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如何创造出具有沉浸感的电子游戏

发布时间:2012-10-12 18:02:45 Tags:,,,

作者:Sebastian Alvarado

作为一种传播信息的方法,文本总是能够从某种程度上改变读者的认知(不管他们是否愿意),甚至让读者能够将自己当成场景中角色。文本本身便能够诱发出沉浸感。然而各种多模式媒体(如电子游戏)则会将视觉性内容(也包含文本),音效以及与游戏故事,角色和环境的互动能力(可能是最重要的元素)结合在一起,所以这种媒体总是能够提供更棒的沉浸感。而这也能够进一步激励着电子游戏开发者创造出更具沉浸感的游戏,即随着技术的发展以及用户评判标准的提高,他们身上所担负的重任也随之提高了。

当提到电子游戏区别于其它媒体的沉浸感时,我们还必须注意一些特别的内容,我也希望在深入分析前明确这些内容。它们分别是沉浸感必要性以及沉浸感类型。

沉浸感必要性

我们必须事先声明,电子游戏开发者并不需要优先考虑沉浸感内容,因为并不是每一款游戏都需要体现出沉浸感,我们必须承认的是沉浸感并非所有游戏的固有特征。就像没有人在玩《俄罗斯方块》时会去在意沉浸感,而如果你的游戏必须突显这一特征,你最好向一些专家请教。

实际上,益智游戏通常都不具备沉浸感。但是创造一款不具备沉浸感的游戏并不意味着游戏无法从沉浸感中受益。为了证明这一点,让我们着眼于益智游戏的总体发展趋势——通常情况下益智游戏的故事,角色和环境元素总是与游戏机制没有任何关系,即它们的存在只是用于创造游戏的沉浸感,并且故事元素与游戏间的情感连接也只是简单依附于游戏机制上而已。《战神的挑战》系列游戏的成功便是一大典例。

Puzzle Quest(from blog.lester850.info)

Puzzle Quest(from blog.lester850.info)

从某种原则上看,更优秀的故事也就意味着它更具有沉浸感。实际上,越开放的故事往往具有更深层次的沉浸感,并且更有可能呈献给玩家他们所希望看到的游戏体验。

沉浸感类型

撇开非沉浸感的益智游戏,电子游戏中还存在两种类型的沉浸感,并且其中一种只能存在于电子游戏中。

基于“客观沉浸感”,你便能够效仿游戏(或小说,电视节目等)中的现有角色,尽管这一角色与你具有完全不同的个性,背景和外观。你可以是马里奥,也可以是克雷多斯。你将在过场动画中观察着这些角色在故事中的行为,并且你也会和他们一样对各种事件做出反应,但是不管怎样,角色所具有的外观和行为都是硬性连接着的,你只是间接地在感受这种沉浸感。

基于“主观沉浸感”,你便能够直接融入游戏中;即你的想法,外观(如果你愿意将其反射在游戏中),情感和对于故事事件的行为反应都是发生在故事背景中。这种沉浸感可以用于角色扮演游戏中,即玩家角色不一定与玩家本身相像,但是玩家却可以选择自己想要扮演的角色,并感受到模拟游戏所具有的吸引力。这种类型的沉浸感所具有的一大重要特征便是角色能够真实地表达出玩家对于任何情境所做出的反应——尽管角色可能长得不像玩家(游戏邦注:玩家的角色可能是个半兽人)或者生活在一个完全不同的环境中(玩家的角色可能身处艾泽拉斯)。比起只是与角色达成共鸣或理解他的行为,玩家将能够在此决定这些行为。这就要求游戏中必须呈现出开放性故事和对话选项,以及理想的多人角色扮演游戏环境;主观沉浸感总是依赖于MMO中的角色扮演服务器。让玩家有机会去选择对于不同事件的反应能够让角色在游戏中所做出的反应和行为更贴近玩家,从而让玩家更深刻地感受到自己对于游戏的作用,而不是游戏强加于角色身上——这便是主观沉浸感的最大优势。主观沉浸感应该算是最“完整的”沉浸感类型,并且也只能存在于电子游戏中,因为游戏角色将会作为玩家代理在故事中呈现出他们的想法。

像《天际》和《辐射3》等游戏便一直在努力创造定制外观,非线性故事情节以及多种对话选择等机制。另外一个特殊的例子便是《魔兽世界》,从2010年初算起,世界上所有玩家花在这款游戏上的时间已经超过了593万年。

如此你便清楚为何比起玩家,开发者总是更加关注于沉浸感了吧:正是如此《宝石迷阵闪电战》才会发展成一款游戏,玩家也才会投入比人类物种诞生还长59倍的时间(从2004年算起)于游戏中。

最后,我们需要着眼于近几年来的发展趋势,即游戏中所包含的道德故事选择。早前的游戏所呈现出的故事选择更多的是关于玩家想要体验的场景,而与玩家的内在价值观没有太大的关系。但是当我们回顾像《神鬼预言》以及《Infamous》等游戏时,我们会发现它们的一大卖点便是玩家不仅能够基于自己对游戏的作用去塑造故事,同时还可以根据自己的信念和道德观去影响故事的发展方向。

所以,关于沉浸感的科学原理是什么?开发者们该如何使用这些原理去创造更多具有沉浸感的游戏?

最近的研究表明玩家总是会与角色产生共鸣,并发现自己的内心存在着与角色相似的特征。这便透露给我们两大重要信息:即玩家可以非常深入地仿效角色并感受到最深层次的沉浸感,以及玩家可以在角色身上找到他们所钦佩的特征。这同时也意味着有可能出现完全相反的情况;即玩家有可能会因为游戏的驱动而将自己的特征植入内心还是白纸的开放式角色中。

当角色与玩家具有较高相似度时,儿童玩家(也有可能是成人)将能够感受到更多沉浸感。许多10至12岁的玩家表示当游戏角色与自己非常相像时,他们便能够获得更棒的沉浸感。当然了,我并不是在提倡开发者必须创造出与玩家尽可能相近的游戏角色,但是如果这么做能够带给玩家最大的沉浸感,我们为什么不去尝试呢?如果电子游戏中只有15%的角色是女性,是否就意味着游戏对于女性玩家的吸引力就比较低?这并不足以说明女性玩家的购买率远远低于男性玩家。

关键信息:开发者应该创造出具有玩家想要效仿的特征的角色(或者让玩家能够在角色身上表现出他们所渴望的特征),并确保角色的多样性(就像玩家也总是多种多样),如此你才有可能为玩家呈现出最具沉浸感的游戏体验。

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

Immersion: Getting into the game

by Sebastian Alvarado

You are in a sunlit meadow, surrounded by pastoral green hills in an expansive vacant valley.

You are reading text on a computer screen. You are now aware of the fact that you are aware of the fact that you are reading text on a computer screen.

You are suddenly aware of the position of your tongue within your mouth. You are now aware of your own breathing.

Text, as a means of conveying information, has a powerful ability to alter the reader’s cognition to the extent that they (willingly or unwillingly) place themselves within a scene, and even self-identify as a character within that scene . What I’m referring to is the concept of immersion. Text on its own is obviously sufficient to provoke a sense of immersion (see, for example, every piece of immersive literature ever produced). However, in a multi-modal medium such as video games, combining visual input (including text) with a rich soundscape and (possibly the most important ingredient) the ability to interact with the game’s story, characters and environments, the potential for immersion is much greater. This also creates a higher incentive for video game developers to do as much as possible to facilitate immersion in their games, a responsibility which is only rising higher as technology and the standards of users increase.

It’s like I’m actually there, man…

Now, there are some special considerations when discussing immersion in video games as opposed to other media, and I’d like to make them explicit before going any further. The first is immersion necessity, and the second is immersion type.

Immersion Necessity

To pre-emptively counter the position that video game developers don’t need to prioritize immersion because not all games require it, I’ll admit right off the bat that immersion is not a quality inherent to every game. Nobody has ever felt a sense of immersion playing tetris, and if you have, seek professional help immediately.

“That’s me in the corner…”

Puzzle games as a whole, in fact, often lack any substrate for immersion. However, just because it’s possible to create a game lacking an obligation for immersion doesn’t mean that a game won’t benefit from one. In support of this, look at the general trend in puzzle games since their inception; often story, character and environment elements are introduced that are completely extraneous to the puzzle mechanics, and which exist only to foster immersion and an emotional connection to whatever story element is ostensibly tied to the puzzle mechanics. Look at the incredibly successful Puzzle Quest series, which is basically just Bejewledover and over with aliens and spells.

Hmmm, needs more side quests

The moral is that more (or better) story means greater immersion. It’s also true that the more open-ended the story, the deeper the immersion, with more opportunity to experience the game however the player would like.

Immersion Type

Putting aside non-immersive puzzle games, there are two types of immersion that exist in video games, and I would argue that one of them in fact can only exist in video games.

With ‘impersonal immersion’, you’re identifying with a particular existing character in a game (or novel, TV show, et cetera), a character with a cohesive personality, context and appearance differing from that of the observer. You’re Mario, or Kratos, or whoever. You’re observing their story-related behaviour in cutscenes, and possibly you’re reacting to events as they do, but the appearance and behaviour of the characters is more or less hard-wired and you’re there for the vicariously immersive ride.

Unless you really believe this is you

With ‘personal immersion’, you’re literally putting yourself into the game; i.e. your thoughts, appearance (however you’d like to project it as in-game), emotional and behavioural responses to story events, etc, all within a fictional context. This can apply to avatar characters, by the way, in which the player-character doesn’t resemble the player themselves but rather a character the player chooses to identify with, and also makes up most of the appeal of the entire Sims franchise. The important feature is that the character responds exactly how you feel like responding to any situation, even though the character may not look like you (your avatar could be an orc) or be in a recognizable context (your avatar could live in Azeroth). Instead of merely sympathizing with or understanding a character’s behaviour, you determine it. This requires open-ended story telling and dialogue options, and ideally a multiplayer (or MMO) role-playing environment; personal immersion is actually a requirement for (the vastly popular) roleplaying servers in MMOs. Giving the player the opportunity to choose reactions to events makes the character’s reactions and behaviour more in line with the player’s themselves, and the more details the player feels like they’re putting into the game, as opposed to the game putting into the character, the greater the sense of personal immersion. Personal immersion is possibly the most ‘complete’ type of immersion, and one that can only exist in video games due to the requirement of player agency in fully dictating story events.

Games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 attempt to do this with appearance customization, non-linear storylines and multiple (albeit limited) dialogue choices. for another example, see World of Warcraft, a game so addictive its users have collectively wracked up 5.93 million years playing it… and that stat is from early 2010.

MILLIONS of years of this

So you can see why game developers care as much or more about immersion than players: it makes Bejewled into a franchise, and it makes players invest the temporal equivalent of the duration of our species’ existence 59 times over on a game from 2004.

Finally, consider the trend in recent years to include morality-based story choices in games. Even when early games presented story options, they were more related to which scene the player wanted to experience next, and had nothing at all to do with the player’s own values. But look back to games like Fable and Infamous, and remember that one of their main selling points was the chance for the player to not only shape the story by their actions, but shape the story in the direction of (or even antithetical to) their own beliefs and morals.

Even if it means being a huge asshole

So what does science tell us about immersion? And how can developers use this to create more immersive games?

A recent study has shown that people who empathized with a character found themselves internalizing qualities of that character. This tells us two important things: people can identify with characters sufficiently strongly that an extremely deep immersion experience is possible, and (to whatever extent this is intuitively understood) people will seek out characters with qualities they admire. It also means that the reverse is possible; players might be driven to implant their own prized qualities onto the tabula rasa of an open-ended character.

Also, kids (and probably adults) experience more immersion when the characters are more like themselves. 10-12 year-olds report more video game immersion when the characters were of their ethnicity. I’m not advocating that game characters should unilaterally be cast as some Idiocracy-esque uniracial archetype, but if aren’t we unnecessarily screwing a lot of people out of maximal immersion? And if only 15% of video game characters are female, might we expect less immersion (and less appeal) for female gamers? But it’s not like there’s a disproportionately low percentage of games being bought by women or anything. Oh, wait.

This might also have something to do with it

Take-home message: Make characters with personality qualities that players want to identify with (or allow players to demonstrate their desired qualities through a character’s actions), and make these characters at least as diverse as the players themselves, and you’ve got a shot at maximizing immersion.(source:GAMASUTRA)


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