作者：Chris Dahlen

电子游戏带有一个情节问题。

这并不是一份新的观察报告，但在一个月前我在旧金山的游戏开发者大会上听到了关于这一主题的一些新研究。微软的Deborah Hendersen致力于用户研究，她与我们分享了自己对于一系列玩家的访问，即玩家们回答了自己对于最喜欢的游戏的故事的记忆。

这些文化消费者可以轻松地回想起来自媒体的故事。但是当提到游戏时，他们便会在游戏开始时迷失方向。他们会错过大型事件，会忘记一些关键的情节点。当她让其中一名玩家说出自己在《天际》里最喜欢的角色的名字时，他的回答竟然是“那个可怕的女人”。

关于如何尽早地完善玩家的理解并测试叙述内容，Hendersen提出了一系列的建议。但是我对前提内容更感兴趣：人们是如何记得情节，而游戏中的情节又是如何发挥作用？我的意思是，我并不会一直记得大多数游戏“现在发生了什么之后又发生什么”。就像现在的我并不记得为什么Sephiroth杀死了Aerith，Templars的卑劣之处在哪里，为什么Quote在Cave Story中必须拯救小兔子，以及《Rayman Legends》中事件发生的任何理由，除非我所面对的是视觉小说，否则我便可能忘记大多数内容。

现在我并不是要谈论所有的讲故事形式。玩家仍然需要获得使命感和一种情感依附。游戏可以通过角色，音调，氛围，强大的前提，甚至是出色的加载屏幕而吸引我们的注意。但在我们能够使用的所有讲故事的元素中，情节是最微弱的。我们不带任何义务感地将时间投入于其中，它也并未像我们所期待的那样给予回报。

让我们后退一步并思考游戏是如何运行的。就像《文明4》的项目总监Soren Johnson在2010年的GDC大会上所说的，游戏被分成了机制和主题两部分。机制是让整体内容运行起来的游戏玩法和系统，而主题则是一开始吸引你的表面内容。

机制是理性的。它们具有意义，或者会让玩家感到困惑并生气。而主题呢？它却可以是任何一切的内容。

这与我在去年的GDC上所听到的一个演讲相联系，即《肯德基0号路》的Jake Elliott在实验视频和Tennessee Williams的背景下谈论了一个谜题和一个秘密间的区别。他表示谜题拥有一个解决方法，而秘密有可能永远得不到解决。谜题必须是有意义的，但秘密却不一定需要。

在游戏环境下，机制便是谜题，而主题则是秘密。游戏玩法必须是可预测的，否则玩家将永远不可能精通它。但是主题却可能引起人们的回忆并且是开放性的。主题将能唤起人们对战争的恐惧；而机制则会提醒你装载枪支。

然后便存在情节

情节被夹在中间。它想要呈现出游戏的意义，但被游戏玩法抢先了。如果我们在观看一部电影，情节将作为支柱，但游戏却不像电影，所以情节也做不到这点。它可能会显得很笨拙并不受欢迎，与此同时较宽松的主题层面将成为游戏中最让人印象深刻的一部分。

这里存在一个简单的解决方法：如果我们能够不再将游戏当成“电影化”，我们便能可以不再将情节当成是故事的基础。比起电影，游戏更接近音乐—-就像David Kanaga在今年的GDC上所说的，“游戏=音乐”。在音乐中总是存在许多方法去传达一个与英雄的旅程无关的故事。游戏脚本很少会胜过John le Carré的小说或者ABC的丑闻。但它却可以像歌词或诗歌，甚至是你在酒吧中无意听到的争吵那般表现出来。

我将提供给你一个案例研究。当我致力于《忍者印记》的脚本时，我们拥有一个带有迂回曲折内容的直接的情节：忍者从主人那接到一个重要的任务；在行进途中他发现自己所知道的一切都是谎言；最后，他做出了一个决定并对自己所学到的内容做出评判。

despicable-me-2(from polygon)

我花了很多时间于细节中，从而确保这一情节足够合理：忍者的主人对他撒谎，但我们理解他为何这么做；忍者的困境最终引出了两个他需要做出的选择；等等。我们希望故事可以没有任何情节漏洞有序地运行着，而因为我的全部工作便是编写脚本，所以我拥有足够的时间去完善这些内容。

但是在真正的游戏中，最主要的角色时刻却是一个并未出现在脚本中的情景：在最后的关卡中，忍者穿过了抽象图像的幻觉部分，内容开始倒叙，同时还响起了Yamantaka所演奏的歌曲。当他被迫以缓慢的速度穿越这一部分时，声音和视觉效果将共同创造出一个情感的高潮。这是主题，而非情节，并且是不能事先编写好的。这是在游戏中所有的一切相互配合而在玩家身上创造出的一种情感反应。

这一场景并不能帮助他做出最后的选择；这将会让玩家更加困惑。这也是我为何如此喜欢它的原因。这会让人感到不安于惊讶。记得它所呈现出的时刻和方式总比记得你是如何以及为什么到达那里好得多。

（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）

Why should game stories make sense?

by Chris Dahlen

Video games have a plot problem.

That’s not a new observation, but a month ago I heard some new research on the subject at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Microsoft’s Deborah Hendersen works in user research, and she shared some interviews that she conducted with a series of gamers who were asked how well they could remember the stories of their favorite games.

These culture consumers could recall stories from other media without any trouble. But when it came to games, they got lost somewhere after the beginning. They missed big events, and forgot key plot points. When she asked one of them to name his favorite character in Skyrim, he replied “the scary lady.”

Hendersen had a series of proposals on how to improve comprehension and test narrative earlier in the process. But I was more interested in the premise: how well do people remember plots, and do plots in games even work? I mean, I don’t always remember the actual “this happened then that” of most games, either. Sitting here right now, I don’t recall: why Sephiroth killed Aerith, what’s so bad about the Templars, why Quote had to save the bunnies in Cave Story, any single reason for the stuff in Rayman Legends … basically, unless I’m playing a visual novel, I’ll probably forget almost everything.

Now, I’m not talking about all forms of storytelling. Gamers still need a sense of mission and an emotional attachment. Games can hook us with characters, as well as tone, atmosphere, a strong premise, and even a great loading screen. But of all the elements of storytelling that we can use, plot is one of the weakest. We sink time into it out of a sense of obligation, and it never pays off as well as we’d expect.

Let’s step back and think about how games work. As Civilization 4 project lead Soren Johnson argued in a talk at GDC 2010, games separate into mechanics and theme. The mechanics are the game play and the systems that make the whole thing run, while the theming is the surface content that engages you in the first place.

The mechanics are rational. They have to make sense, or the players will get confused, and angry. But the theming? That can be anything.

And that ties to a talk I saw at last year’s GDC, when Jake Elliott of Kentucky Route Zero, speaking in front of a backdrop of experimental videos and Tennessee Williams, talked about the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. He argued that a puzzle has a solution, while a mystery may never be solved. A puzzle must make sense, but a mystery may well not.

In the context of a game, the mechanics are the puzzle, while the theme is the mystery. The game play must be predictable, or the player will never master it. But the theme can be evocative and open-ended. A theme evokes the horrors of war; the mechanics remind you to reload your gun.

AND THEN THERE’S PLOT…

The plot is stuck in the middle. It wants to make sense of a game, but the game play is already doing that. If we were watching a movie, the plot would provide the backbone, but games don’t work like movies, and the plot can get in the way. It can feel awkward and unwelcome, while a looser thematic layer can be the most memorable part of the game.

There’s a simple solution: If we could stop thinking of games as “cinematic,” we could could stop relying on plot as the foundation of our stories. Games are much closer to music than to films – as David Kanaga argued at this year’s GDC, “games = music.” And in music, there are many ways to tell a story that have nothing to do with aping the Hero’s Journey. A game script can rarely pull off the well-architected machinery of a John le Carré novel, or ABC’s Scandal. But it can act like lyrics, or poetry, or an argument you overhear in a bar.

I’ll leave you with a case study. When I was working on the script for Mark of the Ninja, we had a straightforward plot that had a couple twists and turns: the Ninja gets a crucial mission from his Master; halfway through, he discovers that everything he thought he knew was a lie; and at the end, he gets to make a decision and pass judgment on what he’s learned.

I spent a lot of time ironing out the details to make sure the plot was sound: that Ninja’s master lies to him, but we understand why he did it; that Ninja’s predicament at the end leads believably to the two choices he’s given; and so forth. We wanted the story to work without any plot holes, hand-waving, or cheap excuses about “Oh, it’s only a ninja game,” and since my whole job was to write the script, I had time to hammer that stuff out.

But in the actual game, the most powerful character moment is a scene that wasn’t in the script: in the last level, Ninja walks through a hallucinatory section of abstract images and flashbacks, while a song by Yamantaka // Sonic Titan plays in the background. As he’s forced to move at a slow walk through the section, the sound and visuals work together to create an emotional highpoint. This was theme, not plot, and it can’t be written. It’s something that happens when everything in the game works together to create an emotional reaction in the player.

This scene doesn’t help him make his final choice; it should actually leave you a little more confused. And that’s why I love it so much. It’s unsettling and surprising, and it’s weird. If you remember that moment and the way it felt, that’s better than remembering the hows and whys that got you there.(source:polygon)