作者： Aki Järvinen

人人都喜爱出色作品。可为何游戏行业在历经数十年的发展后仍充斥大量劣质游戏？我在教授游戏设计课程时，会强迫学生体验糟糕游戏，借此认识到在项目制作中不该采取的举措。正因为如此，我们挖掘出令玩家抓狂的七宗游戏设计罪责。

1.不易使用的控制方式

inaccessible controls(from conversations.nokia.com)

在满足玩家操控角色，毫不费力地四处走动与遭到难以使用的控制方式的挫败之间只是一线之隔。

这还是众多用户不把玩电子游戏当作爱好的关键原由。在足球游戏中，玩家需按住‘L1+B’才能采取近穴击球，这意味着玩家需360度转动手指。

2.缺乏教程或教程设计不良

史上首款电子游戏《Pong》设法将核心理念植入清晰指令中：即‘避免错失高分球’。如今行业鲜少存在简单游戏，这意味着开发者不可认为玩家会立即掌握游戏的基本要领。

进入教程后，游戏会手把手教授玩家核心玩法理念。教程设计要求开发者退一步思考，从尚未接触过游戏（游戏邦注：开发者已投入数个月甚至数年时间）的玩家角度入手。但这样的教程并不会吸引玩家，它仍然是游戏设计中的一个挑战。

tutorial(from conversations.nokia.com)

3.难度曲线增幅过大

一款佳作应根据玩家的熟练度逐步提高挑战难度，从而保证游戏的趣味性。然而，开发者极易忽视一般玩家应对挑战的方式，造成游戏难度快速增加。结果，游戏只会挫败或吓退玩家，迫使他们放弃。

4.缺少反馈

互动模式的要点是，在简单输入与输出循环机制中，玩家的行动能获得反馈。因此，对玩家行动做出反馈是留存他们的关键，如果游戏无法实现这点，它便失去趣味性。

电子游戏至少应做到对玩家行动做出反馈，因为其中创建的基本系统本来就应该能够快速提供反馈。这也是它们之所以被称为电子游戏的原因。假如在《宝石迷阵》中，当你配对成功但却没有展现出令人愉悦的画面，那游戏还会有趣吗？

5.最优取胜策略

《愤怒的小鸟》中部分奇妙之处便是模拟物理机制：即小鸟、猪与积木在可预测与不可预测情况下的共同行为。假如小鸟的物理运动方式是：每当加大弹弓力量，便会达到最佳结果（立即清除关卡）。这属于最优策略，但它无法成就有趣作品。

6.缺少有意义的选项

《文明》游戏设计师Sid Meier曾将游戏定义为“一系列有趣选项”。其作品无疑反射出该理念。

然而，如果游戏呈现出的选项只是表面上的不同结果，那它必是款糟糕之作。假如在《俄罗斯方块》中你不能旋转积木，那便意味着，优化结果的机会越小；游戏趣味性越低。

7.无奖励且不清晰的目标

rewards(from conversations.nokia.com)

当我全身心投入在打败好友，或完成关卡时，这基本上属于目标驱使活动。其中部分快乐源自向着既定目标努力，比如‘避免错失高分球’，‘拯救公主’。

此外，优秀作品的目标显然是一个明确的整体，并且其奋斗过程充满愉悦。这在日常生活中并不常见；比如，我们无法从倒垃圾中找到浪漫氛围。如果游戏中没有设定清晰目标，那它将犹如一盘散沙。（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 7 sins of bad video game design

by  Aki Järvinen

Video games have been around for decades, so why are there still so many duds?

Everybody loves a good game. So why is it, that after decades of gaming, there are still bad ones? When I’ve taught game design, one of my approaches with students has been to force them to play bad games in order to learn what not to do with their own projects. Thanks to challenges like this we’ve unearthed seven sins pretty much guaranteed to make gamers rip their hair out in frustration.

1. Inaccessible controls

There is a thin line between the satisfaction a player gets from being able to manoeuvre a character, effortlessly around, and the frustration a player feels when the video game controller does not yield to his command.

Inaccessible controls remains a key reason why many people do not get into video games as a hobby. In a soccer game, a chipped shot might be explained as ‘L1 + B’, a form of gamerspeak that implies finger-twisting to the extreme. Enough said.

2. Lack of or bad tutorial

The first video game ever, Pong, managed to encapsulate it’s core idea into one lucid instruction: ‘avoid missing ball for high score”. Few games are as simple nowadays, which means that game developers cannot trust the player to immediately grasp the basics.

Enter the tutorial, a sequence where the game holds the player’s hand through the core gameplay concepts. Tutorial design demands the game developers to take a step back from what they eat for breakfast, and step into the shoes of a player who has not touched the game the developer has been working on for months or even years. Thus, a tutorial that fails to suck the player in, persists as a design challenge.

3. Too steep difficulty curve

A good game is supposed to evolve its challenges as the player becomes better at tackling them – this keeps the game interesting. However, it is easy for a game developer to lose sight of how an average player will cope with its challenges. This often leads to the difficulty of the game ramping up too fast. Subsequently, the game ends up frustrating or intimidating the player to the point of quitting. Sound familiar?

4. Lack of feedback to the player

The gist of interactivity is in the simple loop of input and output; one makes a move and sees what comes out of it. Therefore giving feedback to the player for his actions is of utmost importance to keep them engaged – if the game fails to do that, it’s probably not much fun.

Video games are – or at least should be – great at this, because they are essentially systems built to provide visceral, immediate feedback. That’s why they are called video games, something to engage our perception. Imagine a game of Bejeweled where matching diamonds into rows of three would not involve any kind of gratifying visuals to indicate your success. Lesser game, no?

5. Optimal strategy for winning

Part of the magic of Angry Birds is how it simulates physics: how the birds and the pigs and the building blocks behave together in predictable yet unpredictable manner. Let’s imagine for a while that the bird physics would work like this: Each time one maximises the slingshot power, the optimal result – level instantly cleared – would be reached. That would be called an optimal strategy, and it does not a fun game make.

6. Lack of meaningful choices

Famous game designer Sid Meier, of Civilization fame, once defined a game as ‘a series of interesting choices’. His games definitely reflect that.

Yet, if one finds a game where the choices presented to the player produce only superficially different outcomes, you are most probably looking at a bad game. Let’s imagine playing Tetris without being able to rotate the blocks – lesser choices to improve the outcome; lesser fun factor.

7. Unrewarding, unclear goals

When I focus fully on kicking my buddy’s ass, or completing a level in a video game, I engage in a fundamentally goal-driven activity. Part of its pleasure derives from struggling towards well-defined goals, such as ‘avoid missing ball for high score’ or ‘save the princess’.

Furthermore, good game goals are clearly isolated wholes that are pleasurable to strive for. This is not always the case with our everyday life: It’s hard to find romance in taking out the trash. When a game fails in setting it’s goals with clarity and imagination, they appear more like chores.

Each of these can be a real pain, but which gets you riled up the most? Let us know in the comments below.(source:nokia)