作者：Dean Takahashi

Wright建议刚刚入行的年轻设计师学习非游戏领域的知识，以便汲取更多创意的灵感。以下是Game Horizon对他的采访。（请点击此处阅读第1部分）

Game Horizon（GH）：你认为设计师和玩家对游戏的态度存在分歧吗？

Wright（W）：许多人设计游戏是出于不同的动机。如果你跟不同的游戏设计师对话，你会发现其原因取决于他们所处的地位、任职公司（比如小工作室）等。有些人只想让公司成功，而并不关心做什么游戏。他们努力研究成功的游戏类型。有些人的动机就比较艺术了，像独立游戏开发者就大多属于这一类人。他们希望推动游戏设计这门艺术，尝试新奇的和有趣的东西。他们努力发明和发现新的游戏类型。有些人对某种游戏类型非常执著：“我想做出有史以来最好的二战FPS。”这更接近一种技艺的态度。

然而，玩家想的是坐下来好好玩一把游戏，管它是什么游戏。Sid Meier曾经说过，有时候游戏设计师为玩家设计游戏，有时候他们为自己设计游戏。对此，我有好几次都觉得愧疚。回顾过去，我已经吸取教训了。

simearth(from myabandonware)

多年以前，我设计了《模拟地球》，当时我对模拟游戏非常着迷。我花了许多时间研究气候与地质之间的关系之类的东西。然而，玩家看不到这些深层次的东西。他们看不到零散的部件协同运作是多么精妙的事。对他们而言，他们所看到的东西只是图像和物品。玩《模拟地球》时，玩家就像被丢进一个不断下坠的驾驶舱，面对各种旋转中的计量表，他们不知所措，想不出输入与结果的关系。这种模拟太复杂了，玩家无法享受和学习。作为设计师，我完全沉浸于模拟中，却忽略了玩家。这段经历让我受益匪浅。这种事确实常常发生。

现在，游戏市场风云变幻。通过从玩家身上收集指标，我们能够在几个小时内发现困扰玩家、娱乐玩家以及让我们自己感到吃惊的地方。我们能够从玩家信息中了解到很多东西，以至于开发迭代循环也更加密集了。

GH：你同自己的玩家直接交流吗？玩家会联系你、让你回答问题吗？还是说多得处理不过来？

W：我尽量与玩家保持联系吧。现在，对任何一款已发行的游戏来说，最重要的工作之一就是社区管理，包括倾听玩家的意见、了解玩家的需求和反馈玩家、关心和培养玩家社区。如果玩家知道你有关注他们，玩家社区就不会衰落，而会变得更加活跃，甚至成为你的游戏传道者。此外，你还要知道，你的游戏吸引玩家的东西是什么？让玩家最受挫的东西是什么？你反馈和修复问题的速度有多快？一旦你跟玩家社区展开对话，你就是在与他们合作，让他们帮助你改进游戏。我们有技术、指标和玩家社区，现在处理反馈和解决问题的效率非常高了。

GH：你之前提到玩家状态这一概念，认为玩家可能处于不同的心理状态。是否有什么状态是你想更加深入研究的？是否可能帮助你产生新的游戏想法？

W：在某种程度上，游戏是从核心大脑，也就是爬虫类脑（游戏邦注：主管呼吸、血压、心跳等生理系统，也掌管反射性动作如恐惧、快乐等基本情绪反应）开始的。早期的游戏以攻击、防御、生存为主题。最初，我们的游戏是针对爬虫类脑的，因为它容易且高效。现在，游戏开始以大脑皮层和更广泛的情绪反应为目标，使玩家进入不同的状态。现在有许多游戏都非常强调思考、冥想和放松，这与导致肾上腺素分泌增多的早期游戏是相反的。

对于玩家，现在的游戏更加外化。也就是，玩家进入某些世界，应对周围的事物。我们研究得不多、我个人非常有兴趣的领域之一就是，我们如何让玩家感觉到更多的内心状态，即他们自己的心理。他们的头脑中想的是什么？游戏可以把玩家个人的许多想法提取出来，让玩家看到自己在游戏中的有趣反应，而不只是一些外在的模拟现实或虚构的世界。对我而言，这些自我反射的游戏暗示着某种自我意识的精神状态。我们在游戏中还完全没有探索过这些精神状态。

GH：你认为游戏中的叙述是否会阻碍那种体验产生？

W：我认为游戏中总是存在叙述和自由之间的矛盾。比如说，我现在坐在这里给你讲一个故事。对你来说，这是一段非常被动的体验。游戏的主要优势其实是，由玩家驱动游戏的发展。这就是交互性，是玩家对处境的掌控力。

我一直记得，玩家告诉我的他们在游戏中做的独一无二的事。所以我认为游戏更像是一个玩家表演故事的平台，而不是游戏设计师讲述故事的媒介。对我而言，讲述故事基本上是把玩家置于被动的地位。

作为游戏设计师，我认为采取这种思路——“我们如何教游戏识别玩家想表演的故事，然后反应和支持这些故事？”，是更加有意义的。游戏本身可以成为幕后的导演，看着玩家推动故事发展，为故事增加戏剧性。

GH：去年，《Journey》在英国和美国获得许多奖项，你玩过这款游戏吗？我提到它是因为它的叙述平衡很微妙，它告诉玩家的很少，而是让玩家自己去感知角色的情绪。

W：是的。我认为《时空幻境》也把握得很好。尽管非常复杂，但我不认为没有办法做到。

Journey(from forbes.com)

GH：许多读者认为下一代主机的危机是，画面越来越精美了，但玩法越来越单薄了。你认为这种担忧是必要的吗？

W：从历史上看，游戏业中一直存在图像、像素、多边形之间的竞争。回顾20年或30年前玩的游戏，当时游戏角色的像素极低，但我仍然喜爱那个角色，仍然对它充满感情。再看看现在的设备，我们可以制作渲染得非常华丽的角色和物品，但它们的行为仍然像蚂蚁一样低级。我们在图像方面已经非常非常先进了，但在模拟和行为方面，我们仍然很落后。

与此同时，我发现人们在玩的仍然是我们在20年前就能做出来的游戏。尽管这些游戏仍然很有趣。人们很沉迷，肯花时间玩。你可以把画面打磨得非常逼真，暂时吸引玩家的目光，但归根到底，能让玩家坚持玩上30、40个小时的东西还是玩法。

随着我们在模似现实的道路上越走越远，开发成本也上升了。结果，你需要百万美元投入才能与市场上的其他游戏打成平手。我认为，这种现象仍将继续存在，但在整个市场上会越来越少。我不肯定这只是行业的问题。我们有这么先进的图像处理器来产生逼真的画面是件好事，但玩法才是重点。而制作逼真的画面只是其中一个努力方向。谁知道我们还有多少不同类型的玩法还没开发出来。这才是需要开拓的领域。

GH：继续这个问题，你对索尼、微软和任天堂的新一代主机有什么看法吗？

W：一方面，它们要竞争游戏，但另一方面，它们也在竞争成为媒体中心。这就是新一代游戏的战争。游戏之所以有趣，是因为无处不在，甚至随着游戏化运动而渗透到文化的方方面面。游戏的触手开始伸向其他媒体形式。看网页、听音乐、看电影、上社交网，都有游戏的影子。游戏可能成为这些活动之间的枢纽。

下一代主机就会出现这种情况：你购买的是一部玩游戏的机器，但事实上它成为你的媒体中心。从消费者的角度看，玩游戏、看YouTube和听音乐并没有多在差别，只是不同形式的数字娱乐活动罢了。媒体中心可能就是新主机将扮演的角色。

至于其他平台，无论是社交平台还是手机平台，我认为我们将把这些平台看成新游戏开发的前沿和更多受众的开发渠道。主流的美国玩家每五年就会购买一部主机，更新一次Xbox或其他游戏设备。现在，人们更多地把时间花在iPad等移动设备上。

GH：现在有许多新的输入设备如Kinect、Google Glass和Oculus Rift等。你认为多触屏幕会将它们淘汰掉，还是这些新技术并驾齐驱？

W：现在的新输入设备真是五花八门。这是一件好事，因为输入方式简单，而输出结果却大为进步——更高的分辨率、更好的音效等。在以前，玩游戏时，你要一个鼠标、一个键盘和一根游戏控制杆。而再看看多触屏幕和Kinect这些东西，你就会觉得它们为游戏开发世界开拓了一片新天地。

我认为更有趣的一种设备是像Google Glass这种眼镜。它将彻底改变游戏的视野、吸引广泛的关注，是值得探索的新技术。

再者，即使有了这些输入设备，无论是多触屏幕还是动作感知技术，或者只是鼠标和键盘，困难的部分仍然是玩家心理学。在这方面，输入设备还没成为大瓶颈。我可以想象围绕几乎任何一种设备设计游戏中有趣的效果。不同设备各有优势。很难用鼠标和键盘玩跳舞游戏，但用Kinect就非常好。某种设备适合某种游戏。我认为不存在“以不变应万变”的解决方案。多样化才是王道。

GH：人们对Oculus Rift尤其感兴趣。90年代时，虚拟现实可是高端技术，但运用并不深入，现在，它已经落后了。有没有什么新类型游戏是针对这种操作方式的？

W：强化现实的技术还有很大潜力。从实用的角度出发，“头上戴这种东西会头晕吧？”仍然要考虑到许多非常现实的问题。但将游戏与现实相融合的相法确实让我很感兴趣，比纯虚拟现实技术（头戴上设备后，真实世界就消失了）更吸引我。虚拟现实技术可能也有实用性的问题，毕竟仍然能感觉得到周围的动静。如果让我选择一种可能大大促进游戏的技术，我想我会选择强化现实技术吧。

GH：随着大量游戏从付费模式转向免费模式或免费试玩模式，你认为这对游戏设计师和他们设计游戏的方式有何影响？

W：从某种程度上，这让设计师的心态回归到老式街机游戏时代。你如何让玩家在最开始的几分钟内就对你的游戏爱不释手？我们要给他们许多甜头。这是一个巴浦洛夫问题。你必须逐渐体现游戏的价值，从情感上吸引玩家。

一旦玩家对你的游戏产生感情，他们就更容易把手伸向钱袋了。给他们“只要你打开红色的大门，就有好玩的东西了”这样的承诺是远远不够的。

这一定程度上增加了设计师的负担。如果在这几分钟内我不能吸引玩家，那么我在游戏中的其他努力就白费了。我必须花更多时间考虑玩家在游戏中的“初体验”。这未必是件坏事。让玩家喜欢上游戏后，下一个问题就是，如何留住玩家。也就是游戏的粘性。

过去几年，我们发现的最有效的办法是建设玩家社区和社交互动。只要我与其他人产生互动关系，我就会有声望、影响力、认同感，游戏的粘性就产生了。互动使游戏变成社交空间，而社交正是使游戏产生粘性的方法之一。

在商业方面，越来越多人尝试新方法，如先开发游戏的一部分，看看反响后再决定是否继续投资，以免投入过多收不回本。游戏不一定总是零零碎碎地发行，但我肯定游戏会一面销售一面改进。也就是说，先发布第一版本，吸引玩家后，再添加其他内容。这是一种分阶段的开发方式，根据反响决定投入。这种现象会越来越多。（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）

Game Horizon’s Will Wright Q&A on the future of games (part two)

by Dean Takahashi

Will Wright, the creator of blockbuster franchises like SimCity and The Sims, discussed the future of games at the Game Horizon Live event in a live webcast this week. During his Q&A session, he discussed a wide variety of topics about where games are going.

Wright said that he was inspired by the “Cambrian” explosion of games (as in the meteoric growth of life during that epoch in Earth’s history) that has come from indie game development on app stores for smartphones, tablets, and other platforms.

Wright co-founded Maxis and created games like SimCity. Electronic Arts acquired the company in 1997, and Wright went on to create titles like The Sims and Spore while at EA. He left Electronic Arts in 2009 and set up a series of startups. His latest company is Syntertainment, which focuses on creative play and the interaction between entertainment and reality.

Wright has won multiple awards and was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame, and in 2007, he became the first game designer to receive a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award. For young game designers getting started, Wright advised them to study nongaming fields so they can get more creative inspiration. Here’s an edited transcript of a portion of the Q&A with Wright at Game Horizon 2013. This is part two (click here for part one).

Game Horizon: Do you think there’s a disconnect between the people who design games and the people who are playing them?

Wright: A lot of people design games for different reasons. If you talk to different game designers, it depends on where they are, what company they’re in, if they’re in a startup situation, and things like that. Some just want to build a successful company. They don’t really care what kind of game they make. They’re trying to figure out what the hot genre is. Other people are much more into artistic expression. These are more like your indie game developers. They want to push forward the state of the art in game design and try new, weird, interesting things. They want to strike out and discover new genres. Some people are very wedded to a particular genre. “I want to do the coolest first-person shooter set in World War II that’s been done so far.” It’s much more of a craftsmanship approach.

At the end of the day, as a player, you want to sit back and have a good time and enjoy whatever it is. I think that Sid Meier said once that sometimes game designers design games for players, and other times they design games for themselves. I think I’ve been guilty of that a couple of times. I’ve learned from that, as I step back.

With SimEarth, which was a game I did many years ago, I got really into the simulation. I spent all this time getting the climate connected to geology and things like that. From the player’s point of view, they didn’t see under the hood. They didn’t see all these bits and pieces moving around and how beautifully it worked together, this wonderful clockwork. For them, all they saw were these graphs and things. Playing SimEarth was like being put into the cockpit of a 747 in a nose dive with all the gauges spinning. They were pushing the controls around, trying to come up with some association between their input and the outputs. The simulation was too complex, I think, for players to enjoy and learn from. As a designer, I got totally into the simulation and forgot about the player. That was something I learned a lot from. So that does happen a lot.

Right now, the market is so immediate and so Darwinian. With the metrics that we’re able to collect from players, we’re able to discover within a few hours where players are getting stuck, what they’re enjoying, what things are surprising us about their activities in the game. We’re able to learn from players so much more quickly that it creates a much tighter iteration loop.

GH: Do you engage directly with your audience? Do people contact you and ask you questions and you reply, or is that just overwhelming?

Wright: [I engage] as much as possible. One of the most important roles for any game being released today is community management. Listening to the players, getting a sense of what the consensus is from the players, and responding back to them. Part of that is just care and feeding of the community. If they understand that you’re listening, you can spin it from going bad and turning into a flame war to bringing them on to your side and making them into your evangelists. Another big part of that is understanding what they’re enjoying about your game. What are the things about your game that are most frustrating to them? How quickly can you respond to that and fix it? As soon as you can start the conversation with your community, then you’re working with them. They’re helping you develop the game. We have the technology and the metrics and the communications to do that now very effectively and very rapidly.

GH: You mentioned earlier the idea of player states, the different psychological states that a player can be in. Are there any particular states that you’d like to explore more? If you did that,would that lead to new game ideas, possibly?

Wright: Games, in some sense, started almost from the core brain, the reptilian brain. Early games were about aggression, defense, survival. The reptilian brain is what we were initially preying on because that was easy and effective. Now games are starting to get to the outer layers of our brain and a wider palette of emotions, and that brings the player into different states. A lot of games out there right now are very reflective or meditative, very relaxing, which is the opposite of the early games that were all about adrenaline.

Games are also more external to the player now. In other words, it’s about the player being sent into some world and dealing with things around them. One of the areas that we haven’t explored much that I’m very interested in is how we get players to get more of a sense of their internal states, their own psychology. What is it like to be inside their head? Games can extract a lot of that from individual players and allow players to see interesting reflections of themselves in the game, not just some external virtual reality, some fictitious world. These self-reflective games to me imply a certain mental state of self-awareness that I think we haven’t explored at all in games.

GH: Do you feel that narrative can get in the way of that kind of experience?

Wright: I think that there’s always going to be this tension between narrative and freedom or agency in games,. I could sit there and tell you a story. That’s a very passive experience. The chief strength of a game, though, the thing that almost defines a game, is the fact that you’re driving it. It is interactive, and you get to steer the situation. What I’ve kept with me from gaming are the unique stories that players have told me about things that they did in a game, things nobody else did. So I think of games more as a platform for players to play out stories than as a medium for the game designer to tell a story. To me, telling a story is almost, right off the bat, putting the player in a passive role.

As a game designer, I think it’s much more interesting to get on the path of “how do we teach our games to recognize the story that the player is trying to play out and then respond and support that story?” The game itself can become something of a director in the background, watching the player drive the story forward, and then try to support and amplify that dramatically.

GH: Did you play Journey, which won lots of awards in the U.K. and the U.S. last year? I mention it because it found a very interesting balance between the narrative, which it tells you very little about – you discover it yourself – and this sense of emotion in the characters.

Wright: Yeah. I think Braid captured that as well. I’m not saying there aren’t ways to do that. It’s a very tricky thing, though.

GH: We see a lot of readers arguing among themselves about the danger of next-generation consoles delivering more advanced visuals but forgetting about the gameplay aspect – just giving us more flash. Do you feel like that’s a valid concern?

Wright: Historically, we’ve had this kind of arms race in the games industry. Graphics, pixels, polygons. If I look back to the games I was playing 20 or 30 years ago, when there were just a few little pixels on the screen that made up a character, somehow I still cared about that character. I was able to infuse that character with life. Looking at what we can do with modern-day equipment, we can build these beautifully rendered humans and creatures, but their behavioral range is still about that of an ant. We’ve gone way, way ahead on the graphics side, but on the simulation and behavioral side, we’re still many steps back.

At the same time, I see that people are playing these games in the app market that we could have done 20 years ago. They’re still fun, though. People engage, and they spend time playing them. You can go down this path of hyper-realistic graphics, and it’s impressive and nice to look at for a while, but at the end of the day, it’s gameplay that’s going to keep me with a game for 30 or 40 hours.

As we get on that more realistic path, it also makes development much more expensive. That’s where you wind up needing millions of dollars to put something on the market that’s on par with everything else. That world will continue to exist, I think, but it’s going to become a smaller and smaller chunk of the overall games market. I’m not sure that it’s even all that relevant to the industry as a whole. It’s cool that we have these advanced graphics processors to create these hyper-realistic images, but gameplay is what makes up the broad landscape. Making things realistic is just one path through it. Who knows how many different types of innovative gameplay are out there that we haven’t yet discovered. That’s the frontier.

GH: Going on from that, do you have any thoughts on the new generation of consoles in general or the different approaches between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo?

Wright: Gameplay is one thing, but a lot of these people are also competing to become your media hub. That’s the battle they’re starting to fight. Gameplay is interesting because it’s becoming more ubiquitous. It’s starting to infuse our culture everywhere with this gamification movement. People are seeing gameplay send tendrils out into other forms of media. The way I browse the web, the way I think about music or movies, the social networks I use. Games could potentially become the connective tissue between these things.

If you look at this next generation of consoles, they’re seeing that. You buy this as a game machine, but really it’s going to become your media hub. From a consumer’s point of view, there’s not a huge distinction between gaming and watching YouTube and listening to music. They’re all different forms of entertainment that I’m enjoying digitally. That’s probably the biggest role for these new consoles going forward.

With these other platforms, whether they’re social platforms or mobile platforms, I think we’re going to see those as maybe the larger frontier as far as new, innovative game development and reaching a broader audience. Mainstream America had been in this cycle of buying a console every five years, upgrading the Xbox or whatever. Nowadays people are spending more time on their iPads or tablets and things like that.

GH: There are lots of novel interface mechanisms being delivered these days – Kinect, Google Glass, Oculus Rift, and so on. Do you think the multitouch touchscreen is going to wipe them all out, or do you see those innovations flowering alongside each other?

Wright: There are so many different input devices appearing right now. It’s kind of nice because for the longest time we had all this growth in the output from your computer – higher resolution, better sound – and the input was pretty much still the same little straw. You had a mouse, a keyboard, and maybe a joypad. Seeing things like multitouch and 3D Z-buffer Kinect types of things, they’re opening up interesting new areas in game development.

I think one of the more interesting ones is going to be on the eyewear side of things, wherever that goes — Google Glass and so forth. That’s going to be something that feels fundamentally different, that’s going to be a whole new thing to explore. It’s going to have a lot of social stigma attached to it, which will be interesting and fun to explore.

Again, even with the input we have, whether it’s multitouch or gesture or just mouse and keyboard, the hard part is still getting into the psychology of the player. I don’t see that the
interfaces are that big of a bottleneck in that direction. I can imagine designing an interesting effect in a game around almost any interface. Each one has its strengths. It’s hard to do a dance game with a keyboard and mouse whereas a dance game with Kinect works pretty well. Certain interfaces will become the home of certain genres. I don’t see any one-size-fits-all solution. I see a sea of diversification.

GH: The Oculus Rift in particular has drawn a lot of interest. Virtual reality was a big thing in the ’90s, but it never quite worked out, but now it’s come back again. Do you see new genres
being created specifically for this much more integral control method?

Wright: The augmented-reality thing has a lot of potential going forward. There’s still the pragmatic aspect of “how long can I wear this on my head without getting motion sick?” There are some very practical concerns. But the idea of blending gaming with reality is very intriguing to me. It’s more intriguing than the idea of pure virtual reality, where I put on the headset and the whole world disappears. It’s probably more pragmatic as well, to still have some awareness of what’s around you. If I had to pick one technology that I think is going to be a leap forward for gaming, it probably would be down the augmented-reality path.

GH: As a lot of games and genres migrate from a premium business model to free-to-play or free-to-try, do you see that reflected in the role of the designer and the way that you design a game using those models?

Wright: In some sense, it puts the psychology of the designer back where we were in the old arcade days. How do you get somebody, in the first couple of minutes, to enjoy the activity enough that they can’t stop? We’re giving them a bag of potato chips, so to speak. It’s a very Pavlovian thing. You have to unveil the value of a game progressively and get the player emotionally hooked.

Once you get them emotionally hooked, it’s a lot easier to get them to pull a dollar out of their pocket. It’s more than just the promise of “this is going to be really cool if you open the red door.”

In some ways, it frontloads a lot of the designer’s task. Right off the bat, if I can’t get the player past a certain point with this game, any other effort I put into the game is wasted. I’m
going to spend a lot more time thinking about the initial user experience. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Then, once you’ve pulled somebody into the experience, it’s a question of how you keep them there. What’s the stickiness?

One of the most effective ways that we’ve found over the years revolves around community and social interaction. As soon as I’m interacting with other people — I have some reputation, I have a role, I see this as part of my identity — that’s as sticky as anything. It’s going to bring games into a somewhat more social space because social is one of those thumbnail methods for making the experience sticky.

On the business side, you’re going to see a lot of people trying things, to some degree, where you’re putting something out with a certain amount of development and waiting to see if people get pulled into it before you invest too much on the back side of the experience. We’re not necessarily going to see games revealed episodically all the time, but I can definitely see games growing while they’re on the market. I come out with a first version, and when people get into it, I add more layers to it. It’s staged development, where you reinvest based on success. We’re seeing alot of that happen.(source:venturebeat)