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分享游戏设计要点之明确目标(1)

发布时间:2013-07-01 15:05:41 Tags:,,,,

作者:Ethan Levy

在致力于《Enhanced Wars》的创造前,我是BioWare旧金山工作室的制作人和经理。我在BioWare的大多数时间都是引导着《龙腾世纪传奇》的游戏团队(扮演着制作人的角色)。在最忙碌的时期,我甚至带领过一个由25人组成的团队,并且其中19人是由我直接管理。适当的雇佣真的能够有效引导一个团队走向正确的道路(我也很幸运的在艺电拥有一支很强大的队伍,不管是在HR部门还是BioWare的同事),但是我在那时的一大职责是作为游戏设计,艺术和工程等多个职位的人事部经理。(请点击此处阅读本系列第2第3篇

Dragon Age Legends(from media-freaks)

Dragon Age Legends(from media-freaks)

当我离开BioWare后,我开始参加各种社区活动,如Reddit以及其它论坛,并在此填补我的生活空洞。因为在《Enhanced Wars》项目中的其他2位合作者是处在不同时区,所以我不能与他们进行有效地交谈。如此我只能徘徊于各种论坛,希望能够通过与当下或未来的游戏开发者分享我的建议而提升价值。

我发现自己经常在重复一些建议,即关于游戏设计师该如何闯入游戏产业。我认为这是作为人事部经理的我能够分享的有价值的观点,我将分成两部分对其进行深入分析。

重要提醒—-我只是从人事部经理的角度出发。但是你所选择的公司或希望留下深刻印象的人却都是不同的。如果你是想在我们团队中谋得一份工作,那么这些方法便对你很有效。所以你需要自己进行衡量。

步骤1:找到你的目标

2012年,我最喜欢的作者之一Niel Gaiman在费城艺术大学里发表了开学典礼演讲。其中包含了许多很棒的建议能够引导着学生们去制定自己的职业规划。而从演讲中我们知道,任何想成为游戏设计师的人需要迈出的第一步是:

“对我来说非常有效的一种做法便是,想象我想要到达的地方是一座山,一座遥远的山。这便是我的目标。

我知道,只要自己不断朝着那座山前进,我便能够实现目标。而当我不知道自己该做些什么时,我可以停下来,仔细思考是该继续朝着那座山行进还是改变方向。”

这一点非常重要,因为游戏设计是一个广阔的职业。有时候我可能在编写一份设计文件,有时候在绘制UI或规划用户体验流程,有时候一整天都在调整电子表格中的优化值或设计关卡,有时候在编写故事或为菜单屏幕写副本,有时候会花一整天时间去修改脚本文件中的漏斗,有时候还会在规划盈利策略。

这一列表并不是在定义所有的游戏设计元素。甚至比任务更重要的应该是你想要创造的游戏类型和平台。例如,如果《Enhanced Wars》失败了,而我想要找一份全职工作的话,我便会自信地申请手机游戏盈利设计这份工作。但是如果我决定是时候在PS4和Xbone上为AAA级游戏创建3D关卡的话,我便会在有足够自信申请那份工作前至少投入6个月的准备时间。

在你的整个职业生涯中,那座山将会发生多次改变。新的机遇将会出现,新的平台将会形成,新的类型也会诞生。但是最重要的是你需要尽早敲定目标。因为申请《Tom Clancy’s The Division》的关卡设计工作与申请《战地4》的UX设计工作,或者一家小型手机初创公司的多方位设计师都是完全不同的。

你是否研究过并明确了自己作为设计师想要从事的工作。我的建议是,着眼于Gamasutra或你所欣赏的公司网站上的工作招聘信息。阅读有关设计工作的要求,角色和职责。你可能会说“这听起来很有趣”或者“如下接下来3年都要做这些事我会非常郁闷。”

我希望你不要将这座山定位于创意总监。至少在一开始不要这么做。我知道,很多人都梦想着能够成为引导游戏创造性观点的那个人。如果你发现唯一吸引你的工作是那些需要10年以上经验的职位,你便会被击醒。如果几年的努力工作(游戏邦注:推动着你往目标山顶攀爬)是无益的,你便永远都不可能攀上顶峰。

当你找到自己的那座山时,你就需要准备开始创造设计文件夹了,这是我们下面要分析的内容。

创造优秀的文件夹

尽管现在作为独立开发者(致力于《Enhanced Wars》),我并未像在BioWare的旧金山工作室工作那样需要浏览许多简历,不过我还是会阅读一些较为奇特的简历,即来自Reddit或其它论坛的内容。而我对此所作出的反馈通常都是一样的,即:“你需要致力于文件夹网站。”

在BioWare的旧金山工作室,我们与实习生和增选学生(游戏邦注:在工作室工作一学期而获得学分)间具有紧密的关系。实际上,如果没有来自实习团队的贡献,我们便不可能按时发行《龙腾世纪传奇》。同样地,我也很开心看到艺电的大学关系团队能够带着具有潜力的实习生的简历到校园里进行面试。

对我来说,在短短时间里阅读50份简历并挑选出适合我们团队的成员这一工作是再平常不过的事了。不管我是在浏览许多实习生候选人的简历还是阅读一份全职应聘者的简历,我的过程都是一样的。即打开简历,快速浏览1分钟而找到亮点。打开文件夹网站链接并花费大量时间进行浏览(如果可能的话)。如果应聘者的文件夹非常出色,我便会提出电话面试。我已经多次遇到因为对方文件夹太优秀而迫不及待地拨打了电话,以防他被其它工作室请走。可以说高质量的文件夹是决定电话面试的最大因素。

明确的证据

如果你没什么工作经验,那么你所面临的挑战便是不能证明自己能否完成工作要求。当我在招人时,我并不在乎你的使命宣言,参加过什么课外活动或者与这一产业完全无关的暑假兼职。我唯一在乎的是你能否证明自己的设计能力。

很多人都不知道该往设计文件夹里添加哪些内容,并且关于一份优秀的设计文件或如何设置游戏经济也不存在任何标准。你最应该放入文件夹的便是自己创造并发行的游戏。基于像Unity和Game Maker Studio等工具以及自我发行的便利,我会建议那些想要成为游戏设计师的学生们应该在上学的时候每年面向应用商店推出一款游戏。没有什么比以下内容更能证明你是一名有能力的设计师了:

1.你知道如何完成一款游戏并将其面向全世界发行

2.你会花时间听取玩家的看法,不管是通过参数,评价,访问还是其它反馈

3.你可以明确说出是如何根据玩家的反馈完善游戏

能在最初的电话面试中告诉我这一内容的应聘者便能立即获得通向全团队面试的最终门票。

创造一个优秀的文件夹需要花费几个月的时间,甚至是几年。在大学里,我多次尝试着组建一个团队去创造游戏。我被那些想要谈论游戏和合作的程序员和美术人员们所吸引着,但是当是时候开始致力于游戏时,他们却并未能做到像说的那么好。除非你拥有一个自己所信赖的团队,要不我会建议你先开始创造一些小游戏,独立完成并完善它。如果你不知道如何编写代码,那就开始学起!

突出文件夹的材料

文件夹的内容是取决于你之前所明确的目标山。不管你的设计工作类型是什么,你都需要添加能够证明你可以高质量完成设计工作的工具。如果你的目标是创造开放世界RPG,那就去研究《龙腾世纪》或《天际》的mod工具并进行探索。如果你想要致力于多人FPS,那么深入研究Unreal Engine 3或Hammer,并面向世界发行一些关卡。如果你想要创造多人竞技游戏(MOBA),那么就去熟悉《魔兽争霸3》或《星际争霸2》的编辑器,并创造一个新的MOBA类型的游戏模式。

不管你为自己设定的是怎样的目标山,你都不能傻傻地等待着。你必须证明自己能够完成内容,发行到玩家面前,听取他们的反馈并基于反馈完善内容,如此你才能获得第一次专业创造机会。如果你的目标是致力于一款特定的游戏或在一家特定的公司工作,并且如果他们拥有一个公开的工具,你就需要花时间去精通它们。

其它文件夹材料

设计师的工作并不只是创造关卡或内容。以下是你可以添加到文件夹的其它文件或内容。这是基于我在《Enhanced Wars》和其它项目的各种类型工作的建议:

游戏“疗法”—-没有人愿意在评估你的能力时阅读一份长达75页的游戏设计文件。但是他们却乐意欲浏览5至7页的游戏“疗法”,描述了游戏,市场即核心功能等内容。

功能简要—-解释了一个游戏功能的完整执行的详细文件,包括UI线框图和流程,这将能够给对方留下深刻印象。你可以为目标游戏类型设计一个新功能。并确保将其放在简要的前部分,同时你还可以在一块内容中详细解释为什么需要将该功能添加到游戏中。

游戏平衡评估—-许多设计师的工作便是平衡游戏变量。这时候你可以挑选一款游戏并编写有关特殊系统或经济的平衡报告。详细记录每个游戏过程,编辑并总结反馈,然后得出如何完善该系统平衡的相关建议。

UI/UX重新设计—-我在手机/平板电脑游戏中的大多数任务都是设计或评估UI。设计UI是一项复杂的任务,特别是当你之前从未接触过它,但这也是至关现代游戏成功的关键。你可以从一款大受欢迎的游戏中挑选一个不够直白的屏幕或流程,并提出一个详细的重新设计方案。

系统平衡电子表格—-作为设计师,我的大多数时间是花在制作电子表格或JSON文件调整值中。如果你已经遵循了我之前的建议并创造了一些游戏,你便拥有一份可分享的系统价值表格。整理它并添加一些注释帮助别人进行阅读。

笔和纸上原型—-许多游戏一开始都是基于笔和纸的简单原型理念。尽管你不能轻松地分享结果,你却能够分享过程。你应该将带有有关笔和纸上原型的创造过程的文本和图像与最终规则集结合起来。解释那些你尝试着解决的设计问题,并呈现你的解决步骤,指出那些能做与不能做的事。

这些只是我的经验之谈。如果你已经完成了工作,并明确了自己想要申请的工作职位,你可能还有其它想要创造的设计成果能够证明某些要求。

人们总是很忙

那些负责评估你的文件夹的人事部经理总是游戏团队中最忙的一部分人。他们也许没有足够的时间去浏览你花了数月或数年时间所准备的所有材料。他们可能不会去安装你的游戏,不会阅读你的完整文件,甚至不会打开你的电子表格。

如果你真的想要在众多应聘者中脱瘾而出,你可以在YouTube上为文件夹的每部分内容创造一个90秒或更短的视频。通过这个视频去呈现每部分的工作,不管是关卡,设计文件还是UI流程。并在此谈论设计过程,你的设计目标,你将如何实现这些目标,你从玩家或同行中获得哪些反馈,你是如何针对这些反馈做出修改等等。

所以,为什么你需要付出这些努力去创造出可能会被忽视的材料呢?这一内容将在下一部分内容进行详细解释。

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

Breaking into game design: Step 1 – find your mountain

by Ethan Levy

Before I left to work on Enhanced Wars, I was a producer and manager at BioWare’s San Francisco office. The majority of my time at BioWare was spent as a producer leading the Dragon Age Legends game team. During my most crunched state I had a team of 25, 19 of whom I managed directly. Hiring truly takes a team to do right (and I was lucky to have a strong team at EA between the fantastic HR department and my colleagues at BioWare) but one of my primary responsibilities during that time was to serve as hiring manager for a number of positions across game design, art and engineering.

Since I left BioWare, I have turned to community participation on Reddit and forums to fill the hole in my life where co-workers used to be. Since my two partners in crime on Enhanced Wars are in different time zones I don’t have a lot of water cooler conversation. So, I hang out on threads trying to add value by lending my advice to current and prospective game developers.

I find myself repeating a few pieces of advice over and over again about how to break into the industry as a game designer. I thought it would be valuable to take my perspective as a hiring manager and turn it into a series of articles about how to position yourself best to land that first gig.

A big caveat – I am just one hiring manager with one perspective. Each company you are trying to work for and person you are trying to impress is different. These tactics would definitely work if you were trying to land a job on my team. Personal mileage may vary.

Step 1 – find your mountain

In 2012 one of my favorite authors, Niel Gaiman, gave a commencement speech at The University of Arts in Philadelphia. It was filled with incredible advice for guiding your creative career. The first step in any game designers journey can taken directly from that speech:

“Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be … was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain.”

This is important because game design is a broad profession. In any given day I might write a design document. I might wireframe some UI or spec out a UX flow. I might tweak tuning values in a spreadsheet all day long or lay out levels. I might do narrative work or write copy for menu screens. I might spend all day fixing bugs in scripting files. I might plan out a monetization strategy.

This list doesn’t come close to defining all that goes into the bucket of game design. Even more important than tasks is genre and platform of game you want to work on. For instance, if Enhanced Wars folded and I wanted to get a full time job, I would feel confident applying for monetization design jobs on mobile games tomorrow. But if I decided it was time to build 3D levels for AAA games on the PS4 and Xbone, I would need to spend a minimum of 6 months preparing before I could apply for that job from a space of confidence.

Your mountain will change many times over the course of your career. New opportunities will arise, new platforms will take shape and new genres will be invented. But it is important to pick an early goal. Because applying for a level design job on Tom Clancy’s The Division is fundamentally different from applying for a UX design job on Battlefield 4 is fundamentally different from applying as a generalist designer with a small mobile startup company.

Do your research and figure out what sort of job you will want to pursue as a designer. My best advice – look at job postings on Gamasutra and the websites of companies you admire. Read about the actual requirements, roles and responsibilities for real design jobs. Invariably you will find yourself saying “that sounds like a lot of fun” or “I would hate to do that every day for the next 3 years.”

And a word of advice, don’t set your mountain as Creative Director. Not at first. I know it is everyone’s dream to be The Guy or The Gal leading a game’s creative vision. But if you find that the only jobs that appeal to you are those with a fancy title and 10+ years of experience required, you are in for a rude awakening. If the years of backbreaking work it will take to climb the mountain are not inherently rewarding, you will never never make it to the top.

Once you have found your mountain, you will be ready to start building your design portfolio, which I will cover in the next article in this series.

Breaking into game design: Part 2 – build your portfolio

by Ethan Levy

Although I do not review as many resumes now that I’m an indie developer working on Enhanced Wars as I did when I was at BioWare San Francisco, I still review the odd resume here or there as a result of a Reddit or forum post. When I do, my top line feedback is almost always the same: “You need to work on your portfolio website.”

At BioWare San Francisco, we had a strong affinity for interns and co-op students (who would work a full semester at the studio for credit). In a very real sense, we would not have launched Dragon Age Legends on time without the contributions from our co-op team members. As such, one of my favorite times of the year was when the fantastic university relations team at EA would deliver the resumes of potential interns they were bringing to campus for interviews.

It was not unusual for me to review 50 resumes in one marathon session to pick out the prospects that I thought would fit a need on my team. Whether I was reviewing a stack of resumes for intern candidates or a single resume from a recruiter for a full time position, my process was almost always the same. Open a resume and scan it for about a minute to look for highlights. Open the portfolio website link and spend a significant amount of time reviewing (if possible). If a portfolio was great, I would request a phone interview. On more than one occasion, I called someone instantly because the portfolio was so good I didn’t want to waste any time lest the candidate be snatched up by another studio. Sometimes the candidate already had. A high quality portfolio was the single biggest factor in landing a phone interview.

Tangible proof

If your professional experience is minimal or non-existant, the challenge you face is that you have no credibility that you will be capable of fulfilling the job requirements. When I’m looking to fill a job, I don’t care about your mission statement, your extra curricular activities or your summer job in a completely unrelated industry. I only care about proof of your design abilities.

It can be difficult to know what to put in a design portfolio, as there are no standards for what a good design document is or how a game economy should be laid out. The best possible thing to have in your portfolio is shipped games. With tools like Unity and Game Maker Studio and the ease of self publishing, it is my opinion that a prospective game designer should exit college with one game on the app store for each year in school. There is no stronger proof that you are a capable designer than being able to show that:

1.You know how to finish a game and release it to the world

2.You took the time to listen to your players, either through
metrics, comments, reviews or other feedback

3.You can tell a meaningful story about how you improved your game based on player feedback

Being able to tell me that story in the initial phone interview is an instant ticket to a full team interview.

Building a proper portfolio will take months, if not years. In college, I tried on multiple occasions to assemble a team to make a game. I got plenty of interest from programmers or artists who wished to talk about a game and collaborate, but when it came time to start working on the game they did not deliver. Unless you have a team you truly trust, my advice is to start out by making small but completed and polished games that you can build on your own. If you don’t know how to code, it’s time to learn!

Feature portfolio material

What you build for your portfolio is highly dependent on your mountain. No matter what type of design job you have, the tools exist to prove you are capable of doing high quality design work. If your mountain is to work on open world RPGs, then dive into the Dragon Age or Skyrim mod tools and make quests. If you want to work on multiplayer FPS, then dig into Unreal Engine 3 or Hammer and release levels to the world. If you want to work on a MOBA, then get cozy with the WarCraft III or Starcraft II editor and prototype a new MOBA style gameplay mode.

No matter what your mountain is, you cannot wait till you “land that gig” before you start learning how to design content. Only by proving you can finish content, release it to players, listen to their feedback and improve your content based on feedback will you be able to land that first professional gig. And if your goal is as targeted as working on a specific game or at a specific company, if they have publicly available tools you better invest time in mastering them.

Other portfolio material

A designer’s job is much more dynamic than simply creating levels or quests. There are a number of other documents or types of content you can create and share as part of a portfolio. Here are some suggestions based off the varied types of work I do on Enhanced Wars and other projects:

Game Treatment – no one is going to read a 75+ page game design document when evaluating you for a position. But they will scan a 5-7 page game treatment that outlines a game, its market and its core features at a high level.

Feature Brief – a detailed document that explains the full implementation of a single feature for a game, including UI wireframes and flow, goes a long way to impress. Design a new feature for an existing and well known game in the genre you wish to get hired in. Make sure that in the early part of the brief, you have a section explaining why this feature needs to be added to this game.

Game balance evaluation – much of a designer’s job is tuning and balancing game variables. Pick a game and write a report evaluating balance of a particular system or economy. Take detailed notes on multiple play sessions, compile and summarize fan and review feedback and come up with a series of recommendations on how this system’s balance can be improved.

UI/UX redesign – most of my work in mobile/tablet games involves designing or evaluating UI. Designing UI is a difficult task, especially if you’ve never done it before, but it is critical to a modern game’s success. Pick a screen or flow from a popular game that you think is broken or unintuitive, and propose a detailed redesign.

System balance spreadsheet – most of my time as a designer is spent in spreadsheets or JSON files tweaking values. If you have followed the earlier advice and built some games, you will likely have a system values spreadsheet to share. Clean it up and add annotations so that another human can read it.

Pen & Paper prototype – many games start as simple ideas prototyped on pen & paper. Although you cannot easily share the results, you can share your process. Fully document with text and pictures the process of building a pen & paper prototype complete with your final rule set. Explain the design problem you are trying to solve and show the steps you took to solve it, pointing out what does and does not work.

These are just a few examples based off my experience. If you’ve done your homework and spent time identifying job postings you would like to apply to, you may have other design deliverables you would want to build to prove one requirement or another.

People are busy

The hiring managers who will be evaluating your portfolio are likely to be some of the busiest people on the game team. They will not have a lot of time to review all the materials that you have spent months or years preparing. They will probably not install your game. They will probably not read your full document. They will probably not open your spreadsheet.

If you really want to shine, then for each piece in your portfolio you should create a 90 second or less video on youTube. In this video, show the piece of work, whether it is a level, design document or UI flow. Talk about the process of designing the work. What were your design goals? How did you achieve them? What feedback have you gotten from players or peers and how have you reacted to that feedback?

So, why go through all the effort to make materials that will likely only be glanced at? This will all be explained in the next part of the series about how to sell yourself.(source:gamasutra)


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