作者：Brandon Sheffield

《QWOP》、《GIRP》以及《CLOP》开发者Bennett Foddy喜欢同玩家一起体验游戏，他建议更多的开发者应采取同种方式。

他在周五的IndieCade大会上的重要谈话中宣称：“我打算说服你们在游戏中添加更多的痛苦元素。”

他表示自己从奥运会上获得的最大感触就是亚军获得者的痛苦。

qwop(from geekosystem.com)

他解释道：“当玩家在电子游戏中取得第二名的成绩时，他们并未因此而哭泣。没有哪位玩家倒头失声痛哭，这是为什么呢？”

他指出：“在田径类的电子游戏中，快速按下某个按钮，或者快速摆动摇杆，就可以控制玩家角色的跑步方式。但这种控制方法却没有任何乐趣，游戏中的趣味存在恐慌之中——即好友看到你因按下按钮而伤害到自己时感到的快乐。”

Foddy表示：“这不仅仅因为游戏玩法相对更加简单。在我看来，当前的游戏让玩家体会到更多的舒适感，游戏中较少存在不快因素。而我担心的不是游戏变得太过容易上手，因为简单的游戏也有可能很精彩。我担心的是游戏变得过于舒适。”

那么，游戏中存在痛苦元素有哪些优势呢？Foddy指出：“当你在游戏中受挫时，它会突显失败的份量。”比如，《反恐精英》中采取的厌烦元素。即如果你在游戏中失败，那么你就必须观看其他玩家继续游戏进程，然而，游戏中更多采用挫败感元素。

Foddy表示：“游戏中的痛苦元素同样可以提升成功的重要性。”如果你能到达终点，你就会越发体会到成功的快感。他指出：“因此，本次谈话如同针对游戏的一封情书，让你体验到地狱般的经历，因为我们享受这种痛苦的过程。”

“通常当我开始设计一款游戏时，我会考虑游戏输入方式的美感。”假使不存在游戏，这种互动性还会有趣吗？Foddy表示：“大多数体育运动都能以此方式进行”，无规则的接球游戏仍然趣味十足。

其中一个例子就是敲击键盘，它存在固有的满足感，而这也是《CLOP》游戏创作的灵感来源，该游戏使用H、J、K和L四个键。

Foddy表示：“我打算设计一款反人类工学的游戏，这对于体验该游戏的玩家而言是一种肢体挑战，你可能会告诉好友：‘我已经玩了3个小时了，我有必要上医院看下。’”

Foddy已经在游戏中研究过痛苦、困惑和憎恶感，目的是让玩家体会到这种感受。

《德军司令部3D》让人感到憎恨，但却未让你从中感觉良好。Foddy表示：“我并未对该游戏感觉良好，因为这并非游戏的重点。我认为你可以制作一款以憎恶感为主的游戏，人们会因此喜欢上它。”

作为赋予玩家羞辱感的一个例子，《格斗之王》提供的是一种命运的历程。“你可能认为游戏的目的是为了愉悦赢家，而我却不这样认为。即使处于输的一方，作为玩家的我仍能享受到其中的乐趣。”

作为开发者，他们开发游戏的最终目的是同玩家一道体验游戏。Foddy指出：“我之所以区分这些不同程度的痛苦，是因为为何沮丧让人感觉良好？为何困惑或羞辱是美好的？我想，原因之一就是它代表着开发者同玩家一同体验游戏进程。”

许多开发者认为游戏中存在困惑是设计上的一个败笔。这意味着开发者是在教你如何保持对游戏的兴趣，而不是同你一起体验。“我认为这是对开发者如何同玩家进行互动的曲解。”

所以在单人游戏中，开发者应充当玩家2的角色。“玩游戏”是大家不要互相残杀的一种共识——但如果你将其完全归结于不要伤害对方，那么游戏就会失去趣味性。Foddy表示：“那是电子游戏版本的夺旗橄榄球比赛。那么我认为你不如去制作真实的足球类电子游戏。”

如果你这样做，Foddy指出：“你就是在同玩家一起体验游戏，而不只是为他们提供一个自娱自乐的游戏场景。”

不用过分担心挫败感和游戏测试。他指出：“也许你不该过分关注人们的看法。我想，如果Marcel Duchamp制作了游戏教程，那他是否会将其添加到游戏中？他不会专注于测试自己的游戏。”

Foddy总结道：“不要削弱整个游戏体验。我想艺术本身就是困难的，我想它应该是痛苦的、令人厌烦的。比起音乐或其它艺术，游戏应该更加困难、更令人厌恶，因为游戏就是更加复杂的机制。所以，电子游戏不应该太轻松。”（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 benefits of making your players suffer (and maybe throw up)

By Brandon Sheffield

Bennett Foddy, creator of QWOP, GIRP, and CLOP among others, likes to play with his players, and he suggests that more of us should be doing the same.

At the top of his talk at IndieCade on Friday, he asserted, “I’m going to try to convince you to put more suffering in your games.”

Learn a lesson from the Olympics, he says – it’s all about the suffering. It’s all about the pathos of second place.

“Nobody cries when they come second in a video game,” he notes. “Nobody lays down and cries. Why not?”

In track and field video games, “The way that you run is to either hammer a button really fast, or waggle a joystick really fast,” he says. “There’s no joy in that, the joy is in the panic – in your friends watching you injure yourself as you hit the button.”

“It’s not just that games are easier – though they are,” he says. “To me it’s that games these days are more comfortable. There’s less discomfort. My worry is not that games are getting too easy, because easy games can be wonderful. My worry is that games are getting too comfortable.”

What’s so good about suffering anyway? “When you’re suffering in a game, it makes failure matter,” he says. Counter-Strike uses boredom. If you fail, you have to just watch everyone else play, but frustration is more widely used.

“It makes success matter if there’s suffering in the game,” Foddy says. If you get to the end, you feel like this huge weight has been lifted. Thus, “this talk is a love letter to games that put you through Hell just for the sake of it,” he says, “because we enjoy the suffering itself.”

“Often when I start designing a game, I start by thinking about the aesthetics of the input,” he says. Would the interaction be fun if there were no game? “Most sports pass that test,” he says, noting that playing catch is fun even without rules.

One example is drumming your fingers on the keyboard – it’s sort of inherently satisfying – and that became the inspiration for CLOP, which uses the H, J, K, and L keys.

“I’d like to have an anti-ergonomic game where it’s physically challenging to play the game, and you could say to your friends ‘I played for three hours, and I had to go to the hospital,’” he said.

Foddy has been researching pain, confusion, and nausea in games, to make games that give players those sorts of feelings.

Wolfenstein 3D makes people nauseous, but it doesn’t make you feel good. “The reason I don’t feel good about it is that it’s not the point of the game,” he says. “I think you could make a game where nausea is the point of the game, and people would enjoy it.”

Motal Kombat gives you Fatalities, as an example of humiliation. “You might think that’s for the pleasure of the winner, but I don’t think that’s right,” he says. “The computer does it as well.

I’m supposed to be enjoying it as a player, even on the losing end.”

Ultimately it’s all about playing with the player, as a developer. “The reason I’m cataloging these various dimensions of suffering, is why would frustration feel good? Why would confusion or humiliation be nice?” he posed. “I think one reason is it represents the developer playing with the player.”

The idea among many developers is that confusion is an engineering failure. This means developer is teaching you how to stay interested in the game, rather than playing with you. “To me that’s a warped way to look at the interaction between the developer and the player.”

So in a single player game, the developer should be player 2. “Playing” is just an agreement that you won’t kill each other – if you take it down to completely not hurting each other, it loses its teeth. “That’s the flag football of video games,” says Foddy. “I think you should make the real football of videogames.”

If you do this, he says “you’re playing with the player, rather than providing an environment for players to play with themselves.”

Don’t worry too much about frustration, and playtesting. “Maybe you shouldn’t care so much about what people will think,” he posed. “I wonder if Marcel Duchamp would’ve put a tutorial into his video games, if he made them? He wouldn’t have focus tested his games.”

“Don’t water down your games. I think art should be difficult, I think it should be painful, it should be nauseating,” he says. “It should be more difficult, more nauseating than music or other art because it’s more complex,” he concluded. “Don’t make the easy listening of video games.”(source:gamasutra)