作者：Droqen

如下图所示，《塞尔达传说》的主世界很不错，如果再加上情境，你可能会觉得它更加出色。

玩任何游戏，总有那么一瞬间，你会停下来思考（在某些游戏中，你也许无法真正地暂停游戏，不过你的大脑思想确实是停下来了）你在做什么，为什么要做。我的意思是，你会理所当然地认为“因为这是一款游戏，我在玩游戏，我至少要有点沉浸感”，但事实当然不止于此。在《塞尔达传说》中（如下图），如果你停在游戏的半中间，比如说在一个森林里，你会想“为什么我要穿过这片森林？”你的回答可能是“我要得到森林另一边的宝箱。”看上图，东西非常多。你为什么要到森林的另一边去，对这一情境甚至有更多种说法：

context(from gamasutra)

1、你可能不知道森林另一边有什么。你很好奇，想发现新东西！

2、你觉得自己知道森林另一边可能有什么。你可能已经查看了地图，认为你的方向是正确的，或者你猜测（因为提示之类的东西）你正在寻找的地下城就在那一边。

3、你以前到过森林的另一边！你的钱攒够了，你要回去买东西，比如蓝戒指或者钥匙之类的。

……

主世界给简单的活动“探索”提供了不同的情境。所以，你和其他玩家可能处于完全相同的游戏场景，但却想着完全不同的东西。所以，接下来我打算把游戏体验像分尸一样切割成两部分。主世界不是一切。

行为和情境

开门见山。多个行为组成情境。根据我写的顺序，我将先讨论行为——尽管我认为情境才是重点，但我确实想谈谈行为的重要性。我在这里所说的“行为”是指游戏直接吸引你的部分；它是你当前参与的活动。制作游戏的第一部分就是制作行为，因为它是不能凭想象产生的东西。它是移动，它是跳跃。

相比之下，情境就更难定义了。这是因为情境多少是取决于玩家的想法……所以这有时候会损害游戏本身！作为游戏设计师，你可以忽略情境！作为玩家，我可以单纯地享受游戏的行为（如果这个行为确实不错的话），并且自己给自己想出为什么要解决谜题、杀怪、收集道具、交谈等活动的理由。

我不是说，我认为所有游戏都必须有剧情。相反地，要陈述角色的动机是很容易的，就像告诉玩家应该受什么激励一样容易；困难的是让玩家相信你。

我们来说说《马里奥》。

action(from gamasutra)

行为：我要向右走，炮弹比尔朝我移动。

情境：上述我说的话对任何玩过《超级马里奥世界》的人来说都是很容易理解的，但这些活动假想是情境产生的，来自游戏的其他部分。为什么我要向右走？为什么炮弹比尔是危险的（它看起来虽然不是那么友好，但也不至于危险，对吧？）为什么被它打中是不好的？这么简单的行动之后包含着复杂的情境。我们把这个情境分解一下。

你向右走是因为你要通关；

你想通关因为你想到达下一关。

你躲避炮弹比尔是因为被击中是不好的；

被击中不好是因为会变成小马里奥；

变成小马里奥（通常）不好是因为再被击中就会挂掉；

挂掉不好是因为损失一条命以及这个关卡又要重来了——等于在这个主世界中没有任何进展。

不过在玩游戏时你不会这么想的！你想到的是游戏的规则以及遵守它们。当你避开敌人时，不是因为你想到以上所有后果。你已经把游戏的情境压缩到最小的程度：在控制奔跑和跳跃的水管工时，你必须记住的只有：“向右跑；不要死。”

你不必承担成功或失败的后果，直到你确实成功了或失败了。

成功和失败的后果

交互作用是一个给予和索取的过程。行为要求反馈。你可以用手操作控制器，一边看游戏一边按键，但你记住了你的按键行为会产生什么结果，假装你正在做的事对你看到的事会产生影响（对于熟悉的游戏，这么说听起来确实有些无趣）。

许多游戏可以清楚地分成行为模式和情境模式。再返回前面的例子，《超级马里奥世界》可以分成主世界和关卡。许多游戏照搬这种主世界的形式，却丢掉了它的精华（包括后来的《马里奥》系列游戏！）。我就不举例了，但自《超级马里奥世界》这款在我出生以前就诞生的游戏之后，其他游戏对主世界形式的使用方式一点也没有推陈出新，真是让我失望。

《盗贼遗产》有行为模式（打怪和收集金子、道具）和情境模式（花金子升级城堡和装备）。那些用弹弓“猛投东西+升级”的游戏也有行为模式（看你投的东西把目标物弹开）和情境模式（花挣到的钱）。有大量游戏采用这种成功率比较高的结构（牺牲情境来强化行动）。你不断地收集金钱，这样当你终于失败时，你可以花钱使帮助你挣到更多钱的行为更容易……如此循环反复）。

那暴露了我对行为-情境模式中的一个怪癖——我个人认为当内部运行的进程增加时，探索类游戏就被破坏了。你认为那创造了奔跑之间的情境，但你错了：它其实是替代了探索类游戏和街机游戏中存在的、非常个人化的情境。在一款每次都以相同方回应你的游戏，你进步的是你的技能；在一款允许你去并且希望你去完善你的角色的游戏，反映的不止是你进步的技能，还有你投入的时间。

如果我通关一款游戏，我会在心里对自己说“恭喜你！你精通这款游戏了，所以你打败它了！”我绝对不会产生，哪怕是一点点的这样的想法“恭喜你！你在这款游戏中花了X个小时，所以你打败它了！”并非所有游戏都以克服挑战为主题，但角色升级类的游戏通常是这样的。

情境和行为之间的界线

接下来我们再看看模糊行动和情境之间的界线。首先，记住我什么时候把遇到炸弹比尔的事件分解开了。尽管在《超级马里奥世界》中，我已经把行为从情况中分离开了，还是有很多东西模糊了二者之间的界线。两种金币对行为都是无用的，只是为物品的宏大组合增加了额外的生气（游戏邦注：物品的宏大组合在行为中也是无用的，但在更大的图景下有用）。大色调切换？一样的！它们确实显著影响玩家如何体验其他关卡，但在它们所在的关卡中只有微不足道的作用。

overworld(from gamasutra)

《塞尔达传说》有漂亮的地图，而且恰好不是孤立的情境模式。行为和情境相结合产生了一个问题，因为你必须管理的资源太多了，要探索的角落太多了。后来的《塞尔达传说》系列锁掉了很多东西：除了竞速通关式的任务，玩家必须严格按顺序完成地下城；不允许跳过任何任务；基本上不能进入任何与未完成或已完成的目标有关的区域。

在《塞尔达传说》中，你要管理的稀有资源有：金钱、心、箭、炸弹、钥匙。在可能影响未来结果的时候使用它们。没有箭了？好吧，那是因为你打守护宝剑的独角兽时用太多箭了。当你准备炸墙时，你应该想到更大的情境：你只有三颗炸弹，你可能要用它们炸之后会遇到的洞穴。

抵消情境的方法

冷却计时器被普遍运用于魔法/精力系统中，这样玩家就不必担心以后还能不能使用这些技能了，因为已经不存在资源用尽的问题了。

最近的《塞尔达传说》游戏提供足够的箭、炸弹、心和其他资源，玩家再也不必担心物资短缺了，除非他们真的那么浪费。

随时保存技术意味着你的错误总是可以撤销。

（注：在益智游戏如《时空幻境》和《English Country Tune》中，重新开始/撤销的能力是天赐福音，因为可以避免重复执行相同的活动。）

有一个小问题。在《塞尔达传说》中，因为行动和情境之间的持续性，任何时候你带着少于最大值的箭、炸弹、心和其他物资进入地下城，你都不能完美表现。唯一的挑战是你是否有足够的耐心，所以如果你要达到最大效果，那么你就被迫花大量时间做全无乐趣的刷任务，以便凑齐最大量的物资……如果你像我一样，那么你必然会用得非常节省，因为你不想再刷游戏了。

以下是三个基本的解决办法：

1、允许刷游戏。

2、不要让有限的资源变成成功的必须元素。在《雷神之锤2》（以及其他许多弹药有限的游戏）中，你至少有一样武器是不限子弹的。这不太好，但至少你不至于走投无路。

3、允许永远性失败状态，基本上就是无所不在的“永久死亡”。见：探索类游戏如《洞穴探险》和其他也许完全与探索无关的游戏。

糟了。我居然忘记说《Pikmin》。当我还是小孩子时，长时限意味着我还玩不到一半的时间就退出游戏了，因为我觉得没希望通关。我思考了下如何在追求长期目标不得的情况下解决隐藏的问题……好吧，还是算了。（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）

Action in Context

by Droqen is who I am

Overworlds are cool and amazing and you could probably be paying more attention to them than you are right now. The reason: Context.

At any given point in any given game you can stop in your tracks and think (well, in some games you can’t literally stop in your tracks, but you can probably mentally stop in your tracks and get a game over or whatever, but the point is still made and you’ve still stopped in your tracks to think) about what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. I mean, there’s the obvious “because this is a game and I’m having a good time or at least being engaged” but it goes deeper than that. In The Legend of Zelda (pictured above), for example, if you stop in the middle of–oh, anywhere, but let’s say a forest–and wonder “why am I trying to pass through this area, again?” your answer is probably “I’m trying to get to what’s on the other side.” Look at that overworld. Check it out! There’s so much stuff to see! And the greater context of why you’re trying to get to the other side of the forest is even more varied:

Maybe you have no idea what’s over there. You’re wandering, trying to find new stuff!

You think you know what might be over there. Maybe you’ve been checking a map and think you have your bearings, or you suspect (because of hints or whatnot) that the dungeon you’ve been hunting for a while is just on the next screen.

You’ve been there before! You’re going back to a shop after having collected enough rupees for the, I dunno, blue ring or a key.
Overworlds lend all this different context to the simple activity of ‘traveling’. You and someone else could be doing the exact same thing on one screen but be thinking about entirely different things. So for this next bit, we’re going to have to cut up the experience of a game, crudely, into two parts. It’ll be like a magician-saws-assistant-in-half kind of thing. Overworlds aren’t everything, either. There’s a lot more at stake here.

WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE CONTEXT WITH YOUR ACTION?

No time for subtlety. I’ll call these bits ACTION and, predictably, CONTEXT. So in the order written, I’ll talk about action first — and though I’d like for context to take center stage I do want to touch on the importance of action. ‘Action’ as I talk about it here is the part of the game that directly engages you; it’s the activity you’re currently participating in. The first part of making a game is making the action, because it’s the entirety of what cannot be left to the imagination. It’s moving; it’s jumping.

Context, now, that’s a trickier beast to define. The problem is, you can sort of leave context up to the player… so sometimes that’s what happens, to the detriment of a game! As a game designer, you can ignore context! I, as a player, can simply enjoy the action of a game if it’s really good action, and come up with my own reasons for solving puzzles, killing monsters, collecting trinkets, talking to people, or placing blocks.

That’s not to say I’m implying every game needs a narrative, a hand-crafted raison d’être. Quite the opposite, really! It’s easy to state a character’s motivation, and it’s just as easy to tell a player what should be motivating them; the hard part is getting them to believe you.

Let’s talk about Mario.

ACTION: I’m going right (->), the Bullet Bill is going towards me (

CONTEXT: Everything I’ve described above should be obvious to anyone who’s played Super Mario World, but all those activity assumptions came from context, from the rest of the game. Why should I be going right? Why is a Bullet Bill a threat (it looks kind of round and — okay, not friendly, but not harmful, exactly)? Why is being hit bad? There is complex context behind that simple action. Let’s break it down.

You go right because that’s how you get to the end of the level;

you want to get to the end of the level because that opens up the road to the next area on the overworld.

You duck because being hit is bad;

being hit is bad because it makes you shrink down to little mario;

being little mario is (usually) bad because if you get hit again, you die;

dying is bad because you lose a life, and all progress in the level–so you don’t make any progress on the overworld.

You don’t think about things in these terms, though! You come up with rules to follow and you stick to them. When you avoid an enemy, it’s not because you’re thinking about all of the consequences. You have distilled the context of the game down to what’s relevant at a local scale: while controlling a running and jumping plumber, all you really need to remember is “GO RIGHT; DON’T DIE.”

You don’t need to confront the consequences of either victory or defeat until you’re there.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF VICTORY & DEFEAT

Interaction is a give and take. Actions demand feedback. You can hold a controller in your hands and hammer away at the buttons while you’re watching a movie, but the best you can do is memorize what happens and then press buttons, pretending what you’re doing is having any effect on what you’re watching (that actually sounds kind of embarrassingly fun to do with familiar material. I’m going to give that a try sometime).

Many games can be split cleanly into an action mode and a context mode. Super Mario World, to return to an earlier example, can be divided into its overworld (hey, it’s that word again) and its levels. Many games ape this style of overworld, missing the point entirely of its power (including later Mario games!). I won’t pick out examples, but it’s terribly disappointing to me that basically nothing has utilized that style of overworld in a more interesting way since SUPER MARIO WORLD, a game made BEFORE I WAS BORN.

** (please send counterexamples or refute this point! nothing would make me happier!)

Rogue Legacy has its action mode (playing the game where you fight stuff and collect gold and things) and its context mode (spending your gold on castle upgrades, and equipment). Those catapult launch-your-Thing-as-far-as-you-can-and-then-upgrade-them games have an action mode (watching your Thing bounce off of stuff), and a context mode (spending the resulting cash). There are a ton of games built on this failure-mitigating structure, in which context is sacrificed to feed back into the action. You’re collecting money so that when you ultimately fail, you can spend that money on making it easier to do the actions that help you collect more money, so that… etc etc etc.

That exposes a weird quirk in my action-context model. I — personally — think roguelikes are ruined when inter-run progression is added. You’d think that creates context where there was none between runs, but that’s not true: it replaces a very personal context which is present in roguelikes as well as arcade games. Playing a game that treats you the same way every time means getting further is reflective of your skill. A game that allows you to and EXPECTS you to improve upon your character means getting further is reflective of some combination of your skill and your time invested.

tiny rant time

If I complete a challenging game, I’d like to feel — in my heart — “Congratulations! You’re good at this game, and so you beat it!” without even the faintest hint of “Congratulations! You played this game for X hours, and so you beat it!”-taste in my mouth. Not every game has to be about overcoming a challenge, but… well, generally the ones with character progression are.
end tiny rant

IT’S CONTEXT ALL THE WAY DOWN

… and up.

It’s about time, way down here near the end of my piece, to get into muddling the lines between action and context. First off, remember when I broke down the encounter with a Bullet Bill. Although I’ve separated action from context in Super Mario World, tons of things blur that line. Both kinds of coin are useless in action, but add up to extra lives in the grand scheme of things (which are, in turn, useless in action terms but useful on the bigger picture). The huge colour switches? Same thing! They make a really big difference in how other levels are experienced but sort of… only a trivial expository difference in the levels they’re in.

But that’s kid stuff.

Overworlds are rad. The Legend of Zelda, bless its bones, has a beautiful map that happens to not be a separate contextual mode. The connection between action and context is kicked up a notch because of how many resources you have to manage, and how many nooks there are to explore. Later Zelda games really locked stuff down: speedrun-quality exploits aside, dungeons must be completed in a strictly set order. Nothing can be skipped, and you can rarely even enter areas that aren’t either pertinent to reaching your next (single, solitary) goal or already unlocked.

In The Legend of Zelda, you have these scarce resource to manage: rupees, hearts, arrows, bombs, keys. Spending any of these in the moment will affect you in the future to come. Don’t have any arrows? Well, that’s because you shot them all fighting stalfoses or that crazy-ass unicorn thing guarding the master sword. No keys? Go find one in the dungeon, or spend your hard-earned rupees and buy a key. When you bomb cracks in walls, you need to be aware of the greater context: that’s one of your three bombs, and you might want to hold off and wait, to bomb some dodongos you know are coming up.

Man, those are some weird names.

THE GENTLE HAND OF NOTHING MATTERING

Cooldown timers are frequently used in place of persistent mana/energy pools, so that abilities can be used without concern for the future. Goodbye greater context for using resources.

Recent Zelda games provide a steady stream of arrows, bombs, hearts, and other resources so that you’re never short any of them unless you’re seriously wasteful.

Save-anywhere technology means you can always undo your mistakes.

(An important aside: In puzzle games such as Braid and English Country Tune, the ability to rewind/undo is a godsend. They mindfully cull the need for repeated execution of the same actions.)

SO WHEN THINGS DO MATTER, LONG-TERM…

There’s one little problem. In The Legend of Zelda, because of the persistence between action and context, anytime you enter a dungeon with fewer than maximum arrows, bombs, hearts, and anything else, you’re acting sub-optimally. The only global time pressure that exists is your patience, and so if you’re driven to act with the greatest efficiency, you’ll be forced to spend a bunch of time doing potentially not-fun grinding to rustle up to maximum materials… and then, if you’re like me, you’ll be incredibly stingy with them anyway, to avoid having to do that again.

So, there are a basic triad of solutions:

1. Allow for grinding. See above.

2. Don’t make depletable resources necessary for success. In Quake II (along with many other games that have limited ammo), you have at least one weapon with infinite ammo. It sucks, but at least you do have a fallback.

3. Allow for a permanent failure state, almost ubiquitously ‘permadeath’. See: roguelikes, Spelunky, probably other stuff that isn’t roguelike at all.

THE VERY DISORGANIZED END

Shit. I forgot to even mention Pikmin. As a kid, the long-term time limit meant I quit before my time was even half up, because I felt hopeless. I have thoughts about the feelings I got from this, and how maybe to solve implicit problems with fail states for long-term goals… oh well.

Next time.(source:gamasutra)