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开发者谈如何营造恐怖游戏中的骇人感

发布时间:2014-12-19 10:53:52 Tags:,,,,

作者:Koen Deetman

在这个恐怖游戏项目的一开始,我仍然听到自己的内心大声地说着:“让我们创造一款史上最吓人的恐怖游戏。”而现在,距离那时候已经过了一年半时间,我们也仍处于游戏的开发阶段,我想在此分享我们在经历了一些挑战后仍然致力于设计这款名为《Horrinth》的恐怖游戏的经历。

想要打败《神秘人》的野心

Slender Man(from gametbarren)

Slender Man(from gametbarren)

我记得那是2013年的5月或6月,我和兄弟Paul想到了创造一款恐怖游戏的理念。我们都很喜欢基于各种形式的恐怖类型(如书籍,电影,游戏,主题公园等等)。我和Paul认为我们可以成为一个很棒的组合,因为我那时候主修游戏设计而他主修音频引擎。如果我们能够做到这点,也算梦想成真了。

之所以会想出《Horrinth》的理念是因为我和Paul因为《神秘人》的大受欢迎而受挫。对于这款游戏所获得的成绩我们都很惊讶。《神秘人》没有出色的图像,音效,优化以及有趣的游戏社区。它让人觉得就是一个匆匆赶制出的游戏原型。然而它却因为不断触发紧张感以及被神秘人抓到的可能性而让玩家感到非常害怕。这是恐怖游戏类型的一种有趣的发展。

我和Paul都坚信我们能够创造出更棒的游戏。我们认为在一个“迷宫”中创造一款恐怖游戏会很有趣。在我们对现有发生于迷宫中的游戏进行研究之后,我们发现了一些糟糕的尝试,但我们仍坚定着自己的理念。

我和Paul多次讨论了创造这款游戏的方式。Paul告诉我他不可能创造一款没有故事的游戏。因为Paul并非游戏设计师,而是一名音频工程师。我告诉他独立游戏大多都没有有趣的游戏玩法循环或直观的游戏机制。

我们喜欢关于驱邪,占有和超自然活动等恐怖主题。我们决定游戏将包含所有的这些元素。

我们从一开始便禁锢了自己的创造性

在2013年9月,我们从餐桌上开始了这个恐怖项目的创作。我们与一位程序员,一个概念概念艺术实习生以及Paul在音乐和声音专业的朋友组成了一支团队。

我们都坚信这款游戏会与当前的一些游戏有所差别。我们立志创造迄今为止最吓人的游戏,然而那时候我们却不知道该如何选择。

我们不断为正确的概念努力着。我们致力于一些特定的理念,丢弃了一些设计并想出了新的设计。我们总是觉得每个概念都缺少相容性,而游戏中存在这些方面都是有理由的,至少这是我们所瞄准的目标。

10月份,我们最终走上了正确的道路并决定开始寻求项目的投资。

概念

我们拥有一个很棒的机制,因为当你沉浸于游戏中时,你将保持“呼吸”待在迷宫里。你是否在呼吸模式上遭遇了失败?映射在上面的迷宫将逐渐朝你落下。(这便呈现出一种恒定的压力。)我们同样也想在游戏中包含Oculus Rift以及个人信息层面,这将能够以一种不同的形式呈现给玩家恐怖感。

虽然我们自己不敢相信,但是基金资助机构真的决定资助我们的原型创造。他们认为这个理念能够扩展恐怖类型的艺术表现并将成为一个来自荷兰且具有创造性的游戏设计。

因为得到了赞助,我们便能够扩展团队并招来实习生与我们共同致力于该项目。我们租下了一间小小的办公室并开始真正的游戏制作。

我们使用一个类scrum框架去实现该项目的敏捷方法,这意味着我们在每一次冲刺后将获得一个产品。这是一种很有效的方法,因为它让人们能够玩我们最初的原型并测试这款游戏是否能够带给他们乐趣与恐怖。

呼吸机制

很明显这一机制非常烦人。除了我们程序生成的机制外,迷宫也未能提供任何帮助。玩家迷失了方向并不断粉碎钥匙去保持呼吸模式的运行,从而迷失在寻找出口的过程中。

在经过一些迭代后,我们想到自己遗漏了许多一致性和故事内容。特别是从我们的主要概念获得资助并且我们拥有一个官方的截止期限以来。从那时候起我们便一直都致力于我们的机制和迷宫环境。

基于程序的迷宫是糟糕的,因为:

–玩家将一直迷失方向

–我们几乎不可能注意到迷宫中的随机性

–你不能控制你的关卡设计

–你不能创造一个有趣的环境

–它拥有一个“无趣的”环境

呼吸机制是糟糕的,因为:

–玩家不断忙于呼吸

–粉碎呼吸按键将导致玩家筋疲力尽

–困惑和呼吸并不能有效组合在一起

–非常烦人的呼吸声会模糊剩下的音频

–死亡(因为不能呼吸)惩罚让人觉得非常不公平

名为“研究”的陷阱

在经过一至两个月的开发后,我们其中一名实习生(研究生)开始进行恐怖类型的研究项目。我们发现了关于恐怖游戏的一些有趣的事实,即听起来可能很直接,但却不是非常明显。

优秀的恐怖游戏并不会依赖于特定的游戏循环或机制。恐怖游戏是依赖于环境,悬念和恐怖的氛围。人们之所以选择玩恐怖游戏是因为他们喜欢紧张感和肾上腺素急冲的感觉。这种让人紧张的激动是恐怖游戏中最重要的元素。因此这是完全区别于FPS游戏。FPS游戏总是会重复使用一个简单的游戏循环(游戏邦注:被杀,重新加载,再次被杀,并重生)。

经过研究,我们知道自己拥有糟糕的恐怖游戏设计方法。创造恐怖游戏需要做的第一件事便是避开玩家的智慧而吓到他们。但是《Horrinth》却未能做到这点,因为我们太过专注于呼吸机制和程序生成。

我们的研究非常棒,尽管它将我们引向了错误的道路上。大多数恐怖游戏都是商品,是由面向更大的目标群体的大型团队所创造。

我们的截止期限推迟到了2014年9月的第1天,我们希望在那时候能够呈现出完整的游戏原型而不是半成品的游戏中一个完整的功能。我们被恐怖游戏的商业方法蒙住了双眼而忘记了我们的独立方法。从逻辑上来看,所有的元素都应该是独立的,就像我们的呼吸机制和程序生成逐渐变成了我们的商业游戏设计中的问题所在。此外,我们也因为给“游戏玩法预告片”设定了截止期限而折磨着自己。接下来我们有可能会匆匆忙忙地结束游戏创造。因为项目规模的壮大,我们没有足够的时间进行迭代与测试。

9月1日的时候,我们创造了一个带有我们一直致力于创造的环境,游戏玩法和故事的游戏原型。我们已经注意到设计中存在的许多问题,并且如果不揭示这些问题我们便很难去设计游戏玩法的预告片。10月27日,我们需要向赞助公司呈现游戏原型,让他们判断自己的投入是否值得。

我们收到了来自赞助公司积极且有价值的反馈,更确切的说应该是着实挨了一巴掌。我们将朝着怎样的方向前进?现在的我们是否正在制作一款彻底的商业游戏?或者我们仍然在创造出色的恐怖游戏?显然我们必须为《Horrinth》做出一个明确的选择。

所以我们该做出怎样的选择?

很明显,我们并不能创造出一款符合AAA级标准的商业游戏。这需要花费我们好几年的时间,并且对于一家初创游戏工作室来说这具有太大的风险。我已经同意了“出色的恐怖游戏”这一方法(即我在一开始所采取的方法),然而我还想讨论一下来自商业游戏的恐怖游戏元素。它们是否适合这样的项目?或者我们是否应该想出不同的解决方法?

固定的模型

大多数商业恐怖游戏都是基于一些固定的模型。如早旧的木屋,森林,怪兽,闪光灯,突如其来的恐慌。从最近的调查中我们发现许多人认为这些固定的模型还不错,或者有人根本不在意它们。通常情况下商业游戏都会使用这些模型,而独立项目则较少使用它们。

商业恐怖游戏能够吸引许多人的注意,而出色的独立恐怖游戏却很难触及它们的目标用户。我很想结合这两种类型,即开发一款执行特定商业模型的出色的恐怖游戏,但有可能这两种类型并不能兼容?

防御或战斗?

像《失忆症:黑暗后裔》等游戏所带来的恐怖类型的巨大趋势便是你不能自我防御,而是要为了活下来不断逃跑。这么做能让玩家害怕被抓或被杀,因此逃跑便是最有效且最安全的做法,但它却会让玩家始终保持警惕,从而不断营造出压力感。

一些恐怖游戏还包含了枪(但是限制了弹药的使用)。在某些时刻我们仍会受到惊吓,但我们也坚信这些枪支能够帮助我们更轻松地自卫。实际上,未拥有足够的弹药才是我们应该担心的问题。我们应该收集更多弹药,这也是帮助我们获得安全的方法。

这两种类型的游戏玩法都会呈献给恐怖游戏中的玩家有趣的效果。研究表明,许多人在玩没有任何防御机制的游戏中会更加害怕。人们也会觉得带有枪或防御机制的游戏更加有趣。

结论

显然我们需要重新设计游戏以缩小范围。我们的目标是创造一个让人害怕的恐怖体验。我们希望玩家觉得自己的投入是值得的。我们所面临的挑战是无需花费好几年时间便创造出必要的资产。我认为在程序元素方面我们需要发挥更多创造性,确保我们的机制足够有趣且具有意义,同时结合一下你在AAA级游戏体验中会看到的视觉效果和动画。关于呈现,我们将使用商业方法,而关于游戏玩法,我们将专注于更有效的独立解决方法,即使用精心设计的游戏机制和程序生成。

为了该项目,我们使用了“类scrum(一种项目管理方式)”方法,这意味着制作人将列出产品待办事项,作出计划,并面向团队分配任务。我们每周都会进行站立式会议,这需要花费许多时间。这会让人觉得团队是对制作人负责。执行这样的scrum过程会引起大量的延迟,矛盾以及混乱等等,即会给开发团队造成巨大的压力。

而现在我们拥有官方Scrum master(游戏邦注:负责一个团队按照scrum方式运行)认证,并进一步理解了scrum的框架。比起每周的站立式会议我们更加建议每天的站立式会议。每天的站立式会议能够在一些小问题变成大问题前将其揭露出来。现在团队需要重视的是生成“速度”。站立式会议是针对于团队而言,并不需要制作人或scrum master的参与,他们只需要在最后的冲刺阶段出席便可。

我们仍然坚信这款游戏会是一款与众不同的游戏,我们必须消灭一些早旧的框架并为游戏添加一些清晰的目标,最重要的是,我们需要专注于创造一款非常可怕的游戏。如果游戏能把我们自己吓到,这便是最佳结果。

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

Horror Game Design Can Be Scary

by Koen Deetman

I can still hear myself speak loudly “Let’s make the most deeply terrifying horror game of all time” at the start of this horror game project. Now 1,5 year later, we’ve been on a hell of ride, and I would like to share some the struggles we faced and still face on designing this horror game experience called Horrinth until now.

The Ambition To Beat Slender Man

I remember it was May or June 2013 me and my brother (Paul) had the idea to create a horror game. We both both love the horror genre in many forms (for example: Books, Movies, Games, Theme Parks). Me and Paul thought we could be a great combination since I was recently majored in game design and Paul majored in audio engineering. It would be a dream come true if we could pull this off.

The idea for “Horrinth” started when me and Paul were frustrated about the popularity of Slender Man. We were astonished by the fact this game was received so well. Slender lacked great graphics, sound, polish and interesting game design. It felt like a rushed prototype. However it did scare people by following a myth triggering a constant pressure and the possibility being caught by the Slender Man. An interesting development within the horror game genre.

Paul and me were convinced we could create something better. We thought it was fun to create a horror game within a “Labyrinth”. After we’ve done some research on existing games taking place in a Labyrinth, we found some poor attempts and we moved on with our idea.

Paul and me had a lot of discussions about the way want to create this game. Paul told me it was impossible for him to create a game without story. Since Paul is not a game designer but an audio engineer, I told him indie games mainly exist out of a fun gameplay loop or intuitive game mechanic that come together as a fun ‘toy’ (something fun to do repeatedly).

We love horror themes about exorcism, possession and paranormal activities. We decided the game should house these elements, and chose to include them all.

We’ve Imprisoned Our Creativity From Start

In September 2013 we started our horror project literally from our kitchen table. We formed a team with a programmer, a concept art intern, and Paul’s companion in music & sound.

We all were completely convinced the game should be something different compared to current titles. Our ambition was to create the scariest game to date, however we had no idea what we’ve signed up for at the time.

It was a constant struggle for the right concept. We worked on certain ideas, ditched certain designs and came up with new ones. Every concept felt like it missed consistency, all these aspects in the game were there for a reason, at least that is what we aimed for.

In October we finally had the feeling we were on the right track and decided to ask for contribution for the project.

The Concept

We had a great mechanic, because when you became possessed in the game, you had to keep ‘breathing’ to stay alive in the labyrinth. Did you fail your breathing pattern? a mirrored labyrinth above would drop down on you bit by bit. (Hereby a constant pressure was present). We also wanted to include Oculus Rift and experiment with a layer of personal information included in the game, that could come off as scary in a different manner.

In our own disbelieve the funding agency decided to contribute and fund our prototype. They thought the idea could broaden the artistic approach on the horror genre and could turn out to be an example of creative dutch game design.

Since we had the funds, we could grow our team and started to accept interns to work on this project with us. We rented a small office and started actual production.

We used a scrumlike framework to achieve an agile approach to this project, which means we had a product after each sprint. That was a great way to have people play our first prototypes and playtest if this game was proving itself to be fun and scary.

The Breathing Mechanic

It was immediately clear the mechanic was extremely annoying. Besides the mechanic our procedural generated Labyrinth didn’t help either. People were lost and constantly smashing keys to keep their breathing pattern right, lost in search of the exit.

After some iterations we had the idea we were missing a lot of consistency and story. Especially since our main concept was now funded and we had an official deadline. From that point on we had a major struggle working around our mechanic and labyrinth environment.

A procedural labyrinth was bad because:

- The player was lost all the time
- Noticing randomness in a labyrinth is almost zero
- You can’t control your level design
- You couldn’t create an interesting environment
- It had a ‘dull’ ambiance.

The breathing mechanic was bad because:

- Players were constantly busy with their breathing
- Smashing the breath button caused muscle exhaustion
- Puzzling and breathing do not blend greatly together
- Highly annoying breathing sound blurring out the rest of the audio
- Punishment by death (for not breathing) felt extremely unfair.

The Illusive Trap Called ‘Research’

After one to two month’s of development one of our graduate interns started a research project on the horror genre. We discovered a few interesting facts about horror that sound pretty straight forward but aren’t obvious enough.

Great horror games do not lean on a specific game loop or mechanic. Horror games rely on environment, suspense and creepy ambiance. People play horror games because they like the tension and adrenaline rushes. These tensive thrills are most important within a horror game. Therefore completely different in comparison to for example FPS games. FPS games use a simple game loop repeated over and over again (kill, reload, be killed and respawn).

Research showed we had a bad approach to horror game design. The first thing horror games need to do is scaring people out of their wits. Something Horrinth did not do, because we focused so much on this breathing mechanic and procedural generation.

Our research was great, although it led us to the wrong path. Most of these horror games were commercial products, produced and developed by larger teams for a large target audience.

Our deadline was set back to the first of september 2014, and by then we wanted to showcase a fully developed prototype instead of a fully developed feature in a half-baked game. We were blindfolded by a commercial approach on horror games and forgot our indie approach. Logically all elements that were indie-like such as our breathing mechanic and procedural generation slowly started to be a problem in our commercial game design. As an extra we plagued ourselves by setting a deadline for our ‘Gameplay Trailer’. What happened next was a rush to the end. Because the project size increased we didn’t have time to do enough iterations and playtests.

September 1st resulted in a prototype with just a fraction of the ambiance, gameplay and story we had been working on. We already noticed a lot of problems with the design and had a hard time designing a gameplay trailer without revealing too much of these problems. October 27th was the time to present our prototype at the funding agency for them to see what their money is worth.

We received great and valuable feedback from the agency, and to be fair got slapped in the face. What is the road we were driving on? Are we now making a full commercial game? or are we still going for that remarkable horror game? It was clear we had to make a definite choice what is best for Horrinth.

So, What Choice To Make?

It is clear that we are not able to make a full commercial game according to AAA standards. That will cost us years to make perfect and that is a bit risky for a start-up game studio. I have already agreed on the ‘remarkable’ approach (what we’ve started with in the first place) however I do like to discuss a few horror game elements coming from commercial titles. Would they fit in a project like this? or do we have to invent different solutions?

Stereotypes

Most commercial horror games rest on a few stereotypes. Think about old wooden houses, forests, monsters, flashlight, and jump scares. From recent polls we found that many people think stereotypes like these, are great or do not mind they are present. Most of these stereotypes are used by commercially deploy-able games, and less by (the more serious and small) indie game projects.

Commercial horror games do reach a lot of people, where remarkable indie horror games do not completely reach their desired audience. I would love to connect both of these types by developing an remarkable horror game and implement certain commercial stereotypes, or are these two types not connectable?

To Defend or To Battle?

A big trend within the horror genre introduced by games like Amnesia: The Dark Decent is the fact you can’t defend yourself and have to flee to stay alive. By doing this we achieve a fear of getting caught or being slaughtered without doing anything about it, therefore fleeing is the best and safest option available, however it keeps the player on its toes, a constant pressure is present.

Some horror games have guns (mostly with limited ammunition). We can still feel ourselves creeped out in certain moments, but we are completely convinced these guns will somehow make it easier to defend ourselves. The fact that we do not have enough ammunition now worries us. Collecting as much as we can, will mostly be our objective to move on in a safer manner.

Both these ‘types’ of gameplay have an interesting effect on the player in a horror game. Research showed that many people feel more fear when they are playing a game without any defense mechanism. However people tend to think games with guns or a defense mechanism are more fun to play.

Concluding

Its clear we have to redesign the game mainly to bring down the scope. Its our goal to create an awesome and very scary horror experience. We want players to get their money’s worth. Its therefore a challenge to create the necessary assets without years of work. I think we have to be more creative with procedural elements and make our mechanic joyful and meaningful, mixed with some visuals and animations you would normally see in a AAA experience. In terms of presentation we would hereby use an commercial approach, but in terms of gameplay we should focus on a more remarkable indie solution by using a well designed mechanic and procedural generation.

We used a ‘scrumlike’ method for the project, which means the producers were coming up with the product backlog and also planned and assigned items to the team. We did a weekly stand-up which consumed too much time. Also it looked like the team was accountable to the producers and had to back their responsibility to the producers instead of the team. Implementing scrum like this caused massive delays, inconsistency and confusion, in short a lot of pressure and trouble.

We now have a license degree as official Scrum master and understand the scrum framework a whole lot better. We highly recommend daily stand-ups instead of weekly stand-ups. Daily stand-ups will reveal small problems before they turn into big ones. The team is now responsible for their ‘velocity’ of production. Stand-ups are for the team and do not require a producer/product owner or Scrum master to be present, only at the end of the sprint when they deliver the sprint product.

We are still confident this game will turn out to be something special, we have to bury some old skeletons in the ground and refresh the game with some clear goals, and most of all, focus on making the game extremely scary. Scaring ourselves with our own product would be the best result I believe.

Do you as aspiring or seasoned developer have any great advice for us?(source:gamasutra)

 


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