作者：Tadhg Kelly

上周我讨论了电子游戏如何受到“创意常量”的界定和不界定，我所指的常量是那些自发限制和赋予游戏设计师力量的不可回避因素。我在上篇文章讨论过迷人、不完善和紧迫感这三个常量，现在让我们继续吧：（请点击此处阅读本系列第三部分）

4.自然

Naturalism(from commonsenseatheism)

足球运动的规则很少。这项运动的目标就是将球踢进对方的网中并由此得分，其主要限制在于你不可以用手碰球（除了守门员的限制环境外），你可以用脚、头、胸等来踢球、撞球，必须时刻保持球在弹跳状态，并且还有一系列犯规行为。这也造就了一项美妙的游戏，世界上最受欢迎的运动。

许多游戏设计师认为足球或西洋棋、《俄罗斯方块》等其他简单的游戏不错，但仍然有改进的空间。举个例子，制作一款电子游戏版本的《Mega Super Soccer》，他们可能就会添加许多如超级踢和升级道具之类的元素，更改得分条件，设置多种类型的目标或者两个足球等。也许这些改变可以让它成为很酷的游戏，但也可能令游戏陷入一片狼藉的状态。屏幕上所发生的事情太多了，太疯狂了，对于喜欢足球的玩家来说，这整款游戏看起来可能都太怪了。

这种古怪可能令人兴奋可能很酷，但古怪也很令人费解和模糊不清，这一点就没有那么好了。模糊不清的游戏会流失玩家。所以这个常量听起来就像是提倡优美，但却没有那么简单。复杂的游戏可能模糊不清，但简单的游戏也不例外。除此之外，复杂的游戏（例如大型多人游戏）尽管繁琐但仍可能极为管用。真正的区别并不在于游戏有多优美，而在于它有多自然。

我对“自然”的定义就是你游戏的操作和规则在肢体和自然性上要与玩家相关，可以让他们理解其本质。必须能够让玩家理解自己应该做的以及将产生什么结果的基础，否则玩家可能会很困惑。

理解自然的设计师一般会从手指和拇指的起点位置入手，因为这些都是多数玩家用来玩游戏的根本附件。而正是这些起点后来决定了整款游戏的玩法。所以那些易于手指摁压，便于玩家以自然的方式使用的控制设计（游戏邦注：如扣动扳机射击）一般就不需要玩家进行太多的抽象学习。他们很容易理解，并且会直观地存储该技能，关注玩法而非界面。

所以自然意味着对可预测性的需求。如果我点中X以便击中某物，突然我的角色开始崩出对话，那就相当令人困惑了。如果游戏含有相同输入但却产生不同操作结果的元素，那就是一种不自然的设计。相反，如果游戏包括多种混合但却产生相同操作结果的机制，那也是相当糟糕的设计，因为它会变得极具抽象性而非直观性。更重要的是，如果复杂游戏的控制方式没有遵从一个自然的逻辑（例如在一个菜单中布置所有的建设选项），那么它就会变得很古怪。

你无法打破自然常量，但这并不意味着你无法摆弄它。有时候古怪也并非坏事。例如，玩《Frog Fractions》就好像一个古怪得惊人的空间，一般玩家在其中几乎找不到什么“正常”的东西。但它还是因自己的古怪特点而存活下来并成了一款很棒的游戏。对于更有文化素养的玩家来说（例如那些玩独立游戏的用户），古怪感正是自己玩游戏很大一部分原因，所以如果你瞄准的是这类用户，那就不妨大胆一试。

最后，不要将自然与保守混淆起来。没有一个常量与内容、基调或电子游戏文化有关，也不要说你的游戏就应该遵从特定的文化惯例。我所指的自然仅仅是从生物和认知及过程角度而言。如果你想制作那些超越常规的游戏，那就去行动吧（我们许多人都已经厌倦了常规的游戏）。只要理解如果你想让玩家获得非同寻常的体验，重要的是确保他们能够自然地理解游戏所发生的情况。

5.时间

time(from managedview)

所有游戏都是设计而成的循环。玩家做一些事情，就会有一些情况发生，而游戏的状态也会更新，以便玩家去做其他事情，如此反复不断。游戏中实际上有4种类型，由依赖性和存在性而定义的循环。我所指的“依赖性”是指玩家所采取的操作是否需要其他玩家的输入（如果是，就具有依赖性，不是就属于独立性），“存在性”是指游戏是否需要玩家同时存在于同一个空间（如果是，就具有存在性，不是就是不存在）。这两者都与时间有关。

我因为认为最棒的电子游戏发明时代就是“单人模式”而不时在游戏设计循环中遇到麻烦。多数先于电子游戏出现的游戏（桌游、体育运动等）就属于多人模式。而如今你却可以与电脑对抗自己玩游戏，这也正是这个行业存在的原因。如果没有单人模式，游戏行业规模可能就只有它现在的100分之一那么大。但这是为什么呢？答案就在于，单人模式循环不具有依赖性和存在性。玩家完全可以自己玩游戏。

在如果说单人模式是独立性和不存在性的合体，“多人模式”就是它的反面。多人模式需要玩家处于同一个场地，同时坐在牌桌前或者登录死亡竞技场所。无论是合作还是竞争，如果不是所有人都到齐了，多人模式所使用的依赖机制就不管用了。这令多人模式电子游戏更具时间敏感性。玩家可能彼此联系不上，处于不同的时区，或者网络连接不当，这些因素对多人模式的影响远超于其他任何类型的游戏，这也可能成为极为严峻的设计局限性。有歧出的是，多人模式问题的一个副作用就在于，多人模式游戏却是最吸此“硬核”玩家群体的一种类型。

但这里还有其他两种循环。有一种是需要依赖性而非存在性的循环。这就是“连续模式”，回合制游戏的这种循环可以让你长期与世界各地的竞争对手过招，但你可以根据自己的需要来接招。旧式的连续玩法就是邮件游戏的根源，在现代它就以电子邮件形式进行了一点更新。但是在过去几年中，尤其是智能手机和平板电脑问世以来，连续模式开始变得更易可用性。例如《Words With Friends》就是一款颇受欢迎的连续玩法游戏，因为人人都有手机了。连续模式还是社交游戏的一个普遍功能。所有的朋友都在请求你帮他们解琐下一个关卡。

另一种就是要求存在性但不具依赖性的循环，姑且称为“平行模式”。大型多人游戏多数是平行的，所有玩家都处于同一个服务器并体验一个共同的游戏状态。他们可能通过社交方式或游戏玩法彼此互动。他们可能合作攻下一个地下城，或者推翻一个敌对集团（这一点上更趋近于多人模式）。游戏要求玩家出现在同一个地点以便填充游戏世界，并让人人都获得乐趣，但玩家可以根据自己的需要玩游戏。《Journey》这类游戏，《Foursquare》或《Geocaching》等游戏，以及多数跨媒体游戏，游戏化现象亦是如此，它们使用玩家的比较来驱动玩法。

时间通常是游戏设计的一个自然障碍。多人模式游戏更适合拥有大量闲暇时间（如青少年和学生）的玩家，但面向市郊的主妇创造多人模式游戏可能就不是一个好主意了，因为她们没有时间体验这类游戏。另一方面，时间也可以是一种极为强大的机制。还记得那些关于你的Facebook好友在凌晨4点起来收割《FarmVille》庄稼的新闻报道吗？这就是利用长期循环理念的游戏例子，它们创造了一种用途可好可坏的“约定”机制。（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）

The Seven Constants Of Game Design, Part Two

by Tadhg Kelly

Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly writes a regular column about all things video game for TechCrunch. He is a games industry consultant, freelance designer and the creator of leading design blog What Games Are. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Last week I discussed how video games are both unbounded and bounded by “creative constants”, by which I mean inescapable factors that simultaneously limit and empower the game designer. I discussed the first three – Fascination, Imperfection and Urgency – and promised more to follow. So let’s continue:

4. Naturalism

The rules of soccer are few. The goal of the game is to trade a ball token for points by placing it in an opponent’s net, with the primary restriction being that you can’t handle the ball. You can kick, head, chest and so on (except for the limited circumstance of the goalkeeper), must keep the ball in-bounds and in-time, and there are a variety of fouls. The result is a marvelous game, the most popular sport in the world.

Many game designers look at soccer or other simple games like Chess or Tetris and think them neat but with room for improvement. To make a video game of Mega-Super-Soccer (for example) they might add many elements like super-kicks and powerups, bringing more elements onto the pitch (mines, laser beams), changing the scoring conditions away from simple trading maybe to something more exotic like having multiple kinds of goal, or two balls. Maybe the changes would make Mega-Super-Soccer a very cool game, but it would run the risk of devolving into a big mess. There could easily be too much happening on screen, too much craziness, and for the player who likes soccer the overall game might just be too weird.

Weird can be exciting and cool, but weird can also be incomprehensible and opaque. That’s not so good. Games that become opaque lose the player. So this constant sounds like it’s advocating for elegance, but it’s not that easy. Complex games can be opaque, but so can simple games. In addition many complex games (such as massive multiplayer games) can work really well even though they are heavy. The real difference is less about how elegant a game is and more about how natural it is.

By “natural” I mean that the actions and and rules of your game need to be physically and naturally relate-able to the player, something that they can intrinsically understand. They have to be able to understand the basics of what they’re supposed to do and what to expect for results, otherwise they simply feel lost.

Designers who understand naturalism tend to work from the starting position of fingers and thumbs because those are the root appendages that most players use to play. Ultimately it is from that starting point that the entire of the game is subsequently defined. So the control designs that lean into easy presses of fingers that players naturally use in circumstances that feel right (example: pull a trigger to shoot) tend to require less abstract learning from them. They just get it and can subsequently store that skill and focus on play rather than interface.

So naturalism implies a need for predictability. If I hit X intending to hit something and suddenly my character starts spouting dialogue instead, that gets pretty confusing. If a game includes different actions resulting from the same input that’s unnatural design. Conversely if a game includes multiple compound inputs for basic actions that’s generally pretty bad too because it then becomes gesturally abstract rather than intuitive. Furthermore if a complex game’s controls don’t seem to follow a natural logic (such as placing all building options within one menu) then it becomes weird.

You can’t break the naturalism constant but that doesn’t mean you can’t play with it. Sometimes it’s good to be weird. To play the web game Frog Fractions, for example, is to be lost in a wondrously weird space where nothing makes anything like what the regular player might consider “sense”. But it runs with its weirdness and is amazing as a result. For many more cultured players (folks who play indie games, for example) the sensation of the weird is a large part of why they like to play games at all, so if that’s your crowd by all means play into them.

Lastly, please don’t confuse naturalism with conservatism. None of the constants are in any way about the content, tone or culture of video games, nor trying to say that your game should conform to certain cultural norms. I mean naturalism solely in terms of biology and cognition and process. If you want to make games that transgress norms, do so (please do, many of us are bored with white-dude video games). Just understand that if you want to bring players along for the ride, it’s important to ensure they can naturally understand what’s going on.

5. Time

All games are designed in loops. The player does something, something happens and the state of the game updates such that she can do something else, and around and around it goes. There are essentially four kinds of loop, defined by dependence and presence. By “dependence” I mean whether the actions of the player require input from other players or not (Dependent: yes. Independent: no.), and by “presence” I mean whether the game requires players to simultaneously be in the same space (Present: yes. Absent: no.). Both are related to time.

I occasionally get into trouble in game design circles for saying that the greatest invention of the video game era was – and continues to be – “single-play”. Most games (board games, sports, etc.) prior to video games were multiplayer. Nowadays you can play all by yourself against the computer, and that fact is why the industry basically exists. Without single-play the games industry would be about 1/100th of its modern size. But why? The answer is that single player loops (and by extrapolation, the games based on them) are independent and absent. Other, more plainly, the player can play on her own time.

If single-play is the combination of independence and absence, “multi-play” is the opposite. Multi-play needs players to all be on the same pitch, in the same room, seated at the poker table or logged onto deathmatch arena. Whether co-operative or competitive, multi-play doesn’t work well unless all are present so that the dependent mechanics it uses (pass a ball, shoot a dude) work. This makes multiplayer video games most sensitive to the vagaries of time. Players disconnecting, players in different time zones, players with laggy network connections and more all affect multi-play more severely than any other kind of game, and these can be very heavy design constraints. And, interestingly, a side effect of multi-play’s problems is that multiplayer games tend to be the ones most likely to attract “hardcore” cultures.

However there are two other types of loop. There’s the loop that requires dependence but not presence. This is “serial-play”, the loop of the turn-based game that you can play for long periods of time against opponents all around the world, but take your turn as you like. In an older form serial-play was the root of the play-by-mail game and in modern times it updated a little with email. However in the last few years, especially since smartphones and cellular-enabled tablets have emerged, serial-play has become much more usable. Words With Friends, for example, is an enjoyable serial game that works because everyone’s got a mobile phone. Serial-play was also a common feature of social games. All those friend requests asking for you to act to unlock your friend’s next level? Serial loops each and every one.

Then the other kind is the loop that requires presence but not dependence, otherwise known as “parallel-play”. Massive multiplayer games are mostly parallel, for example. All players are on the same server(s) and experiencing a shared game state. They may interact with one another, whether socially or through gameplay. They may co-operate to try and take down a dungeon or overthrow a rival corporation (at this point probably verging more into multi-play). The game needs them to be there in order to fill out the world and make it fun for everyone, but players can just carry along as they like. The same is true of games like Journey, of pervasive games like Foursquare or Geocaching and of most transmedia games and gamification that uses player comparison to drive play.

Time is often a natural barrier to game design. Multiplayer games tend to favor players with lots of spare time like teenagers and students, for example, but creating a multi-play based game for suburban moms is would probably be a non-starter because they wouldn’t have the time to get into it. On the other hand time can be a very powerful mechanic. Remember all those stories your Facebook friends used to tell about waking up at 4am to harvest their FarmVille corn? That’s an example of a game that leaned into the idea of the long-time loop, creating an “appointment” mechanic that could be used for good or evil purposes.（source：techcrunch）