作者：Oscar Clark

在我最近于UKIE的Masterclass中，有个参加者，即Rare的游戏设计师Arran Topalian问我“怎样才能成为一名优秀的设计师？”。我便因此开始思考到底怎样才算得上是一名游戏设计师，暂且不加上优秀两个字。

Oscar Clark(from develop-online)

至少对于我来说，理想的游戏设计师是带有创造性想法的人以及那些能够实现系统的逻辑与平衡并找出乐趣的人的组合。然而从根本上来看，这也是关于设计师作为能够确保开发妥协不会破坏游戏的沟通者的能力。

尽管如此，当我与一组设计师共事时（不管是直接还是作为一种咨询），他们的职责都是不同的。所以对于我来说，设计师拥有许多不同的定义。

我们可以先着眼于将创造传统RPG和桌面游戏作为业余爱好的设计师。创造无缺陷的系统或叙述框架（能为玩家创造一种势头）间存在一种张力。最后还是由我和搭档去创造游戏板和组件并向玩家做出解释。当然了，我必须找到乐趣并考虑机制的种种细节，但我可以基于自由的体验控制（游戏邦注：与任何电子游戏设计中的专业体验完全不同）做到这点。

对于许多游戏设计师来说，这个角色并不是关于他们自己的想法的实施，而是在独立的游戏系统中创造最棒的体验，然后将其与其他团队成员进行交流。

通常情况下都是由创意总监或客户决定游戏理念。这意味着对于开发者来说，该添加什么到游戏体验中具有很大的限制。比起作为游戏世界真正的创造者，我们中的许多人将花更多时间去平衡电子表格中的数字，修改游戏内部的变量或编写子系统该如何运行的用户案例。

游戏中的设计师的理念真的非常复杂。为了帮助我们更好地理解，我尝试着将其按照不同的特征进行划分。

系统设计师与程序员仅有一步之差，他们通常需要检查游戏机制的结构并确保游戏系统中的逻辑流与所有变量都保持一致。

他们需要具有非常棒的逻辑技能并且能像QA测试者那样进行分析。他们总是擅于使用一些有意义的突变性质创造游戏，同时他们还会为了保护系统的纯度而消除整体的体验。

有经验的设计师有任务去保护美学框架并确保控制系统和摄像机系统以及游戏的感观值（基于艺术气息，声音，叙述等等）能够达到平衡。规则和机制的影响通常都是次要的，它们总是依赖于渐进的游戏设计，即在这里系统将决定游戏中的特定场景，并且通常为了通过差异而进行手动设置—-因为这能够确保故事的顺畅发展。这类型设计师能够传递情感价值，甚至是电影般的体验，而这一切都是以玩家的自主感为代价。

用户体验设计师必须将注意力从游戏本身拿开，并更认真地思考玩家的体验。随着免费游戏和基于服务的游戏的不断发展，专注于“轻松的互动”便成为其角色的重要部分。这些设计师需要越来越关注玩家的生命周期，第一次用户体验以及盈利方式等等。

通常情况下，这类型设计师总是被当成专注于游戏玩法的设计师的附属角色，但我认为UI设计师与UX设计师之间的差别在于他们对于玩家端对端旅程的不同看法。这不只是传递菜单系统，更多的是通过发现，学习，用户粘性等等方面去考虑整体的玩家生命周期。整体的玩家体验不仅与英雄体验或游戏流一样重要，而且还是完全不同的内容。

视觉设计师是我想分析的最后一种设计师类型，但你可不要因为这个名字而有所误解。这些人经常被当成设计行家，但这却是不准确的。我认为这类型设计师“拥有”游戏的整体感，并且不只能够基于系统进行思考，同时还能够将其当成一个流程，或者一次旅程。这些人需要考虑市场条件，用户需求以及团队在一个项目中所具有的能力。然而为了拥有这种感觉，他们就需要更高的游戏感，这便意味着他们不能过多地专注于设计的个体元素。视觉设计师并非比我所提到的其他设计师优秀，但是他们却能够更有效地做出策略决策，因为他们能够从整体上去看待一个项目。

基于这种方式去看待这些不同的设计角色并不能帮助我们回答如何才能成为一名优秀的设计师这一问题，因为拥有其中一种角色所需要的技能和心态并不意味着你便能够成为其他类型的优秀设计师—-这反而预示着你不是一名优秀的设计师。每种设计师类型都需要匹配不同的需求组合。优秀的设计师是指项目所需要的类型，而不是这一的问题真正的答案。

当我在与《What Games Are》的作者Tadhg Kellu进行交谈时，他提到了自己即将发行的新书《Raw Game Design》以及他所考虑到的一个想法：“当我更深入地思考时，我更加发现比起创造内容，游戏设计师的角色更像是在减少不必要的内容。我就像是一个团队中的垃圾桶，即在各种理念变得更加昂贵前清除各种垃圾，并尝试着减少原型中的可能性空间，以确保它们是容易管理的。有时候我还需要扮演坏人的角色，但根据我的经验，这是一名设计师需要做的事。这是他们对于团队的价值体现。”

关于游戏设计师是作为特定项目的理念价值评审员而不是创造者的理念引起了许多人的关注。想出一个理念并不是什么问题，而设计师的真正技能应该是在我们尝试着创造的体验，产品或服务中评价这一理念。这是关于我们如何识别出最佳结果并为了解决问题而传达最适当的作品或服务；这同样也符合优秀设计的要求。

然而我认为这同样也突出了另外一个重要技能。即交流技能。了解需要传递的内容还不够。设计师同时还需要有效地与其他团队成员进行交流，确保他们能够真正接受游戏理念，并创建对彼此间的信任。优秀的设计师总是能够幻想各种可能性。同时，优秀的设计师还能够推动团队去落实行动。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转功，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

What makes a good game designer?What makes a good game designer?

By Oscar Clark

After my recent Masterclass at UKIE one of the attendees, Arran Topalian, a game designer at Rare, asked me ‘What makes a good designer?’. It’s something that got me thinking more generally about what it means to be a game designer, let alone a good one.

The ideal of a game designer, at least for me, is a messy combination of skills from being the person with the creative vision, to someone who has to work out the logic and balance in the systems and find the fun. However, underlying this is always the function of a designer as a communicator who has to be able to make ensure that development compromises don’t kill the game.

Despite that, when I’ve worked with teams of designers either directly or as a consultant, their remit never seems to be quite the same. There seems to me to be almost as many definitions of designer as there are games.

For me, I first cut my design teeth as an amateur building traditional RPG and tabletop games. There was a tension between either building (rarely) flawless systems or narrative frameworks which created a momentum for the players. In the end it was just me and my partners in crime who had to do the physical work of making the board and pieces and explaining it to our players. Sure, I had to find the fun and consider the minutia of mechanics, but I could do this with a freedom and control of the experience that is at a complete contrast to any professional experience of video game design.

For many game designers the reality of the role is less about the creative realisation of your own ideas, but more about making the best experience within isolated game systems and then communicating that to the rest of development team.

The game concept is already defined by the creative director, or more likely, the client. This means that there are already huge constraints on what you can add to the experience. Instead of being free to be a true creator of game worlds, many of us will spend our time balancing numbers in spreadsheets, tinkering with in-game variables or writing use-cases about how sub-systems should work.

The idea of a designer in games is also complicated as the role itself covers a number of sins. To help us understand this lets attempt to categorise the different specialisations.

Please forgive me a few liberties in my definitions and remember that they are only intended to support an objective discussion.

For many game designers the reality of the role is less about the creative realisation of your own ideas, but more about making the best experience within isolated game systems

Oscar Clark

System Designers are often one-step away from coders in the way that they have to scrutinise the skeleton of the game mechanics and make sure that the logical flow and all of the variables in the game’s system are consistent and don’t break.

They need to have superb logic skills as well as the ability to think like an evil QA tester bent on breaking their own toys with edge case strategies. They often excel at creating games with meaningful emergent properties, but at the same time can kill the overall experience as they seek to protect the purity of the systems.

Experiential Designers have the task to protect the aesthetic framework and ensure that there is a balance between the control and camera systems and the sensory values of the game in terms of arty, sound, narrative, etcetera. The effect of rules and mechanics are often secondary and they often rely on progressive gameplay design where the systems are intended to resolve only specific scenes in a game and are (too often?) hand-crafted each time to get past the discrepancies created because of the emphasis to ensure that the story can flow. These are the guys who can deliver emotional values, even cinematic experiences, but at the expense of the players sense of autonomy.

User Experience Designers have to tear their focus away from the game itself and instead think about the experience of the player. Following the rise of free-to-play and service-based games their focus on the ’ease of interaction’ is only one part of the role. Increasingly, these designers are being called on to think about the player lifecycle, the first time user experience and even the route to monetisation.

Too often these guys are seen as subordinate to the more gameplay-focused designers but I think the difference between a UI designer and a UX designer is that they consider the end-to-end journey of the player. This is more than just delivering pretty menu systems and more about considering the whole player lifecycle from discovery to learning, engaging and eventually churning. The holistic player experience is as important and different to the experience of the hero or flow of the gameplay.

The more I think on it he more I see the role of the game designer as one of waste reduction rather than creation.

Tadhg Kelly

Vision Designers are the last type I want to explore, but don’t let that name fool you. These guys are often considered the high-priests or rock stars of design, usually unfairly. What I’m referring to here is the kind of designer who ‘owns’ the overall vision of the game and is able to think of that not just in terms of systems or snapshot moments of play; but as a flow – a journey. These guys have to consider the market conditions, the audience needs and the ability of the team to deliver on the project. However, to have this vision it’s essential to have a higher (helicopter) view of the game which inevitably means less focus on the individual elements of the design. Vision designers are not better than the other types I’ve described, but they are often better positioned to make strategic decisions because they see the project as a whole living entity.

Thinking about these different design roles in this way shows the problem with answering what makes a good designer, because being good at the skills and mindset needed for one of these roles, doesn’t necessarily make you a good designer in the others – indeed it’s probably a sign that you aren’t. Each designer type fits a different set of needs. A good designer is the kind that the project needs, but that doesn’t really answer the question.

When I spoke with Tadhg Kelly, author of ‘What Games Are’ on the subject of this article recently, he mentioned his upcoming book “Raw Game Design” and an idea he’s been kicking around: “The more I think on it”, he said, “The more I see the role of the game designer as one of waste reduction rather than creation. I’m like the bin man of the team, the guy who kicks out a lot of junk ideas before they become expensive, who deliberately tries to reduce the possibility space of prototyping down to something manageable. Sometimes that makes me the bad guy I suppose, but in my experience a designer has to be able to do that. That’s their value to the team. That’s what they’re paid for.”

That idea of the game designer as an assessor of the value of the idea for the specific project, rather than their role as a creator, is highly compelling. Coming up with ideas is rarely the problem and the real skill of a designer is to assess an idea in the context of the experience, product or service we are trying to create. How can we realise the best outcome and deliver the right product or service for the problem; which also fits with the classic mantra of good design – form follows function.

However, I think that also highlights another absolutely vital skill. The ability to communicate. It’s not enough to know the right things to deliver. We also have to communicate that effectively to the rest of the team and ensure that they are truly bought into the idea; building trust and taking them with us. Good designers are able to imagine the possible. Great ones are able to empower their team to deliver on it.(source:develop-online)