likely to try and shave off a few seconds and creep up a notch on the leaderboards if I was in either last place or second place.

A 2006 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin article by Stephen Garcia, Avishalom Tor, and Richard Gonzalez explains why. They posited that our upward comparisons are predicated on the existence of a meaningful standard — the top. But other standards — the bottom — could exist as well. Furthermore, the closer we get to those standards, the more the social comparisons to others near them matter, and we are more inclined towards competition and less inclined towards cooperation with those in our way.

To test their theory, the researchers ran a series of 8 studies where subjects were asked to role-play the parts of business executives, philanthropists, poker players, or rock stars. The details varied a bit across studies in order to test various aspects of their theory and rule out alternative explanations, but in general they presented subjects with a chance to either cooperate or compete with a rival. If they choose to cooperate, they might benefit more than if they competed, but the rival would benefit more and come out on top in the rankings. For example, here’s the instructions that one group got:

Imagine that you are playing in a 1-day poker tournament with 500 players. For the final round, you are deciding whether or not to team up with one of your rivals. Strategy A: If you play solo, your tournament earnings will increase by 5% and your rival’s by 5%. OR, Strategy B: If you play as a team, your tournament earnings will increase by 10% and your rival’s by 25%.

Subjects were then asked what strategy they would pursue if they were ranked #3 in the tournament and their rival were ranked #4. What about if they were #6 and the rival was #7? #24 vs. #25?

The consistent finding across these studies was that people were more likely to compete when they were closer to a meaningful standard like being the top ranked poker player or being the CEO of a company ranked high on the Fortune 500 list. This despite the fact that cooperating would earn them more money in absolute terms. Interestingly, players exhibited the same irrational behavior in order to avoid being ranked too close to the bottom of the charts. Just like I would throw myself against the brick wall of the “Physics Factory” track in Trials when in second place on my local leaderboards –much more so than if I were in fifth or eighth.

Game developers could hack this phenomenon into their design if their goal is to inspire competition or make the choice to cooperate more meaningful. More finely diced leaderboards like what Trials offers is a good start, but to take things further they could plant additional goal posts along our paths so that it’s not just first or last place that we focus on. Crossing thresholds to be in the top quartile of overall scores would be one example, but I suspect that even just adding weird metrics like “Amount of damage done with the rocket launcher” or “Number of bunnies irradiated” would have some effect. And, above all, calling out to the player the fact that you’re so close to hitting one of those milestones relative to a friend should cause them to grit their teeth and buckle down.

Games should be facilitating these social comparisons when they’re most meaningful, like when players are on the cusp of stardom or at the brink of ignominy. And for good measure, carve out some more things for us to be proud or ashamed of.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to beat my friend Tungholio’s score on Gigatrack.(source:GAMASUTRA)