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Raph Koster称游戏具有培养人们解决问题的能力

发布时间:2012-11-19 10:19:28 Tags:,,,

作者:Simon Carless

在上海的GDC China大会上,《A Theory Of Fun For Game Design》的作者兼在线游戏专家Raph Koster详细讨论了游戏属性,并阐述了“比起其它对象,游戏更像是一种运算法则。”

Koster着重于阐述为何游戏如此让人着迷。同时他也明确了今天的电子游戏所具有的影响人类思维并受情感驱动的独特属性——以及一些让人印象深刻的成功案例。

Raph Koster(from metaversejournal)

Raph Koster(from metaversejournal)

Koster谈话的核心原理是“比起计算机,人类更擅于直观地解决问题。”可以说游戏中的许多问题都是基于各种行动,谜题和冲突。

相反地,大多数非游戏媒体总是包含学习并发展其它元素,包括道德故事或结果。Koster明确地说道:“在角色扮演游戏中我们并不在乎是否能从怪兽身上学到什么。相反地,我们只会义无反顾地杀死它们。”

游戏会通过其它方式教会我们一些奇怪的经验教训。例如玩家可以反复操作大多数游戏,并在整个过程中不断提高自己的性能。但是就像设计专家所说的:“在现实生活中人们最多只有两次机会。并且在很多时候争取到第二次机会更是非常困难。”

Koster所列出的最有趣的例子应该是免费游戏所教会我们的内容。他开玩笑地说道,如今的游戏似乎都在传达着一种信息:“遇到问题了吗?没关系,你可以通过花钱去解决这一问题。”

在基于微交易的游戏中,玩家便可以通过消费的方式解决问题。但是Koster也指出,在现实生活中“却不是如此。钱并不可能买到快乐。”

Koster希望整个谈话能够呈现出一种积极性,所以他继续强调游戏能够带给人们惊喜,并“创造出更多美感”。同时游戏(系统)还教会我们专注于许多元素间的复杂关系。系统性思考方式能够帮助我们更好地分析世界上的各种事物。

但是最重要的还是,“游戏让我们知道再复杂的问题也能够得到解决。”纵观人类历史,我们总是相信命运需要经历各种不幸。而“因为我们围绕着任何事物创造出了游戏,所以我们能够解决一切问题的理念”便表明游戏是一种非常乐观的内容。

Koster最后说道:“我们不能为创造娱乐而感到羞耻,因为我们的游戏一直都在为解决今后的问题而准备着。游戏是这一世纪非常重要的一种媒体。可以说,在今后100年时间里,游戏的重要性将远远超过文学,音乐,电影和诗歌。游戏教会我们去解决任何看似不可能的问题。而游戏开发者每天的工作(游戏邦注:也就是创造游戏)便是制造乐趣。”

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

Koster: Why games teach lessons we shouldn’t always heed

By Simon Carless

In his packed GDC China keynote in Shanghai, ‘A Theory Of Fun For Game Design’ author and online game veteran Raph Koster gave a stirring discussion on the nature of games, philosophizing: “Games are more like an algorithm than anything else.”

Koster’s inspiring – if somewhat tricky to write up – talk focused on why games are such fascinating beasts. Along the way, he attempted to define the unique brain-altering and emotion-triggering nature of today’s video games – with some evocative success.

A central tenet of Koster’s talk is that humans are “better at solving problems intuitively than computers can ever be”. And a lot of the problems in games are surprisingly action, puzzle, and conflict-based.

Conversely, most of the tropes of non-game media may involve learning and evolving from other characters – moral stories or outcomes. But Koster rightly notes: “In games, we really don’t care about learning from the monster in the RPG. Instead we just kill them all.”

There are other ways that games teach odd lessons. For example, you can retry as many times as you like in most games, and gradually improve your performance, with no ramifications. But, as the design veteran noted: “In the real world, you do get second chances. And [in some cases] the second try is harder.”

Perhaps the most piquant example Koster gave was around what F2P titles might be starting to teach us. He joked that many of today’s game titles seem to be giving the message: “Oh, you have a problem? You can buy yourself out of a problem.”

So in microtransaction-driven games, you can always buy your way out of a problem. But Koster pointed out that in real life: “That isn’t really honest…. you can spend a lot of money and not buy your way out of unhappiness.”

Koster did not intend this talk to be negative. He noted that games continue to amaze, and still “create art and beauty”. And games – as systems – teach us to focus on complex relationships between many factors. Systemic thinking helps us analyze the world so much better.

But most of all, “games tell us that problems can be solved”. For most of human history, we believed that fate was behind many misfortunes. And “the idea that we can solve everything, because we’ve made a game [around] everything”, means that games are fundamentally optimistic.

Koster ended, simply: “We should not be ashamed of making entertainment, because our games are preparing… our cultures for the problems of tomorrow. Games are the medium of this century. We will matter more than the literature, than the music, than the film, than the poems for the next 100 years. Games teach us to solve the impossible… What you do, every day, as you work [creating games], is to make joy.” (source:gamasutra)


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