作者：Wojciech Borczyk

1.我们生来就是创造者

你可能已经发现，即使是最小的孩子也会试图体验其周围的世界，实现自己的小发现和创造。搭积木是我们跨过生命第一年后经常接触到的玩具。我至今还记得自己刚拿到首个乐高积木并随心所欲搭建出东西的那种心情。

几乎每个人在其一年中都曾经试图创造音乐。有些人最终只能在洗澡时自己哼唱几句，而有些人则可以去KTV当麦霸。还有些人则可以迈向更大的舞台。无论你属于哪种结果，都不能否认这是个有趣的过程。

之后，你可能曾经试着在无聊的课堂或会议上在自己的笔记本中画一些涂鸦。或许还甚至自己买了些颜料作画？无论是一些简单的草图还是一幅作品，这个过程都不乏趣味。

Instagram几乎将人人变成了摄影师。杰出的照片层出不穷，很快就被后来者淹没。iMove和YouTube可以让你一小时内就成为视频制作人。这个过程确实很有趣。

Createrria(from expansivedlc.com)

2.为何不创造游戏？

所以，如果发挥创造力是如此有趣的行为，为什么大家不创造游戏呢？我的意思是，我们开发者能够创造游戏，但我们就像那些音乐家、美术家、摄影家和电影制作者一样具有专业性。而那些缺乏这种技能水准的人却不能享受这种乐趣，多数人还无法接触到这种创造行为。

已经有许多人尝试过。早期制作的游戏就已经使用到关卡编辑器，但却并不一定好用，其结果也很有局限性，但过程仍然富有吸引力。不过，你却无法用这种方法创造出游戏。
但我们还可以选择一些简易化的游戏开发工具或游戏引擎来创造游戏。即便如此，我还是经常用Game Maker来教授游戏开发课程，或推荐开发者使用GameSalad。这些工具虽然比Unity 3D或Unreal更容易掌握，但对许多业余爱好者来说仍然并非易事。例如，你父母要操作Game Maker就很费劲吧……我是《小小大星球》的超级粉丝，该游戏编辑器非常棒，并创造了一个出色的创造者社区。据某些计算显示，玩家使用该编辑器创造了多达800万个关卡。但我仍然费了3小时的功夫才创造了一些体面的平台游戏体验。我也仍然无法想象自己的父亲会使用这种工具。

市场上还有许多手机开发应用。但问题是，它们不是太难使用就是结果太粗糙，并且需要大量创造时间——通常情况下，它们兼具这三个劣势。

3.《Createrria》

《Createrria》的原理则是将创造游戏的过程变成游戏：有趣，任务简单，人人都可以在数分钟内完成。如果你还记得《小小大星球》，那么就能掌握《Createrria》的基本要领。它成功地在非复杂化的情况下将游戏和游戏创造环境捆绑在一起。我们原先打算创造一款授权玩家自己创造游戏的游戏。但结果并不仅限于此。用户只需轻轻几下操作，就可以创造出自己的游戏，并且与好友和陌生人分享自己的作品。分享游戏的时候，你可以使用标签功能使人们方便快捷地找到自己所需的东西。强大的社区平台可确保你所创造的内容可以在各地运行，并通过评级和评价获得反馈，以便不断提升你的游戏创造技能。我们相信现在就是用户创造内容的时代，《Createrria》就是其中一例。

4.适用于每个人的工具

我们知道最重要的因素之一就是通过通俗的用户界面创造杰出的用户体验。该界面就是你的用户同游戏交互的渠道。因此我们知道这里的关键就在于以最佳方式展示功能。

熟悉度

我们重温了UI设计原则并据此创造了界面。首先是熟悉度——我们必须确保用户的现实生活经历与我们的应用具有共鸣因素。你不需要学习，只要能够辨识即可。在编辑器模式中应该使用哪个图标来启动物理效果，是最难以制定的一个决策。这个功能是测试游戏是否可行的最重要方式。我们首先想到的是玩/停止按钮，但之后我们又觉得它们与音乐/视频联系过于紧密了。我们的用户有时候会认为他们是在玩真正的游戏（因为他们摁压了“Play”按钮），虽然他们只是激活了物理功能，而不是运行了游戏的“playthrough”功能。在经过一番苦思冥想之后，我们终于想出了用苹果掉落的方式作为运行物理功能的标志。

简洁性

这是指你在游戏中运行的任务不会充斥大量细节。它们应该是短小而专用的。这方面的一个例子就是如何为你所创造的游戏设置目标。最初我们要设计一个特殊的简单菜单。你只需要选择一个目标（游戏邦注：例如

让玩家到达终点，或者收集所有的奖励，或者杀掉所有怪物）。之后你设置目标参数即可。你的游戏现在就有了终点，一个要求玩家实现的目标。当我们意识到这对许多用户来说还是太困难了。我们对其进行了简单

化。我们发现你的关卡中的内容已经描述了玩家完成游戏目标所需实现的操作。当我们认识到这一点时，我们就自动化了设置目标的过程。这一操作发生在幕后，没有菜单的情况下。你只需创造自己的关卡，游戏会

自动察觉你的目标。结果显示，这种操作生效了！

易用性

我们总是很难令所需的一切组件到位，但又要令界面整洁有序。我们的地形绘图功能允许用户设置一些参数，例如地势类型、画笔大小等。这些都是必具而并不常用的要素。我们试图在屏幕上呈现不同的点数，但最终决定令其呈现在库存中的专用页面，在主HUD上只呈现两个重要的元素：铅笔和橡皮擦。这个方法很可行，因为多数时间你只需要使用这两个工具，而如果你为沙子上色的时候，只要打开库存找到颜料即可。我们采用的一个妙法就是当你处于地形上色模式而打开库存时，总能看到地形上色属性，或者处于你所访问的最后一而。因此，这个系统总能根据操作情况提供最相关的工具。

可发现性

可发现性是我想讨论的最后一个原则。你的游戏功能应该具有发现的本能，并提供许多便于他人发现的线索。我们所用的一个技巧就是游戏信息牌。它呈现了游戏图标，基本状态和创造者的姓名。当你点击创造者的姓名时，你就可以看到对方的资料。但是，由于这个牌的信息十分密集，我们又不愿意让多余的按扭四处散布在界面，甚至是在玩家的名称之下添加按钮告知这是一个可以点击查看资料的地方。所以我们就将创造者的名字显示为蓝色，就像互联网中的链接以及iOS 7中的可点击组件一样。这同时实现了保持UI整洁以及告知玩家此处可点击的功能。

5.反复迭代

在实践某个理念之前，我们通常会先绘制许多草图。之后才开始执行交互性。当我们认为自己“走对路时，我们仍需保持迭代和获取反馈，以便提供最佳体验。

原先你可以从库存中拖拽道具。但在之后的测试中，我们发现许多用户喜欢首先在库存中点击道具，然后再点周目的地来移动而不是拖拽道具。因此我们更改这种行为后发现，许多人缺乏拖拽机制。最终解决方案是同时保留这两种机制，让用户自行选择适用的方法。

在砍些不管用的功能方面我们从来不曾犹豫，也不惧重头做起。有时候完美才算得上够好。但另一方面，你得重新开始尝试才能找到适用与不适用的方法。此时最好的方法就是不断迭代。

6.结果

在制作之初，一切玩法的编辑都要完全依靠游戏内部编辑器。这迫使我们无法作弊，并进行许多优化。在游戏软发布阶段，玩家的表现令我们大吃一惊。他们并不是去思考设置游戏目标、参数等情况，只是随心所欲地创造自己脑中浮现的更大更复杂的游戏。毁灭的城市、数字地标、流畅的平台游戏、物理益智游戏、超越障碍训练场、网格艺术，以及类似《愤怒的小鸟》游戏和翻版的《超级马里奥》、游戏化的电视&卡通节目等疯狂的作品。成人和孩子都创造出了许多令我们大感意外的结果。

Createrria(from android-france.fr)

7.总结

我们历时一年多时间才将《Createrria》的首个版本推向市场。因为创造简单的产品是项困难而耗时的工程。

但这确是值得一试的体验。我们的目标实现了——令用户在无数乐趣中发挥了巨大的创造力。在软发布阶段，我们的用户社区规模就达到2万人，他们创造了3.5万款游戏！许多人之后发布了自己的游戏，看到大家使用我们提供的工具创造了如此多成果真令人感到欣慰。（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）

Createrria – challenges designing flexible game creator for casual users

by Wojciech Borczyk

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

We are born creators

You’ve probably observed that even the smallest kids try to experiment with the world around them and make their first small discoveries and constructions. Building blocks are one of the toys we’re usually engaged with as early as when we finish our first year of life. I remember getting my first LEGO set and how fascinating it was to build almost anything I could imagine.

Almost everybody in his life tried to create some music. For some of us thankfully it ended up at singing while taking shower, others took it public with karaoke bars and garage bands. For some of us it ended up in being able to play some decent performances. Whatever it was in your case, it definitely was fun.

Then, you’ve probably also tried some sketching in your notebook during boring lessons or maybe on your meeting notes during the board of directors. Or maybe you’ve even bought yourself some paints and did some paintings? Whether it was a simple sketch or a piece of art, there was definitely a lot of fun involved.

Instagram turned almost everybody into photographers. Great photo lives just a shot and filter away. And with iMovie and YouTube you can become a video producer in an hour. And, yes you guessed it right – this is a lot of fun too

Why not games?

So, if being creative is so fun, why don’t people create games? I mean, we developers do, but we’re like those professional musicians, artists, photographers and movie makers. How about those who lack the skill to do it on this level? There definitely is a ton of fun to have, but it’s out of reach for most of people.

There had been many attempts to making it possible. Since early games we had level editors (Excitebike anybody?). They were not necessarily easy to use, the results were limited, but still it was engaging. However, you couldn’t create your game this way.

Then, there were game creation kits or game engines that tried to make it as easy as possible. But even though I usually teach students with Game Maker or recommend Game Salad to some developers, those tools – although much easier to get grip at than Unity 3D or Unreal, are still out of reach for amateurs. Imagine your parents using Game Maker…

I am a huge fan of Little Big Planet. It’s charming, the editor is simply awesome and it has built a great community of creators. By some accounts, as many as 8 million levels. But it still took me 3 hours to create some decent platforming experience there. And I still can’t imagine my father doing that.

Then, there were many mobile apps. The problem was, they were either too difficult to use, the results looked… well… let’s say “homebrew”, required lot of time to create anything or – usually – all three together.

Createrria

Createrria turns making games into a game itself: fun, easy task that everybody can accomplish in literally minutes. If you’ve had LittleBigPlanet on your mind, then you’ve got the basic grasp of Createrria, which successfully packages a game and game creation environment without complicating one single thing. From the beginning we wanted to make a game that empowers gamers to create their own games. But it doesn’t ends there. With just few taps our users can craft their games and just one more tap allows them to share their creation with friends and strangers. When sharing your game, you can use tags so that people can easily find the stuff they want. Strong community platform ensures that everything you create may be played all around the world and feedbacked via ratings and comments to constantly improve your game crafting skills. It is always a pleasant surprise after sharing a game that people actually played it, enjoyed, liked and left their comments. We believe that the future of user generated content is now and Createrria is a big part of it.

Making it work for everybody

We knew one of the most important factors was to create great user experience through accessible user interface. This interface is the way your user interacts with the game. Therefore the key was exposing the functionality we knew that had to be there the best way possible.

Familiarity

We’ve revisited UI design principles and build the interface around them. First was familiarity – we had to make sure, that user’s real-life experience has corresponding elements in our application. That you don’t have to learn, but recognize instead. One of the difficult decisions to be taken was what icon to use in editor mode for turning the physics on. This functionality is the most important way of testing how your game works. First thing that came to our mind was play / stops buttons, but then we thought they are a bit too music / video related. And our users sometimes think they are playing the actual game (because they pressed “play”), although they were only enabling the physics, not running “playthrough” of the game. Eventually we thought what comes to your mind when you think about physics and things obeying gravity etc. And after some hard thinking we came up with the idea of having Newton’s falling apple as the symbol of running physics.

Simplicity

Then comes the simplicity – the tasks you are performing within game should not be filled with details. They should be short and focused. A good example of this is how to set a goal of the game that you create. Initially, we’ve designed a special simple menu for that. You were just selecting one of the goals (like get player to the finish line or collect all bonuses or kill all monsters). Then, you eventually set parameters of the goal and there it was. Your game now had it’s ending, a goal to achieve. However, we have learned it’s too complicated for many of our users. We’ve tried to simplify it until the point we’ve made the ultimate simplification. At one point we’ve discovered, that what you have on your level already describes what your player should achieve in order to complete your game’s goal. When we realized that, we’ve simply automated the process of setting up the goal. It just happens behind the scenes. No menu for that. You just build your level, and the game automagically knows how you want it to end. And guess what? It just worked!

Availability

Then there came the principle of availability. It’s always difficult to have all the needed components available, but also keep the interface uncluttered. Our terrain painting functionality enables users to set some parameters, like type of terrain, brush size etc. They are all required, but not so frequently used. We’ve tried different placements on screen, but eventually decided to put them on dedicated page in the inventory and just leave two most important ones out on main HUD: pencil and eraser. And it worked great, because most of the time you just use those and when you need to paint with sand for example, you simply open inventory and find it there. One of the neat tricks we’ve introduced is that when you open inventory when in terrain painting mode, it always opens on the terrain painting properties, otherwise on the last page you’ve visited. Thus, the context is used to provide with relevant tools.

Discoverability

Discoverability is the last principle I want to discuss here. Your game’s functionality should be intuitive to discover and there are many cues one can use to do that. One of the tricky situations for us was the game information card. It displays game icon, basic stats and creator’s name. When you click creator’s name, you go to see his/her profile. However, because the card itself is pretty compact we didn’t want to clutter interface with any additional buttons or even add button beneath player name to tell user he can click it to see the profile. What we did instead was to color the name in blue, just as links on internet once used to be and just as iOS7 does in many cases of clickable elements. This allowed us to keep the UI clean and tell users “hey, you can click that!” at the same time.

Iterate, iterate, iterate…

With every idea we usually started with many drawn concepts. Then, interactive implementations were made. And when we thought we “got it” we still kept iterating and getting feedback to provide the best experience possible.

Initially you were able only to drag items out of inventory. Then, during tests we’ve seen that many users want to put them on level by clicking them in inventory first and then by clicking on the destination. They didn’t drag. Therefore we’ve changed the behavior only to find, many people lack the drag mechanism. The final solution was to leave both mechanisms in place and simply let user decide what works better.

We never hesitate to constantly rework from scratch or cut down altogether on features that don’t work the way we expect them to work. Sometimes good enough means to be perfect. But on the other hand, you have to start with something in order to find what works and what doesn’t. Iterations are your best friend in those cases.

Results

At the beginning of production, all editing of gameplay started taking place using entirely the in-game editor. This forced us to never cheat and lead to many improvements. What’s also important our Creators use the exact tools as we do and guess what? They surprised us on the first day after the soft launch. All hard decisions and shifts let our Creators not to think about setting game’s goals, statistics etc. but to just play and create bigger and more complex games that appeared in their minds. Without a doubt, players armed with Createrria are creating games we couldn’t even imagine.  Ruined cities, digital landmarks, smooth platformers, physical puzzles, hardcore obstacle courses, grid-arts, Angry Birds like games as well as completely insane stuff such as fully recreated Super Mario Games and gamified interpretations of movies & cartoons. All of those and many more have been created by both kids and adults which makes us even more happier with the final result.

Summary

It took us over a year of hard work to bring first version of Createrria to the market. Because building simple products is a difficult and time consuming task.

But it was totally worth it. The goal was achieved – people are having tons of fun and simply bursting with creativity. At one point during the soft launch, when we had a community of around 20 000 users, they’ve created 35 000 games! Many of them were published and it was also a lot of fun for the whole team to see what our community has created using the tools we’ve provided them with.

Now with the worldwide release on 5th December 2013, we’re ultimately excited to see the world burst with creativity. Because everybody can create games.（source：gamasutra）