作者：Derek Yu

在SNES上进入《Earthworm Jim》半个小时后，Andy和我意识到了三件事：1.《Earthworm Jim》比我们记忆中的还要糟糕，2.《Earthworm Jim》是由没有多少游戏设计经验的视觉美术人员所设计的，3.现代工作室并未从《Earthworm Jim》中吸取经验教训，因为他们的一些游戏也具有与之相同的负面特征。

Earthworm Jim（from tumblr）

从根本上来看，我们对于《Earthworm Jim》好感是关于其古怪的角色，幽默感以及动画内容，这在当时是非常突出的。但是比较同时期其它枪手跑酷和平台游戏（游戏邦注：如《魂斗罗》或《洛克人》），它便瞬间逊色很多。尽管因为一些正面的原因我们一直记得Jim和他的军团，但这却是我们不会愿意常常回头玩的游戏。

以下便是原因：

视觉效果很棒，但却很难理解

关于《Earthworm Jim》是款由“视觉美术人员创造的游戏”的最显著证据便是其图像虽然看起来很出色，但却不能有效传达平台的起点与终点，以及什么会对你造成伤害等信息。它呈现在第一个关卡，但是在Heck中更加明显，即在那里墙壁和平台有时候会支持你，巨大的岩尖有时候会伤害你，并且一些相关图像可能会因为太大而不能一下子适应屏幕规格而需要你转换思维。

笨拙的控制

行动类电子游戏需要对你的输入做出快速且精确的反应，所以动画就必须跟上节奏。试想下如果你让过分热心的动画师去完成这一任务会发生什么事？当你在等待较长的动画过程时将会出现许多滞后情况（在面对带有较小有效射击区的快速敌人时会非常可怕），同时在反复观看着不断重复的复杂系列时也会产生恐怖谷般的感觉。

玩笑/情境引导的设计

“如果……不就会很有趣？”是设计游戏的一种糟糕方法，原因也很明显：比起添加一些可识别的节奏，在《Earthworm Jim》中你更像是从一个独特的玩笑或有趣的情境笨拙地转变到另一个情境中。甚至在面对一些较大的图像时你通常会觉得自己是迷宫里的仓鼠，除了跳向下一个奇怪的场景中便没有其它目的了。

电影授权游戏通常也带有同样的问题，特别是当它们过分严格地遵循着电影脚本时—-电影从未刻意添加互动元素，而如果将互动序列硬塞进一件作品中则会显得非常笨拙。

简单且不公平的设计

因为美术人员并没有多少游戏设计经验，所以他们会选择较简单的机制和关卡（简单的游戏设计同样也能够更轻松地匹配过度夸张的图像内和主题）。但是因为游戏需要挑战，他们便添加了廉价的生命力，并不匹配的设计区域以及难以杀死的敌人进行补偿。因为游戏太便宜了，所以他们给予玩家100个个生命力，并在关卡中随机分配生命补充包。从游戏一开始便会出现许多缺少游戏设计经验的表现，你还可以注意到设计师为了确保游戏性而做出多个层次的修改。

一款游戏中有太多游戏

卡通片中总是会发生许多疯狂的事，当我们在观看这些卡通时会期待着一些随机性的出现。在卡通片中，如果能够看到身穿太空服的蚯蚓与一只鼻屎怪一起蹦极跳或穿越行星区护送小狗的话便会非常有趣。在游戏中，扮演一名水管工人并只是不断跳跃带你穿越各种变换的理念会更有趣。《马里奥》并没有太多多样性—-它只是通过游戏系列的核心理念而呈现出更棒的多样性。

席德·梅尔在其“秘密行动规则”（命名自他在1990年所创造的一款间谍游戏）中描述了这一现象：

“不要尝试着在一个游戏包中同时装过多游戏。这么做带给了我许多好处。你可以着眼于我在创造《文明》时所做的，那时候我们有很多机会能够投入更多内容。在《文明》中，当两个单位聚集在一起并进行战斗时，为什么我们不直接离开去玩一款战斗游戏并花10分钟左右专心战斗呢？这便是秘密行动规则。专注于游戏的真正核心。”

不过问题就在于，《秘密行动》仍然是一款有趣的游戏，因为席德是一名出色的设计师。相比之下《Earthworm Jim》便不是一款真正有趣的游戏了（尽管它也有自己的魅力）。

结论

《Earthworm Jim》幕后的一些工作人员，主要是出色的美术人员和动画师揭示，游戏是经过“许多次激烈的会议讨论”而设计出来的。作为玩家，我们会想象这些会议是从绘制一些愚蠢的角色和场景开始，伴随着“如果……会不会更有趣”的想法，并以“嘿，我们正在运行内容，让我们就这么做吧！”最终结果便是创造出一个充满野心并看上去还不错的作品，但却不足以与当先同样类型的其它游戏相抗衡。

很显然，这里的要点并不是说美术人员不应该作为游戏设计师。也不是只针对美术人员进行抨击—-同样道理也适用于程序员，作家，音乐师等人员身上。这里的关键在于：不管他们擅长的工作是什么，你都需要优秀的游戏设计师去设计游戏。不能只是那些玩游戏的人，而是需要那些可以搭建起机制和其它内容间复杂联系的人。

（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 Tell When You Gave Artists Too Much Control Over Design

By Derek Yu

A half hour into Earthworm Jim on SNES, and three things became painfully clear to Andy (Hull) and me: 1. wow, Earthworm Jim is a worse game than we remembered, 2. Earthworm Jim was designed by visual artists with little experience in game design, and 3. modern studios haven’t learned from Earthworm Jim, because some of their games share a lot of its negative traits.

Ultimately, what we enjoyed about EWJ were its quirky characters, humor, and animation, which were unmatched at the time. But it’s because those elements came at such a premium that it pales in comparison to other run n’ guns and platformers of the era, like Contra or Mega Man. Though Jim and his cohorts are remembered fondly (and with good reason), it’s not likely to be a game we’ll come back to very often.

Here’s why:

- The visuals are great, but hard to parse

Probably the most obvious clue that Earthworm Jim is a “visual artist’s game” is that the graphics looks fantastic but it’s very difficult to tell where platforms begin and end, what can hurt you, and what’s simply background art versus something you can interact with. It shows in level one, but it’s particularly obvious in Heck, where walls and platforms sometimes support you, giant spikes sometimes hurt you, and leaps of faith are often necessary because the relevant graphics are too large to fit on the screen all at once.

- Awkward controls

Action video games need to react quickly and precisely to your inputs, so the animations have to be fairly snappy. Guess what happens when you put overzealous animators to the task? Lots of lag as you wait for long animations to finish (terrible when dealing with fast enemies with small hitboxes), as well as the almost Uncanny Valley-esque feeling of watching a complex sequence repeating itself over and over again.

- Design led by jokes/situations

“Oh wouldn’t it be funny if…” is a bad method of designing games, and it’s obvious why: instead of Earthworm Jim having any kind of discernable rhythm to it it feels more like you’re traveling awkwardly from one compartmentalized joke or funny situation to another. Even with such large graphics you often get the sense that you’re a hamster in a maze that has little purpose except to dump you into the next quirky scenario.

Movie-licensed games often have the same problem when they follow the movie script too closely – movies are never intended to be made interactive, and shoehorning some interactive sequences into one feels clumsy.

- Simple and unfair design

Because the artists had little experience with games, they opted for simple mechanics and levels (simple game design also fits more easily into overwrought artwork and themes). But because games need challenge, they compensated by adding cheap hits, mismatched hitboxes, and hard-to-kill enemies. Then, because the game got too cheap, they gave the player 100 hitpoints and scattered random health pickups around the levels. And so on. Many of the tropes of inexperienced game design are on display from the very get-go, and you can see the layers of fixes that were applied to make it playable.

- Too many games in one game

Lots of crazy things happen in cartoons and we expect a certain amount of randomness when we watch them. In a cartoon it might be great to see an earthworm in a spacesuit bungee-jumping with a booger monster after he wins a space race or escorts a werepuppy through an asteroid field. In games, however, it’s more fun to play as a plumber who pretty much just jumps and takes you through every permutation and extension of the idea of jumping. Not that Mario games don’t have a lot of variety – it’s just that the variety blooms very elegantly from the core concept of the series.

Sid Meier described this with his “Covert Action Rule”, named after his 1990 spy game:

“Don’t try to do too many games in one package. And that’s actually done me a lot of good. You can look at the games I’ve done since Civilization, and there’s always opportunities to throw in more stuff. When two units get together in Civilization and have a battle, why don’t we drop out to a war game and spend ten minutes or so in duking out this battle? Well, the Covert Action Rule. Focus on what the game is.”

The thing is, Covert Action is still a rather fun game, because Sid is a rather good designer, to put it lightly. Earthworm Jim… is not really a fun game (although it remains a charming one!).

Conclusion:

-Behind the Scenes at SEGA: The Making of a Video Game

The credits of Earthworm Jim, which are dominated by talented artists and animators, reveal that the game was designed by “many, many Shiny meetings” (literally, that is the only designer listed other than the level designer). As players, we imagine that meetings started with a bunch of drawings of silly characters and situations, continued with “oh, wouldn’t it be funny if…”, and ended with “hey, we’re running the show here… let’s just do it all!” The result is an ambitious stew that smells great but doesn’t have the satisfying taste of other games in its genre.

Obviously, the point is not that artists shouldn’t be game designers. Nor is it a jab at artists over anyone else on the team – you could probably create a similar list for programmers, writers, musicians, or whatever. The point is: no matter what else they’re good at, you DO need good game designers designing the game. Not just people who have played games, but people who can make the very difficult connections between mechanics and everything else.（source：tumblr）