作者：Matthew Warneford

许多游戏均无法取得《Club Penguin》、《Moshi Monsters》与《Where’s My Water》的成就，它们在iTunes排行榜上一直处在低靡位置，而后逐渐被互联网埋没。对此，我们该怎样做才能保证自己拥有一款热作？答案是违背常理，即在确定儿童是否喜爱该游戏前不要付诸行动！

那么你又如何在不构造游戏的前提下了解儿童是否乐意体验？你可以进行问卷调查。但不要相信他们的言辞，毕竟孩子们不是游戏设计师，他们并不了解如何评价游戏理念。而获得确切答案的唯一办法是观察他们玩游戏。幸好，我们最先可以在线下创建游戏、玩法循环与角色，比如纸上原型、短篇故事与连环画。

如果这些模拟原型发挥出积极效应，那便意味着孩子们乐意试玩这款游戏（即未编写代码的游戏）。当然，更改纸上原型比修改1万行代码更加划算。

在本文中，我们将首先探讨纸上原型创建，而后研究品牌与市场的测试途径。

kids playing cards(from slatefamily.net）

游戏测试——纸上原型

通常，一款杰出的游戏包括引人入胜的叙事模式，优质角色，以及最重要的有趣玩法循环机制。你可以采用最棒技术与最精美图画，但如果孩子们不喜爱它，你还不如设计一个尖端屏保程序。

纸上原型是测试玩法循环机制的一种低成本方式，利用纸板、橡皮泥或老式桌游这些日常材料便可实现。创建纸上原型是为了证明玩法循环机制的趣味性，保证孩子们能够理解并享受其中。如果你能够在不采用精致图画或出色角色的条件下，制作出有趣的玩法循环机制，那你将有80%的成功概率！

但不要仅局限在纸张、剪刀、胶水这些素材。你应发挥想象力，乐享其中！比如，在设计一款有关理财知识的游戏时，我们将客户交易地设置在糖果店，办公场所则为一座农场。通过运营糖果店，孩子会逐渐了解许多金融理念。在创建真正游戏前，我们会邀请几个孩子轮流运营这家商店，而其它孩子则扮演顾客。在此过程中，他们有10秒钟的时间收集农场内隐藏的糖果制作原料。他们还可以利用收入开发新品种、升级商店，或存储备用。通过这些简单机制，孩子们可以在转变角色前，利用这5分钟的体验创建自己的糖果帝国。

他们从未意识到，该游戏的设计初衷是为了传授基本理财技能，他们只考虑到运营糖果商店十分有趣。游戏结束后，我们对孩子们进行了一个简短测试。结果显示，那些参与商店运营的儿童的表现比参照组更胜一筹，也就是说游戏发挥了作用。

通过原型创建，我们不仅可以证明游戏是否有趣，而且还能传授一些必备的理财知识与技能（之后致力于6个月的编程与开发阶段），此外，孩子们还能从中体会到快乐。

品牌测试——简短故事

一个出色的品牌无法拯救一款糟糕作品，但却能够优化优秀之作！精致的游戏设计可以创造出全新强大的品牌。如果你已经创造了一个出色的新游戏品牌，你不仅有望获得一款热作，而且可能会创下丰厚收益。

在设计新游戏品牌时，我们提议先创造一则短篇故事，借此测试孩子们对该品牌的反应以及对角色的理解。虽然这则短篇故事会透露出游戏的角色与世界，但它却不必重复游戏的叙事模式，毕竟游戏叙事未必就是出色的短篇故事。相反，短篇故事能够以最优方式展现角色与场景。

值得注意的是，故事编写应在儿童的阅读能力范围内。我们建议让某个熟悉的叙述者为他们陈述这个故事，最好能够绘声绘色地描述出整个画面。

我们可以通过多种方式预测儿童的反应。其中我们最喜爱采用单词卡片，借此儿童可以清晰告知自己的想法。每张卡片上的单词各不相同，比如可以是‘强壮’、‘智慧’或‘有活力’。我们要求孩子们为故事角色、场景、美术理念及自己贴上标签。结果可能是，你所认为的强大英雄领袖在孩子们看来略显软弱。他们对自己的描述符合故事中的英雄吗？他们是否能够感同身受？你的美术概念符合书上的英雄形象吗？

市场测试——Ghetto测试

当然，利用纸上原型测试游戏理念是个不错的想法，但却缺乏一定规模，而这是你测试游戏核心理念是否拥有可行市场的必要元素。10个体验该原型的孩子可能会喜爱这种解救兔子的游戏，但从统计学上看，他们不具代表性。此时，我们应采用Ghetto测试。Ghetto测试成本较低，且无需构建游戏原型，只需创建几个主页，而后可以在不开发游戏的条件下，利用某个主页证明该游戏理念是否拥有一定市场。

比如，在测试纸上原型时，你发现孩子们喜爱塔防机制，但你还不确定该游戏背景应设置在太空中，忍者时代，或是恐龙时期。此时，你可以利用小型推广活动与相应主页测试这些理念的可行性。

首先，你可以利用Google AdWords与Facebook广告推广这三个塔防游戏主页。孩子们可能会点击主页上的‘立即注册’按钮，开始注册。当然，游戏尚未建成，即使注册结束也无法见到游戏。虽然这带有一点欺骗之意，但这是测试他们是否乐意体验该游戏的唯一途径，而制造一些注册障碍便足以淘汰那些并不打算体验这款游戏的儿童玩家，最终你会得到对这款游戏真正感兴趣的用户。

因此，潜在用户不会觉得注册过程存在难度，你还应让他们知晓，注册者有机会参与beta测试，而孩子们喜爱成为优先测试对象！

此外，这些点击数据还能显示出相对需求量，通过系统（游戏邦注：比如Facebook）获得这些数据后，你会发现哪些理念能够与不同年龄段，性别或某些国家的儿童产生共鸣。结合这些完整注册的点击数量，你可以查看哪类儿童喜爱这个理念，需求量是否达到标准。

通常，我们希望至少有40%的儿童点击该广告，完成注册，而少于该比例的情况只能证明该理念无法覆盖一定用户规模，且相应的获取玩家成本将十分高昂。

当然，这只是游戏开发进程的开始。紧接着我们还需创建游戏原型，利用用户测试游戏。在发行后期，我们还需通过多种途径不断优化游戏，保证用户粘性，但如果你在一开始便已获得核心游戏机制与游戏世界，那你将节省大量工作与费用。（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）

De-risking game development through research

by Matthew Warneford

For every Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters and Where’s My Water there are plenty of games that will never make it, residing at the bottom of the iTunes chart and buried at the back of the internet. So what can be done to ensure you have a hit on your hand? The answer is counterintuitive, but really quite obvious – don’t build the game until you know kids enjoy playing it!

How can you know if kids want to play your game without building it? You could ask them. But don’t believe what they tell you, kids aren’t game designers and they don’t know how to evaluate the concept. The only way to find out if they like it is to watch them play it. The good news, most games, gameplay loops and characters can be created offline first – be that paper prototypes, short stories, and comics.

If done right, theses analogue prototypes mean that kids can play the game and experience the universe long before any code is written. And of course, it’s much cheaper to change a prototype made from cardboard, monopoly figures, and a roulette wheel, than change 10,000 lines of code.

In this post we’ll begin by looking at paper prototyping before looking at ways to test the brand universe and your market.

Testing the Game – Paper Prototyping

A good game has an engaging narrative, great characters, and most importantly, a fun gameplay loop. You can have the coolest technology and slickest graphics but if the child doesn’t enjoy it you may as well have designed a cutting-edge screensaver.

Paper prototyping is a low cost method of testing the gameplay loop by using everyday materials, such as cardboard, plasticine or old board games. The goal is to prove the gameplay loop is fun, that kids understand it, and they enjoy playing it. If you can make a fun gameplay loop without fancy graphics or cool characters, you’re 80 percent of the way there! The graphics are the icing on the cake.

But don’t just think paper, scissors and glue. Use your imagination, and have fun! For example, when we designed a financial literacy game we transformed a customer’s boardroom into a candy shop and their whole office into a farm. Through running the candy shop children would be exposed to a variety of financial concepts. Before building the game we invited a dozen children to take turns running the candy store, while the other children bought the candies on their shopping lists. The children running the store had ten seconds to collect ingredients hidden around the office that would be later turned into the ‘candies’ sold in their shop. Profit from the candy sales could be invested into new recipes, upgrades for their store, or saved for the future. Using these simple mechanics children had five minutes of play to build up their candy store empire before switching roles.

The children never knew that the game had been designed to teach basic financial skills – they just thought it was fun to run a candy store. At the end of the game we gave the children a short test. Those children who ran the store performed better than the control group – the game worked.

Through prototyping we were able to prove that not only was the game fun, but that the game design would teach the necessary financial literacy skills before committing to six months of programming and development. Plus, the children had fun too.

Testing the Brand Universe – Short Stories

A good brand can’t save a bad game, but a good brand can make a great game even better! And it works both ways; a great game design can create new and powerful brands. If you build your new game-led brand well not only will you have a hit game on your hands but who knows, maybe even lucrative licensing deals too!

When designing a new game brand we advise starting by creating a short story. The story is used to test how children react to the brand, and how well they understand the characters. However, while the short story will unveil the game’s characters and their universe it does not need to replicate the game’s narrative – a game narrative is not necessarily a good short story. Instead, create a short story that represents the characters and the universe in the best light; don’t worry about the game narrative yet.

One word of caution, a written story relies on the child being able to read, and not all children can. We recommend taking the reader out of the equation, have the story read by a practiced narrator – find someone who can bring the words to life.

There are many ways to gauge the children’s reaction. One of our favourites is flash cards (word association cards) that help the children articulate what they think. Each card carries a different word such as ‘strong’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘dynamic’. We ask the children to match the cards to the characters in your story, the universe, your concept art, and even themselves. It could turn out that the strong leader you saw as your hero is seen by the children to be a bit of bully. Do the children’s descriptions of themselves match any of the heroes in your story? Can they empathise? Does your concept art match the heroes in your book?

Testing the Market – Ghetto Testing

Of course, testing concepts through paper prototyping is great but it lacks scale, and scale is what you need if you want to test the available market for your game’s core concept. The ten kids who played the prototype may have loved your crime solving rabbit game but ten kids is not a statistically significant sample. That’s where ghetto testing comes in. Ghetto Testing is so cheap you don’t even build a prototype, just a few homepages, and a homepage is all you need to prove there’s a market without even having a game.

Let’s say you you’ve found out that a tower defence mechanic works with the children in your paper prototyping groups but you don’t know whether this game should be set in space, with ninjas, or dinosaurs. You can test each of these concepts with a small marketing campaign and a matching homepage.

You begin by using Google AdWords and Facebook advertising to promote the three tower defence game homepages. From the homepage the children can hit the ‘register now’ button to begin the registration process. Of course, the game doesn’t exist yet, and there is no game at the end of the registration. Sure, it’s a little bit naughty, but it’s the only way to know if children really will play the game – that little bit of registration friction is enough to discourage the kids who wouldn’t really want to play the game. You’re left with those who are truly interested.

So the potential customers don’t feel hard done by, let them know that registering their data will get them on to the beta testing list – kids love to be first!

The click-data represents relative demand, and when employed through a system, such as Facebook, you can see which concepts resonate with different age groups, genders or children from certain countries. Match those clicks to completed registrations to see which kids like the concept, and if there is enough demand.

As a rule we would expect at least 40 percent of kids clicking the adverts to register – any less than this and the concept won’t scale and the cost of player acquisition will be too high.

Of course, this is just the start of the process. Following these steps there’s prototype stages and further opportunity to testing your game with its audience. Post-release, there’s a many different ways to tweak your game to ensure it is keeping players engaged, but if you’ve got the core game mechanic and game universe right from the start you’ve saved yourself a lot of work and a lot of money.(source:dubitplatform)