作者：Zack Wood

2010年4月到2011年5月期间，我有幸在日本顶尖艺术学校京都英华大学学习漫画和电子游戏设计。我总共在日本生活，工作并学习了4年时间。所以我将在此分享自己所学到的有关游戏设计的知识。

我最早接触到日本动漫是在中学，即朋友向我介绍了吉卜力工作室的《幽灵公主》。该动漫中的角色和生物与我之前所看过的都不同，所以很快我便沉浸于其中。那时候起我也开始玩一些日本电子游戏，特别是任天堂时代的角色扮演游戏（RPG）。

我玩过的第一款游戏（随机挑选的）便是《时空之轮》。我并不知道自己挑选的是一直以来都备受赞赏的游戏，当然，我也非常喜欢它。与对吉卜力工作室的动画电影充满兴趣一样，我也被日本RPG中的各种想象力给迷住了。

被忽视的珍宝

我偶然发现了《Paladin’s Quest》，这款并不是很出名的超级任天堂RPG（于1993年在美国发行）。因为通用名称，我差点略过了这款游戏。我不知道《Paladin’s Quest》的翻译是怎么回事，因为这款游戏与paladins并无任何关系；在日本，它是让人兴奋且神秘的《Lennus: Memory of the Ancient Machine》。

但是最后，《Paladin’s Quest》却成为了我眼中那个时代最具创造性且最让人印象深刻的游戏。尽管柔和的色彩设计和简单的视觉效果让它失去了许多玩家，但是单从创造性来说就足以吸引我的眼球了；让人难以忘怀的音乐，外来植物的生活以及特别的控制模式结合在一起便创造出了这一独特且吸引人的游戏体验。

The Magic School（from gamasutra）

日语学习

当我发现《Paladin’s Quest》拥有续集《Lennus II: The Apostles of the Seals》时，我迫切地想要尝试它；但是这款游戏却未推出英语版本，并且因为不懂日语，我根本没办法去尝试。

这也是我为何在大学一年级报名加入“密集日语培训”的课程的主要原因，即到京都英华大学完成4周的学习旅程。那时候，京都英华大学是日本唯一提供漫画主修课程的学校。

在那里我度过了一段很棒的时光，让我做出了转学到斯坦福大学主攻东亚研究的决定，并继续学习日语。当我毕业时， 我选择加入日本交流教学（JET）项目而来到这个国家教授英语。

那时候我发现了《Lennus》系列游戏制作总监Hidenori Shibao（游戏邦注：他也曾致力于PlayStation RPG《雷盖亚传说》的创造）的博客。在向日本好友询问并仔细检查了所有语法后，我给他发了信息，我们最后也针对《Lennus》以及游戏设计等讨论互发了好几封邮件。

回到京都英华大学

在两年的JET教学后，我想要找回最初吸引我来到日本的那个元素：电子游戏和动漫文化。我非常喜欢画画，并且我也始终记得京都英华大学以及在留学中所参加的漫画项目。这也是我为何会在2010年选择成为故事漫画科目研读生的主要原因。（作为“研读生”，我与其他普通学生所上的课程是一样的，但是在完成课程后却不能获得任何等级或学位证书。）

尽管日本学校对于接触与专业不同的课程具有很严格的要求，但是我却能够参加Kenichi Nishi（游戏邦注：《豆丁机器人》的制作总监，同时也是《时空之轮》的设计师）在游戏设计课程中的一些演说。Nishi向我们分享了各种理念与执行，并让学生们组成小组去创造属于自己的游戏。

基于这些经历，我知道了日本为何能够创造出像漫画和电子游戏这样大热门的内容，而在此我也想分享自己所学到的一些方法，主要侧重于两个点：日式角色及其在电子游戏中的功能，以及sekaikan—-经常用于描述电子游戏和其它媒体的术语。

日式角色：不只是“可爱”

任何去过日本的人都会说，在那里角色总是无处不在：不管是广告牌，电视，服装，列车或者食物（甚至不只停留在包装上，连食物本身也能呈现角色）等等你能够想象到的地方。

你甚至可以发现它们出现在一些在美国绝对不可能出现的地方，如写着“让我们减少自杀数量！”的宣传单上，有一个男孩和可爱的绿色生物握紧拳头并微笑地表明决心。

在美国，像马里奥，hello Kitty以及各种宠物小精灵等日式角色虽然很受欢迎，但有时候却会被视为太过孩子气或太过简单的对象。以我个人来讲，我对这些角色没有多大自控力，并且我也不认为它们除了传达美学而不再具有任何意义。不过我不是很清楚日式角色所具有的强大能量，不管是在利益方面还是作为大受欢迎媒体（如电子游戏）的一个重要元素。

巨大的需求与角色制作构成了如今的角色产业；电子游戏，动漫，漫画以及商品公司共同合作而基于大受欢迎的角色创造出了各种交叉产品。这在日本被称为“媒介组合”，也就是西方市场中的“跨媒体”。通过这些合作，来自成功漫画系列中的角色将能比漫画本身销量带来更多利益。

The Pokémon Train（from gamasutra）

在京都英华大学，我的同学们都知道创造出大受欢迎的角色是漫画创造过程的重要部分，就像你所想的那样，充满技能的角色设计师在日本非常有价值。来自《传奇系列》的Kosuke Fujishima以及《合金装备》的Yoji Shinkawa（游戏邦注：也是京都英华大学的校友）便因为出色的角色设计而拥有巨大的名气。像这些人便能够将自己的作品陈列在展览中，并销售有关草稿和设计的书籍。

Hello Kitty rice balls（from gamasutra）

日式角色的创造

这些角色的特殊之处在于什么？它们具有怎样值得分享的品质？在日本，人们经常用“kawaii”这个词（也就是可爱）来描述角色。但是这却不像“可爱”那么简单；我关于kawaii的角色的理解是，富有表现力，讨人喜欢且容易理解的。大大的头和眼睛，简单且多彩的设计以及丰富的情感反应等便是kawaii角色普遍具有的元素。

西方市场中鲜为人知，但同时也是非常重要的一个术语便是sonzaikan，从字面上直接翻译便是“一些存在着的感觉。”而从角色方面来看，这意味着他们具有真实性—-不只是带有真人般复杂的性格，而是能让人感觉到它们身上充满活力，并驱使观看者产生强烈的情感反应。基于这种方法，人们总是能够与自己喜欢的角色产生紧密的联系，就像他们是真正的朋友那般。

而设计师们又是如何创造出这样的角色？MIT的人类学家和教授Ian Condry在论文《Anime Creativity: Characters and Premises in the Quest for Cool Japan》描述了一个例子。他访问了为大受欢迎的动画片《Dekoboko and Friends》创造角色的设计团队m&k。

他们先是创造许多角色，并从中“测试”60个角色，也就是先拟订一个较广的范围并从中进行挑选。他解释道：“我们始终都避免创造出普通的角色，并瞄准那些在某种程度上失衡的特性。”创造者并不是从角色的视觉图像开始创造，而是先着眼于角色的特殊风味或特殊技能。“kyara的个性超越了角色本身，能够唤起一些真实存在的感觉或生命力。”当m&k从它们所测试的角色中挑选部分角色时，他们强调的是极端性：一个角色极为害羞，另一个极为贪婪，另一个唱着传统歌曲的优雅老女人，另一个体形太大了以至于不能通过一扇门。

换句话说，每个角色都被定义为一个简单的理念，并且这一理念也决定着他们的行为和外观。结果便是，尽管很简单，但是每个角色却又让人感觉那么真实，从而真切让我们感受到这部动画片为何这么受欢迎。

Dekoboko and Friends（from gamasutra）

角色是什么：游戏中的角色

在游戏设计博客“游戏是什么”中，Tadhg Kelly解释了角色的在电子游戏中的作用，并且根据他的描述，日式角色似乎看起来更加适当，

首先，它能帮助我们理解故事在电子游戏中的作用。在文章《On Player Characters and Self Expression》中，Kelly解释了他所谓的“故事感”：

“故事感”是一种叙述方式，主要基于创造一个有趣的世界，可发现的过程以及少量的故事内容，是通向目标的一种抽象方法，但却不需要戏剧化的情节和角色发展。它将故事退回到玩游戏，从而让玩家可以根据自己的喜好决定是否参与其中。这里并不存在特定事件而给予选择游戏内部角色的玩家奖励，唯一的奖励也是最表面化的，就像游戏那样。这里并不存在详细的特性描述，也未想方设法添加任何不必要的意义，不会故意向玩家传达某种情感而刺激它们。

这也是为什么他在《Character Establishment》中解释，游戏中的角色并不需要故事中那样的传统发展：

创造角色与角色发展并不同，从戏剧角度来看，角色发展是一个很长且复杂的过程，但是在游戏中，这却与需要创造出怎样的世界相矛盾。而创造角色则是在传达对某人的一种印象，因为它们只是描述中的一部分。

我们需要以较低的干涉去创造游戏角色，如此才能让玩家基于自己的节奏去做出选择。如果忽视了这点或过多地向玩家进行描述，那么玩家原本可能产生的认同感便会转变成厌恶或反感。

他在《Character Development》中总结道：“世界是关于开发，而角色（在极大程度上）只是其中一个资源。”

日式角色给人的印象便是真实性（sozaikan），简单且不失个性，就像我便非常喜欢这类型的角色。除了物理和情感上具有现实性的角色外，简单化且具有风格的kawaii角色还能够赋予游戏世界生命力，并且让玩家不会因为过多的对话和过场动画而分心。

重视角色

毫不意外，总是有人很重视那些著名角色的图像和使用。而我也惊讶地发现一家名为Warpstar的公司完全致力于管理Kirby这个角色。Warpstar与HAL Laboratory面向Wii创造了《Kirby’s Epic Yarn》。而设计师更是花了3个多月的事件去完善Kirby的外观。

我们也可以从《塞尔达传说：天空之剑》的创造团队中感受到这种对角色的重视。设计师甚至希望敌人也足够kawaii，赋予它们“一些人性”，让玩家既喜欢他们又想击败他们。

我想要在此强调的是kawaii和sonzaikan并非密不可分，尽管在来自日本的一些例子中它们常常一起出现。kawaii是创造出生动且真实的日式角色的重要元素，但是我想还有其它方法能够让你的角色更加sonzaikan。

sekaikan：开发游戏的“世界观”

除了讨论角色，我也想要介绍下sekaikan这个词，我们可以粗略地将其翻译为“世界观”。我认为，它是帮助我们理解日式游戏开发最重要的单词。

最初我是在Hidenori Shibao一篇有关《Paladin’ Quest》的开发的文章中看到这一理念，在文章中他也解释了自己的目标便是将世界当成游戏的主要角色。最后，他尝试着赋予所有内容创新性—-不管是战斗菜单（可以使用方向键进行导航）还是超凡脱俗的角色设计与概念艺术。他表示，自己是带着创造一个完美的sekaikan的想法去设置所有游戏元素。

（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）

Characters and Worldbuilding: Analyzing the Strength of Japanese Games

by Zack Wood

From April 2010 to May 2011, I had the opportunity to study manga (Japanese comics) and video game design at one of Japan’s leading art schools, Kyoto Seika University. In total, I lived, worked, and studied in Japan for about four years. Here, I would like to share what I learned there about game design.

It all started in high school when a friend introduced me to anime (Japanese animation) through Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke. The characters and creatures were unlike anything I’d seen before, and soon I was borrowing more. From there I started playing Japanese video games, especially Super Nintendo-era role-playing games (RPGs).

The first one I played, chosen at random, was the curiously titled Chrono Trigger.  Little did I know I was picking up one of the most revered games of all time, and, of course, I was hooked. Similar to my interest in Studio Ghibli’s animated movies, I was enchanted by the level of imagination that I saw in Japanese RPGs.

An Overlooked Treasure

Eventually I stumbled upon Paladin’s Quest, one of the lesser-known Super Nintendo RPGs, released in the US in 1993. I almost skipped the game entirely, however, due to its generic name. I don’t know how the translators settled on Paladin’s Quest, since the game has nothing to do with paladins; in Japan, it goes by the exciting and mysterious Lennus: Memory of the Ancient Machine.

Paladin’s Quest turned out to be, in my opinion, the most original and memorable game in an era that was already brimming with innovation. The pastel color scheme and simple visual style turned off many players, but their novelty only added to the appeal for me; the haunting music, alien plant-life, and unusual control scheme came together to create a unique and very engaging experience.

“The Magic School,” first area of Paladin’s Quest

For the Love of the Game

When I found out that Paladin’s Quest had a sequel, Lennus II: The Apostles of the Seals, I was eager to play; however, the game had never been released in English, and with zero knowledge of Japanese, I couldn’t even make my way out of the first area.

That’s why, in freshman year of college, I enrolled in an “Intensive Japanese” class that culminated in a four-week trip to Kyoto Seika University. At the time, Kyoto Seika had just made news for being the first school in Japan to offer a major in manga.

I had a great time there, which led me to transfer to Stanford University to major in East Asian Studies and continue studying Japanese. As soon as I graduated, I moved to Japan to teach English with the Japan Exchange Teaching (JET) Program.

That was when I discovered the blog of Hidenori Shibao, the director of the Lennus series, who also worked on Legend of Legaia, a PlayStation RPG. After double-checking my grammar with a Japanese friend, I sent him a message, and we ended up exchanging a number of emails about the Lennus games and game design in general.

Back To Kyoto Seika

After two years with JET, I wanted to return to what drew me to Japan in the first place: popular culture like video games and anime. I had always loved drawing, and I remembered Kyoto Seika and its manga program from my study abroad trip. That’s how I ended up going back in 2010 as a research student in the Story Manga Department. (As a “research student” I took classes like a regular student, but without any grades or diploma upon completion.)

Although Japanese schools tend to be strict about taking classes outside your department, I was able to attend some lectures in a game design class with Kenichi Nishi, the director of the cult-hit Chibi-Robo! (He was, coincidentally, a designer on Chrono Trigger.) Nishi walked us through development from idea to execution, and students formed groups to create their own games over the course of the semester.

Through all of this, I learned a lot about the Japanese approach to creating popular culture like manga and video games, and here I would like to share what I learned, focusing on two points: Japanese-style characters and their function in video games, and sekaikan, a term used frequently in reference to video games and other media.

Japanese Characters: More than Just “Cute”

Anyone who’s been to Japan can tell you that characters appear everywhere: billboards, TV, clothes, trains, food (and not just the packaging, but often the food inside, too) — anywhere you can imagine.

You can even find them in situations that in America might be considered slightly inappropriate, such as a flyer I saw that proclaimed something along the lines of “Let’s reduce the number of suicides!” with a boy and cute green creature raising their fists in smiling determination.

In America, Japanese characters like Mario, Hello Kitty, and the various Pokémon are, while popular, sometimes put down for being child-like or simplistic. Personally, I have always had a soft spot for them, but I didn’t think they were reflective of anything more than an aesthetic that I happened to like. Little did I know that characters in Japan wield great power, both in terms of money and as an important element in popular media like video games.

The huge demand for and production of characters constitutes what is essentially a character industry; video game, anime, manga, and merchandise companies work together in close coordination to create spin-offs, crossovers, and various products based around popular characters. This is referred to as “media mix” in Japan, roughly equivalent to “transmedia” in the West. Through these collaborations, a character from a successful manga series, for example, can end up bringing in far more money than what’s genrated by sales of the original manga itself.

The Pokémon Train

Hello Kitty rice balls

At Kyoto Seika, my classmates were very much aware that creating popular characters was a crucial part of the manga-making process, and, as you can imagine, skilled character designers in Japan are highly valued. There are artists like Kosuke Fujishima of the Tales of series of RPGs and Metal Gear’s Yoji Shinkawa (a Kyoto Seika alumnus whose iconic art is seen to the left), who have achieved great fame and recognition thanks in large part to their work designing characters. Artists such as these have their work featured in exhibitions, and can sell expensive art books of their sketches and designs.

The Making of Japanese Characters

What then is special about these characters? What qualities, if any, do they share? Some people may be familiar with the term kawaii, which is usually rendered in English as “cute,” and is often used to describe characters. Actually, it is not as simple as just being “cute”; my understanding of kawaii characters is that they are expressive, endearing, and easy-to-read. Large heads and eyes, simple, colorful designs, and exaggerated emotional reactions are some recurring stylistic elements of kawaii characters.

A term less well known in the West which is also very important is sonzaikan, which literally translates to “the feeling that something exists.” In terms of characters, it means that they seem real — not necessarily that they are just like real people with complex personalities, but more that they feel full of life, and provoke an emotional response from the viewer. In this way, people can feel a personal connection with their favorite characters, almost as if they were real friends.

In practice, then, how do designers make these kinds of characters? Ian Condry, a cultural anthropologist and professor at MIT, describes one example in his paper, Anime Creativity: Characters and Premises in the Quest for Cool Japan. There, he interviews m&k, the design team who created the characters for a popular animated show called Dekoboko and Friends.

[T]hey developed the characters by “auditioning” about 60 of them, that is, drawing up a wide range and selecting from them. “We avoided average characters, and aimed instead for those who were in some way unbalanced,” he explained… The creators also didn’t start with the visual image of the character, but instead thought in terms of a character’s distinctive flavor (mochiaji) or special skill (tokugi)… “[T]he personality (kyara) precedes the character itself, evoking the feeling of some kind of existence (sonzaikan) or life force (seimeikan)”… When m&k selected characters from among the many they auditioned, they emphasized the extreme: one character is extremely shy, another extremely speedy, another is an elegant older woman who sings traditional sounding songs, another is so big he can’t fit through the door.

In other words, each character is defined by a simple concept, which in turn determines both their behavior and appearance. The result is that, though simplistic, each character feels likable and real, as reflected by the show’s popularity.

What Characters Are: Characters in Games

In his game design blog “What Games Are,” Tadhg Kelly explains characters’ role and function in video games, and, based on his description, Japanese-style characters seem to me to be especially suitable.

First, it helps to understand his view on the role of story in video games. In his post On Player Characters and Self Expression, Kelly explains what he calls “storysense”:

“Storysense” is an approach to narrative which relies on the creation of an interesting world, a discoverable set of threads and bits of story, a minimalist approach to goal direction, but dispenses with dramatic plot and character development. It treats story as a backing track to the play of the game, and so the player can participate or not as he likes. There is no time given over to extrinsically rewarding the player for being in-character, and the only rewards are literal — just as the game is. There is no elaborate characterization, no attempt to insert unnecessary meaning, and no emoting at the player to try and make him or her feel.

That’s why, he explains in Character Establishment, characters in games don’t need traditional development through a story:

Establishing character is not the same thing as character development. Character development in a dramatic arc is a long and complex process, but in a game it’s completely at odds with what a world needs to achieve. The art of establishing characters is conveying an impression of who they are in totality, because they are just a part of a portrait.

A game character needs to be established with a light touch, so that it’s the player’s choice to like or loathe at their own pace. Take that away, or foist exposition on the player, and intended feelings of sympathy quickly turn to antipathy or boredom.

As he sums it up in his post on Character Development, “the world is what develops and characters are (for the most part) just resources within it.”

Japanese characters, with their impression of being real (sonzaikan), and simple but engaging personalities (like the Dekoboko characters and many others), seem to me to be very well-suited for this kind of role. More so than physically and emotionally realistic characters, simplified and stylized kawaii characters help bring the gameworld to life for the “art brain” without distracting the “play brain” from trying to win with excessive dialogue or cutscenes.

Taking Care of Characters

Given characters’ importance in terms of gameplay and larger financial models, it should come as no surprise that great care is taken in handling famous characters’ image and use. I was personally surprised, however, to discover that there is an entire company, called Warpstar, devoted to managing Kirby. Warpstar collaborated with HAL Laboratory, for example, in the making of Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii. In that case, designers spent an incredible three months perfecting Kirby’s appearance.

This careful attention to characters can also be seen in interviews with the team who made Zelda: Skyward Sword. The designers discuss working to make even the enemies kawaii, to give them “a touch of humanity” that makes you like them even as you want to defeat them.

I’d like to emphasize here that kawaii and sonzaikan are not inseparable, though they often go hand-in-hand in the case of Japan. Kawaii is certainly an important part of what makes Japanese characters feel alive and real, but I imagine that there are other approaches to giving your characters sonzaikan, too.

Sekaikan: Developing Your Game’s “Worldview”

In addition to discussing characters, I would like to introduce the term sekaikan, which roughly translates to “worldview.” It is, in my opinion, the single most important word in understanding Japanese game development.

I first encountered the concept of sekaikan on Hidenori Shibao’s blog in a post about the development of Paladin’s Quest, where he explains that his goal was to make the world the main character of the game. Toward that end, he tried to make everything feel novel and new — from the battle menus, which can be navigated solely with the directional pad — to the otherworldly character designs and concept art. He approached all elements of the game, he says, with the goal of creating a good sekaikan.(source:gamasutra)