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前Zynga设计总监Soren Johnson谈“何为游戏设计”

发布时间:2013-08-09 13:50:26 Tags:,,,,

作者:Ethan Levy

(Soren Johnson曾是Zynga设计总监,此前还是《文明3》联合设计师,《文明4》主设计师,《孢子》设计师/程序员,《龙腾世纪传奇》主设计师。)

首先,让我们先说说什么是游戏设计?

Soren Johnson:这是一个宏观的问题,所以你将获得一个宏观的答案。而最简单的回答便是,游戏设计是关于你如何挖掘一个项目的乐趣。

这的确是在管理着玩家和机器间的循环,在此你将呈现给他们某些决定;他们将做决定,然后你提供相关反馈,从而让他们知道自己的行动的结果,从而才能做出其它决定。

Soren Johnson(from gamesindustry.biz)

Soren Johnson(from gamesindustry.biz)

设计师的角色是为了确保每个循环步骤能够发挥作用,因为游戏会因为很多情况遭遇失败。游戏可以拥有非常有趣的决策,但是它却不能基于玩家的行动给予他们合理的反馈。从而导致玩家会觉得自己像在黑暗中前进似得。

或者一款游戏能够提供给你有效的反馈,但是决策本身却只具有微小的变化,并不存在任何真正的区别。或者只有一个决策能够完全主导策略,从而导致游戏并不具有真正的乐趣。

你是否遇到过一些真正让自己敬佩的例子,即提供了非常有益的反馈?

Soren Johnson:《幻幻球》便是一款时常浮现在我的脑海中的游戏,但是我却不确定这是不是一种讽刺的说法。这款游戏因为某些内容设置太过火而备受瞩目。你将从最突出的箱子中拿到球,这时候游戏便会使用慢动作进行放大。接着彩虹和星星便会跳出来布满整个屏幕。有人会说:“如果背景音乐还播放着《欢乐颂》的话,这难道不会太多了吗?”他们便会说:“不,怎么会多呢。”

这点很重要,因为这就像是一条鼓励性反馈。《幻幻球》中有许多我所喜欢的内容,我不知道自己是否把这当成一回事。游戏是否会因此而嘲笑我?我并不清楚。但显然,它在反馈方面做得很出色。的确,PopCap在自己的游戏中都很重视反馈这一元素。

peggle-deluxe(from peggle-deluxe.softonic)

peggle-deluxe(from peggle-deluxe.softonic)

我的意思是,这是一种半讽刺的做法,就像《Spinal Tap》的创造者并不是真的在讽刺重金属摇滚乐。相反地,他们热爱重金属摇滚乐,但是他们也享受着它的荒谬性。我认为这正是《幻幻球》的创造者想要表达的。他们喜欢休闲游戏,但同时他们也想要调侃自己的呈现方式的荒谬性。

游戏设计师扮演着怎样的角色?

Soren Johnson:如果你是从职业角度来看的话,我认为存在不同类型的设计师。既有项目领导型设计师,即必须牵挂一切工作。如游戏是如何出现在玩家面前?像广告图像等内容是如何呈现出来的,箱子的外观怎样?我们该如何告诉人们这款游戏是关于什么?我们该如何推动合适的人去购买游戏,而不是任何人都去购买游戏。游戏系统该如何维系在一起而有效运行?对于《Legends》来说,这就像是城堡与战斗间的调和,并伴随着消费品循环。这便是最顶级的设计师的任务。

在首席设计师之下还有所谓的系统设计师和内容设计师。就像我便属于系统设计师。这些角色的作用便是创造桌面游戏(游戏邦注:如果没有计算机的话)。

系统设计师会想出规则,系统和循环。如果他们能够想出有趣的决策循环,有趣且具有吸引力的主题,那么他们便算出色地完成了任务。

随后还有一些内容设计(这是我不擅长的),你需要在此将游戏与机制有效地整合在一起。他们可以采取一种机制系统,然后想出怪物的进程,任务的进程或引导人们前往某处的故事。

并不是每一款游戏都需要这些内容,我认为游戏也有自己的范围。我想说的是这里主要存在三种主要元素。游戏是策略集中型?还是更加专注于转变?或者它是基于故事展开?而有些游戏也同时具有这些元素。

就像《神秘海域》便拥有出色的故事设置,适度的转变元素,但却没有策略内容。《文明》则具有非常强大的策略机制,并拥有少量的故事元素,而没有转变元素。我认为每一款元素都会有自己关于这些元素的比例。实际上,我认为透镜便是着眼于授权和续集的有效方法。因为当授权和续集陷入麻烦时,那便是它们未能有效处理策略,转变和故事元素的整合。

如果游戏突然变成一个全新版本,即全部关于故事内容,这便会导致玩家难以接受。或者设计师将大量转变元素塞进一款策略游戏,这也不是玩家愿意看到的。

你可以做出许多改变,但是却必须保持恒定的比例。

作为项目领导者,你是怎样做到尽早做出重要决定?

Soren Johnson:在某种意义上,你只有在真正创造出一款游戏后才可能得出该问题的答案。我始终都强调设计师需要尽早创造出游戏的可游戏版本。不要让任何人阻碍你。

关于《文明4》,我们在开发后的几个月内便创造了一个可游戏版本。不过当你着眼于该版本时,会发现它还很糟糕。我们的单位是基于2D图像的小小看板,即会出现在不同层面间。这并不是动画,这里也不存在地形系统,反倒只有一些模糊但却不能真正发挥作用的内容,但至少你可以看到单位在不同层面间的移动。这是围绕着多人游戏所创造的。我们是为了创造游戏而创造了这一系统,但至少它是有效的。我们需要担心的事物还在后头。

Civ 4(from carrandas.blogspot)

Civ 4(from carrandas.blogspot)

你必须想出哪些事物会阻止你的游戏获取成功。在项目早期,很多团队都会专注于各种技术问题。怎样才能让动画系统发挥作用?我们是否需要串通各种事物?

我们是否拥有实时服务器或无状态服务器?

Soren Johnson:有的。多人游戏该如何运行?玩家该如何相互连接?我们该在图像中使用怎样的格式?这些都是你在发行游戏前需要回答的问题。

但这也是你能够想出的内容。项目并不会因为你答不出这些问题而遭遇失败。所以你必须专注于那些未拥有明显答案,或者至少有一个你想不出答案的问题。

就像是我们在某一时刻将拥有一个动画系统。但我们并不是在说:“你知道什么?我不认为我们可以解决这一动画问题。许多其它游戏已经做到这点了,我们只是在空白内容上进行绘制。”

这是静态精灵。

Soren Johnson:是的,这是静态精灵。不要为此担心。《文明4》所存在的问题是,我们正在尝试着创造许多全新且随机的内容。我们正在尝试一个关于伟大的人类和宗教的理念,以及如何将多人游戏功能整合到游戏中。比起从技术角度出发,你应该基于游戏玩法去测试这些功能。我们便是如此创造出基于团队的系统。如果你是与团队一起游戏的话便能感受到《文明》的多人游戏乐趣。你能够在此分享技术,分享奇观。你可以让所有人都朝着同样的方向前进。

像我们想要尝试的公民系统,一个新的推广系统,以及一个完全不同的战斗模式才是真正的问题所在。所以不要让任何事物阻挡了你去测试这些内容。

你能否将自己所知道的问题推向一边。

Soren Johnson:当然。

关于共事的设计师在看待游戏设计的角度是否与你相同这点重要吗?

Soren Johnson:我想这是我所面对的最大挑战。通常如果我与共事的程序员或美术人员不熟的话,我也能够有效地与之相处,因为我们拥有着共同的目标。尽管我们拥有不同的技能组合,但是我们却始终尝试着去解决同样的问题。

而当面对的是不熟悉的设计师时,这将更具有挑战性,特别是当我们可以基于同样的主题分别创造出一款优秀的游戏时。你总是希望首席设计师能够尽可能遵循一个特定的方向,而不是周旋于两者之间。

所以当与我共事的设计师对于我们要创造的游戏类型具有不同见解时,我便会很沮丧。适合一款游戏框架的不同优秀理念间总是有所区别的。如果双方设计师都具有自身优秀的理念,但是这些理念却必须呈现在不同产品上时,他们便会因此而受挫。

这便回到了之前我们关于定义可能性空间的谈话中。

Soren Johnson:你肯定需要删除某些内容。我在《文明4》中经常使用的一个短语便是:“看,创造一款有关世界历史的游戏存在数千种方法。我们正在创造其中的一个世界。所以我们需要找到一个最好的方法去做到这点。”

我们并不是在尝试着解决所有问题或者提出所有优秀的理念。我们只是想要找到该问题的一个合理答案。

当你致力于像《文明》和《孢子》这样需要历经多年的大型项目中时,最终产品中还会保留多少你们的最初理念?

Soren Johnson:《文明4》便非常接近我们的最初理念。我们知道自己想要涉及的领域。我们并不需要清楚它们是如何发挥作用。在项目早期,我们想要涉及宗教内容。我们想要射击伟大的人类.我们想要涉及多人游戏元素。我们希望游戏是克星的。我们想要创造出面向单位的RPG推动系统。

所有这些都配合得很好。但是不同游戏间还具有巨大的区别,就像在授权游戏中便不存在这些悬而未决的问题,而在《孢子》这样的游戏中则会出现“我们正在探索一个全新的境界。我们正在探索这个完全空旷的领域。”你也许可以在那里发现金子,也许又不能。

我的意思是,这主要取决于你所创造的游戏环境。这也是为什么会出现各种续集内容,以及这些续集不像电影或书籍那样糟糕的主要原因。

我认为游戏在传达具有吸引力的续集内容方面具有独特的能力。通常情况下,只要续集能够越做越出色,我便很乐意去接受它们。

Soren Johnson:没错。就拿系列书籍来说吧,尽管它们的内容仍保持着同样的乐趣,但是它们却不能真正完善读者阅读书籍的方式。如《哈利波特7》便未包含一些全新的阅读技巧。

即使加个分号也无济于事(笑)。

Soren Johnson:说得好。这也是游戏所迎来的巨大机遇。

原文发表于2012年3月22日,所涉事件及数据以当时为准。(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

“What is Game Design?” with Soren Johnson

Post on 22/03/12

To start with, what is game design?

Soren Johnson: Well, it’s a broad question so you’re going to get a broad answer. The simplest way of putting it is, game design is how you find the fun of a project.

But, it really is managing that loop between the player and the machine, where you’re presenting them with decisions; they make a decision and then you give them relevant feedback, so they know the results of their action and then they make another decision.

The role of the designer is to make sure every step of that loop works out, because there are lots of ways a game can fail. A game can have really interesting decisions, but it doesn’t give the player good feedback on the results of their actions. So then they feel like they’re just playing in the dark.

Or, a game can give you really good feedback, but the actual decisions themselves are all very tiny variations of each other and there really isn’t any distinction.  Or, there’s just this one completely dominant strategy, so the game is not particularly interesting.

Are there any examples of something you’ve worked on or played that you’ve admired, where feedback trumped mechanics that you as a designer would spend a lot of time on?

Soren Johnson: One thing that always pops into my mind, and I’m never sure how much of their game was satire or not, is Peggle. Because that was a game that was infamous for going way over the top whenever you do something right. You get the ball in the best bin and it’s going to zoom in with slow-mo. There’s going to be rainbows and stars popping out all over the screen. Someone’s like, “would it be too much if we also played Ode to Joy in the background?” They’re like, “no, it’s not too much.” You know?

So that’s important, that sort of feedback as encouragement. Peggle treads so much where I was like well, I don’t know whether I can take this seriously. Are they making fun of me for enjoying this or not? I’m not really sure. But obviously they did a really good job with feedback. And PopCap generally does a good job with feedback in their games.

I mean, I think it’s sort of half-satire in the same way that the people who made Spinal Tap, they’re not actually cynical about heavy metal, right? They love heavy metal, but they also enjoy the absurdity of it. I think that’s kind of what’s going on with Peggle. They love casual games but they also enjoy poking fun at the absurdity of how they’re presented.

What is the role of the game designer?

Soren Johnson: Well, I think if you’re asking from an occupational point of view, I think there’s different types of designers.  There’s the project lead/lead designer type role, which is where you have to be concerned about everything. How the game presents itself to the player. How even just stuff like what’s the banner art going to look like and what’s the box going to look like? How are we telling people what this game is going to be about? How do we get the right people to buy the game, as opposed to just anyone to buy the game?  How the systems work together at a meta level? For Legends, that’s like thinking about how the castle interweaves with the combat, with the consumable loop. So there’s that level.

Below lead designers, there are what I  would call system designers and content designers. My natural aptitude is as a system designer. These are the type of people who, if there weren’t computers, would be making board games.

System designers come up with rules and systems and loops. If you come up with interesting, loops of interesting decisions that are also fun thematically, engaging thematically, then these people are doing a good job.

Then there’s content design – which is not something I’m super good at – where you figure out how to interweave narrative with game mechanics. They can take a mechanical system and then come up with a progression of monsters or a progression of quests or a story that leads people someplace.

Not every game needs that and I think games have a spectrum. I’d say there’s three major elements. Is a game more strategy focused? Is it more twitch focused? Or is it more narrative focused? And I think some games have a variety of all those things.

Uncharted has high narrative, medium twitch and no strategy. Civ is very, very high strategy, no twitch and a little bit of narrative. I think every game has some ratio of that. In fact, I think that lens is a good way to look at franchises and sequels. Because I think when franchises and sequels get in trouble, it’s when they screw with that mix of strategy, twitch and narrative.

They move forward to a new version that suddenly became all about story, when that’s not what people are interested in. Or they threw a bunch of twitch into some of the strategy game, and that’s not really what players wanted.

You can change a lot, but keep that ratio constant.

As a project leader, how do you approach deciding what’s important early on?

Soren Johnson: Well, in some sense, you don’t know the answer to that question until you make the game. If there’s one thing that I emphasize a lot, and I’m not the only person to emphasize this, but try to get a playable version of the game going as soon as possible. And don’t let anything hold you back from that.

With Civ 4, we had a playable version of the game within a few months of starting.  And if you look at what it looked like, it’s kind of horrifying. Our units were little billboards of 2d art that popped around from tile to tile. There wasn’t animation, there wasn’t a terrain system, there was just some kind of vague, heightmap thing that didn’t really work all that well to begin with, but you can see units move from tile and tile. It was built as a multiplayer game immediately. There was no lobby. We had this crazy system for hosting a game, but it worked.  That stuff we’ll worry about later.

You have to figure out what are the things that are going to keep your game from succeeding.  Early on in the project, a lot of teams get very focused on a lot of tech questions. How is the animation system going to work? Are we going to be streaming stuff?

Do we have real-time servers or stateless servers?

Soren Johnson: Right. How is the multiplayer going to work?  How people are going to be connected?  What kind of format are we going to use for the art? Just all of the stuff that has to get answered before you ship the game.

But these things are things you can figure out.  The project is not going to fail because you were never able to answer these questions. So you have to focus on the questions that do not have an obvious answer, or, at least an answer you can’t just brute force your way to.

Like, we will have animation system at some point. It’s not like we’re going to say “You know what? I don’t think we can figure out this animation issue.  Hundreds of other games have done it, but somehow we’re just drawing blanks.”

Static sprites it is…

Soren Johnson: Yes, static sprites it is. Just don’t worry about that.  The questions for Civ 4 was, okay, we’re trying a bunch of new random things. We’re trying an idea of great people and religion and how should multiplayer function within the game. Testing those features out, not from a technology point of view, but simply from a gameplay point of view. That’s what led us to the team-based system. Civ is actually fun to multiplayer if you’re playing with teams. And you share technologies and you share wonders and line of sight. You get everyone pointed in the same direction.

The civic system that we wanted to try out with, a new promotion system, a totally different combat model, those are the real issues. So, don’t let anything stand in the way of trying to test those out.

The problems that you know can be solved, shove them to the side.

Soren Johnson: Right. Yeah.

Is it important that other designers you work with view game design from the same frame as you?

Soren Johnson: That’s probably my biggest challenge I think.  Usually I’m able, if I’m not familiar with what a programmer or artist is capable of, I can still work well with that person because we’re kind of orthogonal to each other. We have different skill sets but we’re both trying to attack the same problem.

It’s more challenging with designers, especially when we could both make a great game on the same topic.  I feel like you want the lead designer to really follow a specific path as far as possible, instead of some average between the two.

So if I work with a designer who has a very different philosophy about what type of game to make, it can be frustrating. There’s the difference between a good idea and a good idea that fits the frame of this game. It’s frustrating for them too, if they have a bunch of good ideas, but the ideas need to be in a different product.

That goes back an earlier conversation we had about strong decision making at the outset to define the possibility space.

Soren Johnson: You definitely have to cut certain things off. One of the phrases I used a lot during Civ 4 is “look, there’s a thousand ways to make a game about the history of the world. We’re making one of those. We need to find one good way to do that. That’s it.”

We’re not trying to solve all the problems or put in all the good ideas. We’re just trying to find one cohesive answer to that problem. There’ll be other ones.

When you’re working on big multi-year projects, like Civ and Spore, how much of the initial vision ends up in the final product?

Soren Johnson: Civ 4, it was pretty close. We knew the areas we wanted to tackle. We didn’t necessarily know how they would play out. Early on in the project, I was like, we want to tackle religion. We want to tackle great people. We want to tackle multiplayer. We want a game that is accessible. We want an RPG promotion system for units.

So that fit pretty well. But, there’s a huge difference between games that are in a franchise where there aren’t these big unanswered questions and games like Spore, where it’s just like “Okay, we’re plowing into a new frontier. We’re going to go explore this totally empty area.” You might find gold there and you might not.

I’d say, it largely depends upon the context of the game that you’re trying to make. That’s why there’s a lot of sequels. It’s also why sequels aren’t necessarily that bad of a thing in the games industry, unlike movies or books.

I feel like games are unique in their ability to deliver sequels that are compelling.  Oftentimes, I find myself more and more excited about each sequel as long as they keep getting better.

Soren Johnson: Right, right. Like a book, a series of books, the content might keep being enjoyable, but they’re not actually going to also improve the method by which you read a book. Like, Harry Potter 7 didn’t have some radically new reading technology involved.

Semi-colons never get better. [laughs]

Soren Johnson: Right, right. So, which is kind of a neat opportunity for games.(source:famousaspect)


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