Rich Hilleman是艺电的首席创意总监。他是艺电最早的雇员之一，并因为帮助创造EA Sports（包含《John Madden Football》, 《NHL Hockey》，《Tiger Woods PGA Tour》在内的游戏品牌）而声名大噪。以下是2012年4月对于Rich的一次访问。

EL：在艺电的29年工作生涯中你参与过哪些游戏的创造？

RH：我所致力的第一款游戏名为《Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Simulator》，之后又改为《Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer》。那时候我们与Lucasfilm以及其它公司也共同致力于其它几款模拟游戏。我们创造了包括《Ferrari Formula One》（一款有关Indy 500的游戏）在内的几款赛车游戏。我们创造了《Road Rash》。我还创造了《Populous》最初的Genesis版本。我们面向了Genesis分别创造了《John Madden Football》和《NHL Hockey》的第一个版本。还创造了《爱丽丝梦游仙境》。

EL：参与了这么多经典游戏的创造真的是太棒了。

和往常一样，我也将问你同样的问题，你认为什么是游戏设计？

RH：我觉得游戏设计是组合各种游戏组件的过程，并为玩家创造出他们想要的体验。而这里也存在许多分歧。就像有许多人喜欢创造非常规范的体验。我曾致力于《Winged Commander》系列中。我们提供给玩家选择，但是却并未给予他们过多选择。显然在《质量效应》中我们也未给予玩家足够的选择。

这些游戏的设计师都是着眼于玩家想要怎样的游戏体验。他们希望你能够做出一些选择，但是他们也希望你能在一定范围内操作，如此他们便能够为你创造出丰富的体验。

范围的另一端是体育类游戏，即为那些脑子里充斥着各种奇思妙想的人创造工具去帮助他们实现这些想法。有时候这具有很强的针对性：他们想要成为一个特殊领域中的特殊玩家。而其它时候，他们会想要将其当成是辅助自己想象力的工具，去实现那些你不能预先描述的内容。

对于我来说，游戏设计既是整合一边视角的过程，也是装配工具让玩家能够从另外一个视角出发的过程。

EL：我认为体育类游戏真的是个有趣的领域，因为这是一个特殊的模拟领域。

RH：一点都没错。

EL：创造了这么多体育游戏，作为《FIFA》或《John Madden Football》的设计师的工作与Seth Marinello创造《死亡空间》的工作有什么不同？

RH：他能更轻松地进行构想，而我却很难做到这点。在Seth所面对的情况下并不存在准确的答案。玩家不知道这到底是什么，他只知道自己喜不喜欢。在这种特殊的情况下，Seth的工作便是创造带有适当频率的体验，即能够有效影响玩家去创造情感故事，并让他们会随着时间的发展而加深对于故事结果的好奇。

大多数情况下在体育类游戏中，玩家会认为自己已经知道游戏是关于什么了。他们以为自己清楚了游戏故事。而你的一大风险便是可能对这种情况造成消极影响，即你将以某种方式避免玩家意识到自己所追寻的故事，或你会把自己的想法强加在他们身上。

而人们所谓的自己了解体育的想法正是促使这一工作变得更加困难的两个特征。一个特征便是他们的想法是完全不可能的，而另一个则是这通常都是错误的想法。在现代美式足球中，基于现代环境玩游戏的职责便是一边操控11个玩家，一边了解情况并做出准确的决策。

几乎没人理解这一点。意思是，如果我让你控制玩家，你便需要理解持续进行的游戏，并理解如何接近你所扮演角色所处的多个位置。如果你在《Madden》中的角色是防卫者，即要在不同玩家间转换着，这便意味着你必须了解所有的这11个玩家，而不只是其中的一位。

所以这是一个复杂且现实的问题。如果我让你去解决问题，你便只会遭遇失败。所以我们的工作便是提供你认为对但事实却不对的内容。这将带给你真实感。这也等于我所谓的“尘埃”措施，即使微小但却能够构成特定且不同的体育特征，并与你所不了解的内容结合在一起：教授一些你之前并不知道的体育内容。

这似乎就足够了。然而问题在于这是个不断变化的目标，而我们每一年都需要去完善它。

EL：你是在何时开始遭遇真正的认知摩擦，即关于在体育类游戏中创造真实存在于现实生活中的功能，并看着它不能满足人们对于体育的期待或幻想以及他们的反应间的摩擦？

RH：我并不是从体育中学到这点，而是从飞行模拟器中学到的。有趣的是，我是通过创造飞行模拟器以及驾驶模拟器才走向体育类产品。

这便意味着我在此的观点很大程度是受到创造飞行模拟器的经历的影响。当我们在创造《Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer》时，比起《我的世界》的飞行模拟器，它拥有当时较不迂腐但也较不清晰的飞行模拟器。我们同样也要基于4倍的帧率而运行，并需要考虑驾驶飞行人员。

我从中学到了什么？显然因为我经常中途离开并犯其它错误，所以我能学到的并不多。我们尝试着创造一个F-16模拟器与《Falcon》竞争，当《Falcon》发行时，它也伴随着一份160页的手册紧随其后。我不知道你们是否记得，但是为了在《Falcon》中发射一枚导弹，你就必须做7件事。你必须明确目标，瞄准雷达，限制导弹的探头，固定该探头，确定探头已经锁定了，锁定雷达图像，然后武装起来并发射导弹。

EL：这听起来就像是真正的模拟。

RH：确实如此。不过说实话，在《F-16 Combat Pilot》中，我们花了数百万美元去训练这些人。如果我给你一款游戏让你做F-16要求你做的所有事，你会怎样？首先，你肯定什么都不会做。其次，这种体验一点都不有趣。在F-16的现代空战中射击另外一家飞机：这完全是一款雷达游戏。屏幕上只有少量信号，我将瞄准这些信号发射导弹，然后这些信号便会消失。

但是人们真正想要的体验是像《壮志凌云》的汤姆克鲁斯那样。他们想要扣动扳机并射下目标，所有的一切事物都处于可视距离中，这就像是一场真正的对决。

现代喷气机战斗与这并不相同。但这并不意味着这里没有玩家想要的体验。所以我认为这是“事实”与“传奇”相矛盾的经典例子，因为这正是人们想要的。

我们所发现的正确做法便是给予玩家比他们想要的更加真实的汤姆克鲁斯般的体验。使用真实的导弹和真实的飞机。也许它们的速度会一样快：如此玩家便能够在游戏环境中追踪并感知它们间的不同。

但是我们并未让玩家基于不同的战术飞行。我们并未让他们飞行。我们并未让他们基于非常真实的方式使用武器系统。我们并未让他们基于苏联所采取的协调方式使用雷达系统。最重要的是，在20世纪80年代和90年代间，如果你驾驶的是喷射式飞机，你便不能够发射导弹。那时候的导弹是从地面发射的。你的工作只是驾驶飞机，而由别人发射导弹。所以很明显这是个不让人满意的表达。

当我们走向体育类游戏时发现，我们已经沿着这条路走了很久。我们也曾因为呈现太过真实的内容而犯错。

所以我们需要继续解决该问题。我认为直至今日《Madden》仍是一个问题所在，即《Madden》很难，足球也很难。将其结合在一起完全是不可能的事。所以关于《Madden》的新玩家问题便是我们每年所致力于的问题。我们并不能有效地解决它，但是我们却一直都在为此而努力。

EL：听起来创造一款有趣的模拟游戏的关键是在于传达好莱坞级别的传奇而不是真正的模拟内容。

RH：其实真正的关键是明确你所尝试创造的是关于别人脑子里的想法，而不是你自己的。如果游戏不能有效反应他们脑中的现有环境，那么内容是否真实也就不再重要。

真实性是基于用户的体验而不是现实。体育也是如此。它看起来好像所有的模拟，所有的内容都与现实世界相关联，这便是人们对于它们的想法。

EL：我和Michael John曾讨论过，当他在训练设计师时，他会教授他们什么是“玩家的思维”，他会跟他们说“我会在每个句子开始时才听你说话。”这与你在讲述模拟游戏的时候很像。说实话，在所有电子游戏中，它们都不是关于客观地找出事实。而是关于明确玩家脑中的想法，并帮助他们实现这些想法。

RH：讽刺的是，尽管我们可能不喜欢某些内容，但在特殊的模拟游戏中，我们却是扮演着真正的行为艺术家的角色。而当你是个DJ时，不管你是否做得对或者不管用户是否在跳舞便都不重要了。

我认为在我们的例子中，这便是关于游戏如何运行。我们在寻找来自用户的反应，即表示我们触及了他们对于游戏中故事发展的真实感与期待感。他们在绘制图像并填补空间，这是我们不能够影响到他们的想法。他们在体验我所不能给予的。模拟的威力便在于某些内容其实已经存在于人们的脑子里了。

EL：作为首席创意总监，你的工作是否有趣。

RH：（笑）你还是不知道我在做些什么。

EL：是的，我仍然不清楚作为首席创意总监的你的主要工作是什么。

RH：它们之间也存在着一些矛盾，而我认为最可行的事主要有三个。首先便是明确我们公司拥有高质量的设计人才和制作人才。

我致力于确保我们能够在大学项目中投入足够的时间与空间去培养自己所需要的这类型项目中的人才，然后再考核哪些人才是真正合格的。之后再面向这些人进行二次投资，以确保他们能够给我们公司的未来做出贡献。这便是我们所做的第一件事。

我们所负责的第二件事便是有关游戏设计图像的状态。举个例子来说吧，就像团队中的Sandy之所以会和我们共同致力于现在的工作中是因为我相信，比起其它市场，免费游戏模式将在中国市场取得更加快速的发展。这是我们对于该市场的理解，而这将直接影响着我们是否能在美国市场取得成功（游戏邦注：即在中国市场成功后在美国市场仿效同样的模式）。

对于我们来说这真的是件奇怪的内容，但却是关于最基础的游戏设计。所以我认为确保游戏具有意义的一方面内容便是拥护设计师的角色，而我们对于设计原则和新事物的倡导将会体现在游戏世界中。

EL：作为游戏设计师意味着你们和许多你们尝试着培养的人才（艺电或游戏产业在大学或其它领域所培养的年轻游戏设计人才）有许多不同之处。你想要塑造怎样的现代游戏设计师角色呢？

RH：一个像Seth那样创造射击游戏的人，一个创造出像《模拟城市》的模拟类游戏的人，一个创造了一款社交游戏的人，一个创造了一款社交游戏的年轻女性，一个创造了一款手机游戏的人，或一个创造了一款AAA级主机游戏的人，但是不管是怎样的类型，你们所面对的问题类型都是不同的，因为你们的用户是不同的，你们的盈利系统是不同的，你们的分销渠道是不同的，人们的游戏频率和持续时间也是不同的。

而他们间的更多共同点在于与长期用户之间的高指标指向型关系。如果我尝试着在今天的大学项目中完成一件事，它可能是关于如何掌控你的产品在传达玩家如何游戏的信息。而你需要做的便是改变这些数据，期待这些改变，并向团队其他成员做出详细解释。

很长一段时间，或者当你与我一起做事时，你会发现在缺少音频设计师的公司里，设计师其实过着公司中最底层的生活，因为在几乎每个团队中，他们与美术人员的比例是30：1，与制作人的比例是10：1，与工程师的比例是10：1。他们唯一可能超过的角色便是音频设计师，即有可能是3：1。

EL：有人曾告诉过我如果想要在艺电做自己想要做的事，那就想办法成为制作人。

RH：你如果想要获得控制权，那么制作人的头衔便能够帮助你做到这点。

不过我认为这种情况也发生了变化。这并不是说设计师是完全受控制的，我认为随着人们对于遥测技术和指标的兴趣的不断提高，现在的我们能够更好地评估设计师这一工作了。我认为之前所存在的问题是关于许多公司和大多数业务都是在设计师推出内容时，也就是每隔18个月左右才能对其展开评估。而其它有关设计师的影响力的元素却被彻底忽视了。只有你能够真正剖析一件产品，你才能理解设计师所做的以及人们强加给他们的误解。

但是我认为真正有趣的是，如果你拥有指标，如果你拥有遥测技术，如果你与用户维持着长期的活跃关系，你便能在三周内判断一名出色的设计师。而我认为真正发生改变的是设计师能够通过某种方法向用户传达自己多优秀，并解释为什么你可以在他们身上找到其他团队成员所不具有的特性。

这将成为能够在短时间内理解并衡量的产品组件。

EL：这绝对是最标准的评估。我认为通过在《龙腾世纪传奇》中的体验，我们便能够获得有效的理解。这里还有很大的发展空间。

RH：关於这点的部分分析（当你获得数值时）并不意味着你知道它们代表着什么。我认为我们还要经历许多过程。

EL：在过去几周通过与各种指标的人士进行交谈后所留给我的最深刻印象是，进行A/B测试的人真的很优秀，并也因此得到了回报。当你问他们，有多少测试是没有效果时，他们会回答大多数。你所测试的60%或70%的东西是没有效果或不会做出明显改变的。

我真希望自己在12个月前便清楚这点。那么我便可以面向自己的产品做出100个更好的决策，“嘿，你知道吗，70%的情况下我们可能看不到任何结果。而当我们看到1%的变化时，我们便算取得了巨大的成功。”

RH：我认为这也是为什么设计师们开始取得了一些进步，一方面他们能够解释更多情况，另一方面他们理解何时才能做出改变。当你告诉某人“我们将对这些数据做出3%的改变，”你便会做出这些改变，这就像是个神奇的法术。对于同个房间里的其他人来说，你所做的就跟魔法似得。

如今你能够向人们解释原因，因为通过预测，你已经找到了一些真正的原因。但是对于大多人来说，他们仍然不愿思考足够的细节去理解一件可预测的事。

你可以提前预测某些情况，但是当你连续三次这么做时，制作人便会说：“不要管他。”（笑）“我不知道他在做什么，但是你们肯定不知道他是怎么做到的。所以不要管他。”

如果你想要描述设计师最想要的最终状态，那可能会是：“不要管我。”（笑）

（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）

On Game Design with Rich Hilleman (Part 1)

Rich Hilleman is the Chief Creative Director of EA. He is one of EA’s earliest employees and is best known for helping to build the juggernaut EA Sports business as the original producer of games including John Madden Football, NHL Hockey and Tiger Woods PGA Tour. This interview took place in April, 2012. For more from Rich, check out part 2 and part 3 of this interview.

EL: What are some of the games you’ve worked on in your 29-year career at EA?

RH: The very first game I worked on was a game called Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Simulator, which then became Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer. We worked on a number of other simulations from that era with Lucasfilm and with others. We built driving games in that era which included Ferrari Formula One, an Indy 500 game. We also built Road Rash. I built the original Genesis version of Populous, of all crazy things. We built the first version of John Madden Football for the Genesis. We built the first version of NHL Hockey for the Genesis. Built the first Tiger Woods PGA Tour. Built American McGee’s Alice. I’m sure I’m forgetting other things I shouldn’t be forgetting, but I’m sure I’ve insulted somebody.

EL: [laughs] It’s okay. It’s good to have so many incredible hit classic games under your belt that that’s actually an issue.

So the question I start everybody off with is, what is game design?

RH: I think game design is the process of assembling the components that can make up a game to produce a desired experience in the player. There are a lot of different flavors of that I think. There are folks who build very prescriptive experiences. I worked on the Winged Commander series. We gave the user choices but trust me we didn’t give them that many choices. Apparently we don’t give them enough choices in Mass Effect anymore.

Those are games that the designer has a point of view about what they want you to experience. They want you to make some choices, but they want you to operate within a range so they can really produce a rich experience for you.

The other end of the spectrum is sports games which are really about creating the tools for somebody to be able to fulfill the fantasy they probably already have in their head. And sometimes that’s a very specific thing: they want to be a particular player in a particular place. Other times, they want to use it as a tool along with their imagination to realize something that you couldn’t even describe in advance.

And so for me game design is the process of either assembling that point of view in one case, or assembling the tools that allow your user to have that point of view in the other.

EL: I think sports games are a really interesting area because it’s such a specific area of simulation.

RH: Painfully specific.

EL: Having done so many sports games, how is the job of being a designer on FIFA or John Madden Football different from Seth Marinello’s job making levels on Dead Space?

RH: It has the illusion of being easier, but I’d make the case it’s harder. In Seth’s case, there is no right answer. The user doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be, he just knows whether he likes it or not. And so in that particular case, Seth’s job is to create an experience that has the right frequency, that has the right impact on the player to create an emotional narrative within the player that deepens their care for the outcome of the story over time.

Most of the time in a sports game, the player thinks they already know what the game is. They think they already know what the story is. One of your risks is that you either somehow negatively impact that, that you somehow don’t allow them to realize the story that they’re after, or that you intrude your own on them.

I think the reason that it’s harder is because what people think they know about sports is two characteristics that make it difficult. One is that it’s incomplete and the other one is that it’s often wrong. In modern American football, play calling and the execution of plays in a modern context is a responsibility of eleven players on one side to read the situation and make exactly the same decision at exactly the same time together.

Almost nobody understands that. It means that, if I give you control of a player, you need to understand the play that’s going on and need to understand the multiple approaches for the position that you’re playing. If you were playing defense in Madden, switching from player to player, that means you have to know eleven of those, not one of those. And you need to know eleven times three or four, probably.

So that is a complicated, realistic problem. If I give you that to solve, you will do nothing but fail. So our job is to give you what you think is the truth but really isn’t. That creates for you the sensation of authenticity. That’s usually equal measures of what I call “dirt,” which is the minutiae that makes up the specific and distinct characteristic of a sport combined with something you didn’t know before you showed up: something that we taught you about the sport that you never knew before.

That seems to be enough. The problem is, it’s a moving target and every year we have to improve it.

EL: Was there a time where you first started encountering this actual cognitive friction between building a feature in a sports game that was true to real life and then watching it fail to meet people’s expectations or fantasies about what the sport actually was and how they reacted?

RH: I didn’t learn it from sports, we learned it from flight simulators. What’s funny is that I came to sports products from doing flight simulators and driving simulators.

What that meant was that my perspective over here is very much shaped by the experiences we had over there. When we built Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer, it was a less pedantic and less articulate flight simulator than Microsoft’s flight simulator at the time. We also ran at four times the frame rate and had airplanes people cared about.

What did I learn out of that? Apparently not very much because I instantly went off and made another mistake. We tried to build an F-16 simulator to compete with Falcon and when Falcon shipped, it shipped with, I don’t know, a 160-page manual. Well, I don’t know if you remember, but in order to fire a missile on Falcon, you had to do like seven things. You had to identify the target, you had to range the radar to the right, you had to restrict the seeker head on the missile, you had to engage that seeker head, you had to receive a tone that it had been locked on, you had to lock the radar image to the tone, and then you had to arm it and fire the missile.

It was like eight things to fire the missile.

EL: That sounds like a very authentic simulation.

RH: It was a painfully authentic situation. Well the truth is, on F-16 Combat Pilot, we spent like a million dollars training those guys. And so if I give you a game that makes you do all the things that an F-16 makes you do, guess what? You never do anything, number one. Number two, the experience isn’t all that cool. To shoot down another airplane in an F-16 in a modern air combat: it’s a radar game. There’s a little blip on the screen and then I fire a missile at that blip and then the blip goes away.

And what people really want is Tom Cruise in Top Gun. They want to pull the trigger and shoot the thing down, and the whole thing happens in visual range, and the whole thing feels like it’s a mano-a-mano contest.

Modern jet combat has nothing to do with any of that. But that doesn’t mean that that’s not what people want. So I think it’s the classic example of when “the truth” and “the legend” are in conflict, print the legend, because that’s what people want.

So what we discovered was the right thing to do was to give them Tom Cruise with just a little bit more authenticity than they wanted. Call the missiles the real missiles. Have the right airplanes be the right airplanes. Maybe have them go equally fast: something that the user could track the difference and actually perceive that difference within the context of the game.

But we didn’t make them fly the different tactics. We didn’t make them fly. We didn’t make them use their weapon systems in a highly authentic way. We didn’t make them use radar systems in the coordinated fashion that the Soviet Union did. Most importantly, it turned out that for most of the 1980s and 90s, if you were a guy flying a jet fighter, you actually couldn’t fire the missile. The missiles were fired by the ground. Your job was to fly the airplane and then they fired the missiles. So that’s a distinctly unsatisfying expression of that.

What we learned by the time we got to sports was that we had been down that road already. We had already made that mistake of trying to present something that was so authentic it was painful.

And we’ve continued to have to solve that problem though. I think Madden to this day continues to be a problem where Madden is hard and football is hard. Together they’re nearly impossible. And so the new player problem for Madden is just a problem that we work on almost every year. We’re not solving it particularly well, but we’re working on it.

EL: It sounds like at its heart the key to doing a fun simulation game is delivering almost the Hollywood-level legend and not the actual simulation.

RH: The key thing is to recognize the reality you’re trying to create is the one in their head, not yours. And that if it doesn’t react favorably to that existing context in their head, it doesn’t matter if it’s true, it’s inauthentic.

Authenticity is based on the user’s experience and not reality. And sports are no different. It seems like all simulations, all things that are related to the real world, that’s how people think about them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Tony Hawk, for that matter.

EL: Yeah, Michael John and I talked about when he’s training designers sometimes he’ll teach them the “player thinking” which is, he’ll tell them, “I’m not listening to you until every sentence starts with, ‘The Player…’” And that sounds like it’s almost exactly what you just said with simulations. Frankly, in all videogames, it’s not about figuring out what’s true objectively. It’s about figuring what’s true in the player’s mind, and giving that to them.

RH: I think what’s ironic is in spite of the fact we don’t seem like one, actually we, at our best in particular simulations, are performance artists. And so, when you’re a DJ, it doesn’t matter if you’re right if the audience doesn’t dance. It doesn’t matter.

And I think in our case, that’s very much how it works. We’re looking for that response out of the user that says that we’ve engaged with their authenticity and their sense of anticipation with what’s going to happen in the game. And they’re drawing pictures and filling in spaces that I can never fill in their head. They’re having experiences that I couldn’t afford to give them. The power of simulations is what already exists in people’s heads. You fight that at your peril.

EL: As chief creative director here, what’s funny is that I worked for you for seven months and I’m not—

RH: [Laughs] You still don’t know what I do.

EL: I still don’t know exactly what your job as chief creative director means.

RH: There’s a dissonance between them and so the part of that that I think is the most actionable for me is really around three things. One of them is the quality of the design talent and production talent that we have as a company.

I invest in making sure that we are spending the time and space necessary within the university programs to foster the kinds of people that we want out of those programs, and then to identify the ones who are really great. And then to do secondary investments in those people, like you, to make sure that they’re ready for their futures. That’s the first thing that we do.

The other thing that we are responsible for is the state of the art of game design. For instance, Sandy, who’s in our group now, is with us because I believe that the free-to-play model will advance more rapidly in China than any other market. And that our understanding and exposure to that market and how it works will directly influence how successful it can be in the U.S., emulating that model when it happens.

For us, that’s an odd kind of sideways thing, but it’s actually really about game design at the bottom of all of that. And so I think the part that makes sense for that title is our advocacy for the role of designer and our advocacy for the discipline of design and the new things that will emerge in that space.

EL: Being a game designer means a lot of different things to a lot of different people when you’re trying to build: working with universities and the young game design talent here at EA and in the industry. What is the role of the modern game designer that you are helping to craft?

RH: A guy who builds a shooter like Seth, or a guy who builds a simulation like Sim City, or a guy who builds a social game, or a young lady who builds a social game, or a person who builds a mobile game, or a person who builds a triple-A console game, the problems you wrestle with become different because your audience is different, because your monetization systems are different, because your distribution is different, because the frequency and duration of the periods of time that people get to play it are different.

Increasingly what they share in common is a highly metrics-oriented relationship with their customer in the long term. If I try and get one thing across with the university programs of today, it is how to be in command of the information that your product expresses about how the player is playing it. To be in the business of changing those numbers, anticipating those changes, and explaining to the rest of your team what those things are and what they mean.

For a long time in this company and really early on, I think when you worked with me, designers were the lowest form of life in the company short of audio designers because on the average team they were outnumbered by artists 30-to-1, producers 10-to-1, and engineers 10-to-1. The only thing or person that they might outnumber is there might be three designers and one audio guy. “We’re going to go kick the dog now. We’ll beat up the audio guy.”

EL: You guys even told me to switch to being a producer because to do what I wanted to do at EA, I had to have that in my job title.

RH: You wanted to be in control in a way that I thought you needed to be a producer to do.

I think that’s changed. That doesn’t mean necessarily the designers are as much in charge, but I think that the increasing interest in telemetry and metrics have made the designer a job that we now understand how to evaluate. And I think the key issue before was the way that the company and most of the business evaluated a designer was about every 18 months when they shipped something. And the number of other factors that go into that equation dramatically swamp the designer’s real influence on that. Only if you can really take apart a product can you understand what the designer did versus the mistakes that somebody else did to them.

But, I think what’s interesting about this is, if you have metrics, if you have telemetry, and you have an ongoing live relationship with a customer, suddenly you can tell a good designer in about three weeks. And I think that’s really what’s changed is designers have a way to describe to their customers why they’re great and why you can depend on them in a way that very few members of the other teams actually can.

It’s gone from maybe the least understood and least measured component of the product to arguably the most in a very short period of time.

EL: It’s definitely the most measured. I feel the understanding just from our own experience with metrics on Dragon Age Legends. There’s a lot of room to grow there.

RH: The analysis portion of it—once you’ve acquired the numbers—doesn’t mean you know what they mean. And I think we’re still going through a lot of that.

EL: I think one of the most insightful things I’ve learned from talking to various metrics people in the past couple of weeks is actually that the people who do A/B test great and it really pays off. When you ask them how many of their tests have no effect, they’ll say most of them. Sixty percent or seventy percent of things you test have literally no effect, no significant change.

I wish I had known that twelve months ago. I could’ve made a hundred better decisions on my product had I just been able to say, “Hey, you know what? Seventy percent of the time, we’re going to see nothing. And when we see one percent change, that’s a huge win.”

RH: Yeah, knowing how to celebrate. I think a big chunk of that is why I think designers are starting to gain some headway is (A) they’re explaining those things, and (B) they understand when they can change them. When you tell somebody, “I’m going to make this number change by three percent,” and then you do three percent, and you do that like three times in a row, it’s fucking magic. To everybody else in the room, what you have done is magic.

Now the truth is you could probably explain to them why, in most cases, because for you to predict that, you’ve got some reason why. But for most of the people they’d just never bothered to think through the details enough to understand that that’s an anticipatable thing.

So simply the fact that you can anticipate it, you can forecast it in advance, and that you were right, there’s a point—as you’ve heard me describe before—you do that like three times in a row and the producer says, “Just leave him the fuck alone.” [laughs] “I don’t know what he does or how he does it, but he does shit that none of the rest of you know how to do. Leave him alone.”

If you were going to describe the end-state that designers want most, that might be it: “Leave me alone.” [laughs]（sourceL：famousaspect）