作者：Austin Ivansmith

我爱3DS，这种喜爱已超出我的想象。《塞尔达传说：时之笛》、《超级马里奥3D大陆》和《Mighty Switch Force》这类游戏如果加上3D模式，那效果肯定绝佳。现在弹出的精美图像给人带来了一种全新的感觉。然而，《新超级马里奥兄弟2》（以下简称NSMB2）传送的清晰且多彩的图片，再加上3D效果时却会显得画面唐突。

NSMB2(from gengame.net)

如果你还未见过3D版的NSMB2，你有必要向好友借下，或者在商店的电脑亭上观看。无论如何你都要看下！这款游戏的机制——当你滑动屏幕上方的3D滚动条时，目标会在视线内水平移动，从而产生同其它游戏一样的3D效果。但与此同时，游戏中的背景物体却会层层堆积产生模糊效果，这种效果会随着滚动条的推远逐渐加重。再次重申，游戏区域后的每个目标都变得模糊，你追求的3D模式越多，背景模糊性也就越高。

这是我在任何3DS游戏上都未曾见过的“新功能”。在这款游戏问世之前，每款游戏都是简单地水平转换物体以产生3D效果，而对我们这些能看到并享受3D效果的用户来看，该游戏的这种新特效真是很糟糕。虽然我的论断听起来很主观，但我也曾向其他人展示这一功能时，他们看到时也产生了困惑并且只好关掉3D效果，只有一位任天堂的铁杆粉丝支持了这一功能，并称呼其为不错的创意。

从功能角度亦或是美学角度上说，模糊效果根本就是一大瑕疵。它简直会让背景目标失去具体细节，你的视线也无法感受到背景对象的3D效果。一些隐藏在游戏区域后的目标会在加入3D效果时弹出视野，在高度模糊的远距离背景前，图像显得越发遥远，不同深度的物体所存在的微妙性也完全丧失。最终，你只会发现，在未打开3D效果时，整个游戏画面非常清晰，然而这一特定设备的这个关键功能却完全将精美画面涂抹成了一团混沌。

作为3DS游戏的开发者，我想应该有人会认同这一观点。然而，针对“天下没有所谓的糟糕想法”这句话，我相信它可以补充成“……但是如果要让这个理念成型，一定要确保不要把它搞砸。”

我很惊讶这个功能竟然会问世。我不知道这是否是个“东西方文化有别”的情况，但是我相信我们开发团队中的许多人在看到此项功能时会说：“这压根不起作用”或“你怎么会傻到设置这种功能？”（其他人可能会和同事吃午餐时对它表示怜悯，但是当不只一个人在抱怨同件事时，大家可能就会找管理层去修补或解决这个问题）。我鼓励这种开放式的讨论，但我又怀疑日本开发者和发行商对于这类事情是否通常是自己说了算，因为我相信在开发过程中还是有些人并不喜欢这种功能。

同时，这一功能模糊效果的强烈程度也很让我震惊。这让我想起了1999年我购买第一台电脑，当时使用Adobe Photoshop 5.0的副本。在第一个周时，我连续三天熬夜至清晨6点，只是为了摆弄过滤器来制造整洁的画面（有时我回过头来看时，我发现作品总是需要进行镜头光晕处理）。这里的暗示再明白不过了：你是在为展示效果而制作效果。NSMB2的模糊效果感觉更像是一种技术演示，而不是用于欣赏或展示的功能，我真的认为它应该还处于演示阶段。

但我这种事情并不十分让我意外，因为在研究其它游戏前我已见识过类似事件（我相信其他开发人员也经历过）。凡是有些影响力的人都会有不错的想法，而且特别想看到它在游戏中实现。我可以想象这类开发会议是这样进行的：

“难道你不觉得添加模糊性很酷吗？”

“嘿，伙计，你得确保添加模糊性。”

“嘿，我喜欢那种模糊效果。”

“我听到你说的话了，但是我确实喜欢模糊效果。”

“告诉测试师别再发送关于模糊化的bug。”

“别再提出这一问题了，我们的beta测试已经进行两周了。我才是老板，我喜欢模糊化。保留那种模糊性吧。”

电影和摄影行业中也常会出现模糊效果，我们也都清楚模糊的工作原理：向某一事物对焦，后面或前面的事物就会变得模糊。模糊效果可以帮助辨别近景和背景事物，甚至Penny-Arcade也为引人注目而不停地使用这一手法。但是3D画面仅需启动3D模式突显深度，那样你就不会对玩家的位置、背景事物和近景事物感到困惑。

bluring(from gamasutra)

令我沮丧的是，3DS主机的重点就在3D效果上，从它的名称就可以看出这一点。其它设备并无此功能。而这种模糊效果却破坏了这一系统独特且强大的3D功能。并且还是任天堂本身，而不是第三方开发者出了这桩事。这就像是特斯拉汽车公司推出了一款柴油引擎汽车。或者苹果将56K调制解调器置入iPhone中。又或像是Smith & Wesson为执法而贩卖黑火药步枪。这完全有悖于突出产品特性的做法。

我认为任天堂做的这些事，会向用户透露至少一种信息：1）“有些人很难体验到3D效果，所以我们加入的模糊性可以让3D效果更加明显”，这是在为其设备的关键性能而打自己的脸；或者2）“我们觉得当前3D模式所呈现的效果并不足以让用户欣赏到出色的游戏画面。”

我真心希望这是我最后一次看到3DS游戏中存在这种模糊效果。（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）

Super Mario Bros. 2′s Blur Effect – A Mistake?

by Austin Ivansmith

Hey Nintendo. I’ve got something to say.

Yesterday I received my brand spanking new copy of New Super Mario Bros. 2 for my Nintendo 3DS. I literally have not been following it in the news, knew nothing about any premise or setups, and chose to be pleasantly surprised by whatever the game had to offer. But I didn’t think one tiny iota that I would be disappointed right off the bat with a new graphical feature.

As a person with a strong opinion on a number of things, I have been known to throw my weight around and open my mouth when I probably shouldn’t. Now that I am in my thirties I generally find myself a lot more forgiving of artistic decisions than I was in my teens or twenties. So for me, this is a big, rant-worthy one and I promise it doesn’t come from a fanboy “You ruined my favorite game brand” perspective.

I love my 3DS. I love it more than I thought I would. Games like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 3D Land, and Mighty Switch Force! (shameless self-plug) look great when turning on the 3D mode. The already great graphics pop out and have a whole new feel. But New Super Mario Bros. 2, a game which delivers clean and colorful graphics, simply looks awful when 3D is turned on.

If you haven’t seen NSMB2 in 3D, you need to. Rent it, borrow it from a friend, see it in a store kiosk.  Whatever you do, see it! The mechanics of it are: as you slide the 3D slider on the top screen the objects “slide” horizontally in each eye to create the 3d effect, much the same as any other game. But in addition to this, the game is layering a blur effect on every background object being translated into 3d which gets stronger as the slider is pushed further. To reiterate, every object behind the playfield is being blurred, and the more 3d you want, the more blurry it gets.

This is a “feature” new to any game on the 3DS (to my knowledge). Up until this release every game has simply translated objects horizontally to enable the 3D effect, and for those of us who can see the 3D effect, and enjoy the 3D, this new effect is horrible. It sounds so subjective, but I have shown this to many people who are confused and turned off by the effect, and the only remote support was a Nintendo fanboy who was mostly playing devil’s advocate calling it a neat idea.

The blur effect is fundamentally flawed from a functional standpoint as well as an aesthetic one. It literally makes the objects in the background lose enough detail that your eyes can’t see the 3D on the background objects. Some playfield objects and those just behind the playfield begin to pop out in 3D, and feel far in front of the hot blurry mess in the far background, but the subtleties of items existing at different depths is completely lost. Ultimately what you are left with is a game which looks great in screenshots, and without the 3D turned on, but the very key feature of this specific console completely obliterates the great graphics into a blurry mess.

As a developer who has worked on the 3DS, I can see where someone would get this idea. And as the phrase goes “There is no such thing as a bad idea”, but I am sure there is a quote out there that finishes it out with something along the lines of “…but if that idea comes to fruition make sure it doesn’t suck.”

I am surprised this feature saw its way to release for a number of reasons. I do not know if this is an “East vs. West” kind of situation, but I know many people on any of my dev teams would see this in action and say “This doesn’t work very well” or “This sucks, you’re an idiot for wanting this.” (And others may simply commiserate while out at lunch with coworkers, but when more than one person complains about the same thing it usually finds its way back to management to try to be fixed or addressed.) I welcome this kind of an open discourse, but wonder if employees at a Japanese developer and publisher keep these kinds of things to themselves more often, because I have to believe some people didn’t like this during the course of development.

I am also surprised by how strong the blur effect really is. It reminds me of when I bought my first computer in 1999 and had a copy of Adobe Photoshop 5.0. The first weekend I had the thing I stayed up until six in the morning for three straight days just fiddling with filters and creating neat art (which I look back on at times, and find the art to be riddled with lens flares.) There was never a hint of subtlety: you did an effect to showcase the effect. The NSMB2 blur effect feels like more of a tech demo than a feature to be praised or showcased, and I really feel it should have stayed in the demo stage.

But a part of me is not surprised to see this thing out there because I have seen this kind of thing before on other games I’ve worked on (as I am sure many other devs have as well). Someone with some clout had a neat idea and really, really wanted to see it in the game. I can imagine meetings over the course of development going:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a blur?”

“Hey guys, make sure you get that blur in.”

“Hey, it’s that blur, I love it.”

“I hear what you are saying, but I really like the blur.”

“Tell the testers to stop sending bugs about the blur.”

“Stop bringing this up, we are 2 weeks from beta. I’m the boss and I like it. The blur stays.”

Blur occurs in films and photography, and we have all seen how blur works: focus on one object, things behind or in front get blurry. The blur helps to distinguish between foreground and background objects, and even Penny-Arcade started using this from time to time for dramatic purposes. But in 3D simply turning the 3D mode on makes the depth distinct, and you don’t get confused about the location of the player and what exists in the background and what exists in the foreground.

The thing that frustrates me the most is that the whole point of the 3DS console is the 3D effect. No other device is doing it. It’s in the name. I am stating the obvious so hard it is hurting my fingers typing it. This blur effect ruins the very feature that makes your system unique and wonderful.  This is Nintendo making this happen, not a third party developer. This would be like Tesla Motors releasing a diesel engine vehicle. This would be like Apple putting a 56k modem on their iPhone. It would be like Smith & Wesson selling a black powder musket for law enforcement. It is counter to the very thing that makes their product a unique standout.

Nintendo, by doing this you are saying one of two things to consumers. 1) “Some people have a hard time with 3D so we are turning on this blur to make 3D easier to see”, which is essentially apologizing for the key feature of your best device currently on the market. Or 2) “We don’t feel the 3D effect is important enough for our customers to keep the game looking good when 3D mode is turned on.”

Every game developer should see this for themselves and come to their own conclusion. I for one genuinely hope this is the last time I ever see this effect in a 3DS title.（source:gamaustra）