作者：Leigh Alexander

10年前，Raph Koster在奥斯丁的GDC大会上做了题为《A Theory of Fun》的演讲，该书后来被多次出版印刷，现在每年仍能售出4000册，算得上史上最畅销的游戏书籍之一。

那时，MMO游戏开发元老Koster刚完成《Star Wars: Galaxies》，但玩家反馈该游戏并不十分有趣。Koster不知该游戏是否缺乏趣味元素，并决心着手研究心理学与认知科学（游戏邦注：Koster的同事Dave Rickey和Noah Falstein也是该领域的研究者），探索玩与乐趣的本质。

theory Of Fun(from gdconline)

科学指出人类在现实中常会无意识地进行模仿。诸如养育这些行为是我们生来就有的，而其它行为则需后天学习。随着时间的推移，对人类和动物而言，玩游戏变为一种重要的学习与练习工具，他们通过一起玩耍掌握基本的生存技能。

Koster表示：“如果你曾经看到小孩第一次学习走路，你会看到他们脸上洋溢的快乐：这种行为太有趣了。他们感觉自己像在玩游戏。”大脑会在从事有趣学习时分泌内啡肽，而《A Theory of Fun》核心内容中的基本概念探索人类的自然模式与系统，以便找到人们发现游戏具有吸引力的自然原因。

有些理论家将“游戏”与“玩”区分开，他们认为，游戏一般受到规则束缚，而玩则是无组织的自发行为，但是《A Theory of Fun》中的部分内容驳斥了这一观点。Koster指出：“你参加茶会，这也是一个学习系统。”

他继续指出：“如果你正在玩警察抓小偷、角色扮演或玩具，那么该系统包含的规则会多于《Candy Land》。其中的规则只会更多，不会更少……游戏通常涉及微不足道、具有约束性而且微小，用笔就可以记录下来的规则集。”

任何系统均接近游戏模式，由于游戏是根据更改我们大脑思维的学习系统而有意创造的内容，因此我们可以将游戏视为重塑人类大脑思维的一种艺术形式。Koster建议：“我们既然有能力这样做，那我们必须接手这个任务……实际上我们正着手研究直接的大脑控制领域。”

Koster最感兴趣的乐趣类型与流状态或快乐这种愉悦状态完全不同：“艺术具有挑战性，这是我们必须从事的工作。它很美好很快乐……它并非来自意外时刻。它让人快乐，但并非我们所说的‘乐趣’。”

Koster发现，乐趣非常依赖神经递质多巴胺的刺激作用。他解释道：“多巴胺是一种兴奋物质，它可以提高学习激情与记忆力。它与预测奖励结果有关，而这正是我们玩游戏时所追求的目标。它是大脑的指导信号。

当处于意外情境时，它也能发挥作用，激励你解决问题。同时，它能够缓解抑郁情绪。”

也就是说，多巴胺与知识的渴望程度有关。Koster提出：“也许乐趣不是‘学习’，而是‘对生活的好奇’。”

除乐趣以外，人们基于多种其它原因进行娱乐活动：专注于沉思、探索故事情节、获得舒适感，或者赢得比赛。以上均为玩游戏的正当理由，但与Koster的乐趣理论无关。

Koster提议：“许多人讨厌我们将游戏活动转变为机械模式。我不愿谈及这个观点，但在过去十年，如果出现越多这类科学理论，我们就越能证实这一情况。越来越多的论据显示，我们实际上可通过游戏学习重要而困难的内容，玩家更易通过游戏而学习，游戏确实具有治疗功效……这已经成为现实”。

现在就产生了关于“游戏”一词的有趣问题。抽象游戏仅充满挑战，而艺术游戏却不包含任何挑战成分，但是它们都统称为“游戏”。那么这有什么意义？Koster表示，游戏设计意味着创造系统，而不是创造视觉或创意元素。

他指出：“每款游戏都会首先以一个问题开场——比如，设置下棋桌，这就涉及到拓扑学的问题；要从盾牌后还是场景后射击太空入侵者是不同的问题……也是核心机制。游戏应告知玩家该如何行动。”

以《传送门》为例；你可以在宏观层面上获得整个游戏的胜利，也可以从较小水平上完胜某一回合，所有这些结果可归功于枪支的准确定位以及对游戏规则的理解。这种“微观”视角有助于解释说明游戏表层与实质的差距。

当然，不少设计师以更加精密的方式梳理游戏理论。在Koster的理论之外，Dan Cook在《Chemistry of Game Design》中提出“技能原子”理论；Ben Cousins测量了一系列在游戏间转移所需耗损的时间，并发现最佳时间。设计师们严密地研究游戏，定义自己的游戏科学，并列出图表加以解释。

可是，什么是游戏核心的黑盒子？Koster指出，游戏中只存在四个核心机制，理论上可归结为：试探性地解决问题，了解其它用户及社会关系，掌控自己的肢体状况，通过估算可能性来探索人类的天然困境。

游戏的核心完全取决于数学——但对于在诗歌领域取得硕士学位的Koster而言，他难以接受这个观点：“我觉得，数学确实难以表达所有事物。你要如何编写有关桃子口味的游戏呢？或如何表述一些妙不可言的事情？”

然而，许多艺术游戏（游戏邦注：比如Rod Humble的《The Marriage》和Jason Rohrer的《Passage》）都是《A Theory of Fun》的直接衍生物。Koster认为具有通俗性的娱乐形式位于某个极端，而具有学识要求的艺术则处于另一个极端。

娱乐具有保守性和熟悉感，而艺术却是我们无法理解的风险性与挑战性模式。这强化了一个观点，即情景喜剧有助我们规范社会行为，理解文化的表达方式。娱乐能提供模式识别的快感。但艺术具有挑战性，并且提供的是需要我们去学习和掌握的新系统。

我们制作的游戏更多趋于表面形式，鲜少包含“黑盒子”机制，游戏演变为按下按钮便可引发一连串事件的机制。Koster表示：“比起游戏机制，我们更容易通过故事和电影模式表达艺术。”那是否意味着像《Dear Esther》这种游戏可称得上真正的游戏呢？

“也许我们正在创作出一种不是‘游戏设计’的全新娱乐方式……我们可能需要一个新的定义，因为游戏设计是一种互动体验，但并非所有互动体验均是游戏设计。这可能类似于‘游戏故事与玩法的融合’，这或许就是为何单向平台游戏与人生意义，殖民主义和MMO可以自然融合的原因。”

Koster表示：“因为整个世界和游戏的发展模式均为如此，所以我将一切事物都视为系统？或者……因为游戏令我首先将所有事物当作系统模式，所以我才会有这种想法？因为我们是有意或者偶然疏忽而设计游戏，所以我们是在改变大脑思维。”

然而，为我们带来最大欢乐的当数游戏本质——社交联系、感恩、慷慨、乐观主义以及追求目标。（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）

Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun, ten years on

By Leigh Alexander

Ten years ago, Raph Koster came to GDC in Austin to give a talk called A Theory of Fun, before it was ever a book that’s fallen in and out of print multiple times — it still sells 4,000 copies a year, which might make it the best-selling game book of all time.

Back then, MMO veteran Koster had just finished Star Wars: Galaxies, and the feedback was it wasn’t particularly fun. Wondering if he’d lost touch with what makes games fun, he decided to look at psychology and cognitive science as his colleagues Dave Rickey and Noah Falstein had been doing, to explore the nature of play and what fun really is.

Science knows humans apply patterns to reality often unconsciously. Some behaviors, like nursing, we’re born with, and others we learn over time. Playing games is a crucial education and practice tool over time not just for humans but for animals, who learn their basic survival behaviors by playing together.

“If you’ve ever seen a kid first learn how to walk, the look of joy on that toddler’s face: It’s fun. They’re playing a game,” suggests Koster. The brain releases endorphins in response to playful learning, and that basic concept is at the core of Koster’s A Theory of Fun, which explores natural human patterns and systems to find what people naturally find compelling about games.

Some theorists separate “games” from “play,” under the presumption that games are highly rule-bound while play is supposedly unstructured nd spontaneous, but part of what A Theory of Fun does was dismiss this idea. “When you’re playing a tea party, it’s just another system for you to learn,” Koster says.

“If you’re playing cops and robbers, or role-playing or making up another game with toys, it’s a system with a lot more rules than Candy Land,” he continues. “It has more rules, not less… games usually deal with small, constrained, tiny little rulesets you can write down. Ever tried to write down a ruleset for physics?”

Any system can be approached as a game, and since games are intentionally created to teach systems that modify the wiring in our brains, games can be viewed as an art form that re-wires people’s brains. “We have the power, and that means we have to be responsibly… we actually get to engage in direct mind-control,” Koster suggests.

The particular types of fun Koster is most interested in differ from flow states or pleasure-states like delight: “Art’s challenging; art we have to work for. Something that’s pretty and delightful… isn’t the unexpected moment. That’s delight, but it isn’t what I would call ‘fun’.”

Koster sees fun as very dependent on the neurotransmitter of reward, dopamine. “Dopamine is really interesting because it specifically enhances learning and memory. Specifically it relates to predicting rewarding outcomes, which funny enough, is a lot of what we play games for,” Koster explains. “It is a teaching signal to the brain. It gets dumped in you when there are unpredictable situations as well, in order to encourage you to solve them. It also decreases inhibition.”

In other words, dopamine is associated with the thirst for knowledge: “Maybe fun isn’t ‘learning,’ it’s ‘being curious about life,’” Koster suggests.

People do play for other reasons besides fun: To focus meditation, to explore a story, to gain comfort instead of fun per se, or for “deadly serious” practice to win a tournament. These are valid reasons to play games but separate from Koster’s theory of fun.

“A lot of people hate the idea that we can reduce all of this to something so mechanical,” suggests Koster. “I hate to say it, but the more science that has come out over the last ten years, the more this entire thing has been validated. There’s more and more evidence to show we do in fact engage in significant, difficult learning with games, that gamers are predisposed toward learning, that games have real therapeutic value… it’s all come true.”

But that creates, now, a funny issue with the word “game.” Abstract games that are nothing but challenge, art games that have no challenge at all, yet all are called “games.” What, then, does that mean? According to Koster, game design means the creation of systems, not any of the visual or created elements.

“Every game consists of being presented with a problem, preparing to start it — setting up the chess table — a topology in which the problem exists, because shooting at a space invader from behind the shield or behind the field is a different problem… and a core mechanic,” says Koster. “Then you get told how you did.”

Look at Portal, for example; there’s the macro-level of beating the game, a smaller level of beating one stage of the game, all the way down to the subtleties of positioning the gun and understanding the game’s grammar. This “atomic” view of games helps explicate and illustrate the gap between what a game is, and the game’s surface (what Clint Hocking refers to as “ludonarrative dissonance”).

Of course, many designers are running over games with a fine-toothed comb. Independently of Koster, Dan Cook came up with “skill atoms” in his Chemistry of Game Design; Ben Cousins measured the amount of time you spend in the air jumping in a wide array of games and found that an optimal time exists. Designers research games closely, define their science, and diagram them.

Yet what is the black box at the core beneath it all? There are only four core mechanics in games, Koster theorizes: Solving problems heuristically. understanding other people and social relationships, mastering your physical relations, and exploiting the natural human difficulty in estimating probability.

At games’ core, they’re entirely about math — but as someone with a Master’s degree in poetry, Koster has a hard time accepting this. “It seems to me that math has real problems expressing a whole bunch of stuff. How do you write a game about the taste of a peach? How do you touch the ineffable?”

Yet so many art games — Rod Humble’s The Marriage and Jason Rohrer’s Passage — were derived directly as responses to A Theory of Fun. Koster sees a spectrum with accessible entertainment at one end, and art that requires literacy at the other.

Entertainment is conservative and familiar, while art is risky, challenging patterns we don’t yet understand. It enforces — sitcoms help us do social norming and understand how our culture works. It provides the delight of pattern recognition. But art is challenging and offers new systems to master (a bit of info you can use if you ever get into a “games as art” debate).

More and more we create games that create lots of surface and very little “black box,” games that become button-presses leading to events, one after the other. “It’s so much easier to express art through story and movie-making than it was through game mechanics,” he says. But does that mean games like Dear Esther are really games?

“It might be we’re creating a new kind of entertainment that isn’t ‘game design’… we might need a new name, because a designed game is an interactive experience, but not all interactive experience are designed to be games. And maybe there’s such a thing as “ludonarrative consonance,” where some associations — like uni-directional platformers and the meaning of life, or colonialism and MMOs — just naturally fit.

“Am I seeing everything as systems because that’s the way the world is and that’s what games are? Or… am I approaching it all this way because games trained me to see everything as systems in the first place?” wonders Koster. “Because we design either through intention or accidentally by omission, we are changing a brain.”

But the things that make us the most happy are the things that games do really well: Social connection, gratitude and generosity, optimism and striving for goals.

In the end, if fun is joy, and the grand pursuit of happiness, that’s enough for Koster. (source:gamasutra)