作者：Evan Hill

你该如何创造情感纠葛去刺激精神发泄？或者换句话说，你该如何创造出能够不断诱发玩家情感参与的游戏？

如果能够正确地分解的话，这一问题的答案便非常明显。

首先我们必须明确“情感参与”意味着什么。这便是我们所谓的包含了任何情感的体验，如害怕，生气，喜悦或悲伤等等。但这不只是关于诱发我们的情感，而且还要将其置于危险中。即当事件的结果不确定时，人们将投入更多情感于其中，就像在观看一场势均力敌的足球比赛，打开一包交易卡或等待别人答应一场约会的时候。当某一种体验结合了我们的关心和情感不确定性时，我们便会迫切地寻求下一步会发生什么。

形容这种情感和境遇的结合的正式术语便是悬念。

而在游戏中生成悬念的元素被称为戏剧性实质。

戏剧性实质可以分为5大要素：

*代理感

*角色交流

*创造复杂化

*游戏整合

*描述

但一开始让我们先更深入地了解这个悬念。

悬念

悬念是刺激精神发泄的一种情感纠葛。而正式看来，悬念是玩家在投入某些事件的不确定结果时所产生的情感。悬念是我们的环境，并未整合于任何特殊的情感，但却会描述因为关心和不确定性所产生的情感。

悬念是回复玩家问题“为什么他们应该赋予关心？”的情感答案。

在某种形式下，一致的悬念对创造一种情感奖励体验至关重要。我们是用此去评估游戏的戏剧化内容的有效性。当我们在讨论游戏中的悬念时，我们也是在衡量玩家关心多少内容，他们产生了怎样的情感以及不确定性。不确定性与不可预测性是不同的，它描述的是玩家对于可能结果的感受。甚至在可预测的情境下，不同结果的可能性（如失败）将给事件创造一种戏剧性压力。

悬念是一种复杂的理念，因为存在很多方法能够创造它。为了更好地体验悬念或衡量其效能，我们无需理解悬念背后的理论。这是吸引玩家进入游戏并将其带向高潮的本能情感参与。为了进一步理解悬念，我们需要讨论创造悬念及其戏剧性实质的结构。

戏剧性实质

戏剧性实质是阐述游戏的方式以及创造悬念的方式。这是大部分的游戏结构。带有较强戏剧性实质的游戏总是能够创造出悬念。因为其重要且复杂的属性，我们将该元素分为5大关键原则。

代理感：告知玩家他们所拥有的自由和责任。

角色交流：让玩家有投入其中的理由。

创造复杂化：生成有趣的事件去创造不确定性。

游戏整合：将情节整合到游戏玩法决策中。

描述：呈现游戏玩法意外的内容。

在深入细节之前我们需要讨论这些原则是如何相互联系而创造出悬念。这些理念是紧密联系在一起的，所以他们在生成悬念的成功是取决于总体戏剧性的分量，即意味着只要游戏的整体戏剧性实质足以为玩家创造悬念，那么游戏在某些特定领域中便会功亏一篑。这证实了不同的游戏也能具有同等的情感参与。

这5个组件能够创造关心和不确定性，并最终唤起悬念感。

代理感：这是玩家在游戏中的控制感，责任感和自由感。该原则在游戏中是独特的。因为其它媒体从本质上看来都是被动的，用户是通过主角的行动和选择间接体验内容。但是基于能动性，游戏需要提供给玩家一定的代理感而不是让他们依赖于对角色的被动识别。

感受到选择和责任能够创造一种固有的投入感和不确定性。这些都是生成悬念的主要内容。该理念的关键在于术语本身，玩家对于悬念的感受并不依赖于真正的代理，反倒是基于他们感受到自己拥有多少代理。

线性游戏能够通过创造代理幻觉去支持这种重要的理念。而非线性游戏则会破坏这种理念，即导致玩家感受不到代理感。不管怎样，游戏的代理感需要具有连续性，即意味着玩家在认知代理中的任何激进的变化在游戏环境中都是有理由的，或者它将冒险打破玩家控制游戏世界的“暂停怀疑”。过场动画便是引起这种问题的普遍原因。

角色交流：这是玩家被告知游戏元素的质量的过程。这一环境下角色将不断延伸而超越故事中的“人”。严格定义的话，角色是指区别于玩家的游戏元素。人，位置，对象，组织，世界等等，如果一种元素是游戏中的“一个东西”，它便拥有角色。为了让玩家体验悬念，它们必须关心故事事件中所包含的元素以及那些事件的不确定结果。玩家必须移情，同情或投入游戏世界中，真正感受故事中的角色，但如果缺少了适当的交流，这一切便都是不可能的。

为了让玩家对某些内容或某些人产生同感，角色至少需要与玩家区别开来。这也是我为何在角色定义中包含了“区别于玩家的游戏元素”的主要原因。换句话说，为了让一个代理拥有强大的角色感，它就必须区别于玩家，即使玩家控制着它，并且只有这么做才能让玩家产生同感。

同感，认同，同情甚至是憎恨或竞争等负面回应都是关于分离。它们都是关于通过差异去填补缺口。为了创造这些差异，游戏的角色就必须区别于玩家，而为了让这些差异带有情感影响，他们就必须基于玩家能够理解的方式进行交流。

比起“角色”本身的评论，我们更加专注于角色的交流，因为交流能够真正决定情感效果。角色只是玩家的认知，不管他们的背景或想法多么活跃或生动，如果玩家不能基于某种方式去体验它们的话便都是没有价值的。这也反应了任何角色是如何与特定环境或描述产生同感，就像在《绝命毒师》或《教父》中，如果我们能够轻松地理解平凡的主角，他们便会具有很大的吸引力。游戏将不断超越简单且直接的描述，游戏视觉效果，游戏玩法，音乐和关卡设计都能够基于简单且组合的方式实现角色交流。专注于玩家所面对的最终结果，我们便能够客观地评估各种能让角色在游戏中有效交流的方法。

创造复杂化：是为游戏中的代理构造逆境，障碍或逆转情况的过程。复杂化是引起对悬念至关重要的“不确定事件”的内容。在游戏中复杂化可以是任何来自敌人的内容，需要解决的谜题或者角色突然公开自己的背叛等。只要复杂化能够创造不确定性的必要摩擦去唤起悬念，那么它们的细节便不再重要。

这一原则既微妙又复杂，因为它的覆盖范围较为广泛。复杂化可以源自玩家自身的决策，其他玩家的行动以及游戏本身。复杂化本身可以拥有内在的美学特征即能够与游戏的特定习语产生共鸣。例如：

《光晕》的复杂化便与它的行动核心美学达成了共鸣，并将玩家推向了危险和具有挑战性的战斗情境中。

《神秘岛》提供给玩家较为呆板的谜题，从而与游戏自身的神秘感和复杂性形成了共鸣。

《逆转裁判》受荒谬角色所驱动的情节转变去创造复杂化，并反应了基于戏剧和叙述的游戏风格。

复杂化作为一种催化剂能够推动着悬念的产生。如果玩家能够投入戏剧性实质的其它元素中，那么复杂化所创造的不确定性将有效地创造出悬念。而最有效的复杂化类型便是由环境所决定，每种游戏机制和故事所创造的内容。

游戏整合：是将故事的情感和戏剧性环境编写到游戏中的过程。游戏将基于情感模拟方式与系统和机制进行互动。再一次地，这些定义的措辞非常重要。正式的游戏定义不需要明确的目标，同时专注于情感组件将基于机制而区分游戏与其它实际互动类型。

从核心上来看电子游戏是一种机制媒体，这与电影是一种视觉媒体是一个道理，即每个系统都是每个媒体与用户交流的主要方式。我们不能忽视游戏的性质，不能冒着破坏玩家的代理感或创造情感分离的危险将故事与游戏玩法区分开来。这种现象被称为Ludonarrative（游戏邦注：ludonarrative是由原LucasArts创意总监Clint Hocking提出，这是一个合成词，由ludology和narrative两个单词组成，意指游戏故事与玩法之间的冲突）不协调，它描述的是在游戏明确的叙述与含蓄的叙述出现矛盾时的消极感。以下是一些显著的例子：

在《神秘海域》系列中，主角Nathan Drake被描绘为一个具有高尚品德的角色，他甚至声明了自己反对杀戮和枪支的使用。但是因为游戏主要是围绕着枪支暴力，所以玩家将在游戏中无意识地使用Nathan射杀数百号人。

在《杀出重围3：人类革命》中，对于90%的游戏，玩家能够使用非战斗式战术前进。但是在对情节的任意需求中，玩家将定期在一个直接的一对一枪战中遭遇boss，因为他们的游戏风格决定了某些玩家注定会缺少准备。游戏强调了主角Adam Jensen是个狡猾，谨慎且精打细算的人，但是过场动画却不断让他做出一些冲动且无计划的决定，因为玩家需要推断他会做些什么，否则情节便不能向前发展。

在《阿玛拉王国：惩罚》中，明确的叙述描述了玩家角色是如何“命运无常”，并最终能够彻底摧毁其周边世界的决定论。然而大部分游戏情节的实际结构都是线性的，除了完成任务线的顺序外并不存在真正的选择感。

在这些例子中，玩家的体验是部分或完全出轨的。Ludonarrative不协调具有同时打破怀疑暂停，违背代理感并让玩家难以满足的潜力。

当游戏和情节整合在一起时，它们将能够有效地加强戏剧性实质的其它元素。机制的结构属性将给予玩家一种有意义的代理感，而一些需要交流的主要内容便是角色和复杂化。这便让游戏整合成为了创造悬念最重要的原则。

描述：指的是所有的这些非游戏元素是如何有效地呈现在游戏中。这包括游戏内部的图像，过场动画，音乐，游戏内部的文字，用户界面以及其它能够归入游戏的媒体内容。描述必须能够评价它是如何从整体上传达游戏的情感体验，而不是表现每种元素的独立特性。

产品质量并不等价于描述。前者是关于非游戏元素如何有效地将游戏当成一个整体并作用于该整体，而无关它们看起来多昂贵或多光鲜亮丽。所以一款具有一致性的廉价独立游戏有可能比结构糟糕的AAA级游戏具有更棒的描述（尽管后者具有更高的产品质量）。就像基于动漫风格的《Flower》或《Journey》便比《最终幻想13》（虽然较为昂贵但却拥有较糟糕的过场动画）拥有更棒的描述。因为《Flower》和《Journey》的非游戏元素能够更好地将游戏当成一个整体并作用于该整体。

有效执行的描述也能够推动其它戏剧化元素的发展。

没有一款游戏能够仅凭图像和音乐本身的质量而获救，但同时一款真正优秀的游戏也不会只因为糟糕的描述便被彻底摧毁。像《Day Z》，《我的世界》，《江湖》，《O Game》和《网络开拓史》等游戏的普及证明了优秀的游戏玩法能够掩盖平淡的描述。尽管这不像游戏整合那么重要，但是优秀的描述却也是创造悬念的一大重要组成部分。这是玩家在体验游戏时最先会看到的内容，这能帮助他们更轻松地进入游戏世界并将他们的其它感受与游戏感维系在一起。

为了勾勒出游戏戏剧性实质的全貌，我们需要完全评估所有的这些元素。这能帮助我们更好地分析并讨论各种方法去推动游戏创造出更棒的情感参与。

现在我们已经拥有了详细的悬念和戏剧性实质，所以我们离完整的游戏化戏剧艺术越来越近了。很多戏剧性实质元素是受到每种游戏固有风格和独特视角与目标（推动着设计师基于这些方法进行创造）的影响。成语法的概念是我们的性质系统最后一块内容。

在接下来的文章中我们将讨论游戏设计风格等相关问题以及理解推动游戏最后设计和结构的目标的重要性。

（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）

How to create Drama in Games: Suspense and Substance – The New Dramaturgy Pt. 3

by Evan Hill

How do you build the emotional charges that fuel Catharsis?

Or in other words

How are games made emotionally engaging moment to moment?

The answer to this question, though complex, is extremely straightforward when it is  broken down correctly.

First we must nail down what  “emotionally engaging” means. It’s what we tend to call experiences that involve any of our emotions be they fear, anger, joy, or sadness etc. But engagement involves more than simply evoking our emotions, it puts them at risk. When the outcome of an event is uncertain people will invest more emotion into it, be it when watching a close game of football, opening a pack of trading cards, or waiting to see if that certain someone will say yes to a date. When an experience combines caring and uncertainty our emotions flair and we become engaged in finding what happens next.

The formal term for this cocktail of emotion and circumstance is Suspense.

And the elements that generate suspense in games are called Dramatic Substance.

Dramatic substance can be broken down into five components:

Sense of Agency

Communication of character

Creation of Complications

Play Integration

and Presentation

But before we get ahead of ourselves let’s first examine Suspense in more depth.

Suspense

Suspense is the emotional charge that fuels Catharsis. Formally defined, Suspense is the set of emotions a player experiences when they are Invested in the Uncertain Outcome of Events. Suspense is our context is not tied to any specific emotion but instead describes the emotions a work evokes with a combination of Caring and Uncertainty.

Suspense is the emotional answer to the players question of “why should they care?”.

Consistent Suspense, in some form or another, is vital for creating an emotionally rewarding experience. It is what we use to evaluate the effectiveness of a Game’s Dramatic Substance. When we discuss Suspense in a Game we are measuring of how much the player cares, the emotions they experience, and the qualities of the uncertainty around it. Uncertainty is not the same as unpredictability, it describes a player’s sense of possible outcomes. Even in somewhat predictable situations, the possibilities of different outcomes, like failure, places dramatic pressure on an event.

Suspense is a complex concept simply because there are so many ways to effectively create it. One does not need to understand the the theory behind Suspense in order to experience it or measure its effect. It is the visceral emotional engagement that hooks a player into a game and starts pulling them towards the climax. In order to further understand Suspense we need to discuss the Structures in work that create it, its Dramatic Substance.

Dramatic Substance

Dramatic Substance is the methods by which a game is told and as a result, how it creates suspense. It is the bulk of a games structure. A game with strong Dramatic Substance intrinsically generates Suspense. Due to its vital and complex nature I have broken this element  into Five Key Principles.

Sense of Agency: informs the player of the freedoms and responsibilities they have.

Communication of Character: gives the player the reasons to be invested.

Creation of Complication: generates interesting events to create uncertainty.

Play Integration: incorporates the plot into the gameplay decisions.

Presentation: represents the content outside of gameplay.

Before we delve into specifics we need to discuss how the principles interrelate to create Suspense. These concepts are deeply interlinked and overlapping, as a result their success at generating Suspense is determined by their Sum Dramatic Weight, this means that a Game is able to fall short in some of these specific areas as long as its total Dramatic Substance is enough to create suspense for the players. This demonstrates how wildly different games can all be equally emotionally engaging.

All five components contribute to creating both the Caring and Uncertainty that evoke the feelings of suspense.

(Pop the balloon, create suspense)

Sense of Agency: is the player’s sense of control, responsibility, and freedom within the game. This principle is entirely unique to Games. Because other media are intrinsically passive, the audience lives vicariously through the actions and choices of the main characters. But because of their active nature, Games need to provide players with a perception of agency for themselves rather than relying on passive identification with characters.

The perception of choice and responsibility is able to create an innate sense of investment and uncertainty. These are the key things that are required to generate Suspense. The key to this concept is in the term itself, since, the player’s feelings of suspense is completely independent of their actual agency, instead it is dependent on how much agency they feel that they have.

Linear games are able to maintain this important perception by creating the illusion of agency. Inversely Non-Linear games can destroy this perception the player is not provided with an accurate sense of the agency they do have. In either case a game’s  Sense of Agency needs to feel contiguous, meaning that any radical shift in the player’s perceived agency should be justified in the games context or it will risk breaking the player’s “suspension of disbelief” of their control over the game world. Cutscenes are a common causes for such a break.

Communication of Character: is the processes that the player is informed about the qualities of a Game’s Elements. Character in this context extends far beyond the “people” in the story. Strictly defined, Character is  the aspects of Game Elements that are separate from the player. People, places, objects, organizations, worlds, etc. if an element is a “thing” in the game it will have character. In order for the player to experience Suspense they must care about the elements involved in the stories events and by extension, those events uncertain outcomes. The player must empathize, sympathize, or be generally invested in a game’s world and its inhabitants for a story to have impact and that is impossible without proper communication.

In order to for a player to empathize with something or someone it must be at least partially separate from the player. This is why I have worded the definition of character to include: “aspects of Game Elements that are separate from the player”. In other words to have a strong sense of character for an agent it must be at least partially separate from the player, even if the player controls it, in order for it  to be empathized with.

Empathy, identification, sympathy, and even negative responses like hatred or rivalry are fundamentally about separation. They are about bridging or maintaining the gaps created by differences. In order to create those differences a game’s characters must be distinct from the player, and in order for those differences to have emotional impact they need to be communicated in a way for the player to understand.

We are focusing so much on the communication of character instead of the “characters” themselves in criticism precisely because the communication is what truly dictates emotional effectiveness. A character is only what the player perceives them to be, the vividness of their backstory or thoughts is worthless if the player is not able to experience them in some way. This paradigm also reflects how nearly any character can be empathized with given the right context and telling, just look at the “heroes” of works like Breaking Bad or The Godfather for a perfect example of how anti-heroes can be made compelling if they are allowed to be understood. Games constantly go beyond simple explicit and direct exposition, In Games visuals, gameplay, music, and level design are all capable of communicating the qualities of character in wild and compounding ways. Focusing on the end result of what makes it to the player, allows us to objectively evaluate the countless ways that character can effectively be communicated in Games.

Creation of Complication: is the process of constructing adversity, obstacles, or reversals of circumstance for the Agents in a Game. Complication is what brings about the “uncertain events” that are vital to Suspense. In a Game Complications can mean anything from the enemies in a level, the puzzles that need to be solved, to a character suddenly revealing his betrayal. The specifics of the Complications are not important as long as they create the necessary friction of Uncertainty needed to evoke Suspense.

This Principle is both subtle and complex simply because it is so broad. Complications can come from a player’s own decisionmaking, the actions of other players, and the game itself. And Complications themselves can have internal aesthetic qualities that can be made to resonate with a Game’s specific Idiom. For example:

Halo creates complications that resonate with its core aesthetics of action and thrill by shoving the player into dangerous and challenging combat situations.

Myst gives its players obtuse and mechanical puzzles that resonate with its internal sense of mystery and complexity.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney uses absurd character driven plot twists to create complications that reflect the comedic, narrative focused style.

Complications act as the catalyst that enables Suspense. The Uncertainty created by Complications will only effectively lead to Suspense if the player can become invested through the other elements of Dramatic Substance. And what types of Complications will be most effective are entirely dictated by the contexts created by each game’s mechanics and story.

Play Integration: is the process of encoding the emotions and dramatic contexts of the story into Play. Formally defined, Play is the willful interaction with systems and mechanics in an emotionally stimulating way. Once again the wording of these definitions are very important. This formal definition of play removes the requirement for explicit goals while focusing on the emotional component that separates play from other types of pragmatic interactions with mechanics.

Video Games at their core are a Mechanical Medium in the same way Films are a Visual Medium, each system is the primary way that each medium communicates with its audience. This is an impossible to ignore property of Games, separating story from gameplay risks breaking the player’s Sense of Agency and/or creating emotional disconnects and contradictions. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as Ludonarrative Dissonance, it describes the negative feelings that occur when the explicit narrative of a game conflicts with the implicit narrative of a game’s play. Some prominent examples are:

In the Uncharted Series the main character Nathan Drake is portrayed as a good moral character who even explicitly states he is against killing and the use of guns. But the game is heavily reliant on gun violence to the point that the player will use Nathan to senselessly kill HUNDREDS of people over the course of a single game.

In Deus Ex Human Revolution, for 90% of the game, the player is allowed to use non-combative tactics to progress. But at the arbitrary demands of the plot the player will be periodically forced to confront a boss character in a direct one on one gunfight, that because of their playstyle decisions certain players will be left totally unprepared for. This is compounded by the fact that the play reinforces the idea that the protagonist Adam Jensen is a cunning, cautious, and calculated man, but the cutscenes will constantly having him making impulsive and poorly planned decisions simply because the plot would not move forward had he acted like the player would infer for him to act.

In Kingdoms of Amalur the explicit narrative describes how the player character is “Fateless” and as a result capable of making decisions that radically undermine the determinism of the world around him. Yet the actual structure of most of the game’s plots are excruciatingly linear, with no real sense of choice other than the order to complete the quest lines in.

In each of these examples the player’s experience is partially or completely derailed. Ludonarrative Dissonance has to potential to simultaneously break suspension of disbelief, violate sense of agency, and leave the player dissatisfied emotionally.

When Play and Plot become integrated they strongly reinforce the other elements of dramatic substance. The structured nature of mechanics naturally gives the player a meaningful Sense of Agency and the principal things that will inevitably be communicated are Character and Complications. This makes Play Integration possibly the most important principle in generating Suspense.

Presentation: refers to how effectively all of the non-play elements are represented in a game. This includes in-game art, Cutscenes, Music, In-game prose, User Interface and any other conceivable medium that can be subsumed into a game. Presentation should be evaluated on how it serves the emotional experience of a game as a whole instead of independent quality of each element.

Production Quality is not the same as Presentation. it is about how well the non-play elements serve the game as a whole and not how expensive or flashy they look. As a result a cheap independent game with a unified feel that serves the gameplay has better Presentation than a poorly constructed AAA game even though its Production Quality is higher. For example it can be argued that Flower or Journey, with their elegant minimalistic style, have  better Presentation than Final Fantasy 13 and its expensive but poorly directed cutscenes. Simply because Flower and Journey’s non-play elements better served their games as a whole.

When executed well Presentation weakly reinforces other dramatic elements.

No game can be saved by the quality of its art and music alone, but by the same token a truly good game cannot completely ruined by its Presentation. The popularity of games like Day Z, Minecraft, Runescape, O Game, and Nethack demonstrate that good gameplay can overcome lackluster Presentation. Even though it is not as important as Play Integration, good Presentation is still a vital part of effectively creating Suspense. It is the first thing a player experiences about a game, it eases them into the world of the game and connects their other senses to the feelings of play.

Each of these elements need to be fully evaluated in order to bet the full picture of a Game’s Dramatic Substance. This gives a thorough and flexible lense to help us deconstruct and discuss the countless ways that Game’s are able to create emotional engagement.

Now that we have detailed Suspense and Dramatic Substance we are nearing a complete picture of Gamic Dramaturgy. Many of the aspects of Dramatic Substance are influenced by each game’s intrinsic style and the unique perspectives and goals that motivated its designers to create it in that way. This concept of Idiomatics is the last remaining piece of of our formal system.

In next weeks article we will examine the questions of what style is in game design and why it is important to understand the goals that motivate a games final design and structure.(source:gamasutra)