篇目1，从电影制作角度看游戏设计的20个层面

第一个部分内容来自Tess Jones

多年以来，我一直在探索游戏和电影制作之间的相同和不同之处。两者都是大型创造性团队努力成功地呈现视觉娱乐的产品。

当我制作电影时，我每天都要驾驶汽车到城市的各个不同地方。到达目标地点之后，我需要同200多个创意人员配合，大家都在努力实现同一个愿景。

当我制作游戏时，我依然是同200多个创意制作人配合，努力实现众人共同的愿景，但是我并不需要前往城市各个角落来制作动态场景，所有的环境和场景都在办公室的电脑屏幕上 完成。

这两者间的相似性似乎只有以上这些。这两个领域内的作品制作有很大的不同之处。电影的制作时间显然要短于游戏。先根据电影中的场景需求制定出具体的时间计划和安排。雇 佣团队成员后，制作便可以开始。于是，成员每天拍摄电影中的场景，直到完成整个剧本。当所有场景拍摄完成后，团队的工作就结束了。这个过程有时可以在1个月的时间内完成 。

游戏有较长的制作周期。新的游戏玩法机制会带来编程挑战。玩家可以在游戏环境中停下或四处走动，围着对象旋转360度。在制作过程中，可能产生意料之外的漏洞，更不用提开 发者可能因玩家在关卡导航中使用意料之外的方法，或因游戏玩法元素的不断重复而产生挫败感。最后，游戏的持续时间往往比电影更长，而且需要大量的创意内容，“较短”的 游戏往往也都能向玩家提供6到8小时的游戏体验。

尽管二者存在差异，但我相信某些电影行业的技术能够运用到游戏制作中。电影制作团队会迅速地制作出内容，是因为他们必须这么做，因为地点、工作人员和演员都有自己的时 间安排。随着市场竞争逐渐激烈，用户期望在游戏中看到更多的功能和内容，因此我们需要找到又快又廉价的游戏制作方法。所以，电影制作的过程值得观察和借鉴。

1、电影制作必须要有副导演

演员于早上5点到达并开始化妆，而多达200号的制作人员在7点到达现场。首个拍摄场景位于闹市区的办公建筑，需要使用复杂的高架镜头。随后，所有工作人员需要迅速打包装备 ，在下午2点时赶到第2个拍摄点。第2个拍摄点会在下午6点关闭，而且剧组需要在太阳落山前完成4个镜头的拍摄，其中有个镜头需要动用50名群众演员。顺便提下，如果主角无法 按时到场，这意味着你需要重新安排整个镜头拍摄顺序，并且希望上帝能够保佑你在当天完成应尽的拍摄工作，无需使用更多的时间和预算。

这样的时间管理和安排显得多么困难！如果你认为自己的团队难以管理，想想看电影副导演所承当的重任吧。

他们必须精于判断可能影响镜头拍摄的各种因素，确定每个镜头拍摄可能需要的时间。在成本以分钟为单位来计算的电影制作中，他们的能力保证了整个拍摄过程的流畅进行，顺 利完成计划列表中的每个镜头。

我曾经在没有副导演的小电影团队中工作过，不可避免的结果是，你发现自己凌晨2点还需要在布朗克斯区的公寓中进行拍摄，这并不是件好受的事情。

人们都希望能够在游戏制作中避免这种情况的出现。想想看，有时候时间会成为妨碍“创意”游戏开发的因素。主要的问题在于迭代过程，你无法估算其时间，不是吗？在概念阶 段，你的开发团队对游戏想法充满热情，所以能够快速地完成任务。但是，当你们已经对工作感到疲惫，游戏进入测试阶段，情况又会如何呢？你或许已经想到了。后期你们可能 需要加班加点地润色游戏，因此而出现睡眠不足的情况。睡眠不足才是妨碍创造性的真正障碍。因而，你需要一名熟练的副导演。

“什么？我根本不需要副导演！我的制作人可以完成那些工作。”有些制作人会致力于管理游戏开发时间，但有些制作人并不会这么做。制作人往往还需要考虑其他要素，比如游 戏整体概念、营销和开发里程碑报告等，这些事务都会使他们分心，无法每天将精力投入到确保计划按部就班完成的事情中。

电影制作有制作人也有副导演，双方各司其职。游戏团队也需要专注于管理时间的成员。资深管理者会将注意力集中在时间估算上，根据将来可能面对的风险和元素构建计划。游 戏团队的职员总人数总是会很紧张，因而项目管理者往往被视为不必要的成员。但是，如果你希望在45天内拍摄出好电影，而且时间方面不出现偏差，那么就需要雇佣优秀的副导 演。

2、电影有漫长的剧本开发过程

如果你走进电影工作室，让他们全额资助你雇佣电影制作人员，来探索新电影概念，你可能会被所有人嘲笑。但是，上述情况确实在许多游戏工作室发生过。

然而，似乎并没有其他的选择。在只含有1或2个小型游戏团队的工作室里，游戏概念的产生得益于开发团队的团队合作。尽管有时也会邀请工作室外的文案来帮助组织故事，但概 念的源头通常都是来自于有着绝妙想法且充满激情的开发团队。

相比之下，电影概念通常有着漫长的开发过程，这些都需要在制作开始之前完成。概念、角色、场景和故事预先用110到120页的电影剧本描述清楚。电影剧本需要经过严格的审核 阶段，也就是好莱坞所谓的剧本开发。

剧本开发

以下是剧本开发的过程。编剧不断敲击键盘，制作出剧本，这个过程的持续时间从2个月到7年不等。完成后，编剧将剧本发送给经纪人，后者将剧本交给职业剧本审核团队。

好莱坞有大量职业读者，他们靠评估剧本质量来维持生计。这些读者阅读过剧本后，编写长达4页的报告，总结剧本的题材、历史背景、角色、情节和故事发生地。他们还以各种不 同的创意元素为标准来给剧本评级。他们通常会提供整体性的反馈，以专业的眼光来衡量剧本是否能够吸引观众。

这有助于执行人评估概念在市场中的生存能力。如果经纪人觉得剧本可以推出，他们会将其发送给可能感兴趣的不同执行人和剧本开发部门。

流程叙述先稍停片刻。我想要强调的是，在上述过程中，电影已经呈现出比游戏强的一面。你刚开始产生的只是上千个创意想法，而编剧需要揣度这些想法长达数年时间。只有最 棒的想法才会被保留下来，被送到制作公司手中，更不用提经纪人还会特别去寻找最适合该创意的制作公司。

那么，接下来会发生什么事情呢？制作公司购买电影，然后开始进行拍摄，是这样吗？事情并没有这么简单。

如果制作公司喜欢某个剧本，他们会购买，但是这并不能保证这个剧本会制作成电影。通常情况下，剧本会进入“开发”阶段，进一步获得改善。寻找到导演或演员后，他们或许 也会对剧本进行修改。而且，只有那些最棒的剧本才能进入制作阶段。有些制作公司购买了大量的剧本留待“某天”拍摄，但有些剧本从未被选用。

最后，如果时间、剧本和其他需求都准备就绪，该剧本就会进入制作阶段。只有到了这个时候，制作公司才会开始雇佣所有剧组成员，这样才能将剧本中的创意概念变成现实。执 行是关键。如果选择了错误的演员或剧组，优秀的剧本最终也会变成劣质的电影。

但是，剧本开发阶段中电影主线的寻找和制作已经大大减少了失败的可能性。执行人会思考电影的收入空间，营销人员会讨论概念在市场中的生存能力，经过这个过程后，电影才 会被拍摄、编辑和发布。

游戏开发者能够从这个过程中学到什么呢？

想象下，如果游戏行业有类似于电影行业的概念审查服务。设计师和概念艺术师会合作并制作提案，随后将其发送给制作公司，后者会让职业游戏读者评估概念、角色、艺术风格 、环境模型和故事的市场生存能力。市场中将充满只专注于概念的创意职业者，而只有最棒的游戏想法能够生存下来。这样，不仅能使行业多样化且出现更多精妙的游戏，而且游 戏制作一开始就有了完整和成熟的概念。

或许我只是在做梦。类似于电影行业的游戏概念开发过程似乎并不符合行业目前的运转方式。游戏团队为他们自己的创意能力感到骄傲，他们对自己的工作充满激情的部分原因在 于概念源于自己的想法。只有当游戏团队充满激情，才能够制作出优秀的游戏，这是任何优秀的制作人都知道不能去干涉开发团队的地方。

尽管如此，电影的漫长剧本开发过程仍有可借鉴之处。它让我们意识到，预制作是项目开发中最重要的阶段。在每个阶段对概念进行评估和测试。在花费时间和资源前，先主动制 作自己的概念集。你的概念集包括关键的游戏玩法元素、游戏内容描述、富有吸引力的名字以及角色和环境的艺术作品概念。

将其发送给你信任的人，让他们提供最真实的反馈。如果你有足够的预算，可以对概念集进行玩法和可用性测试，构建玩法示例即可实现这个目标。你还可以雇佣市场调查公司测 试游戏概念在市场中的生存能力。不管游戏公司是大是小，都可以采用所有上述措施。

3、故事与概念相符

在游戏大会上，我听过很多人讨论故事与游戏玩法间的冲突问题。一方认为，故事对游戏毫不重要，因为游戏要呈现的是优秀的游戏玩法。另一方认为，故事是现代游戏玩法追求 的东西，是高质量主机游戏体验的必需品。

依我的观点，整个争论本身就是错误的。人们都忘了一点，90%的故事是概念。对于这里的“概念”，我指的是构建游戏前提的主角、核心冲突、主要游戏玩法元素、主要敌人、场 景和时期以及环境。每款游戏都有概念，无论该游戏中的“故事”成分有多少。你可曾玩过没有环境的游戏？或者可曾遇到过没有激发你购买的单行描述或“吸引点”的游戏？

正如每个优秀的好莱坞编剧所熟知的那样，在创作概念时要从广义的角度思考。这是剧本开发反复失败和尝试中得出的剧本成功的关键所在。如果你不能用寥寥数语在电梯中向制 作公司的高管描述你的剧本，那么剧本自然就不会引起他们的注意。

拥有概念后，你就需要细心地考虑它是否能够在市场中有良好的表现。你的终端用户是否会认为这款游戏很有趣？他们是否会受美术设计吸引而想去了解更多游戏中的内容？他们 是否会将游戏推荐给自己的好友？如果你用一句话向他人描述你的想法，你是否有自信将其解释清楚，还是会因为胆怯而无法解释清楚？如果你对自己出售想法有足够的自信，之 后才能在概念中投入精力以及更多的资源和时间，并进入下个制作阶段。不要在概念创作方面过于匆忙，它是你成功的基础。

4、“淘金时间”与“困难时刻”

当电影剧组成员听到“淘金时间”这个词时，不是战栗就是开怀大笑。这个术语指当工作日的工作时间达到16个小时后，剧组成员的日薪资飞涨。尽管每个剧组成员都是各自签订 合同，但许多合同都有涉及到工作时间超出时的特别条款。当工作时间超出10、12或14个小时时，每小时薪资便会迅速上涨。如果工作时间超过16个小时，那么剧组成员领取的是 工作时间介于16和20小时的薪水，不管超出的时间是1分钟还是4小时。

剧组可能会因工作时间超出而疲惫不堪，但是知道他们能够获得更高的薪水，有时反而会激发更高的创作热情和氛围。当然，制作人和导演并没有像其他剧组成员那样热情高涨， 因为他们的制作成本在飞速增加。在每天的拍摄中，制作人需要为时间超出负责，他们尽全力来避免发生这种情况。如果剧组的工作时间过长，受惩罚的是制作人，这就会激励他 们尽全力来有效管理剧组的工作时间。

在游戏行业中，工作时间补偿并没有如此丰厚。如果游戏出现大量漏洞或功能运行与预期计划存在差异，团队成员会发现他们进入工作的“困难时刻”，这是该行业用来描述这段 无薪超时工作的术语。

有些团队有计划地通过小型困难时刻来提升产品的质量。有些团队发现自己陷入了计划外的困难时刻，需要额外花大量时间来修改漏洞或提升游戏质量。

游戏开发者往往都只是领取薪水，且没有成立自己的行业工会，所以他们只能寄希望于游戏取得成功并在年末获得分红或奖金，以此来补偿自己付出的额外精力。

这两种系统的好坏完全取决于个人想法。有些人喜欢困难时刻，有些人讨厌。电影行业的淘金时间也是如此。困难时刻可以提升产品质量，也会让团队意志消沉。淘金时间能够帮 你获得大笔薪水，但那种疲劳可能会影响到接下来整周的工作状态。这些都是热门话题，两个行业内的多数从业者都有自己的想法。

但是，有件事情是明确的。在电影行业中，剧组成员额外付出的经历能够得到公开的补偿。如果电影的拍摄时间超出预期，需要承担责任的是制作人和管理层，团队成员并不会因 意料之外的事件发生而受到惩罚。这是否会激发制作人不惜一切代价来避免剧组长时间工作？或许能够取得这方面的效果。剧组是否喜欢这种做法，并因此而更加努力地工作？这 也是有可能的。敏锐的制作人会考虑到工作时间超出的情况，并针对此制定相应的计划。当发生这种情况时，他们就能够获得超时成本，即便在困难时刻也能够保持剧组愉快地工 作。

5、后期制作占整个电影制作过程的一半

你可曾看过无声的动作电影？尝试在关掉声音的情况下看《变形金刚》或《蜘蛛侠》。往常那些让你心跳加速的场景变得平淡无奇。你的大脑开始浮想联翩，思考查看邮件或准备 午餐之类的事情。所以，要创造出富有吸引力的剧情，音效是不可或缺的内容。

优秀的电影制作人知道，整部电影的制作时间中有一半用于后期制作。音频、音效、节奏和片头都会影响到观众对产品的反应。电影行业中的后期制作还包括画外音工作、颜色修 正、特效以及胶片或数字形式的制作，确保最终在屏幕上呈现出完美的图像。后期制作阶段的长短各不相同，有些电影很快便可以完成，而有些电影花费一年甚至更长的时间来润 色。

游戏制作人也同样关注好莱坞后期制作阶段所关注的音效和其他技术。在这个要求时刻保持用户紧张感和兴奋感的媒介中，游戏开发者热切地希望后期制作技术能够提升产品的价 值。

但是，我见过的多数游戏开发时间计划并没有在项目末期划出正式的“后期制作”阶段。音频、动画、光照、标题和特效往往被直接穿插在常规制作过程中。虽然有些元素能够很 容易地融入早期的制作过程中，但有些元素需要等到内容最终确定后方能执行。结果，音频和其他团队成员就会陷入上述困难时刻。游戏开发者或许可以考虑在项目制作末期划出 额外的后期制作时间，确保整个团队能够意识到这些关键元素。

6、每个人都有剧本，剧本每天都会发生改变

当电影剧组成员每天到达拍摄现场时，他们最先拿到的是剧本修改打印件。他们拿着这些带有各种颜色的页面，参照它们来理解剧本的变动。新页面包含台词的增加、场景的减少 或地点的改变。每个剧组成员都有个完整的剧本，他们将这些修改页面添加到剧本中。这样，他们总是能够知道当天的拍摄内容和需要做的事情。

在游戏制作过程中，团队往往会使用游戏设计文件，但是通常情况下，内容创作过程严密性不足。各部门主管可能会遵从设计文件来工作，但是也会根据自己的想法更改内容和故 事创作方向。游戏设计师可能会拥有游戏设计文件，但是因为产品中通常包含数量众多的游戏玩法，所以很难保持文件的更新。游戏设计的变更和进展很快，设计文件很快就会变 得过时。设计师不断地重复设计游戏，每小时每分钟都能够取得进展。对于大型游戏来说，可能有10或20个设计师同时修改关卡。

那么，我是否提倡的是游戏团队向所有团队成员分发设计文件打印件呢？正是如此。尽管将文件打印出来似乎是过时的做法，而且浪费纸张，但是如果只通过邮件，很容易会被人 忽视，团队成员有时根本不会阅读数字化的设计文件更新内容，尤其在更新每天都有而且还有大量漏洞等待修正的时候。分发实体“游戏开发手册”或许是个值得尝试的有趣方法 。

或者，游戏本身就能够成为一个开发手册。保持团队对更新了解的最佳方法是玩游戏。尝试每天早上和团队成员一起打通一个关卡，看看关卡发生的改变，讨论接下来数周需要完 成的任务。

这里的关键在于，了解团队成员是否总是能够知道设计进行了更新。让团队成员参与到开发循环中，有助于提升团队的凝聚力，也能够保持团队成员朝正确的方向努力并为愿景的 实现做出贡献。

7、精美而充足的食物供应

食物对雇员的激励效果令人震惊，尤其是优质的事物。它们不仅让雇员感觉到自己得到了照顾，从而减小工作压力和改善心情，而且还能够驱动人们交谈和讨论问题。当雇员在一 起吃东西时，他们就会开始分享信息、激发新想法或想起需要就某项特殊任务采取行动。

电影剧组采用的就是统一进餐。电影制作时，剧组会在拍摄现场就餐，往往现场会有餐饮车烹制菜肴。所有的菜肴和点心对剧组成员来说都是免费的，所有的标准制作预算都会考 虑到这个方面。

剧组往往需要工作一整天时间，而且拍摄地通常远离剧组成员的居住地，所以必须提供食物。所有剧组成员的午餐时间都是相同的，午餐过后，剧组成员迅速投入到工作中。

游戏制作的情况与电影制作并不相同。开发者并不需要改变工作地点。他们每天都坐在相同的办公室中，他们可以从家中携带午餐或到附近的餐厅吃午餐。通常情况下，向开发者 提供食物被视为是种奢侈的做法或特殊情况，并没有被视为雇员的应有福利。

游戏制作人往往会在困难时刻期间或开发取得进展后提供食物。有些公司拥有自助餐厅，方便了雇员的就餐。这或许可以算是游戏行业正朝着电影行业的方向努力。我认为，如果 你想要在自己的游戏制作公司中让雇员更加快乐，那么食物是一种重要的工具。

当你开始将开发者当成创意资源团队而不是普通的办公室职员时，这种做法的意义就会显现出来。在压力被消除时，创作流程会显得更加自然。提供食物意味着雇员担心的事情减 少了，开发者可以在午餐时间得到休息，鼓励开发者交流，并让他们感觉到自己受到照顾。

但是，提供食物有个弊端，那就是长期提供不良食物会最终让团队的创造力降低。提供高热量的点心、苏打、咖啡、披萨和难消化的食物对团队毫无帮助。长此以往，这些会对开 发者投入到工作中的能量产生影响。有些食物甚至会导致开发者体重增加并产生健康问题。

尝试提供高蛋白食物、新鲜水果和蔬菜、谷物和豆类，远离糖类或含咖啡因的产品。

8、由导演统领全局

电影导演对影片的拍摄过程有绝对的控制力。电影导演会组件能够对最终电影产品产生极大影响的创意剧组成员，包括摄影师、制作设计师和演职导演。但是，如果出现争议，那 么最终做决定的总是导演。他们是主要的愿景呈现者，利用许多人的创意来形成最终产品。

游戏设计师在团队中的职责与电影导演类似，但是有些事情会妨碍他们对整个制作过程的控制。游戏团队成员往往都很自信，而且行业文化倾向于采取协作性方法来决定游戏愿景 。制作团队拥有清晰理解愿景的创意总监的另一个障碍是，游戏设计师往往发现自己扮演着多个角色，他们要编写对话、设计关卡以及完成其他与领导职责不相关的任务。

如果游戏设计师不能成为创作愿景的引导者，那么谁来完成这项工作呢？有些公司的工程、美术或其他部门的主管拥有凌驾于其他类别主管的权利。

发行商可能会有个对最终产品投入全部兴趣的制作人，他们会将自己的设计想法不断灌输给开发团队。许多公司采用团队创意控制方法，有时通过各抒己见来完成优秀产品的制作 ，但是当团队没有就创意想法达成一致意见时，整个团队就会显得迷茫。每个公司都有形成创意控制结构的独特政策、历史和团队。

在电影行业中，或许也存在演员大腕、有钱的制作人或令人尊敬的优秀摄影师使用他们的力量来控制拍摄过程。但是，电影导演的职责是如此清晰，所有电影剧组成员的行为永远 都不会对其产生影响。或许剧组中会有权威或闻名于世的成员，但整个剧组都会听从导演的命令。这减少了剧组政治现象，让制作得以流畅地进展下去。电影剧组都清楚，单个人 把控全局比由200个人来决定创意愿景要容易得多。所以，游戏制作团队或许也应当意识到这一点。

每个人都听说过电影导演要求掌握电影拍摄全部控制权的事情，我并不建议游戏设计师采纳这种极端的做法。

我认为，游戏团队的每个人都可以从电影行业中清晰的等级结构中学到某些东西。在团队中确立各个成员的职责，确保所有团队成员都明白这些职责。制作人和总监应当每天与团 队交流，回答团队成员提出的所有问题，跟踪那些有可能脱离正确设计方向的创意元素。减少设计师待在办公室中的时间，去除那些能够由团队其他成员完成的工作。

9、委派工作

放弃事无巨细的微管理模式，将部分工作交给其他人来完成！如果导演将所有的时间都花费在修改剧本和将剧本打印给剧组成员上，这会让整部电影的拍摄变得混乱。他们没有时 间来指导演员、回答场景构设中有关创意方向的问题或者指导摄影师变更拍摄角度。电影导演要做的事情就是指导，确保所有人各司其职。

游戏制作人应当鼓励他们的总监尽量将具体工作委托给其他人。制定清晰的岗位职责并坚持下去。定期查看各岗位成员将大部分时间花在什么地方，防止出现职责不清的情况。最 重要的是，记住项目的截止日期和优先目标。

10、在剪辑室中无法更改故事

在电影制作中，会出现某个电影已无法更改的阶段。除非你有足够的预算来重新拍摄，否则到那时你只能尽量润色你的拍摄成品。如果原剧本和概念存在瑕疵，那么这时已经没有 修改的方法了。

如果你足够了解电影行业，你就会知道可以利用剪辑技巧来尝试修正故事中的问题。持续性音效或许可以用来掩盖情感上的平淡性。快速剪辑以及黑体大标题可以增加场景的吸引 力，否则情节可能会显得乏味无趣。在编辑阶段，还可以在影片中增加台词。

剪辑期间自然可以修正些许问题，但剪辑人员能做的也就只有这些。

游戏与电影有所不同，因为开发者可以在整个制作过程中更改内容。场景并不固定，动画可以改变，环境也可以重新制作，甚至连任务也可以重新布置。一方面，这意味着游戏内 容在制作末期依然可以改良。另一方面，这也会让游戏团队可以自由地拖延本应在制作早期完成的故事内容，或者在项目制作过程中随时根据需要进行更改。

放弃无用的想法是游戏成功的关键。坚持你原本的愿景，你就能够得到最初设想的产品。如果你这么做而且找到了正确的方向，你会迅速得到产品并且有时间做新的产品。

避免让团队的完美主义者掌控项目，只需要尽全力将产品做得更好。这对游戏开发行业来说是件很困难的事情，行业本身就有完美主义的倾向。功能累赘是一种延长时间计划的现 象，从某种程度上来说类似于电影剪辑时花大量精力只是为了努力掩饰部分场景的缺陷。

有时，新游戏功能确实有助于团队推出绝妙的游戏，开发期间的故事修改也会让产品质量获得提升。技巧在于，找到能够提升质量的直接修改点。

总结

我们如何利用这些想法来更快更廉价地制作更高质量的游戏呢？让我们来回顾下！

预制作阶段：

1、先开发稳固的游戏概念，再招募制作团队。

2、以与电影剧本开发过程类似的方法来审核概念。

制作阶段：

1、雇佣经验丰富的时间管理专家。

2、通过规划、工作超时补贴和食物来保持团队的创造性。

3、确保团队成员参与到整个游戏更改和愿景的循环中。

4、确定团队成员职责，有个清晰了解愿景的创意总监。

5、将主管的部分任务委派给其他成员，让主管将注意力放在保持团队朝正确方向努力上。

6、坚持最初的产品愿景，以此来平衡修改和产品质量。

后期制作阶段：

1、确保在预算中考虑到后期制作。

2、尽量利用后期制作来提高产品质量，认可后期制作占整个开发过程的一半。

第二个部分内容来自Devin Becker

我曾经阅读过Roger Corman所著书籍《How I made a hundred movies in hollywood and never lost a dime》，对其中的内容依然印象深刻。书名清楚地指出，他可以从每款制 作的电影中盈利，无论预算多么低或者质量多么差。在这篇博文中，我将分析如何将他这些最佳的技术应用于独立游戏开发，这样开发者也就可以从每款游戏中盈利！

1、开拓性题材

Corman的电影通常都会被人们打上B电影、题材电影和开拓性的标签。他知晓如何创造和开拓合适的电影题材，比如《自行车》、《护士》、《笼中的妇人》、《埃德加·爱伦·坡 》等。有些人可能会认为这是种消极做法，但他自己显然不这么想。这些次题材通常都被认为具有开拓性，因为它们会引起人们的注意。当你在决定是要创造另一个科幻游戏还是 遵循Edmund Mcmillen和Adult Swim的游戏设计之路时，以上做法值得考虑。消极的深刻印象依然是种深刻印象！

开拓新颖的流行次题材可以让你成为某个小范围内获得特别关注，而不是常事在已经拥挤的游戏世界中获得稀松平常的注意。反常或令人震惊的举动会激发人们谈论和玩游戏！不 幸的是，如果某种题材成功之后，这种技术便会受到众人的仿效，比如僵尸和小鸟游戏。创造属于自己的东西或者选择某些未被充分开发的题材！

灵感来源：电影题材探索的维基百科页面；古典主义的开拓

2、制定低盈利甚至低预算的目标

Corman总是能够盈利的重要原因之一是，他知道如何使得产品预算与预期的ROI（游戏邦注：即投资回报）相符。他并非总是尝试制作能够盈利5亿美元的电影，然后在制作中投入2 亿美元，再花1亿美元来做广告。他知道电影只能获得X美元的收入，所以他会花比X少得多的资金来制作和营销，从而实现盈利。调查你的“竞争对手”的真实收入（游戏邦注：不 要一开始就以《愤怒的小鸟》之类的游戏为竞争对手），然后树立花较少的资金制成游戏的标。个人推荐可以通过Game Jam活动来学习如何在时间和金钱有限的情况下制得产品 ！这里，我还推荐从其他低预算媒介中寻找降低成本的方法，但是请记住，时间本身也是金钱！

灵感来源：控制预算的电影导演

3、依法廉价地对自己进行营销

Corman用来推广电影的某种更具创新性的技巧便是使用影院来作为广告平台以赋予其电影合法性，不幸的是这种方法无法简单地复制到游戏行业中。他可以在这部分上控制成本的 做法是，只为自己的电影制作两份海报（游戏邦注：海报的制作费用昂贵，所以他只制作两份，一份用于展示，另一份备用），然后在各影院中巡回展示他的电影，每个影院的时 间只有1到2周。这个想法的重点在于，在这个电影直接转变成DVD方式的时代里，影院播放电影便存在合法性问题，某种决定电影是否值得观看的状况。他还意识到，多数人在影片 发布的前两周内前往观看电影，所以在影院中花更长的时间来做推广并非利用海报来盈利的绝妙方法。

那么，这种方法如何能被独立游戏开发者所使用呢？不要将金钱花在广告上，应该将时间花在于持续时间较短但获得极大关注度的区域推广游戏，比如Game Jams、节日、比赛、展 会、平台特别推荐（游戏邦注：比如iOS推荐的每周游戏以及Steam免费促销等）、捆绑销售、慈善动员和竞标赛（游戏邦注：比如DOTA2等）和Kongregate成就比赛等。巡回数周时 间，在可能的情况下尽量展示游戏。

以下将提供某些如何让这种方式在经济上产生作用的注意点。你的游戏只有在新鲜且获得关注之时才能获得大量收入，随后盈利便会迅速下滑，然后趋于稳定（游戏邦注：捆绑销 售可以挽救这个局面，下文将具体阐述）。为什么这种情况算好呢？此时你应当为游戏制定计划，不是专注于尝试将游戏以服务的方式进行出售，而是开始着手制作下款游戏。《 愤怒的小鸟》是Rovio的第52款游戏，他们不断努力直到开发出轰动市场的作品，没有将全部的精力和资金都投入到某款游戏中。你应当专注于迅速、低成本且可盈利地制作游戏， 随着你通过每款游戏学到新的东西，游戏质量自然会逐渐提升，你的公司和名声会随着每款游戏的发布而逐渐成长。Robert Rodriguez的首个电影巨作《El Mariachi》事实上只是 为他制作更大的电影提供资金。他也能够在自己制作的每款电影上获利！

灵感来源：学生独立游戏竞赛；PAX游戏展；Indiecade；独立游戏捆绑包

4、开拓被低估的内容

Corman较不为人知的盈利技巧是低价购买外国影片，然后将其重新编辑便配上新的对话，制作某种混合型电影或者新电影。这种方法的前期投入相对较低，而且所需的工作量和员 工也较少，从而产生巨额盈利。如果做法正确的话，可以转化成盈利项目的小型独立游戏和实验多达上千个。我不建议将流行游戏克隆到其他游戏平台上并从中获得盈利的做法， 但是可以寻找那些被低估或者尚未完成的游戏，要么将其完全买断，要么与开发者合作，使得游戏成为受大众喜欢的作品。如果你想要些灵感的话，可以看看Ludum Dare游戏比赛 的入围作品，它们都是开源且未被完成或润色的游戏想法，这些想法已经获得些许反馈、曝光度和游戏时间，但是也仅此而已。如果你想要得到更具实验性的想法，不妨看看 Experimental Gameplay Project上的开放性想法和概念，将它们进一步发展。一旦你的识别能力达到某种程度，你或许可以成为发行人或者某些能够为游戏的发布提供帮助的人。

5、雇佣渴望获得机会的业余人才

首先要澄清的是，我所说的业余人才是指那些目前没有职业依靠自己的才能来赚取金钱的有才华的人。Corman闻名的原因之一是能够帮助优秀的学徒进军好莱坞。或许你曾经听说 过Jack Nicholson、Martin Scorsese和Ron Howard等人，他们都曾从师于Corman并做出自己的巨作。他在识别人才方面独具慧眼，让这些人能够有机会真正将自己的作品展示在观 众面前，而这是他们自己的努力无法轻易实现的。这些导演中，有些刚开始是替Corman编辑电影预告片，直到后者给予他们导演电影的机会。Jack Nicholson刚开始一直都是编剧 ，直到Corman某天决定让其在某部电影中展现才华。

在这里，我给独立游戏开发者们的建议是，寻找那些渴望获得展现自己实力的有才华的人。预先告知他们项目的盈利会很少，但他们依然会辛勤工作。其中的价值在于，你会完成 并发布游戏，而且会有各种各样的人群玩游戏。许多独立项目从未实现这种目标，但是你的遭遇将有所不同，因为你掌握了这篇博文中所提供的技巧，专注于赚取盈利以制作下款 绝妙游戏。刚刚毕业的游戏学校毕业生是可以寻找到此类人才的宝库！

灵感来源：The Corman Film School；Game Career Guide论坛

6、预售产品

Corman之所以能够保证电影获利的部分原因在于，他不仅让降低电影的最初预算，而且还与其他公司合作来预售自己的电影。通常情况下他会将自己的电影预售给经销商以获取盈 利，因而只要他能保证电影预算不超支，就无需担心电影的盈利可能性。有些时候，他会利用电影脚本与感兴趣的工作室或电影资助人合作，预先让后者来为尽可能多的制作成本 买单。这种做法与书籍撰写者类似，他们也会让发行商来承担成本。在你的知名度相对较低且你的盈利能力未得到验证时，实现上述目标可能很难。那么为何不选择将产品预售给 顾客而不是中间商呢？知道有人愿意付费购买你的产品是再好不过的事情。这种模型的两种形式已经取得了显著的成效，那就是Kickstarter和出售预定版本。

Kickstarter和预售1.0筹款系统的概念相似，你提供可玩内容（游戏邦注：如原型和测试版）或以媒体（游戏邦注：如预告片和设计文件）的形式提供游戏概况，然后让人们花些 许金钱资助游戏以换取正式版本游戏以及某些额外的利益。Kickstarter的不同之处在于，它通常还未是个可玩的游戏，不同的付费等级对应不同的奖励，如果筹款目标没有达到就 不会失去金钱。原型销售的不同之处在于，提供不断更新的可玩游戏、可以对项目开发产生影响的能力，无论筹款目标的达成情况如何，金钱交易是实时进行的。每种方法都有好 处和弊端，所以你应当根据游戏目前的进展状况（游戏邦注：你能够给顾客提供哪些东西，你是否认为自己能够达成筹款目标）选择合适的方法。你可以在项目早期（游戏邦注： 游戏还未能可玩的阶段）尝试使用Kickstarter，如果无法实现筹款目标，就应当专注于构建原型，然后尽快将其出售。应当注意的是，这些做法与病毒性有所联系，所以应当利用 所掌握的所有营销技巧！以下是某些较为成功的范例。

灵感来源：《Zombies, run》；Kickstarter页面；《Minecraft》的销售；《Frozen Synapse》预订页面；RTS游戏《Achron》

7、迅速工作

Corman经常会挑战自己如何快速地制成电影，这既出于盈利原因，也是种个人发展想法。他还将这种心态传达给自己的编剧Charles Griffith，有时会在晚上给后者打电话，概述 剧本想法并让其在第二天早晨提交首个剧本草稿！他的最快创作记录是2天！这样做降低了成本，保持了内容的创造性并且能够不断让他学习和制作出新东西。重点在于，他从不发 布自认为很烂的电影，他只是保持对制作的较低期望而已。再次，我还要推荐Game Jams，因为这能够让你学习如何实现上述目标。在48个小时内构想并完成游戏，这的确会给人极 大的满足感。要成功实现这个目标，你需要学习如何专注于你的游戏并将其精制润色。你必须削去大量游戏特征，但是剩下来的应当变得更好。一旦你掌握了如何迅速工作的技巧 ，就会更加容易地根据上述第4个建议快速地改造game jam中的游戏想法。

许多独立开发者和游戏工作室（游戏邦注：如3D Realms）将成长和经济上的成功视为在游戏中花更长时间的机会，但是制作时间的长短并不总是等同于游戏的润色程度或盈利，所 以不要落入这个陷阱，逐渐缩短每款游戏的制作时间。

灵感来源：在两天内快速制成游戏；Global Game Jam；Game Jams

8、重新使用资产

Corman之所以能够在两天的时间内迅速制成影片，最大的原因之一是结合优秀的前期预制作和重新使用场景和道具。当制作次题材影片时，这种方法特别有效，比如他之前制作的 多部《埃德加·爱伦·坡》电影。以重新使用资产的方法来设计游戏应该要比电影制作要简单，因为游戏的基础通常都是大量的成分以及这些成分互动的规则。重新使用资产、角 色和场景可以带来两个令人惊异的好处：节省成本和时间；构建世界和IP。在构建粉丝群体和营销时，构建世界和IP可以体现出极大的价值。那么，为何不使用相同的世界或角色 来以不同的方法制作多款游戏呢？马里奥、索尼克和古惑狼之类的游戏看起来似乎与游戏初作并没有直接的联系，但是我敢担保其中某些确实有重新使用的资产。当然，行业中也 有明显使用初代游戏来制作系列游戏的做法，但是与AAA级游戏相比这似乎并不适合此题材开拓性游戏，因而最好是使用你已经获得的资产来开拓新的游戏机制。

许多人可能都看过或者至少听说过Corman的经典作品《Death Race 2000》，但是你可曾知晓电影里的汽车音效来源于其F1竞速电影（游戏邦注：而这个音效是在他去观看比赛时录 制下来的）？Troma的Lloyd Kaufman曾经在他的电影中加入汽车碰撞场景，考虑到这个特技的制作成本昂贵，他寻找方法将这个场景插入到自己的其他电影中，以减少制作成本！ 如果你在某些东西上花钱，那么不要在制作一款游戏之后就将其抛弃！

灵感来源：Troma循环利用；Cheapass Games重新使用桌游的成分

9、开拓性捆绑销售

Corman为B电影的原创含义辩护，他解释为何称不上冒犯，它只是代表着双功能展示中的第二个功能，就像是音乐中的B面那样。B面歌曲和电影的混乱在于，它们通常会显得更加危 险，但是有时是更加有趣的发布，尽管营销并不是那么简单，但仍然有潜在的盈利性。将B面与更具有营销型的产品绑定使得公司可以缓和低盈利的风险。提供捆绑销售不仅能够增 加顾客的价值感，还有可能使得B面同样获得成功帮助带动销售。

Steam在提供和推广各种类别的独立游戏捆绑方面做得很不错，不仅有助于个体游戏的推广，还能够因所提供的价值而增加销售量。如果没有通过这种方式，部分独立游戏玩家可能 根本就不会接触到游戏。这还产生了某种绝妙的方法，使用那些较老的流行游戏来促进销售量。你会看到，Steam的捆绑销售中，发行商会提供某些已经过时的游戏，这些游戏本身 可能已经不再独立出售，但是玩家或许对这些游戏有些怀念，他们想要玩这些之前在流行时玩过的游戏。另一个绝佳的例证是Humble Indie Bundle，刚好今天提供了特别的Frozen Synapse Bundle。

你无需等待其他人对游戏进行捆绑，你可以创造出自己的游戏集或特别推广包（游戏邦注：尤其是如果开发者遵循第8个建议开发出一系列单IP游戏）。在这个方向上更进一步，使 用捆绑销售来为下款游戏筹集资金或Kickstarter（游戏邦注：正如建议6中所说的那样）。如果J.K. Rowling发表如下声明：“我需要足够的资金来编写《哈利波特》系列小说的 最后两部，有个特别推广活动，如果你以这个特别折扣价购买前5部小说的合集，那么你将会免费获得最后两部小说！”，想象下该系列小说的销售量会取得怎样的进步。

灵感来源：Valve Orange Box；MacHeist

10、总是完成或不断循环

Corman理解以下观点：如果你不出售电影的话就无法获得盈利，如果你无法获得盈利的话就无法制作出更多的电影！所有之前的建议中都含有能够让你在预算内快速完成游戏并获 得盈利的想法，希望这些目标能够尽快实现。他会在预制作计划中投入大量的精力，利用受到的约束条件来工作，这两种工作方式都促进了电影制作的完成。他专注于使用每部电 影的盈利来资助下部电影的制作，这能够确保他在对其他电影想法感到兴奋时依然有充足的理由完成手头正在制作的影片。

如果你是个独立开发者，这或许意味着你需要通过制作游戏来维持生计，那么如果你不出售自己的作品，就无法实现这个目标。正如Joker在《The Dark Knight》中所说的那样： “如果你在某些方面尤为擅长，那么就应该在这方面获得报酬。”这便是业余人士和职业人士之间的差别，职业人士首先要求得到金钱，然后再实现自己的承诺。如果完成某款游 戏已不可能，或者游戏完全无法带来乐趣，或者从设计的角度来看是完全无法挽救的，那么你就必须将你投入的资产和时间运用到某些能够出售的内容中。你可以重新使用代码、 艺术、音效甚至某些设计，但是可能不能完全使用这些东西。将这种重生视为新的挑战，使用抛弃原有游戏后剩余的预算和时间来开发出新游戏，这样你仍然可以获得盈利。你可 以做到这一点，不要放弃！

灵感来源：Derek Yu——《完成游戏》；Chris Hecker——《请完成你的游戏》

我强烈推荐你自己阅读这本书籍，因为这对成为优秀的导演和制作人不无裨益。如果你觉得低预算电影制作技术很有趣并希望学到更多内容以将其运用到游戏制作中，我还推荐 Robert Rodriguez所著《Rebel without and crew》和所有Lloyd Kaufman撰写的有关电影制作的书籍。

篇目2，从好莱坞的剧本创作视角探索游戏关卡设定

在过去四十年上映的几乎所有好莱坞电影都是从单一结构的剧本改编而来的。本文将介绍好莱坞电影的结构，将考察将这种结构运用于游戏玩法设计的可能性。不过，我们不是在 游戏的故事中采用剧本结构，而是只用游戏的机制创造剧情，更准确地说，将这种结构和游戏阶段运用于不同的游戏类型。

在大部分的好莱坞影中，首先，观众会看到电影的主角和他所在的场景。然后，发生了一件改变当前局面的事件，观众开始对主角有所了解。在这里，主角面临第一个挑战，他要 靠这个挑战让观众认识自己。在电影的中间部分，观众得知主角必须做出什么关键决定、他的最终目标是什么——这是他无法脱身的处境。再然后，主角经历了一次战斗，这场战 斗会以致命一击结束，如果主角能克服这最后一个挑战，那么观众就会看到他的人生以及别人的人生因此而改变——他们得到奖励。如果电影有续集，那么观众就会隐隐看到另一 个挑战的暗示。当然，这种结构还有其他变体，比如主角不是一个人，而是一群人，敌人可能不是人类，而是一种自然力量或主角必须克服的某种恐惧。

令人惊讶的是，我们很容易就能想出另一种剧情结构，但是几乎没有剧本在跳出这种相当严密的结构之后还能获是成功，至少好莱坞电影是这样的；这是一种必胜的结构，电影制 作人都知道。那么，这对作为游戏设计师的我们有何启发？很多：这个结构告诉你如何将游戏关卡变成包含玩家在内的剧情——你的玩家喜欢并记得怎么玩的小电影，这种玩法剧 情会与绝大多数玩家产生共鸣，不过这取决于他们对这个小电影的理解和认同程度。

我知道，在这样一个大环境之下——设计师们仍然认为故事是多余的，是罪恶的，声称给予玩法剧情结构似乎是浪费时间，但请相信我，当我将好莱坞式配方运用到各种游戏关卡 设计时，你会发现它不仅让关卡更具连贯性，而且确实是头脑风暴时的绝好创意来源。在文章的另一个部分我将解释在《军团要塞2》（游戏邦注：以下简称《TF2》）中的一些最 成功的关卡如何运用这种结构，并据此为《TF2》设计一个新关卡。

一部好莱坞电影的结构分解

以下是Michael Hauge对一部好莱坞电影《超级战舰》的结构描述和取自这部电影的截图。

图1、主角是一位冲动、散漫、好色的家伙

阶段1：开头

这是电影的开头部分，观众将看到主角（们），可能还有他的同伴。这是你要观众对主角（们）产生好印象的阶段。开头一般占电影总长度的10%。

图2、在主角被警察抓住后，主角的哥哥劝说他加入海军部队，希望他能好好生活

转折点1——机遇（10%）

在这里，主角面临新机遇或他无法抗拒/逃避的威胁（内在原因或外界压力）。这个机遇使主角脱离现状，踏上旅程，尽管按照逻辑，此时主角也可能回归现状，但我们知道这种事 是不会发生的。

图3、主角成了一名海军军官，并且恋爱了——仍然散漫，但过上了新生活

阶段2——新局面

在响应机遇或第一次威胁后，主角现在已经适应了新生活（如果他接受这种新生活的话）。此时，主角第一次意识到自己的敌人的存在，或者第一次学会如何使用枪。这是主角的 初期发现阶段，将引导他制定一个计划，以便达成机遇提出的目标，但在背景故事中，我们希望让观众知道冲突或矛盾以一个女人为中心。这个阶段占电影总长度的15%。

图4、当外星人入侵地球时，“泡妞”就成浮云了！

转折点2——计划改变（25%）

在这里，主角不得不改变他的计划。计划的改变导致主角进入新的人生阶段，他也正是在这个时候明确了他要达到的最后一个可见目标。主角可能已经找到他心目中的“女神”并 且现在想和她永远在一起，或者也许之前出现的人想保护他得杀掉的人。所谓可见目标就是“观众支持主角在电影结局中必须达到的目标”。

图5、人类舰队对战外星战舰

阶段3——发展

现在，主角处在最激烈的时刻，开始朝着可见目标前进。此时，主角开始从计划改变导致的措手不及状态中走出。在这个阶段，冲突矛盾仍然存在，但已经不能对主角构成威胁。 这部分占电影总长度的25%。

图6、主角的哥哥被外星人杀害了，他的船也毁了。没有回头路了，必须打败外星人（这是电影的可见目标）

转折点3——不归路（50%）

此时发生了一件事，或者一个情况导致主角无法回头继续执行他的计划。这个事件或时刻决定了主角从现在到电影结束的走向。桥被摧毁了，观众知道主角已经走上不归路。

图7、与外星人的“亲密接触”，但主角在与之近战中时时处于被动防守状态

阶段4——混乱

在这个阶段，斗争已经到了主角只能胜利不能失败的时刻。战斗成了一切。主角打得很辛苦，但就在主角似乎要得胜之际，事态又急转直下。这个阶段占电影总长度的25%。

图8、外星人将主角的船撕成碎片

转折点4——大挫折（75%）

这是导致主角似乎完全无法达成目标的大灾难。他被抓获，或者重要的战友或同伴离开他或死亡或出卖他。此时，前途似乎一片黑暗。

图9、幸存者们重新集合，为最后一战作准备

阶段5——最后一战

现在主角已经获得战胜困难所需的所有能量和资源。他的人生之旅已经接近终点了——此时的前进步伐飞快。这个终点就是一切。这个阶段应该占电影总长度的15%-24%。

图10、尽管上了年纪，主角的船仍然英勇无畏地战斗着，外星人的母舰被摧毁了，他们的阴谋被挫败了

转折点5——高潮（90%～99%)

这是主角面临最后的挑战的时候，决定了他自己的命运，并且可见目标已经达成了。在这里，主角战胜或杀死最终BOSS或解决了最后的罪恶之谜或舍身取义。这可能是观众之后记 忆最深刻的部分。

图11、主角得到勋章或主角得到女孩，主角受到舰队司令的赏识和尊重——剧终

阶段6——余波

在这里，观众平静下来审视电影高潮的结局。主角结婚了或者下葬了或者从此过上幸福的生活了！这个阶段只占电影总长度的极小一部分，一般就几分钟。

好莱坞电影结构在游戏关卡设计中的运用

根据上文的分析，我们可以绘制出下图。其中，纵轴表示《超级战舰》的主角面临的挑战难度，横轴表示时间长度：

这与多年前的许多游戏中的关卡非常相似：

现在我们来探讨一下如何将我们分析出来的这种成功的结构运用于关卡布置。

阶段1——开头

尽管许多设计师将这个阶段忽略不计，错误地认为电子游戏玩家希望直接跳到操作部分，但是，在关卡中加入一定长度的介绍有助于玩家确定自己的方向、了解角色、控制动作， 以及在战斗以前做出稳妥的决定。这是一个微妙的点，但如果你把玩家直接丢进战斗而不让玩家自己决定，玩家是不会感谢你的。现在，你可能会说，从玩家开始游戏的那一刻起 ，他们就已经做出迎接挑战的决定了，但不要忘了，允许玩家做选择始终是游戏的本质，玩家能做的有意义选择越多，关卡的效果就越好。

在关卡中添加开头是很容易的。平台游戏和射击类游戏的做法是在关卡的开始部分添加一段没有敌人的部分。《TF2》的做法是在大门开启以前，给玩家60秒的无敌时间和挑选级别 。而《辐射：新维加斯》则有一个完整的起始区域，没有敌人，只给玩家介绍背景故事。《魔兽世界》也类似，为每一个种族都提供一个安全区。设置“开头”区域有三个要点：

1、必须是安全的

2、必须告诉玩家游戏的环境和角色的背景故事

3、在游戏长度或关卡时间的前10%部分，玩家必须能够退出该区域

要点1和要点2是显而易见的，但我得解释一下要点3。以《辐射：新维加斯》为例。根据经验，我们推测游戏的关卡平均长度大约是1-2小时。这意味着玩家必须能够在游戏开始的 前6-12分钟内获得必要的资源。同样的，在《魔兽》中，玩家必须能够在他们呆在安全区的6-12分钟内获得有价值的技能。至于平台游戏，关卡可能只持续几分钟，所以第一个技 能或挑战应该在10秒内能使用。

当然，也有些游戏并不遵循这条原则，比如《BIT.TRIP Runner》就是一个典型。它有所失败是因为开始新关卡时非常容易让玩家感到压力和无助，需要几秒钟和几次成功跳跃才能 缓解那种消极情绪。并且，这款游戏不给玩家机会理解玩法元素及其作用，所以玩家第一次进入关卡时基本上坚持不到3秒钟就挂了。糟糕的《BIT.TRIP》！

转折点1——机遇（10%）

在这里，玩家遇到第一个挑战。这个挑战当然不是让玩家踏上拯救世界的旅程——那是之后的任务，而是让玩家脱离安全的环境，进入新领域或新情境，在那里玩家必须开始行动 ，并且积极地了解新选择。这也是大多数游戏没做好的地方。这些游戏急于向玩家介绍故事的意义和玩法挑战，过早地把拯救世界免于核武器危害的秘密任务交给主角。

跳过转折点直接把主角送上不归路，就使设计师损失了一个重要机会——揭露主角的内心世界和介绍他的战友（NPC），而这是塑造角色形象的关键。另外，这么做还导致玩家脱离 游戏剧情，没有充分的理由去关心游戏世界或NPC或其他等着他拯救的在线玩家。

创造转折点的方法很多，但共同点就是包含一个作用于玩家的事件，迫使玩家接受第一个挑战或呆在安全区。在《TF2》中，当大门第一次开启，玩家可以决定呆在基地的安全区或 等所有“无敌”状态都用完了以及第一次混战结束就出去。另一种方法是给玩家最好的武器或交通工具，让他们看到未来的自己是多么强大，根本没有失败的风险。当然，这种做 法有一定的危险，一旦玩家的美好幻想被一把生锈的小刀——游戏给的防身武器割裂，他们不免感到受挫。《Oblivion》就有一个漂亮的转折点，角色的身份从犯人变成保护国王 的战士，让玩家感到荣耀。

阶段2：新局面

在这个阶段，战士就开始战斗，间谍就开始暗算。注意，这时我们还没有让玩家开始为终极目标奋斗。如果终极目标是占领某个控制点，那么转折点是不会让玩家成功的。主角（ 在《TF2》中是一支突击小队）这时候应该还没有机会获胜。比如，让一类职业难以逃脱最初的基地，或者单纯地让所有人开始真正的任务以前都要经历一番挣扎—-他们仍然要杀 死敌人，但他们就是达不到控制点—-目前还达不到。

转折点2——计划改变（25%）

经过第一场战斗，或新生活的开端，主角开始走上目标的奋斗之旅。在《TF2》中，这意味着突击小队开始推车，或向控制点前进。我们有选择地削弱敌人（《TF2》中的守卫）的 实力，即让守卫离开防御位置很长时间才回来，或延迟他们的刷出时间，或取消一些有利的防御位置，所以玩家在这个过程就不那么困难了。在MMO中，玩家在这个阶段会得到一个 强大的技能，使他们更快地完成任务的第一部分。在平台游戏中，此时玩家会得知主角的目标就是拯救公主，或第一次遇见到这个性感女郞。

阶段3——发展

主角在这个阶段过得比较轻松。游戏场所有利于主角，可以也应该有利于主角，甚至在玩家对抗玩家的游戏中也一样。在《TF2》中，突击小队在关卡的这个部分占据了大多数有利 位置。这可能是打开了第一个控制点的通道（后门），或开辟了一条导弹车能通过的、易于防守的道路。这个阶段应该占据游戏总长度或游戏持续时间的25%，这时的主角形象应该 是很高大的。

转折点3——不归路（50%）

与体育运动不同，好莱坞电影中的一半时间不是休息和放松——在这个时候会发生一件大事，足以摧毁主角回归原来的生活或甚至新生活的任何机会。也正是在这个时候，主角下 定决心他必须勇往直前了。

在关卡设计中，这意味着：

对于平台游戏：现在主角不动用新学会的双跳技能或刚得到的火箭就不能通过这个关卡；不使用必杀技就杀不了太多敌人。如果主角失败了或速度放缓了，公主就要被杀掉了—— 应该保证玩家知道这一点！

对于MMO/RPG：这时游戏世界将响应主角的行动而发生改变。比如，一条特殊的巨龙飞升而起，玩家要在它摧毁自己的故乡以前打败它。

对于多人射击游戏如《TF2》或《战地3》：这是进攻小队取得登录/刷出位置的控制权的时候，这个位置太好了，所以原来的基地被废弃了，或可能甚至是被关闭了。

阶段4——混乱

在阶段3，主角已经占尽好处。现在该是局势急转直下的时候了，此时主角与敌人势均力敌。这意味着双方与赛点的距离是相同的。例如，主角的小宇宙终于爆发了，因为敌人NPC 也到达这个水平了。

我们还可以人为地引入额外的挑战，如在地图上或剧情中增加额外的冲突—-可能主角得牺牲一名战友才能渡过难关，或者设置一个陷阱让主角的HP只剩一点点。出卖和时限也是常 用的故事元素。这是《TF2》关卡的一部分，敌人大开杀戒，耗竭了主角的瞬间传送精力、破坏了主角的防御阵形，这就导致了接下来的转折点。

转折点4——大挫折（75%）

这是主角有史以来最黑暗的一段时期。我们可以在这里对玩法/关卡元素稍作调整，不过这需要一定的程序工作才能生效。经过前一个阶段的所有混乱，我们希望主角处于非常脆弱 的状态，并且这种状态至少要持续一小段时间。以下方式可以达到这个目的：

对于RPG：最终BOSS出现，玩家进攻他时，他会对玩家施加许多负状态，直到BOSS退出战场。

对于平台游戏：玩家的生命药水/弹药会大大减少。现在主角得开始数自己的子弹和命值剩多少了。

对于策略游戏：玩家被敌人三面包围，或甚至更糟糕，战友死在前一个阶段后，主角现在的防御力减弱，得孤身承受严峻的考验。我们希望主角以一对多，孤身奋战到最后。

对于多人游戏：敌人所在地有强大的后卫或狙击手。这两道障碍大大打击了主角的士气，使玩家清楚地感觉到什么叫无法克服的困境。但是，我们应该保证这两队敌人是有办法打 败的。不要把主角置身于一个敌人可以非常容易反复攻击他的地方，否则就会在玩家真正达成目标以前就引发游戏高潮。

为了让高潮的效果达到最佳，我们必须让所有元素（游戏邦注：逼近目标、最后一战、大量冲突、实力相当的战斗）在同一时间汇合。

阶段5——最后一战

在阶段3，主角占尽所有好处；在阶段4，双方实力持平。现在轮到主角找敌人（在《TF2》中是守卫）算帐的时候了。此时敌人的狙击点方位好，隐蔽性强。在《TF2》中，因为目 的地更接近守卫的基地，所以敌人其实是占了上风。在其他游戏中，这时玩家会频繁地切换武器，因为弹药消耗得飞快；玩家还要使用大量药水，但几乎没有效果。最后一战是一场激烈的占山为王的战役（敌人所处的位置比玩家更高一些，有地势上的优势，所以称最后一战可以形象地比喻为“占山为王”）。

在这个阶段，主角必须明确目标（比如，最后一个控制点或《TF2》中的推车地图的最后个路径点）。他必须能够很快达到冲突的焦点（在《战地》中，在最后一个控制点以前必须 有各种速度快的交通工具），并且最后一战的战场必须非常集中。不要把最后一战安排在宽广开阔的区域或战壕。要让双方直接对抗。不要忘了给敌人大量优势，使他能够重创主 角。如果你的游戏机制允许时间限制，那就在这个阶段的末期用上吧。在这个关卡里，这是设计师可以尽情“虐”玩家的唯一环节；只要玩家最终能够战胜敌人，他们就不会有太 多抱怨（好吧，他们还是会报怨的，不过他们会体会到设计的“用心良苦”的。）

我已经指出一些可用于创造最后一击的元素，那么我们如何在不同的游戏类型中运用呢？

对于策略游戏：在主角独自战胜挫折以后，现在又团结到一切可以团结的力量了；而敌人的势力也已经遍布全球了。最后一战发生在一个沙漏关卡，一波又一波的敌人在集中区域 里不断侵蚀玩家一方的防御力量。随着高潮逼近，敌群的规模越来越大，玩家一方也随之加快杀敌速度。玩家在战斗的某一瞬间会觉得妥善管理自己的单位非常困难。如果玩家再 不摧毁敌人的核工厂，时间一到，核武器就要生产出来了。敌人越来越多，甚至出现了以前从来没见过的敌人类型。

对于平台游戏：玩家边跑，平台边下落……所以玩家必须快速向前跑，但敌人又很强悍……有时候玩家甚至会觉得与其冲上去杀掉敌人，不如小心地躲开敌人的子弹。只有一条行 得通的路，并且玩家也没空思考是否还有其他路。这个阶段没有谜题，只有激烈的战斗和向前冲。也许游戏世界就在你身后迅速崩塌，也许你会听到主角的“梦中情人”正在尖叫 ，因为她就要被大BOSS残害了。

对于RPG：玩家已经发现了最终BOSS所在的地下城，但他的小兵们也不好对付。一波接一波的敌人从四面逼近，且越来越难对付，玩家没有时间探索，甚至顾不上开宝箱。敌人刷新 得非常快，玩家没办法原路返回或就地休息。

接着是最彪悍的BOSS出场了，玩家只有打败它才能抵达游戏的目的地。

对于多人射击游戏：这是夺取最后一个控制点或占领敌人基地的战役。允许玩家就近刷出或很快抵达。允许玩家使用所有极品武器，但给敌人有利的地理位置（比如，让敌人的位 置更高，或迫使玩家先通过一个沙漏关卡——你当然不能只安排一条路，但你可以安排一条看起比较简单的路和几条非常危险的路）。当然，你必须允许玩家在这里暂时保存（如 果游戏机制或重刷机制允许的话），让敌人进入各种防御塔，等等。

转折点5——高潮（90%～99%）

高潮是主角终于跨过最后一道坎，达到终极目标的时候。在游戏中，玩家要战胜最终BOSS，或占领敌人基地，或消灭最后一个敌人。制造高潮的要点如下：

1、在高潮逼近时不要人为地减少紧张感。否则，你就犯了一个愚蠢的错误，无异于直接冲玩家喊“哈哈，你终于来了！”，相反地，你要让玩家的紧张感在这最后一战中自然而然 地加剧。

2、为了战胜最后一点的敌人，玩家应该用上大量（即使不是全部）之前学习到的技能/知识。这个时候不要引入新机制——而是使用玩家已经见识过的大部分机制。例如，如果游 戏的特点是持续运动和躲避敌人的攻击，那就不要让玩家躲在固定的炮塔里，射击大块头的终极BOSS！

3、必须完结主角的任务。无论如何，高潮之后不应该有其他挑战。高潮过后意味着一切都完结了！不应该让玩家再收拾烂摊子。如果BOSS在战斗中释放小啰罗，只要BOSS一死，这 些家伙就应该爆掉。不要让玩家来收拾它们，否则会干扰玩家体验成就感。要让玩家充分地享受成就感，然后趁热给他们奖励！

至于关卡设计，高潮是最后一战的自然延伸，应该发生在敌人基地的门口，或最终BOSS老巢的入口。一旦达到高潮，不要突然否定玩家之前面对的所有挑战；最后的风暴中没有平 静的时候。

如果是格斗游戏，最后高潮发生的地方应该是一个中央区域，四周有不同的入口，无论如何都应该让玩家选择把战斗的地点定在这个中央区域。要关闭所有可能干扰最后一战的后 门，不要让敌人用隐蔽的手段偷袭玩家。另外，在这个阶段要避免使用任何复杂或智商高的小敌人（除了最终BOSS），否则会拖延高潮的来临，这是我们不希望看到的结果。

如果是益智或冒险游戏，高潮发生的地方应该是玩家修复巨大的机械装置、不让它产生毁灭世界的力量的地方。

如果是MMORPG，这个地方应该是解决最终BOSS的战场，或收拾最终BOSS的地下城。

无论是在什么类型的游戏中，必须通过直观的画面告诉玩家他们已经完成关卡，可以开始最后一战了（比如，出现一个四周有入口但没有出口的圆形区域）；必须保证最终BOSS/挑 战能考验玩家的多方面能力（如速度、合作、管理、装备、武器、策略等）。

阶段6——余波

经过最后一战和高潮，终极目标达成了（但愿是以明确的方式），这时候该让主角休息一下，享受奖励了。这个阶段的要点如下：

1、保证玩家清楚自己获胜了。高潮过后，敌人不应该再朝玩家开枪，玩家不应该再遇到任何挑战。

2、玩家应该有时间和空间享受他的奖励。在《TF2》中，成功的玩家会找出并批判畏缩的敌人。在RPG中，玩家在BOSS的房间里找到所有珍宝。在MMORPG中，这是分配奖品的时候。 许多游戏只是宣布玩家获胜了，然后就开始加载关卡。有时候玩家甚至没有足够的时间查看排行榜：这是糟糕的设计，削弱了玩家的成就感。

3、避免半完成的结局。让主角最终击败敌人，或抱得美人归，或让主角的心上人死掉以悲剧收尾（不要让她受伤或离开主角）。不要让敌人逃走，至少得把他永远关在地牢里或封 印在盒子里。玩家不喜欢看到自己拼上老命之后还是没有让敌人遭到报应。如果有续集，那就给点暗示，但还是要让玩家感到圆满结束了。

关于余波，没有太多关卡设计的技巧，除了：

1、不要跳过这个环节，将玩家急匆匆地送进下一个冒险中。

2、给予玩家充分的时间和空间享受丰厚的奖励。赞扬玩家的卓越表现。如果玩家拯救了公主，那就让公主给他一个爱的吻或两人步入婚姻的殿堂；如果玩家摧毁敌人的基地，那就 要把轰炸掉的建筑和掩埋敌人的细节刻画得巨细无比。

3、如果这是一个小故事（如MMORPG中的一个地下城），不要让玩家带着成功走出地下城，而是要把他们传送出去。给他们一点发光的特效，让他们觉得自己几乎成神了。

在本文的下一个部分，我将根据好莱坞电影的配方设计一个《TF2》的推车地图，你可以将它与当下流行的地图作比较。不过，我建议你在阅读设计的细节以前先玩一下那些地图。 我希望读者们还能想出如何将其他好莱坞电影的结构运用于不同类型的游戏。如果你是设计师，我希望你在设计关卡时能有意识地遵循这个或类似的设计结构。

《TF2》的玩家职业

在开始设计地图前，我们需要清楚设计对象，也就是《TF2》中的玩家类别。每种类别都有其优势与劣势，同时他们还必须同时扮演好攻击者与防御者的角色。即使玩家不得已改变 类别，他们也必然拥有自己最喜欢且表现最出色的类别，而如果我们所设计的地图能够在各种不同阶段帮助所有类别的玩家，它必然会大受欢迎。

以下是《TF2》中的一些玩家类别，以及这些类别对我们关卡设计的影响：

喷火兵：擅于近距离埋伏敌人，在狭窄的隧道以及封闭和开放领域的转化过程中找到/杀死间谍。但如果出现在开放领域时他们便很容易被杀死。（环境=狭窄的走廊/隧道）

士兵：擅于攻击上方的目标，特别是那些难以触及的目标。在中距离进攻（即位于开放领域并面对着敌人的退出点）时，他们总能发挥出最强大的攻击力。但是在近距离范围或远 距离范围（游戏邦注：即在一个没有任何障碍的开放领域与敌人进行一对一较量时）时，他们的攻击力就会变得较弱。当医师隐藏在士兵周围时将对敌人造成致命的伤害。（环境= 面对敌人的退出点的开放领域，或者是在高地）

医师/保镖：擅于通过隐藏而近距离杀死敌人，同时也能够治疗保镖。是狙击兵和火箭的主要目标，并且因为速度较慢所以很难躲避各种攻击。因为总能够吸引间谍的注意，所以在 一些潜行区域非常不利。而比起攻击，保镖更擅于防守（因为移动性较不足）。（环境=医师的保护区靠近敌人所在领域）

侦查员：当他们在空中巡视敌人时擅于采取侧面攻击和快速捕获方式——这也能够帮助他们快速攻击与撤退。同时侦查员还擅于在全方位领域行动，因为在此他们总是能够快速追 上敌人。但如果他们必须在普通路线上执行任务，或被敌人保镖和喷火兵所包围时，其优势便不复存在。（环境：能够在各种不同的高度平台上自由行动）

间谍：通常都因此在开放领域的角落或间隙中。擅于深入敌后，或面对一个单独的炮塔。但是如果面前出现2个以上的炮塔，或者不存在隐蔽处的开放领域，他们也就没辙了。（环 境：拥有许多可躲藏空间的开放领域）

爆破兵：擅于在出口/入口处设置陷阱杀死单位。当他们成功躲避敌人并获得分数后，陷阱便能派上用场。除此之外还擅于将手榴弹投进窗户里或防御处的角落，从而成功防御敌人 的进攻。但是在开放领域，爆破兵便不是狙击兵的对手，并不能像在近距离进攻，或像侦查员那样击退单位。

狙击兵：总是隐藏在窗户或障碍后面而面向更广泛领域或远处的敌人出口。但是狙击兵不善于近距离战斗。（环境：带有窗户的房子，并且能够看到开放领域）

技师/哨兵：为了躲避手榴弹而隐藏在道路的90度角方向中。但是如果在没有弯道的开放领域或狭窄的隧道内，他们的行踪便会被藏在房间里的间谍所捕获。（环境：可防御的90度 角弯道内）

现在我们便清楚每种类型的角色所适合的环境。我们同样也会使用这些分类去增强或削弱攻击者或防御者的位置（即当我们想要优化叙述层面时）。

综述

我们的叙述将被用于单一的《TF2》关卡vs.包含相关关卡的地图（就像在最初的“淘金热”地图那样能让玩家循环通过）。每个转折点都将标记一个“检查点”。每个检查点将在 旅程初始时告诉他们新阶段的开始，因为我们的叙述转折点是等间隔的，所以很容易将其均衡地用于检查点中。除此之外，阶段一（背景）和阶段六（结果）将分别发生在友好的 一方（攻击者）和敌对一方（防御者）基础上，并且游戏规则也明确定义了这一点，所以我们只要遵循一些简单的实践便可，而无需花太多时间为它们设计关卡。以下我将分别描 述各个叙述阶段。

阶段1：背景

这时候攻击者还未开始战斗。他们能够选择类别，加载弹药，并了解场地等等，就好像英雄的日常生活。唯一需要记住的规则便是为攻击者提供多个出口，帮助不同类别的攻击者 进行快速分组。就像在我们的例子中，攻击者便拥有3个出口。主要出口（B）便很宽广，不存在防御物——对于驾驭重型车辆的攻击者来说这也是最近的出口。而出口（A）设有突 出物能够掩护攻击者顺利离开。出口（C）是一个受保护的出口，远离可能出现在出口（A）后面的哨兵。而（D）出口将引导着攻击者前往瞭望塔，让他们能够透过窗户观察狙击手 的位置。但是当（D）出口的大门敞开时，敌方士兵将很容易进入其中。

在倒计时后，当大门敞开时转折点便会出现，就好似英雄的生活突然发生改变，而战斗也紧接着爆发了。

阶段2：新形势

当玩家进入一个新形势时，我们想要创造敌人与环境的互动。这一阶段将为之后的几幕场景确定基调。为了让攻击者能在这一领域中探索，我们需要创造一些隐蔽处让敌人能够躲 藏——但是我们不能让敌人完全控制整片领域。所以我们最终决定让敌人从（E）点前进到（H）点，因为这是最佳开火和伏击位置。这些点是专门用于引诱敌人，并且这里已经埋 伏了哨兵，但是攻击者也很容易征服这些敌人——因为它们刚好是面向于攻击者的射击线上。就像我们所看到的，攻击者可以从（A）点看到所有敌人的设置点。

因为新形势是很好理解且很容易克服的挑战，因此我们拥有一个直线领域，并且攻击者可以在此轻松穿越至第一个检查点（=转折点），这便是所谓的“计划变更”。

“计划变更”转折点便是英雄做出选择或受驱动而转向可行目标的时刻。因此我们可以在此做出首个关卡决策，所以现在形势将从有趣的阶段2转向充满挑战且需要做出艰难决策的 阶段3。

阶段3：前进

这一阶段是关于起起落落。我们的英雄遭遇了挑战，他们正面临着最激烈的时刻。在面对新形势的冲击后，他们为自己的未来制定了计划，并开始朝着这一计划前进。为了推动玩 家去制定计划，我们需要提供给他们一些重要的选择。

以下是我们的做法：

*路径的选择：攻击者将选择是否待在主线上，清除建筑（T1）或移到建筑（T2）。如果他们在（T2）便能够选择是否离开并进入隧道（B）或直接离开凸起的地道而转向（T2）的 左边位置上。

*职业的选择：该领域是为了转折点（游戏邦注：即标志着英雄前进道路上的起起落落），首次埋伏点（T1，T2以及角落）以及为敌人而设置的防御点所设计的。攻击者在此遇到他 们的首次挑战，并且如果他们是狙击手或保镖，便需要在此转换职业，因为他们的“视距”优势已不存在了。

我让敌人能够穿越隧道（B）快速到达冲突点（PoC），并在此铲平团队。这一设置能够让攻击团队意识到是时候制定防御计划了。

阶段3以“只能进不能退”的（A）点结束，我们希望能够让英雄（攻击者）感受到他们已经离开基地并将进入一个全新背景，他们需要在此做出艰难的决策。在战争电影中，英雄 将会与敌人同归于尽。而在好莱坞电影模式中，没有回头路便意味着必须做出两个完全不同的决定（游戏邦注：如射击罪犯或拨打911，迎面扑向敌人或逃走，对爱人撒谎或保持忠 诚）。为了创造这种差别，我将发生地点从一栋建筑转向阶段2中发生战斗的建筑，再转向另一个环境，让玩家可以选择是穿越隧道（B）而攻击敌人还是通过斜坡（A）而冲向狙击 兵。每个玩家都必须在此做出选择，并且他们的选择都具有很大区别，如作为待在广泛领域的英雄vs.待在黑暗隧道中的阴谋者。

阶段4：复杂化

除了改变发生地点，无掩蔽的斜坡和领域将会让攻击者有种“哦，天哪！”的感觉。阶段4将突出孤注一掷的战斗类型。

如果玩家选择斜坡，他们的行踪将完全暴露在狙击兵面前。如果他设法到达隧道（E）下方，他将遭遇敌人的埋伏攻击，在此期间敌人将从（G）下方跳出，狙击兵也将通过窗户去 射击攻击者的同伴。

就像你所看到的，狙击兵将瞄准斜坡（A）与这条路线沿途的对象。在第一次测试中，我发现攻击者很难在此进行防御，所以我决定添加障碍物让他们能够在此隐藏。线圈也意味着 能够让玩家产生“哦，天哪”的感觉的区域。

另一方面，如果攻击者选择隧道，即从（A）到（B），他们必须克服这里存在的一大劣势，即一出去就会遇上敌人的枪口，并且可防御的位置靠近防御者的基地。这两种情况都创 造出了“机不可失”的形势。

这一幕结束于转折点4，即“主要的退步”。这一幕的标志性路径便是向上引导的斜坡，即敌人位于更高的位置，能够从侧面进攻英雄。对于那些能够离开隧道并朝着敌人基地前进 的人来说，他们前方的建筑物便是最难克服的挑战。就像好莱坞电影所做的那样，我也需要在此添加一些希望，这也是我为何会将狙击兵地道设置在开放领域前面的主要原因。

阶段5：最后出击

最能代表最后出击的便是桥，因此我便在这一阶段设置了一座桥。我同样也喜欢多层次的战斗战术，让两边的玩家能够通向水里，桥上，更高的建筑以及阳台。在这一幕，敌人非 常接近于自己的基地，并且我唯一能够带给攻击者宽慰的便是桥上的防御物（B）与（C），实际上他们已经穿越隧道，并得到桥后面的高塔掩护。而水能够缓解那些被喷火兵烧杀 的角色的伤痛，我们同样也需要设置斜坡让攻击者能够离开桥而获得第二次机会。

在下图我们可以看到桥的起点（A）是位于敌人基地的视线内；而隧道出口（B）则是源自狙击兵的地道，如此便能让攻击者在此对那些离开基地的敌人发起攻击；斜坡（C）将连接 着隧道与高塔，提供给攻击者掩蔽物，水（D）是在桥下。

如果主要攻击者决定穿越隧道而发出最后一击（能让他们快速进入最后的PoC），他们就需要控制（B），（C）和（D）点，并让驱车的伙伴能够爬上桥。

这一阶段是在转折点5“高潮”结束，即靠近我们叙述的结尾。这时候敌人拥有所有优势，而攻击者将做出各种牺牲去击退敌人。而当攻击者顺利过桥后，我们便来到了阶段6。

阶段6：结果

在桥的中间点，攻击者需要一些掩护，并且他们离最后的检查点只有几步之遥了。我尽量确保这一距离较短，从而不会夺去他们在中间点战斗的光彩。如果攻击者能够成功走到最 后检查点，他们便能够炸毁后退的敌人并获得最后的胜利。

最后我还想提醒你们的是，与攻击者基地一样，防御者的基地也需要多重出口，而因为防御者基地非常靠近PoC，所以我让攻击者能够在桥的中间点（B）看到领域（D）和（C）， 并通过主要保护出口（A）快速进入这两个领域。

结论

正如你们所看到的，我便是通过使用容易理解的象征物（游戏邦注：弯曲的路径，暴露的领域，上下斜坡，桥，秘密隧道等），控制攻击者团队的挑战/缓解关卡，在特定点上提供 各种选择类型，并控制攻击者经历每个关卡与到达转折点的时间而呈现出了好莱坞式电影所具备的6个阶段叙述过程。

篇目3，从影视和小说的角度比照游戏的故事设定

在本文中，我们将讨论为什么讲故事需要围绕着媒体的互动属性。让我们来学习如何识别优秀的游戏叙述，并理解互动性故事叙述的重要性（而不是像电影中那样的故事叙述）。

想象有一天你突然产生了一个灵感：脑子里突然飘过一个故事，毫无疑问这是人类能够想到的最棒的故事。它具有一个优秀故事的所有元素：一个引人入胜的情节，细致入微的角色以及能够唤起人们回忆的背景设置。

你将如何写一本书去传达这个故事？

首先，让我们着眼于文学媒体是如何运行的。作者写下一些单词去传达想法，并基于某种方式去排列他们而将读者带进故事的世界中。作者会使用描述性语言去唤起读者的感官反应；他们会组织对话去显露个性；他们会将单词组成句子，段落和章节，并掌握适当的节奏。

现在，让我们假设你正在写自己的书，同时忽视了所有的这些指导方针。你使用最普通的描述，匮乏的词汇，并基于一种笨拙的方式去揭示你的角色。这本书的摘录如下：

“这是一个漆黑的暴风雨夜。Bob是一个坏人。他对好人John说道：‘我讨厌你并想要杀了你。’”

你将继续基于这种可怕的风格创造出整本书，你仍会基于某种方式去传达自己脑子里装着一个惊人故事的苍白事实。

阅读这本书的人会嘲笑你。尽管这可能包含一个惊人故事的轮廓，但是它却不能有效地将其转换成文字—-可以说你并未能有效地利用表达媒体（文学）。故事和故事叙述并不相同；你只是在传达你的故事的事实，而不是其吸引人的元素。

让我们列举一个相反的例子，你正在写一本非常棒的书，一直都在创造非常新颖的内容。做得好！而现在你将面临新的任务：你必须以电影的形式去创造你那优秀的故事。

现在，让我们着眼于电影这一媒体。文学是随着时间的发展使用文字去传达理念，而电影则是依赖于添加一种二维的表达方式：感觉输入。

电影的视听体验对于艺术表现形式来说是一种全新可能性领域。书本中的整页描述性语言可以只通过电影中的一个简短影像便清楚地呈现出来。角色间的对话也可以因为彼此的肢体语言，语调以及电影艺术而得到强化。

所以如果要创造你自己的电影，你会怎么做？以下是其中的一种方法：将你那惊人的书籍版本的故事随便递给一个人看，并以电影的形式拍出他们大声朗读的场景。也许你也会设置一些吸引人的风景。这算是电影吧？随着时间的发展它也会通过音频和视觉效果去呈现理念。

尽管始终都包含最新颖的叙述方式，电影却仍是一个失败品。它并未有效地利用表达媒体—-未基于有效的方式使用视觉效果和音频效果去赋予故事生命力。人们会嘲笑它只是尝试着通过彻底忽视电影的整体感官维度去传达一个故事。如果你只是观看一部有个人大声阅读书籍的电影，你还不如自己去看书。

而吸引人的全景画面又怎样呢？它们非常棒，但如果你不能将叙述元素与电影元素统一在一起，所有的这一切只会分散观众的注意力。视觉效果和音频效果是讲述故事的主要工具；它们不能只是被当成媒体的工件。全景画面的电影质量水平需要渗透到整体的故事叙述中；你不能只是将故事和视频分割开来。这就像是尝试着去拯救我们早前所编写的糟糕的书籍一样。你不能只是只是将华丽的电影艺术钉在一本书上并将其称为是电影改编的产物。

当然，这都是再明显不过的内容。让我们假设其实你的电影非常棒。基于该成就，你拥有一个最终的任务：使用一款电子游戏去传达你那惊人的故事。

我们将电影称为一种二维文学方式，第二轴也就是一种感官输入。而电子游戏则引进了第三维：互动性。

在书籍中，深度是源自你所阅读的文字；在电影中，额外的细微差别是源自听到并看到一个场景。而在游戏中，你可以通过进入该场景而发现更有深度的内容。基于互动性，你将能够直接获得故事体验。当你作为游戏主角时，你便有机会去表现出他们的动机和情感。你会通过自己的发现听到并看到某些事，而不是源自摄像师的镜头引导。可以说电子游戏是基于体验去传达叙述体验的深度，而电影则是通过视觉进行传达。

所以为了让你的故事能够适应游戏，你需要做：采用你的故事的电影版本，将其分割成独立的场景，创造一个能够回放片段的计算机程序。你将编写一些有趣的游戏玩法片段，即与故事的一些不是特别重要的部分相关，然后将其设置在电影场景之间。

尽管拥有最棒的故事，最棒的文字内容，最棒的电影式表达方法，游戏却再次不能有效地利用表达媒体—-它并不能将互动性整合到叙述中。你设置的有趣游戏玩法部分又怎样？这就像是将莎士比亚的内容添加到你那糟糕的书籍中，将全景画面添加到你那糟糕的电影中一样，这些游戏玩法并不能推动叙述的发展。你所做的只是将游戏整合到其故事部分和游戏玩法部分。不管游戏玩法部分多有趣，不管故事部分多出色，如果这两部分存在最小的重叠，你便不能说故事成功地通过游戏媒体进行了传达。你所做的一切只是将游戏玩法钉在电影中。

现在，玩这款游戏的人们将会嘲笑它所呈现的叙述多糟糕吧？其实他们并没有这么做。

你也许会惊讶地发现几乎所有基于这种方法呈现叙述的高预算游戏都伴随着最小的重叠内容。

故事vs.故事叙述

等一分钟：实际上这一方法并不是一种糟糕的故事叙述方法。我的意思是，人们喜欢这些游戏不是吗？它们卖的不错，人们也总是在谈论它们的故事有多棒。

是的，我要说的是它具有糟糕的故事叙述，而不是游戏本身多糟糕，或者它们的故事多糟糕。叙述并不是游戏中的一个重要组件，就像它经常会出现在电影或文学中。互动性是游戏的典型功能—-的确，擅长转游戏玩法的游戏经常都是最出色的游戏。然而虽然有许多游戏具有很强的叙述野心，但是它们却是通过将不匹配的电影控制与互动性随便组合在一起去传达故事。

不管你的故事多棒其实一点也不重要。首先真正重要的是你的故事叙述有多出色，这主要是通过你传达故事的媒体形式进行定义，不管是通过书籍，电影还是游戏。上述提到的带有强大叙述野心的游戏虽然拥有很棒的故事，但是它们的故事叙述却非常糟糕。

所以如何才能做到有效的故事叙述呢，并且我们该如何识别糟糕的故事叙述？

关于游戏评论的注释

在我们回答这些问题前，让我们先思考一些问题：这是否全是主观的看法？如果所有人都喜欢它，那又有什么大不了呢？

游戏故事叙述的质量是否是主观的？只有部分是这样。专注于故事的电子游戏与任何创造性表达形式一样，也是一种交流行为。游戏设计师的目标是传达一种体验和主题给玩家。而主观的元素则是预想体验和主题的价值。

然而，非主观元素则是这些理念交流的实效性。大多数关于游戏故事的评论都是在讨论主观的主题，并将主题的清晰性与呈现认为是理所当然的事。这就像是评论家在讨论我们很早之前所创造的一部恐怖电影，并只因为叙述故事内容而给予其积极的评价，忽视了故事其实是以一种糟糕的方式进行呈现的事实。

但人们是喜欢这些游戏的；他们获得了乐趣并喜欢故事。当然我并不是想削减它们的积极体验。相反地，我希望呈现更多出色的体验。我们拥有较低的标准，主要是因为找不到多少真正突出的例子。这主要是基于受欢迎的游戏评论，实际上这只是游戏产业的市场营销的延伸，即确保探索最容易被消化的游戏理念的共生循环。

我们想要的是带有一些互动性的电影，即存在一些完全未被探索过的可能性宇宙。一旦你在思考从理论上来说足够完美的游戏叙述是怎样的时候，你便会意识到我们现在所拥有的还远远不够。我们已经致力于非常接近于这种理想状态的文学和电影，但是我们却还不清楚游戏中的所谓理想状态是怎样的。

本文的目标便是呈现游戏仅仅只是明确了如何呈现一个主题，而我们其实应该先关注于如何是当地使用媒体作为一种表达工具，然后才开始担心呈现内容。

如何衡量艺术价值

在我们谈论故事叙述之前，让我们先谈谈如何识别一款游戏中的突出价值。艺术性或优秀设计的一个强大的指示器是独立元素如何有效地相互协作去传达一个主题。在一部优秀的电影中，所有的内容都应该致力于强化主题理念，不管是颜色还是摄像机角度，还是音乐，表演和化妆等等。如果这些元素中的一个与主题相矛盾，它便会特别醒目并贬低信息的传达能力，或者至少会错失突出信息的机会。

例如在《黑客帝国》中，颜色便用于突出与现实相对立的理念。所有的这些场景是发生在一个模拟矩阵世界中，即带有绿色的道具，衣柜，和灯光，同时所有的场景都是发生在一个带有蓝色色调的寒冷且严酷的现实世界中。这一视觉提示能够帮助观众从潜意识中区分这两个对立世界。这是强化游戏主题的一种有效方式。

如果只是任意地选择调色板，那么相对立的现实这一主题将会被削弱，从而变得不再那么明朗。一个优秀的电影摄影技师将会为了强化理念的优势而找到并使用这些机遇。同样地，在游戏故事叙述中，我们也会发现机遇去强化带有像互动和决策制定等游戏元素的故事信息。如果你在设计这些元素的同时忽视了主题，你便只能呈现出一个较糟糕的故事叙述体验。这是关于我们早前揭露的内容的重述，即我们必须利用媒体的特性才能有效地在媒体中传达一个故事。

基于这样的态度的创造性作品将更突出且相一致，因为它努力传达了许多带有少数组件的相关理念。而较不协调的游戏则会让人觉得不够集中，太过笨拙且自相矛盾。如果你想要识别出糟糕的故事叙述，这便是你需要寻找的属性，即我们可以通过玩游戏并关注于脑子里是否充斥着这种不一致性将其检测出来。

三种类型的失调

认知失调—-这是一种内部的心理冲突，通常都很细微。当你的脑袋里同时拥有两个冲突的理念时，这些情况便会出现。当我们在玩这类游戏时会感受到怎样的失调呢？以下是我所明确的3种类型。

相矛盾的体验

第一种也是最显著的一种便是ludonarrative失调（游戏邦注：ludonarrative是由原LucasArts创意总监Clint Hocking提出，这是一个合成词，由ludology和narrative两个单词组成，意指游戏故事与玩法之间的冲突）。这意味着什么？ludonarrative失调是发生在你看到英雄正哀悼着与家人的疏远，而下一刻，你却驾车碾过100个人。Ludonarrative失调是发生在一个勇士的同盟独自说着自己多狡猾多可怕，但在下一刻他却愚蠢地绕着圈子旋转，烦人地阻挡着你的前进道路，然后中弹死掉。即当故事所传达的与玩家所做的或体验不相符时便会产生这种情况。

这种类型的失调经常发生在你分离了叙述与游戏玩法时，因为叙述在某一时刻是由作者所决定的，接下来才是玩家。这让我们很难正视故事在说些什么，因为它与我们所体验的内容相矛盾了。

“我是谁？”

下一种失调便是身份失调。为了解释这点，让我们先回到将文学，电影和游戏作为一种维度的类比。着眼于这三个内容的另外一种方法便是通过它们之间越来越接近的视角。想想书籍：许多文学内容可以被描述成第三人称故事叙述：它将通过第三人称（也就是作者）的视角以口头叙述的方式向你传达某些事件，你将按照自己的方式去理解这些内容。

另一方面，电影基于第二称的故事叙述方式：你将看到事件在你的眼前展开，直接看到事情的发展。最后，电子游戏是基于一种第一人称故事叙述方式：你是住在故事中的演员。比起只是听着故事的发展或看着发生了什么，你将直接体验它！

然而，基于糟糕的游戏故事叙述，我们经常在身份上出现巨大的失调。在某一时刻，你是主角，正在探索世界并与敌人打斗。而在下一时刻，你将跳离原来的身体并看着角色不受你的控制与别人进行互动，独自行走并交谈。

在这种情况下你已经从第一人称转变成第二人称了。你到底是谁呢？你是演员还是观众？游戏是否应该与你的视角相协调。如果你一直有游戏不信任你的感觉，这将会大大削弱你的行动的重要性。

协作的一个基本原则便是去呈现，而不是讲述。如果你想要传达角色很敏捷的信息，不要明确地说“Bob非常敏捷”，而是应该将其呈现出来：“Bob躲避了掉落的巨石。”而在游戏中，你应该去落实行动，而不只是呈现。不要只是呈现你的角色躲避掉落的巨石的画面，应该去落实它：让玩家亲自去躲避巨石。如此玩家自己便能够亲自感受到这种敏捷，而不是他的角色。这种将角色的开发转变成个人开发便是在游戏中创造沉浸式故事叙述的重要方法。

过场动画的问题

最后的一种失调是奇怪的模式转变，即发生在每次游戏尝试着在“叙述模式”与“游戏模式”间转变时。这一分钟你正在玩游戏，而下一分钟你则在看电影。这将打破沉浸感，不断地提醒玩家你正在消耗一件媒体。不止如此，这也会剥夺玩家在游戏过程中所建立起来的紧张感和其它情感。

想想你正在玩一款让人紧张的游戏，在此你将为了活命而战斗。你处在一个非常艰难的部分：你需要一直保持着警觉并留心于自己的每一步前进，确保你不会犯任何错误。你所拥有的压力和紧张感都很真实：这是一种切实的压力，而不只是因为你的角色处在一个子弹满天飞，僵尸乱窜的情境中，还因为你自己也面对着这种挑战，即尝试着去精通游戏玩法并走出这一艰难的情境。这部分便是一种优秀的故事叙述：玩家所感受到的情感与他们所面对的主题情境是相匹配的。

当你正在玩这部分游戏时，突然地，画面将被拉远，现在你所面对的将是过场动画。突然间，你的所有紧张感都消失了。你放下了控制器并放松下来，只是看着屏幕。尽管现在屏幕上的角色忙于一些更紧张的情境，从直升机上跳落等等，作为玩家的你却不再那么在乎这一切了。在内心深处，你知道这只是一种“电影模式”：现在所发生的一切就只是这么发生着；这都只是“故事的一部分”。

你之前在游戏模式中所犯的任何问题都很重要：它们会给你带来现实世界的压力。但现在，因为你不再进行控制，所以你看到角色在电影模式中所犯的任何问题都只是“计划中的一部分。”你不再属于游戏世界。你会发现当转变到这一模式时，自己会大大放松下来。现在游戏中最紧张的部分对于你来说也只是放松肌肉并深深地吸口气。游戏以变得更加“电影化”为名义牺牲了好不容易才创造出的玩家情感。

每当游戏在游戏模式与电影模式间转换时，你对于玩家角色的依附将从100%的情感投入转向100%的情感分离。这真的是一种非常不和谐的失调。

以下是关于这种模式转变的另外一个不同例子，这是发生在游戏外部：无声电影。这些电影具有非常棒的电影艺术和非常出色的表演。你可以说它们填满了视觉体验。但是有时候却会出现幕间标题。

幕间标题是指那些用于描述发生了什么或包含对话的全屏字幕。在这些字幕间，电影退回了一维中—-它忽视了感觉经验，即区别电影与文学的独特元素，并直接将文学呈现在屏幕上。如果你将在我们的2D图表上表现出无声电影的进程，它便是如下的效果：

基于电影的长度，它通常将维持高水平的视觉体验；然而，不管何时会出现幕间标题，感觉经验的数量都会下降至0左右。同样的情况也发生在游戏过场动画中。

当过场动画出现时，你忽视了整体的互动性维度，即游戏突显于电影的元素，并直接将电影呈现在屏幕上。带有过场动画的游戏就像是无声电影版的游戏。至少无声电影免除了其技术上的限制—-而游戏却不存在类似的借口。最糟糕的部分在于在过场动画期间会出现最重要的情节点，同时让你不能亲自参与其中。

让我们着眼于过场动画的一个反例。《半条命》系列具有一个变换方法：比起呈现一部电影，它们在游戏玩法期间自然地打开了场景内容，你也从来不会失去对角色的控制。角色开始在你周边讲话，你眼前会出现让人印象深刻的画面，但这过程中你始终把握着控制权。虽然在这期间你将被限制于一个闸口区域，但你仍然能够四处走动并观察事物，在控制角色的同时观看一些行动的变化。

这真的很有效：沉浸感并未被打破，你并未改变视角，并且从未停止作为故事中的一名演员而直接体验各种情况。尽管这并不是那么完美：公式最终是可以预测的，一旦你开始意识到‘好吧，我现在其实是在一个故事房间里，’，幻觉将逐渐消失，但从很大程度上来看它还是很有效的，至少比过场动画好。

明确的故事和玩家故事

我们已经谈论了许多有关游戏在哪些方面做错的内容。那么我们该如何完善自己的故事叙述呢？首先让我们更深入地着眼于叙述本身的理念。

什么是叙述？是否所有游戏都具有叙述？是否所有游戏都需要叙述？让我们做出一些定义。首先，游戏中有两种类型的叙述：第一种便是传统类型，即当我们在谈论情节，角色和对话时所想到的；第二种则是玩家个人体验的叙述。

第一种叙述是我所谓的明确的故事。这是关于游戏的内容。游戏是关于打败僵尸。游戏是关于探索世界并拯救公主。游戏是关于从外星人手中拯救世界。这是游戏的美学环境，主要是通过视觉，声音和文字进行传达。并不是所有游戏都带有这种类型的叙述，但却是大部分游戏都有。RPG，冒险游戏和行动游戏通常都会特别强调明确的故事。也有些游戏会完全避开它，如许多益智游戏和大多数传统的纸牌游戏。甚至像象棋等游戏也具有少量的这一元素：被当成是一种中世纪战争游戏。

第二种类型的叙述便是我所谓的玩家故事。这是玩家的个人体验。当玩家在玩游戏时，他们的脑子里会想很多事：他们会经历各种情感，他们会对角色和事件产生认知，他们会与自己的行动和屏幕上的结果产生彼此间的关系。这些都能够创造一个不同类型的叙述体验，即带有它自己的节奏，角色，情节和对话，并且区别于明确的故事的内容。

这些玩家故事是否是真的故事？是的，实际上，玩家总是会完全将这些故事告诉别人。询问别人他们在《俄罗斯方块》中的紧张比赛。

“我一直在尝试着打败好友的高分。我有一个很棒的开始，但在快到最后的时候我却老是得不到竖直组块。这决定着最后几行的消除，最终我得到了一个！我使用它清除了许多组块，并打败了好友的高分。”

这是一个真实的故事。也许从文字上看这并不是多么激动人心，但是在玩家心中，这却是伴随着真正的冲突，高潮和结果的完整的体验。因为这是玩家直接经历到的，所以他们会有更深刻的感受。

所有的游戏都有这种类型的叙述。甚至是像足球这样的游戏也有其自己的故事—-人们一直在告诉你某些内容，重述着激动人心的比赛。许多游戏同时具有这两种叙述，即明确的故事和玩家故事。

然而，一个优秀的玩家故事总是最终结果，而一个明确故事的角色总是应该支持一个优秀玩家故事的发展。带有惊人的明确故事和可怕的玩家故事的游戏就像是我们早期创造的带有优秀情节，但却不能有效传达它的书籍一样；这是我们基于糟糕的叙述和无聊的视觉效果所创造的电影。你不能只是分开设计两种故事：就像我们之前所看到的，将有趣的游戏玩法区分于明确的故事将产生失调，这意味着你最终将看到一个脱节且糟糕的玩家故事。

统一两种叙述

所以我们该如何一起讲述一个优秀的玩家故事和优秀的明确故事？掌握这一点：最出色的游戏故事叙述是出现在明确的故事与玩家故事完整地融合在一起时。

当你在玩游戏时，你应该永远都不需要问自己：“我本应该做什么？”在一款优秀的游戏中，你应该做的事将与你想要做的事相贯穿。如果你在玩游戏的时候所获得的情感和动机非常符合游戏环境，那么便会发生一些非常惊人的事情。

以下是来自第一款《传送门》的例子。在这款游戏中，你是作为一个配有一把传送门手枪的测试对象，尝试着经历不同的试验室。快到最后的时候，你乘坐上一个缓慢移动的平台到达一个所谓的将你你之前良好的测试表现的地方。突然，你发现这个平台其实是要将你置于死地。

当我在经历这一场景时，我非常恐慌：这时候我完全专注于游戏中，之前我觉得自己能够解决这个谜题，并准备获得奖励，但是现在我却被出卖了。无意识地，我的眼睛引导着我朝一个最理想的界面开枪，我为自己创造了一个出口，并逃离了鬼门关。等一下，我好像打破了系统。我利用自己的智慧超越了敌人。

当然了，最终证明我应该这么做。但是当我如此行动时，这完全是基于我为了实现自我保护的动机，而不是因为我想要“推动故事的发展”。观看角色侥幸逃脱与利用自己的聪明才智亲自进行体验是白天与黑夜的区别。主要的情节元素将自然地发展，而未出现任何失调。我想要做的以及我应该做的都是一样的。

游戏之前部分的所有内容都是为了让这一场景能够自然地呈现在玩家面前：在传送门机制中的培训；预示着厄运的机智的对话；让你想要逃脱的试验室格式；关于逃脱具有可能性的小小暗示。

让我们将这一场景分解成两种叙述类型：玩家故事是关于你使用智慧逃脱一个让人紧张的情境。明确的故事是关于你的角色Chell使用她的智慧逃脱一个让人紧张的情境。它们是完全相同的内容！

让我们将这一场景与一款不同的游戏中的类似场景相比较。我将使用全新的《古墓丽影》为例，尽管在其它游戏中还有无数情境是基于同样的方式去表达。在一个场景中，你正观看者角色逃离危险的一个过场动画，突然一颗巨石将砸向你。你具有一个选择：在接下来的半秒内按压X按键。如果你这么做，你的角色将安全地存活下来。而其它行动将导致你的角色死去。

不管是《传送门》还是《古墓丽影》的场景似乎都具有同样程度的危险：在这两种情况下，四百意味着你的英雄将会死去。然而在《古墓丽影》中，是由玩家去体验这些的情境。也许当你看到可怕的死亡动画时会畏缩，或者当你在前面几次未能即时按压按键时会感到受挫。但却没有什么比使用你自己的智慧让自己脱险更让人激动的了，在《传送门》中也是如此。

尽管《古墓丽影》的场景更像电影，并且具有让人印象深刻的视觉效果，但这却是很容易让人忘记的。而你差点就要死了，这点不应该更让人难忘吗？！但事实却不是如此，因为玩家故事与明确故事是相矛盾的。在这里，玩家故事是指你观看一个过场动画，突然游戏基于一个明显但却让人厌烦的方式要求你按压一个按键，你将被迫在无聊的重复折腾下按压这个按键。而明确的故事是指你的角色Lara Croft使用她那敏锐的感觉和技巧逃离了危险。这两个故事具有显著的差别！它们是如此的不协调啊！

这是我在说明确的故事是玩家故事的美学环境时想要传达的意思。这是构造你的行动和动机的一种方法，这是增强一致性并强化主题的方法。这两种叙述类型能够相互合作。如果在《传送门》场景中没有明确的故事，你将只是从灰色的盒子跳进灰色的墙中，如此你便不会进入一个可以重置你的位置的红色区域。你可能会喜欢识别谜题，或享受于精通机制，但你不会觉得自己“在打败系统”，或者在使用智慧去避免死亡。

另一方面，如果不存在玩家故事，就像你只是观看某些情境的电影画面，你也不会感受到这些。你可能会因为某些视觉效果而兴奋，或者因为主角的存活而高兴，但你肯定不会感受到任何个人的成就或冒险。

线性，脚本和电影故事

所以我们只是看到一些关于较短的行动序列的优秀故事的例子而已。那么我们该如何将这些原则延伸到一个完整的游戏故事呢？

这很难。很少有游戏能够成功做到这点，特别是带有线性，脚本和电影格式的游戏。基于这种格式，我所说的是那些特别强调明确的故事，带有基于脚本的事件，角色和对话，以及明确的结局的游戏。这种格式具有许多缺陷：缺少选择；过分强调对话，玩家缺少对它的控制；具有刻板的线性进程。在电影中，这些特征并不是什么缺陷，但是在游戏中，它们将与该媒体对于互动性的强调产生矛盾。

《传送门》便属于这类型游戏，但是它却在努力地做到有效的故事叙述。我认为它是一个例外，即具有独特的能力能够利用这些缺陷。缺少选择，片面的对话以及线性进程等等缺陷在《传送门》的试验室中都是行得通的。你被迫做游戏告诉你的事，因为你只是一只被试验的天竺鼠；你不能回话，因为除了一个非实体计算机外这里没有其它角色；在这些试验室中你只有一个前进方向。

这种便利的格式意味着很少会出现失调。但是你不能将这些技巧普及到其它游戏中。这就好像克服这些缺陷的唯一方法是将其整合到故事本身中。这并不是大多数游戏故事的选择。

也许线性，脚本，电影故事只是不是游戏的最佳格式。有些带有这些故事的游戏表现的很好，至少在某些方面是这样的，但我不相信我们能够长时间地看到这些优势。这是改编自电影的不完美的风格，它只是不是那么适合有关互动性，选择和个人体验的媒体。

我不认为它应该作为游戏故事的转向格式。还有其它格式吗？当然还存在一些选择，它们中的许多都是基于实验性，但有一个是我特别想在本文中与你们分享的，那便是意外的叙述。

将玩家放回控制中

我们发现基于线性，脚本和电影格式的缺陷都是以控制为中心。作者们想要创造一连串能够恒久开启的具体事件，但如果松开了这样的欲望会怎样呢？如果我们放弃严格的控制会怎样？在这些游戏中我们经常看到的便是，它们先创造一个明确的故事，然后围绕着该故事去设计玩家故事。它们都拥有既定的脚本，然后基于该脚本去创造游戏玩法，并尝试着让它们相匹配。如果我们做的刚好相反会怎样？如果我们先设计玩家故事，然后在创造明确的故事去匹配玩家故事又会怎样？

现在，我并不是想要先创造一个有趣的抽象游戏，然后编写一个有意义的脚本故事。这当然是一个值得尝试的好方法，但这却不是我们现在要说的。我的意思是，比起拥有任何基于脚本的元素，我们应该让明确的故事去描述玩家故事。我们应该情节，高潮和角色都是源自玩家的体验。总而言之，故事应该描述玩家所做的，而不是玩家需要做的。

以下是一些例子。

《旅途》

第一个例子便是《旅途》。在这款游戏中，明确的故事非常散漫。当你开始时，你所知道的一切便是自己是沙漠中某种人或生物。就只有这样而已。这里没有明确的目标，动机，情节，冲突或对话。然而，这些内容却能通过游戏设计非常自然地出现。

在较早的时候，你会看到远处的山上闪烁着一道光束。可能是有意识或潜意识地，你的目标便变成是到达那座山，因为它似乎始终都存在于你的视线中。在行进的途中，你将遭遇一些角色。他们是其他人类玩家，正与你经历着同样的事。你不能通过语言与之交谈，但是你却可以使用肢体语言和歌唱能力进行传达。

这时候，每个人所看到的故事是不同的。有些人选择与充满好奇的新玩家结伴而行，一起解决问题，构建友谊的桥梁，并携手走到最后。也有些人与其他玩家发生矛盾，选择独自前进。还有些人虽然交到了朋友，但却前进过程中与朋友分道扬镳，同时还哀悼着失去朋友。甚至有些人找到了引导者，即那些能够告诉他们如何前进的资深玩家。

这些都是对玩家来说非常有意义的优秀故事，因为这是他们为自己创造的个人体验。它们不只是像紧张的《俄罗斯方块》游戏那样的个人体验，同时也是像优秀的电影那样带有情感的复杂体验。让我们想象：

你独自一人待在一个荒原中，然后你掉进了悬崖深处。你不知道如何逃出去，然后从某个地方出现了一个陌生人向你伸出了援助之手。你们两人便成为了好朋友，携手探索这个世界。然后当你顶着大风穿越一座桥时，你的朋友却掉下去了！

你呼喊着他的名字，希望他能听到。你瞬间充满了绝望，觉得自己再也见不到他了，但突然间你听到遥远的地方传来了他微弱的哭泣声。你知道这个声音，你之前听过这个节奏。最后，你想办法下去将其拯救出来，就像他之前拯救你那样。最终你们能够安全第携手走到旅途的最后。

这就像是电影一样！然而，这里的体验比电影更强，因为你能够亲身经历它。这种体验并不是作者事先决定好的，而是基于你和新朋友的行动所决定的。你们将组建真实的朋友关系，感受到真实的情感，绝望与乐趣。体验的脚本版本只能引出同感；而不可能是直接的感受。你可以将其称为一种文字叙述，因为所有重要的一切是发生在真实的生活中，缺少实体体验将只会陷进一个神秘的荒原中。

并不是说设计师未能设计出任何明确的故事。相反地，比起尝试想出最特别的情感线，角色，对话和事件，它们选择设计一个能够突出这些元素的环境。

当你找到另外一个玩家时，这里存在一些视觉线索将强调他们的存在与出现。当你通过唱歌和肢体语言与之交流时，你脑子里便会浮现出所有有关其他玩家个性的图像（这便是一种角色发展！）。当你们能够和睦相处时，将会出现一次大危险去测试你们的关系。这便是一个优秀故事的所有元素，它们是由设计师精心设计的。它们并不会一下子震慑到你，而是会自然地出现。

《矮人要塞》

让我们着眼于另一个例子。我们谈论的是让故事出现在玩家的体验中；这款游戏便将这一理念带到了一个全新的水平：《矮人要塞》。

我们很难去描述《矮人要塞》，但总的说来，这是一个对于矮人王国的详细模拟游戏。从图像看来它非常简单，但不要因此被骗了：这款游戏真的非常强调细节。它模拟了各种内容，包括几千年来河流穿越峡谷，孩子的睫毛刷掉落下雨滴等等。这是一款沙盒游戏，你尝试着创建自己的王国，直至大灾难突然降临，并卷走了一切。

关于游戏很棒的一点便是其画面的简单性让你能够利用想象去填补空白，并为游戏添加详细的意义与动机。这就像是当你在阅读一本优秀的书籍时，你的脑子里将想象着角色的外观和声音。通过这些以及游戏的复杂性，你便能够想象会出现什么类型的故事。DFstories.com便编入了许多这样的内容：有些充满了行动，有些意外的真诚且感人，有些则非常平庸。通过检测去看看人们在玩这款游戏时脑子里会产生怎样的想象与情感。

尽管我认为《矮人要塞》是这类型故事叙述的极端面，即对于大多数人来说这是很难做到的，但是从这款游戏中我们还是能够学到许多。我们可以学到的主要内容便是一种意外情境——不管它是源自复杂规则的互动，玩家的试验还是只是通过随机的机会，这都会对处于脚本情境的玩家产生影响。

当情境具有目的性并添加深度到玩家故事时，美好的东西便会出现。实际上，一个意外的情境便意味着它可能是独特的，将会让玩家拥有特别的体验，因为它们知道之前每人遭遇过它。这就像是当你一开始在玩《我的世界》并找到一个美丽的自然构成时的情况。你会充满敬畏感，知道你是第一个看到这个的人。这是具有开拓性的发现。这是基于脚本情境很难创造的感受！

《Brogue》

最后一个意外叙述的例子便是一款名为《Brogue》的roguelike游戏。

在《Brogue》中，你是一个冒险家，将探索一个程序生成的煽动，并尝试着触及最底端的人工制品，并将其带回地面。这真的非常困难：死亡是经常会发生的情况，你总是会犯各种错误。这里拥有较小的明确故事：你所直到的便只有你在寻找什么以及身边的世界非常危险。与《矮人要塞》一样，最低水平的视觉效果让玩家能够形成他们自己对于行动的看法。

然而，游戏中具有许多机会能够填满优秀玩家故事的意外性。在道具，敌人和环境间存在许多复杂的互动性，你总是有许多选择能够处理这些当前的情境。草着火了；敌人变成了同盟；掉落的道具将触动开关等等。在个体元素间存在着许多互动，然而这里并不存在脚本序列。从中会出现什么类型的意外故事呢？我曾看到自己的朋友是这么玩游戏的：

他陷在了一个很深的峡谷上的一座木桥上，地精封锁了两端的出入口，阻碍了桥的通行。他的生命值变得很低，不能与之相抗衡。他只拥有一个不明的药剂，如果这是一个能够让人悬浮的药剂，他便可以安全地离开这座桥。在离树精几步之遥的时候，他喝下了药剂。但不幸的是，这却是一个焚化药剂！

一个巨大的火焰喷射了出来，环绕着他和地精，桥着火了。瞬间桥被烧毁，所有的人都掉到了悬崖下。幸运的是他安全掉到了水里，从而帮助他扑灭了身上的火。有些地精活了下来，也有些掉到了地上死了。然而一个满身是火的地精掉在了充满爆炸气流的找找中，并触发了大爆炸而消灭了剩下的地精。我的朋友逃脱了，并继续深入洞穴进行探险。

这一场景中充斥着行动。这与任何行动电影或游戏电影一样激动人心，但这只是我在这款游戏中看到的许多惊人场景中的一个。尽管如此，所有的这些都不是基于脚本内容；这甚至不是设计师有意的设定。这只是源自机制的互动所产生的情况。《Brogue》的难度进程意味着当你越深入游戏中，你便会遭遇更多元素，并意味着诸如此类的更多互动与紧张序列会出现在你眼前。

《Brogue》的游戏过程的确包含了一个非常棒的故事：玩家在危险的洞穴中探险的故事。只是因为没有名字，对话或电影画面并不能否定它的故事。我真的认为《Brogue》的故事叙述超越了像新的《古墓丽影》这样的游戏的故事叙述（尽管游戏完全未受到情节作者的影响）。

是的，《古墓丽影》具有更复杂的情节和更细致的角色，但我们需要记得：故事与故事叙述并不相同。也许比起《Brogue》，《古墓丽影》能够用于创造出更棒的电影，但我们现在谈论的是游戏。《古墓丽影》就像是我们在文章的一开始所提到的具有优秀故事的书籍，但却不能有效第使用文字和句子。而《Brogue》更像是海明威的作品，带有简单的情节，简单的语法和简单的句子结构，但却非常擅于协作，能够有效地传达内容在护体。我认为行动和冒险的主题能够更深刻地与《Brogue》达成共鸣，而不是《古墓丽影》。

新境界

意外叙述仍然是我们未做出较多探索的新技巧，但是我认为它具有非常大的发展前途，因为它能够塑造出很棒的个人体验。这是许多可行的故事叙述方法中的一种，我想如果我们想要寻找完美的游戏叙述形式的话，我们就需要深入这些领域。直到那时，让我们记得在创建一个明确故事的同时专注于玩家故事。

电子游戏是一个创造性表达的年轻媒体。书籍已经诞生一千多年了，而电影也出现一个多世纪。但电子游戏却是在几十年前开始流行起来。我们刚刚经过游戏的无声电影时代。我不认为我们已经完全理解了在游戏中创造优秀叙述的意义，所以我们需要开放思想去看待不同的故事叙述格式。

我们应该停止将电影当成是叙述的灵感，并开始意识到比起最大的脚本和电影游戏，非传统的结构能够作为更强大的故事技巧。让我们重新定义游戏叙述，使其不再只是关于情节和对话——我们真正在乎的应该是发生在玩家脑子里的故事。

篇目1，篇目2，篇目3（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

The Top 10 Things The Game Industry Can Learn from Film Production

Tess Jones

Over the years I have mused on the differences and similarities between producing games and films. Both have large, creative crews working towards successful delivery of a visually entertaining product.

When I worked on movie sets, I drove around the city to a different location each day. Once there, I was greeted by a troupe of 200 creative people on the movie set all trying to achieve one vision.

When I worked on games, I was again greeted by 200 creative people all trying to achieve one vision, but instead of using a physical set to stage their dramatic scenes requiring me to cross town, the environments and sets were all contained at the office on their computer screens.

Despite their different work environments, both mediums aim to entertain, creating tension and excitement, making people laugh, cry, or tremble in fear at the edge of their seats.

From there, the similarities seem to end. Producing works in these two fields is drastically different. Films have significantly shorter production periods than games. A detailed schedule is created based on the scenes required in a screenplay. The cast and crew are hired, production begins, and each day they film specific scenes until the entire script is complete. When all scenes have been filmed, the crew is done. This can all be done in as short as a month.

Games have long production periods. New gameplay mechanics present engineering challenges. Players have the ability to stop and walk around in environments, rotating 360 degrees around objects. Unexpected bugs may arise late in production, not to mention the possibility that players will navigate levels in unexpected ways or become frustrated with gameplay elements requires ongoing iteration as testing happens. And finally, games are generally much longer than films, and require a hefty amount of creative content, with “short” games providing a six to eight hour game experience.

Despite these differences, I believe there are techniques from the film industry that can be applied to game production. Film production teams deliver fast because they have to, with location, crew, and cast restrictions tied to a very precise clock. As the market tightens and consumers expect more features from games, we need to find ways to make games faster and cheaper. One place to look is to the well-oiled machine of film production.

Lesson #1: Never Shoot a Movie without an Assistant Director

The cast arrives at 5am for make-up, while the production crew of 200 people gets there at 7. First up is a scene in a downtown office building, which includes a complicated crane shot. A second unit is shooting up the street to fill in the gaps so the whole crew can pack up and be at a second location by 2pm. The second location closes by 6pm — no ifs, ands, or buts — and they have to get four shots before the sun goes down, one including 50 extras in the scene. Oh, and by the way, your key actor is late, meaning you have to rearrange your entire shot list and pray to God you get everything complete without having to add another day to the schedule — and budget.

Holy jigsaw puzzle of time management! If you thought your teams were hard to manage, imagine the pressure on the shoulders of a film’s Assistant Director. “ADs,” as they are known on set, are unionized through the Director’s Guild of America.

They are highly skilled in judging all the various elements that will go into a shot and determining how much time it will take. On a film set where money is literally being spent as each minute on the clock ticks by, they keep things running smoothly towards completing each shot on the list.

I’ve worked on small films without an AD, and the inevitable result is that you find yourself still trying to “get that last shot” at 2am in an apartment in the Bronx, eventually falling asleep with your face plastered onto a piece of pizza. It’s not pretty.

People tend to avoid the clock in games. Thinking about time estimates hampers the “cool” and “creative” game dev lifestyle. It’s all about iteration, and you can’t put a time estimate on that, can you? That’s all well and fun during concept phase when your devs are passionate, but when you’re exhausted and pushing to Beta… Yup — you got it. You’re stuck with another brutal, middle of the night sleeping pizza face incident. Sleep deprivation — that is the real obstacle to creativity. What you need is a skilled AD.

What? “I don’t need that! My producer does that.” Well, yes and no. Some producers are amazing at time management, and others not so much. Producers often also have other elements on their mind: big picture concept, correspondence with marketing, milestone reports, a whole lot of other things that draw their attention away from the nitty-gritty, day to day of making sure elements are “in the can.”

Movie sets have both a producer and AD, each managing different responsibilities. What game teams need is a dedicated resource to manage time. A qualified, experienced resource that can eyeball time estimates and build a schedule based on the risks and elements in front of them. Headcount is always tight on game teams, and project managers dedicated to scheduling could be seen as unnecessary overhead. But if you want to shoot a movie in 45 days with no overages and
to have a beautiful film in the can, in the movie business, you hire a good AD.

Lesson #2: Films have a Lengthy Script Development Process

If you went to a film studio and asked them to fully fund a movie production crew to explore concepts for a new movie, you would get laughed out of the room. Yet that is exactly what happens in many game studios.

Often there is no other choice. In studios with only one or two small game teams, concepts for games are created as a group effort by the development team. Although outside writers are sometimes brought in to help form the story, the seed of the concept usually comes from a passionate team with a great idea.

In contrast, the concept for a film generally has a lengthy development process before the production ever has anyone on payroll. The concept, characters, setting, and story are all laid out in advance in a 110 to 120 page screenplay. Screenplays are put through a rigorous vetting process known in Hollywood as script development.

Script Development

Here’s how script development works. A screenwriter toils away at their keyboard and creates a screenplay, which can take anywhere from two months to seven years. When finished, the screenwriter wipes the sweat from their brow and sends the script to their agent, who in turn sends the script out for professional script coverage.

Hollywood has a legion of professional readers that evaluate scripts for a living. These readers create a four-page report that summarizes the genre, time period, characters, plot, and location. They also rate the script on a pass/fail scale on various different creative elements. They often provide an overall feedback section with their professional opinion of whether a script will fly or bomb at the box office.

This aids executives in evaluating the viability of a concept in the marketplace. Once the agent feels the script is ready to shop around town, they send it to various executives and script development departments that would be a good match.

Let’s stop here for a moment. I’d like to note that already, films have a huge leg up on games at this point. You start with thousands of amazing creative ideas that screenwriters have probably put a few years of thought into. Only the best survive and get sent to production houses, not to mention that agents are specifically sending creative ideas to houses they think would be a good fit.

So what happens next? The production house buys the movie and it gets made, right? Not quite yet…

If a production house likes a script, they buy it, but this is no guarantee that it will get made. Often scripts go into “development” to improve the script even further. When a director or actor is attached, they may also have revisions. Again, only the best survive. Some production houses have drawers and drawers of purchased screenplays on deck to be made “someday”. Some are never made.

Finally, if the timing, screenplay, and attachments are right, the screenplay will be greenlit for production. Only then is a full crew hired so creative talent can bring the concept to life. Execution is everything. Even good scripts can turn into bad movies with the wrong cast or crew.

But the rate of failure has been greatly reduced by the forethought that went into creating the backbone of the movie during the script development process. Executives have had their say about income margins, marketing has discussed the viability of the concept, and now the movie can finally be cast, shot, edited, and released.

What Lessons Can Game Developers Learn from This?

Imagine a world where games had concept coverage services similar to films. Designers and concept artists could pair together and create proposals to send to production houses, which would in turn get professional game readers to evaluate the market viability of the concept, characters, artwork style, environment mockups, and story. The market would be flooded with creative professionals focusing only on concepts, and only the best game ideas would survive. Not only would this create more diverse and fascinating games, but they would have complete and cohesive concepts from the start, before any production budget is spent.

Perhaps I’m dreaming. A game concepting process similar to that of movies doesn’t seem likely given the way the industry currently operates. Game teams pride themselves on their creative abilities, and part of the reason they get so passionate about their work is often because the concepts are their own. When game teams are passionate, that is when great games are made, an equation any good producer knows not to meddle with.

Despite this, there are lessons to be learned from film’s extensive script development process. It reminds us that pre-production is by far and away the most important phase of a project. Evaluate and test your concepts at every single phase. Take initiative and create your own concept package before committing and spending time and resources. Your concept package could include key gameplay elements, a back-of-the-box one paragraph write up, a killer name, and artwork concepts for the characters and environment.

Hand it to someone you trust, and get their honest feedback. If you have a budget, put your package through playtesting and usability, with a sample build of gameplay if you have one. There are also market research firms you can hire to test your game concept in the marketplace. All these steps can be done by game companies large and small.

Lesson #3: Story Equals Concept

I hear a lot of talk at game conferences about the ongoing battle of story versus gameplay. In one camp, story is irrelevant because games are about good gameplay. In the opposing view, story is what the modern gamer craves and requires in a new landscape of high-quality console entertainment.

In my humble opinion, this entire argument is flawed. People are missing is that 90 percent of story is concept. Let me say that again. NINETY percent of story IS concept. By “concept” I mean the main character, core conflict, main gameplay elements, main enemies, setting and time period, and environments that make up the premise for your game. Every game has concept, regardless of how much “story” is there. Have you played a hit game lately without an
environment? How about one without a one-line description or “hook” that made you want to buy it?

As every good Hollywood screenwriter knows, always, always, always think of the big picture when creating your concept. This is the number one key to making it successfully through the brutal trials and tribulations of script development. If you can’t pitch your screenplay in one line to the head executive of insert-your-favorite studio in the elevator, you’re dead in the water.

Once you have your concept, you need to carefully consider if it will do well in the marketplace. Will my end consumer think this game is fun? Will they be intrigued by the artwork or premise and want to learn more? Will they tell all their friends about it? If you pitch your one-line idea to 10 random people, do you feel confident as you explain it, or do you find yourself “shying away” from the concept or “explaining it away”? Once you feel confident you can sell the idea, only then is it time to commit to the concept, invest more resources and time, and move on to the next step in the process. Don’t rush concept creation; it is the foundation of your house.

Lesson #4: Goldentime (film) versus Crunch (games)

When a film crew member hears the words “Golden Time” they will either shudder or smile. The term refers to the large salary jump crew members earn when hitting the 16th hour of work on a given day. While each crew member has their own contract, many have a clause specifying terms for what happens when working overtime. They may get bumped after 10, 12 or 14 hours of work to increasingly higher hourly rates. At 16 hours, many crew contracts hit paydirt,
receiving an entire day’s salary for hours 16 through 20, regardless if they work 1 minute or 4 hours.

Crews may be exhausted, but knowing they are getting paid bank perks up the set and sometimes even creates a creative and festive atmosphere. Of course, the producer and director aren’t feeling festive, as their production costs skyrocket with each passing hour. At the end of the day, the producers are responsible for overages, and they do everything in their power to avoid them. If a crew goes over, it is the producer that is punished, incentivizing them to do everything they can to effectively manage the work hours of their crew.

In games, compensation isn’t quite so cut and dry. If bugs crop up or features aren’t turning out as planned, team members can find themselves working “crunch”, the industry’s pet name for unpaid overtime.

Some teams work small, planned spells of crunch as a way to reach the end of a sprint or boost the quality of their products. Other teams find themselves working unplanned crunch, scrambling to fix bugs or drive up game quality.

Game developers are usually salary and not unionized, so these late hours are compensated only by the hope of a big hit game and profit sharing or a bonus at the end of the year.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide which system is better or worse. Crunch is loved by some, hated by others. Film golden time has a similar split. Crunch can drive up quality, or demoralize a team. Golden time can help you get that last shot, but exhaustion may set in for the rest of the week. These are hot- button topics that most professionals in both industries have their own thoughts about.

One thing is clear, however. In the film industry, crew members are mandatorily and openly compensated for their extra effort. If a film goes into overages, it falls squarely on the shoulders of the producer and management, instead of punishing team members for unexpected events. Does this incentivize producers to avoid long hours at all costs? You bet. Does the crew appreciate this and work harder for it? Probably. A savvy producer can assume there will be a
certain amount of overages and plan for them. When the time comes, they can reach into that overage budget, maintaining a happy crew even in a difficult crunch period.

Lesson #5: Post-Production is Half the Film

Have you ever watched an action movie on mute? Try popping in Transformers or Spider-Man and turning off the sound. Scenes that usually make your heart pound become emotionally flat. Disinterest sets in as your mind wanders to checking your email or planning your lunch. To create engaging, gripping sequences, sound is an absolute must.

Good film producers know that post-production is literally half the film. Audio, sound effects, pace of editing, and title sequences can make or break how an audience reacts to your product. Post-production in the film world also includes voiceover work, color correction, special effects, and working with film stocks or digital delivery formats to ensure a crisp image on the final screen. Post-production period lengths vary, with some films getting things edited quickly while others can take up to a year or more to perfect.

Game producers also give extra attention and focus to sound and other techniques that fit into the post-production schedule in Hollywood. In a medium requiring moment-to-moment tension and excitement, game developers are keenly aware of the value that post techniques have on their audience.

However, most game schedules that I have seen don’t seem to have an official “post-production” period set out at the end of the project. Audio, cinematics, lighting, titles, and special effects are often expected to come online throughout regular production. While many elements can easily come online early, some need to wait for final content before implementation. What results is a crunch period right before major milestones for audio and other team members. Game developers may want to consider laying out extra time at the end of their projects to ensure these key elements can be fully realized.

Lesson #6: Everyone Gets a Script and Script Page Changes Every Single Day

When a film crew member walks on set in the morning, one of the first things they receive are neatly printed script changes. They take these pink, yellow, blue or other colored pages and place them in their binder with the rest of their script pages. The new pages contain added lines, cut scenes, or location changes. Every crew member has a script fully printed out, and they add these new pages into their script. They always know exactly what is being shot for
the day and what needs to be done.

In game production, teams often use game design documents, but in general the process of creating content often less top-down and more organic. Leads of various departments may be working off hit lists, and also creating content and story as they go along. The game designer probably has a game design document, but with sheer volume of gameplay usually contained in a product, this is difficult to keep up to date. Things move fast in game design and GDDs get out of date quickly. Designers iterate on the game constantly, making improvements by the hour and minute. On larger games, you may have 10 or 20 designers all making changes on their levels simultaneously.

Am I advocating that game teams adopt printed script bibles for all team members? Maybe. While printing out pages seems archaic and a waste of paper, it’s funny how easy it is to dismiss emails or avoid reading digital GDD updates, especially when changes are rolling in every day and you have a bug list a mile long. Having a physical “game bible” may be an interesting experiment to try.

Or, perhaps the game itself is the script bible. The best way to stay up to date on what changes are rolling in from the team is to actually play the game. Try running through one level each morning with your team to see what changes are in, as well as to discuss upcoming tasks that will be coming online in the next few weeks.

The key take-away here is determining whether your team members are always up to date. Being in the loop will make for a more cohesive vision, with team members that stay on track and contribute to that vision.

Lesson #7: Great and Plentiful Food Motivates

It’s amazing how much food can motivate employees, especially good food. Not only does it make employees feel like they are being taken care of, reducing their stress and increasing goodwill, but it also draws people together for conversation. When employees eat together, they begin sharing information, sparking new ideas, or remembering to take action on particular tasks.

Film crews have this one all figured out. Movie sets are fully catered, often with an on-site food truck cooking meals to order. All meals and snacks are free to crew members, with catering showing as a regular line item in any standard production budget.

With crews working around the clock, often at remote locations, having food on set is a must. Lunchtime is at the same time for all crew members, and after lunch is served, crew members promptly go back to work.

Understandably, game production doesn’t work in the same way. Developers are not on set. They are in the same office every day, and can bring food from home or go out to lunch at nearby eateries. In general, food for developers is looked at as a luxury or special occasion, and not as a mandatory part of what is provided to employees.

Game producers often provide food during crunch periods or at the end of a milestone. Some companies have food cafeterias set up as a way to offer convenience and community. This may be as close as the game industry will get to the luxurious meals provided to the creative talent on film crews. I’d like to challenge that, and say that if you want to generate happy creatives in your own game production office, food is a key tool in your toolbox.

When you start thinking of your developers as a team of creative resources instead of as a legion of office workers, this starts to make more sense. Creativity flows more naturally when stress is reduced. Having food on-site means one less thing to worry about during the day, gives developers a clear lunchtime to take a break, encourages community and makes them feel taken care of.

There is one caveat with food, however, that can actually end up making your teams less productive in the long run. Providing unhealthy snacks, soda, coffee, pizza, and heavy foods is not going to help your cause. In the long run these drag energy down, providing quick fixes but later resulting in an energy slump. Some of these foods can even lead to weight gain and health problems if consumed long-term.

Try to focus on providing high-protein foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes, and stay away from sugar or caffeine-loaded products.

Lesson #8: Have One Clear Creative Director

Film directors have absolute power on set. The film director assembles a crew of creative leads that greatly influences the film’s final product including a cinematographer, production designer, and casting director. But if there is a question on set, the director always has final say. They are the primary vision holder, harnessing the creativity of many into a final, cohesive product.

Game designers play a similar role with their teams, but there are things that can interfere with their ability to fully be in control. Game crews often pride themselves on their team approach, and the culture tends to lean towards a more collaborative mentality when it comes to the game vision. Another obstacle to having one clear director is that game designers often find themselves playing dual roles and writing the dialogue, designing levels, and doing other tasks that interfere with their ability to walk the floor and provide creative leadership.

If the game designer isn’t leading the creative vision, who is? Some companies have engineering, art, or other department leads in positions that wield more power than others. Upper management could be holding the reins, or a marketing division could be making demands.

A publisher may have an acting producer with an invested interest in the final product, and actively push their design ideas onto the team. Many companies take a team creative control approach, sometimes creating great products with an open-door culture, but other times allowing for unclear roles and negative feelings when creative ideas aren’t used. Each company has unique politics, history, and teams that form the power structure for creative control.

In the filmmaking world, there may be an actor with clout, a producer with money, or a revered cinematographer that use their power to control things on set. Yet the role of director is so clearly laid out and respected that the film crew’s daily production pipeline is not usually affected. There may be squabbling at the top, but the crew takes their orders from the director. This reduces team member politics and streamlines the production pipeline. Film crews have figured out that it is much easier to coordinate a creative vision made by 200 people if there is one person to answer to. In time, game production teams may figure this out as well.

Everyone has heard the horror stories of prima donna film directors demanding full control on their movies, and I’m not suggesting that game designers swing to this extreme side of the pendulum of control-crazy leadership.

That said, I think everyone on game teams can learn something from the clear hierarchy laid out consistently on film sets time and again. Establish roles on the team and make sure your team is aware of these roles. Producers and directors should walk the floor twice a day and be open to answering any questions that team members have, keeping an eye out for creative elements that may be off track. Free up your day for office hours and remove yourself from tasks that
can be done by others.

And that brings us to…

Lesson #9: Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Stop micromanaging and hand some of your work to others! What would happen on a film set if the director spent all their time making script page changes on their computer and photocopying them for the crew? They wouldn’t have had time to rehearse their actors, answer questions about the creative direction for set construction, or approve camera angles from the cinematographer. The director on a film does just that — directs — ensuring everyone is on the same
page.

Game producers should encourage their leads to delegate as much as possible. Create clear role definitions and stick to those. Check in often about where people are spending most of their time, and troubleshoot ways to get tasks off their plate that prevent them from higher priorities. Above all, always keep deadlines and priorities in mind. If your milestone requires X, Y, and Z, let other items go.

Lesson #10: You Can’t Fix the Story in the Cutting Room

In film production, there is a time when the movie reaches a point of no return. Unless your budget has deep pockets to allow for massive reshoots, what you shoot is what you get. If the original screenplay and concept were flawed, there is no great way to fix them.

If you watch films closely, you can see editing tricks employed to try and fix story issues. A constant soundtrack over scenes may try to mask emotional flatness. Quick editing and bold, large titles may try to add intrigue to scenes that would be otherwise tedious to watch. Scenes can be constructed from outtakes, and lines added in voiceover.

Things can definitely be doctored during editing, but there is only so much an editor can do to fix a broken movie.

Games are unique because developers can change content through the entire length of production. Scenes aren’t locked in stone, animations can be changed, and environments can be reworked. Missions can even be reordered. On one hand, this means that game content can be improved through the very end of a production schedule. On the other hand, this could give a game team a free pass to procrastinate story decisions that should come early in production, or to make changes mid-stream that throw the project off schedule.

Abandoning ideas that aren’t working is key to success. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is what you want to avoid. Stick to your original vision, and you’ll turn out the product you first set out to make. If you do this and stay on track, you will get it out the door quickly and have time to spare to make another new, improved project that you know will be “so much better than this one”.

Avoid letting your team’s perfectionist side take over, and focus on shipping the game that is in front of you, putting everything you have into making it as good as it can be. This can be difficult for game developers, who trend toward perfectionist tendencies. Feature creep has a way of lengthening schedules, which in some cases could be likened to a film editor trying to mask a scene that isn’t working wth loud music.

Sometimes new game features really can make the difference in shipping an excellent game, and mid-story changes are what end up making a product shine. The trick is to find a happy trade-off between running with what you’ve got versus allowing directional changes that may hike up quality.

Summary

How do we utilize these ideas to make higher quality games faster, cheaper? Let’s review!

Pre-Production:

Develop solid game concepts before production crews are brought in

Vet concepts in a similar way to the film script development process

Production:

Hire a skilled time management specialist

Keep crews productive by planning and paying for overtime and providing meals

Ensure team members are consistently in the loop for game changes and vision

Define team roles and have one clear creative director

Delegate tasks off leadership to allow them to focus on moving the rest of the team forward

Balance improvements and high quality with sticking to the original product vision

Post-Production

Make sure post-production time is planned in your budget

Use post-production to its fullest capacity, acknowledging that it is half the game

Now, what about the list of fascinating tidbits that film producers could learn from game devs? We’ll save that for another article.

10 Things Corman Taught Me About Indie Game Development

Devin Becker

It’s been a while since I read Roger Corman’s book “How I made a hundred movies in hollywood and never lost a dime.” but I remember its lessons vividly. His book title is pretty literal as he made profit on every film he made, no matter how low budget or schlocky. In this post I’d like to share how some of his best techniques can be applied to indie game production so you too can never lose a dime!

1) Exploit genres

Corman’s films were often labeled as B-movies, Genre films and Exploitation. He was a master of creating and exploiting niche film genres such as Bikes, Nurses, Women in cages, Edgar Allen Poe, etc. Some would see this as a negative, but his bottom line sure didn’t. These subgenre’s were generally considered exploitation because they exploited shock value for attention, something worth considering when deciding between creating yet another fantasy game or going the Edmund Mcmillen and Adult Swim games routes. Negative press is still press!

Exploiting a newly popular subgenre or niche gives you the benefit of being a big fish in a small pond rather than trying to get normal mainstream attention in the already crowded world of games journalism. Wacky, weird or shocking will get people talking and playing! Unfortunately this “technique” also leads to tons of me-too games whenever a genre shows mainstream success, ie. Zombies, Bird games, etc. Come up with your own or pick something underutilized!

Some inspiration: Wikipedia page of exploitation genre’s in film; Exploitation classics

2) Aim for low profit, and even lower budget

A good part of the reason Corman always made profit is he knew how to scale his production budget to match his expected ROI (return on investment). He didn’ t try and make 500 million a movie while spending 200 million just to make it and another 100 million on advertising, he knew he’d only make X, so he spend much less than X and boom, profit! Find out how much your “competition” realistically makes (hint, don’t consider Angry Birds your competition) and then aim to spend much, much less than that. I recommend doing some Game Jams to really learn how to scale your production down in terms of time and money! The other lessons here offer some great tricks on ways to keep costs down but look for many more and never stop stealing hacks and techniques from other low budget mediums like film but remember, time is money too!

Some inspiration: The frugal auteur

3) Market yourself as legit, cheaply

One of the more innovative tricks Corman used to promote his films that unfortunately can’t easily be repeated now was using theatres as an advertising platform to legitimize his films. The way he did this cheaply was to only make two prints of his film (prints were really expensive so he made 1 for show and 1 in case the first got damaged), then tour around showing his film in theatres for only a week or two at each theatre. What’s important about this idea is that in this day and age of direct to dvd movies there is a legitimacy associated with actually being shown in theatres, a certain status as a film possibly worth seeing. He also realized that people mostly see films during the first 2 weeks of release and wasting his time promoting it at a theatre for longer than that wasn’t a good way to make profit from his print.

How does this apply to you, the indie game developer? Rather than spend your money on advertising, spend your time promoting your game in short run, high attention areas like Game Jams, Festivals, Competitions, Conferences, Platform specific featurings (iOS featured games of the week, Steam free weekends/promotional sales etc), Bundle sales, Charity drives, Tournaments (DOTA2 anyone?), Kongregate achievement competitions, and more. Tour around for a
couple weeks and get facetime and game press whenever possible.

Here’s the key to understanding how to make this work financially. You will only make profit for a short time when your game is new and attention is on it, the profits will drop off quickly and be barely a trickle after that (bundles can help later, see below). Why is this good? Plan for it and instead of focusing on trying to sell your games as a service (which is a good alternative biz model but not within the scope of this post) just start working on the next game. Angry Birds was the 52nd game for Rovio, they waited till they had a HUGE hit before putting their eggs in one basket. Focus on making games quickly, low budget and profitable and your quality will naturally improve as you learn new things with each game and your company/name fame (or infamy if you follow lesson 1) will grow with each release. Robert Rodriguez’s first big hit film El Mariachi was actually made to just be part of a 3 part direct to video b-movie series just to help him fund doing bigger and bigger films. He makes profit on every film he makes too!

Some inspiration: Indie student game competitions; PAX (Penny Arcade Expo); Indiecade; Humble indie bundle

4) Exploit undervalued content

One of Corman’s lesser known money making tricks was to buy foreign films cheap then re-edit them and dub new dialog to make a sort of remix or new film. This lead to great profits with relatively low upfront cost and much less work and crew required. There are thousands of small indie games and experiments that could be transformed into a profit if done well. This could be done poorly (Ninja Fishing vs Radical Fishing and Minecraft vs Fortresscraft) or smartly (Muffin Knight vs Super Crate Box). I don’t want to suggest blatently cloning another popular game for another platform and shamelessly raking in profits (Gameloft) but rather finding underappreciated or unfinished games and either buying them outright or working with the developer to make them into a quick buck for everyone involved. Want a great head start on this? Check out Ludum Dare game jam competition entries, they are open source, unfinished/unpolished
game ideas that have already gotten some feedback, exposure and playtime without an expectation of anything more. Heck I’ve even put together a list of which games use which kind of programming language/engine/tool to make it easier for you to find one you can easily take the ball and run with. If you want to go a bit more experimental than check out the Experimental Gameplay Project for some radical ideas and people open to taking their concepts further. Once
you reach a certain level of recognition you can even potentially act as a publisher or someone who can help port games (the way Halfbrick has been doing for indie’s lately).

5) Employ hungry amateur talent

First to be clear, when I say amateur talent I mean it in the sense of talented people not currently using that talent at a paid professional level. One of the things Corman is famous for is helping apprentice great talent into hollywood. Perhaps you’ve heard of Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, James Cameron, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, David Carradine, or Robert De Niro? All of them got their big breaks working through and learning from Corman. He was great at recognizing hungry talent and giving them a chance to work on something that would actually be seen by an audience, something they couldn’t easily do on their own. Many of those directors started off editing trailers for Corman till he gave them a chance to direct one of his films. Jack Nicholson started off as a screenwriter till Corman decided to throw him in one of his movies.

What I’m suggesting for Indie game developers is that you find talented people out there who are hungry for a chance to be involved and show off their stuff. Be upfront with them about how little profit and pay there will be and that you will work them HARD but what will make it worth there while is that you WILL finish and release the game and that it will be PLAYED by a good variety of people. Many indie projects never accomplish those things but you will be different because you’re armed with the tricks of this post and a focus on making profit to make the next great thing. Recently graduated game school graduates are a great source of talent looking to build a portfolio!

Some inspiration: “The Corman Film School”; Game Career Guide forums

6) Pre-sell your product

Part of the reason Corman was able to guarentee that he was able to make profit was not just keeping his initial budget low, it was also partnering up with other companies and pre-selling his films. Often he would pre-sell his film to a distributor for a profit and then as long as he kept the film on budget he didn’t even have to worry about the films profit possibilities during film or release. Other times he would get a script or at least treatment written and then partner up with an interested studio or film financer to cover as much of the production cost as possible up front. This works similar to how book authors will get advances from publishers to cover the cost of sitting at a typewriter for ages. This can be a difficult thing to do when you’re relatively unknown and your ability to make profit is untested so rather than focus on selling to middlemen, why not pre-sell your product to customers? There’s nothing better than knowing the demand for your product is there in the form of cold hard cash. This model is already gaining significant ground in two forms: Kickstarter and selling alphas/betas/preorders.

Kickstarter and Pre-v1.0 fundraising systems both work off a similar concept, you provide a pitch in the form of media (mockups, trailer, design docs, etc) and/or playable content (prototype, demo, alpha/beta version, etc) and then get people to pony up to help fund the game in exchange for a copy of the game and some additional bonuses. Kickstarter differs in that its usually not a playable game yet, there are different payment levels with different kinds of bonuses, and money isn’t withdrawn unless the funding goal is hit. Prototype/Alpha/Beta sales differ in providing a constantly updating playable game, an ability to help influence the development of the project, and money transactions (and something to play!) are instant regardless of any funding goals. There are tradeoffs and benefits to each method so pick the one most appropriate to where your game is at now, what you can provide customers, and whether you think you can reach a funding goal. You can always try Kickstarter while at the early stages (non-playable) and if it fails to reach a funding goal focus on building your prototype and then sell as soon as you can. Keep in mind these depend on virality so take advantage of any marketing tricks you can! See below for some successful examples.

Some inspiration: Zombies, run!; Kickstarter page; Minecraft sales; Frozen Synapse pre-order page; Achron RTS

7) Work fast

Corman often challenged himself to see how fast he could make films both for profit reasons and just as a personal development idea. He pushed the same mentality on his pet screenwriter, Charles Griffith, sometimes calling him in the evening, outlining a script idea and asking to get a first draft script by morning, and getting it! His quickest production was a whole 2 days, 2 days! This kept costs down, keep things creatively exciting and kept him learning and making new things. The important thing is that he didn’t release films he thought were garbage, he just kept his production expectations low and scaled accordingly. This again is where I’ll recommend Game Jams as the ultimate boot camp in learning how to do this. There’s nothing as exhilirating and satisfying as conceiving and finishing a game in 48 hours. In order to successfully pull it off though you need to learn how to focus your game and polish a pearl not a bowling ball. You will have to cut out lots of features but what’s left will be that much better for it. Once you’ve got the hang of doing this it will be that much easier to follow the suggestions of lesson #4 and play off game jam games for quick turnaround.
Many indie’s and game studios see growth and financial success as an opportunity to spend longer on their games (ie 3D Realms) but length doesn’t always equate to polish or profit so don’t fall into this trap, make each game quicker than the last (see the next lesson for how).

Some inspiration: Little shop of horrors shot in 2 days; Global Game Jam; Game Jams

8 ） Reuse assets

One of the biggest reasons Corman was able to film movies in sometimes as short as two days was good pre-production combined with reusing sets and props. This works especially well when working within a subgenre such as when he did multiple Edgar Allen Poe films. There was even one of his films where he realized he had a spare day or two before one of his Poe sets was going to be dismantled and had a script written that night to take advantage of that small window to produce one more film. Games are designed in a way that reusing assets should be even easier than in films as they are often based around lots of components and the rules for how those components interact. Reusing your assets, characters and settings can have two amazing benefits: cost/time savings, world/ip building. There’s tremendous value in building up a world/ip when it comes to building a fan base and marketing so why not make multiple games that take different approaches to the same world or characters? Heck look at all the things they’ve done with Mario, Sonic and Crash Bandicoot that have nothing to do with their debut games but I’m sure some of them reused assets (probably sound more than art but I digress). There’s also of course the obvious move of making sequels but that may not work as well for subgenre exploitation games as it does for AAA tentpole games, so better to explore new mechanics with the assets you’ve got.Many of you reading this have probably seen or at least heard of the Corman classic Death Race 2000, but did you know that the car sounds were reused from his F1 racing film (which itself used real race footage he recorded cheaply by going to the races)? Lloyd Kaufman of Troma once put a car crash scene in one of his films and considered it kind of an expensive stunt so he mitigated the cost by finding some way to include that scene in as many of his other films as possible! If you spend money on something, don’t throw it away after 1 game! I’d also recommend studying what has worked/not worked for Telltale with their episodic games as a great learning opportunity for asset reuse (sadly they probably don’t reuse as much as they could).

Some inspiration: Troma recycling; Cheapass Games reuses board game components

9) Exploit Bundles

Corman defends the original meaning of the term B-movie by explaining why it wasn’t originally an insult, it simply meant the second feature of a double feature showing (like drive-ins still do), similar to the term B-side in music. The upside of B-side songs and movies is they are usually the riskier but sometimes more interesting releases, the ones not as easily marketed but still potentially profitable. Having a B-side bundled with a more marketable product allows a company to mitigate the risk of lower profits by providing a bundle with not only an increased value perception for the customer but also the possibility that the B-side could also be successful and help drive sales further.

Steam has been great at providing and promoting bundles for indie games of various categories to not only help promote the individual games but also to increase sales due to the value provided. There are quite a few Indie games gamers might not have otherwise played had they not be part of a bundle and profits that might never have been gained. This also provides a great way to get a short boost of income using your old, unpopular games to boost the bundle value. You see this with Steam’s bundles from publishers providing back catalogue games that probably wouldn’t sell on their own anymore but that gamers might have some nostalgia for or want to play because they missed it when it was popular. Another great example is the Humble Indie Bundle which coincidentally is today offering a special Frozen Synapse Bundle (two things I’ve mentioned earlier as great examples).

You don’t have to wait for someone else to create a bundle, create your own “greatest hits” catalogs or special promotional bundles (especially if you create a great series of single ip games by following lesson #8). Go one step further and use the bundle sale as a fundraiser or kickstarter for your next game (as in lesson #6). Imagine the sales that could have happened if J.K. Rowling had put up a page saying “I need funding for the final two Harry Potter books as they are a two-parter, as a special promotion if you buy the first 5 Harry Potter books as a bundle at this special discount price you will get the next two books free!”.

Some inspiration: Valve Orange Box; MacHeist

10) Always finish or recycle

Corman understood you can’t make a profit on your films if you don’t sell them, and if you can’t make profit you can’t make more! All of the previous lessons include ideas that will commit you to a promise of finishing your game, fast, within budget and make profit, hopefully as early as possible. He put a lot of focus on good pre-production planning and working with constraints instead of against them, both of which go a long way towards making that finish possible. His focus on using the profit from each movie to fund the next one made sure that if he was excited about other film ideas he still had a great reason to finish the current one first.If you’re an Indie developer that probably means you want to make a living making games and you can’t do that without selling what you do. As the Joker in The Dark Knight said, “if you’re good at something you should get paid for it”. That’s the difference between an amateur and a professional, a
professional asks for money and comes through with their promises. If finishing a game really becomes impossible or the game is just absolutely not working and looks unsaveable from a design perspective then you absolutely must recycle the assets and time you’ve spent into something that WILL sell. Chances are you can reuse code, art and sound and maybe even some design, but probably not all of it (maybe in a future game though). Treat this rebirth as a bonus
challenge to develop the new game using the remaining time you had budgeted for the game you are scrapping so that you absolutely still hit budget and make profit. You can do it so don’t wuss out!

Some inspiration: Derek Yu – Finishing a game; Chris Hecker – Please finish your game

I highly recommend reading the book yourself as it’s a great read about a great Director/Producer. If you find low budget film making technqiues and hacks interesting and want to learn more to apply to your game production I also recommend Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel without and crew” and any of Lloyd Kaufman ’s (of Troma fame) books on filmmaking (he even has a dvd version now).

Cheeky plug: If you liked this post check out the most recent episode of the Game Developers Radio show I co-host, “Exploring Design”, on the topic of gimmicks in games.

Hope this helps at least provoke some thought for the indie’s out there struggling to make a living!

篇目2，The Hollywood Screenplay Approach to Designing Game Levels: Part I

by Babak Kaveh

Almost all Hollywood movies released in the past forty years are based on screenplays that use a singular structure. This article will introduce the Hollywood screenplay formula, and examine waysto apply that same structure to gameplay design. We won’t be using the screenplay structure for a game story, rather, we will attempt to create a narrative using only game mechanics, and more specifically, applying the formula to the design of levels and play sessions in different game genres.

Most Hollywood movies start out by introducing the viewers to the hero and his current situation. Then an event happens that upsets the current state of affairs, and the antagonist is introduced.

There is an initial challenge that the hero overcomes, thus proving himself to the audience. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, we get to the point where the hero must make a momentous decision and the viewer gets to understand the final goal he must achieve in the movie – this is the point of no return. From there on the hero has an uphill battle, which culminates in one last big push, and if the hero is able to overcome that last challenge, you get to see how it has affected their life and the life of others – they reap the rewards, and if there is to be a sequel, we also get a glimpse of another challenge on the horizon. Of course there are small variations on this theme, e.g. we can have multiple heroes, and the antagonist might not be a human, but a force of nature, or an angst the hero must overcome. Michael Hauge’s has an excellent summary of the separate stages of this formula.

It is surprisingly easy to come up with alternate narrative structures, and yet very few screenplays outside this rather strict structure have succeeded, at least in Hollywood; it is a winning formula, and movie producers know it. That said, what can we game designers learn here? A whole lot: the formula will teach you how to make each game level a narrative that the player is a part of – a mini movie that your audience will enjoy and remember playing, and this gameplay narrative will resonate with a majority of your audience, based on what they have come to understand and accept in movies.

I am aware that in an environment where some designers still think narrative is unnecessary and evil, claiming that giving your gameplay a narrative structure will sound like a waste of time, but bear with me as I apply the Hollywood formula to the design of a variety of game levels, and you will see not only will it make the level more consistent, it is actually a great brainstorming tool.

In the next installment (to follow shortly) I will also try to explain how some of the most successful Payload levels (pl_badwater and pl_goldrush) follow this formula very closely, and walk you through a new TF2 Payload level design from beginning to end.

An Overview of the Hollywood Screenplay Structure

Following is a summary of Michael Hauge’s description of the Hollywood screenplay structure and example screenshots from the recent movie “Battleship”.

Our hero is an impulsive, undisciplined womanizer

Stage 1 – The setup

This is the beginning of a narrativve where you are introduced to the hero(s), and possibly his companion(s) everyday life. This is where you try to make them likable and interesting to the audience. The setup normally takes up the first 10% of the duration of the movie.

After his run-in with the police, our hero’s brother forces him to join the marines in the hopes that he will get his life togetherTurning point 1 – The opportunity (@ 10%)

This is where the hero is presented with a new opportunity/threat that they cannot refuse/escape (internally or because of external forces). The opportunity makes the hero leave behind the status quo and start on a journey , although ogically at this point the hero could presumably go back to the status quo, but we know that won’t happen.

Our hero is an officer in the Navy, and in a relationship – still undisciplined but in a whole new world/way

Stage 2 – The New Situation

After having responded to the opportunity or initial threat, now the hero gets acclimatized to the new life he will be leading. This is where hero’s hear about their nemesis for the first time or get to learn how to use guns for the first time. This is the initial discovery phase for the hero which leads to him coming up with a plan to reach the goal set forth by the opportunity but in the background we want to show the audience that conflict is building around the her. This stage takes up another 15% of the total movie duration.

“Getting the girl” loses in importance when aliens crash-land on the Earth!

Turning point 2 – The change of plans (@ 25%)

This is where something happens that causes the hero to change his plans. It takes the hero from the new world that the opportunity defined, to a whole new level, where he will define the final visible goal that he will achieve in the movie. The guy might have found the right girl and now he wants to get her, or maybe the ex mercenary decides to protect the people he was sent to kill. The visible goal is what the “audience is rooting for your hero to achieve by the end of the film.”

Hhuman ships are in a stand-off with the alien spaceships

Stage 3 – Progress

Now the hero is in the thick of things and starts to make progress towards the visible goal. It is where the hero goes from having been caught off-guard by the change of plans, to where they align all their powers and allies to reach their goal. Conflict is still building at this stage but it is nothing the hero cannot overcome. This takes up another 25% of the total movie duration.

Our hero’s brother is killed by aliens and his ship is destroyed. There is no going back now, they must be defeated (which is the visible goal of the movie)

Turning point 3 – The Point of No Return (@ 50%)

Here an event happens, or the situation evolves in a way that will limit the hero in going back from his plans. This is the event or moment that defines the hero’s path all the way to the end of the movie. Bridges are burned and there is no going back and the audience knows it.

Close encounters of the third kind, and hand to hand combat with aliens, but our hero is doing fending off every offensive

Stage 4 – Complications

During this stage conflict builds to a point where the hero simply cannot risk loosing. It becomes all or nothing. The hero fight hard, but then just before the hero seems to score a major success the major setback happens. This stage which will also take up about 25% of the total movie duration.

The tides have turned – Alien “wheel-whizzer-thingies” shred the hero’s ship into slivers

Turning point 4 – The major setback (@ 75%)

This is the disastrous event that causes the hero to seemingly lose any chance of achieving the visible goal. He is captured, or important allies or companions leave him or die, or maybe there is a major betrayal. Things start to look real dark at this point.

The survivors regroup on the Mighty Mo and get her ready for a final grand battle

Stage 5 – The final push

Now the hero has to gather all of his energy and resources one last time to overcome the challenge. He is real close to the finishing line – the pace is furious at this point and it’s all or nothing. This stage should take up another 15-24% of the total movie duration.

She fights valiantly despite her age, and the alien mothership is destroyed and their communication scheme neutralized

Turning point 5 – The climax (@90~99%)

This is where the hero faces the final challenge, determines his own fate and the visible goal of the story gets resolved. It is where the hero fights and kills the end-boss or solves the final riddle of a crime or dies trying. It is also what the audience will probably be remembering about the movie later on.

Hero gets medal – hero gets girl – hero gets admiral’s recognition and respect – The End.

Stage 6 – The aftermath

This is where the audience winds down and gets to see the result of the events in the climax. The hero gets married or buried or gets to live happily thereafter! This stages takes up a minimal amount of time of the total movie duration, typically just a few minutes.

Applying the Structure to Game Level Design

Let us plot hero challenge (or audience tension) vs. time based on the timing of the stages and events from the Hollywood formula described above:

This is very similar to the punctuated sawtooth plot of challenge over time many game developers have proposed over the years:

Challenge vs Time in RPG games taken from an article by Thomas DuPont

Now it’s time to discuss how we can lay out our level to conform to the successful formula we explained.

Stage 1 – The setup

Although many designers leave this stage out, falsely assuming that video game players want to jump straight into the action, adding some sort of introduction into a level gives players to find their bearings and get to know their avatar, the controls and movement, as well as a sense of security before making their own conscious decision to enter the fray. This is a subtle point, but players will not appreciate it when you throw them into the arena without allowing them to make the choice. Now, you may argue that the moment the player started the game, they already made the decision to face up to the challenge, but don’t forget that allowing players choice is what games are all about, and the more meaningful choices you allow the player to make, the better your level will work.

It is very easy to add a Setup to your level. Platformers and shoot ‘em ups do this by adding a section in the beginning of the level where enemies don’t exist. TF2 does it by allowing players 60 seconds to charge up their Ubers and pick their classes before the gates open, and Fallout: New Vegas has an entire starter area where there are absolutely no enemies and where you get introduced to the backstory. WoW, similarly provides safe starter areas for each race. There are three important points in setting up the “the Setup” area:

1. It has to be safe

2. It has to teach the player about the game environment and the avatar’s back-story

3. The player needs to be able to exit the area within 10% of the duration of a play session or the level play-time, whichever is smallerPoint 1 and 2 are straightforward, but I will explain point 3. Take a game like Fallout: New Vegas. Let us make an educated guess that the average playing session for the game/level will be around 1-2 hours. This means that the player needs to be able to get all the startup resources he needs to enter the badlands within 6-12 minutes of starting the game. Assuming the same for WoW, the player would need to be able to get a valuable kill within 6-12 minutes of starting in their safe zone. For a platformer where a level might last only a couple of minutes, the first kill or challenge should be available within 10 seconds.

There are games out there that don’t follow this rule of course, and they lose something because of that – BIT.TRIP Runner being a notable one where starting a new level it is very easy to feel pressured and helpless and it takes a few seconds and successful jumps just for that negative feeling to dissipate. BIT.TRIP Runner also never gives you a chance to understand the elements in the gameplay and what each do before you run into them and die and there are barely 3 seconds to check out the level before your first jump. Bad BIT.TRIP!

Turning point 1 – The opportunity (@ 10%)

This is where the player meets his first challenge. It is not the challenge that will send him on his quest to save the universe – that will come later – rather, it should take the player out from his safe environment, into a new area or situation where they need to start acting, and actively exploring new options. That’s where most games go wrong. In their hurry to provide meaning to their story, and gameplay challenge to the player, they send the hero off on a secret mission to save the world from a soviet nuke.

Bypassing the first turning point and going straight to the point of no return will take valuable time away from the designers which can be spent on exposing the inner life of the hero and his allies (NPCs) and give them a second and third dimension. It also removes the player from the plot in that it doesn’t give them enough reason to care for the universe or NPCs or other online players that they are supposed to save.

There are a number of ways to create a turning point and they all involve an event that is forced on the player, allowing them to accept the initial challenge, or stay in their safe zone. In TF2 e.g. when the gates first open, the player can decide to stay in the safety of the base, or move out after all the ubercharges are spent and the initial frenzy is over. Another way to give the player the best weapon or vehicle in the game, and teleport them into their future self where they will get a taste of being cool without any risk of loosing, although this method does risk creating frustration in players once they
are ripped out of the fantasy and given a rusty knife to fend for themselves. Oblivion had a nice turning point where the player went from being a prisoner to having the honor of protecting the king.

Stage 2 – The New Situation

This is the stage where a fighter starts fighting – a spy, backstabbing. Note that at this point we are NOT sending the player on his final goal. E.g. if the final goal is to capture a certain control point, the turning point will not allow them to do that yet. There should be no chance of the heroes (in TF2 this is the attacking team) wining the game at this stage. This can be done by making the initial base breakout hard for faster/sneakier classes e.g, or simply making everyone have to fight their way through to a point where they can start their actual mission – They still get to kill enemies, but they
cannot rush to the control point – not yet!Turning point 2 – The change of plans (@ 25%)

After the initial combat, or introduction to the new life the hero will be leading, we start them on a path towards their goal. In TF2 this means the attacking team gets to start pushing the payload e.g. or move forward towards the control points. We facilitate this by selectively weakening the position of the enemy (defenders in TF2) by making them walk for a long time before getting to their defensive position, or by delaying their respawn a bit longer, or by taking away some of the beneficial potential fighting positions. In an MMO, e.g. this would be the stage where the hero receives a great ability that allows him to do the first part of the story quest at a fast pace. In a platformer, this might be the point where you introduce the hero to his goal of saving a princess, and giving him a first glimpse of said sexy lady!

Stage 3 – Progress

At this point it should be easy going for the heroes. The playing field is tilted in their favor. This can be done, and should be done even in games where humans play against humans. In TF2 this is the part of the level where the attacking team gets most of the advantageous positions . This might mean opening an access route (backdoor) to the first control point, or creating an easily defensible path that the payload cart can be pushed through. Make this stage last for 25% of the game time or play session duration, and let the heroes of the game feel awesome for the time eing.

Turning point 3 – The Point of No Return (@ 50%)

Contrary to sports, in Hollywood, half-time is not a time of respite and rest – It is the point where something happens that destroys any chance of the hero ever going back to his original life or even new situation. It is the point where he decides that he must push forward.

In the context of level design this can mean many things:

· For a platformer: It will now be impossible to traverse levels without the newly gained awesome double-jump or jetpack. It is also impossible to kill many enemies without your thunder-stomp! And if you slow down or fail, the princess will be killed, slowly – make sure your player knows that!

· For an MMO/RPG, this is where the world changes in response to the hero’s actions. E.g. A particular dragon might have risen who needs to be defeated before he reaches the birthplace of the hero.

· For a Multiplayer shooter like TF2/BF3 this is the point where the attacking team gains control of a forward spawning/landing position that is so good that the original starting base is made obsolete, or maybe even locked out.

Stage 4 – Complications

In stage 3, the hero got all the benefits. Now the tide will start to turn and the hero and his enemies will be balanced out. This means that both teams have an equal distance to go to reach the battle hotspot e.g. or the hero simply hits the limits of his awesome power because enemy NPCs are rising in level.

We can also artificially introduce extra challenges by adding extra conflict points around the map or within the story – maybe the hero has to sacrifice an ally to get through, or there might be traps that will leave the hero with very little HP before he manages to come out the other end. Betrayals are also a commonly used story element here, and so are time limits. This is the part of the TF2 level where enemy spies run amok, and this naturally brings about the next turning point as they sap forward attacker teleports and defensive positions.

Turning point 4 – The major setback (@ 75%)

The major setback is the darkest hour of the hero’s existence and unlike most other stages that can be achieved by tweaking gameplay/level elements requires a certain degree of engineering to make it work. After all the complications in the previous stage, we want the hero to be in a very weak position at least for a short while. Here are some ways to do this:

In an RPG: Endgame boss appears, and as the player is fighting him casts tons of debuffs on him that will last for quiet a while after the boss himself has left the arena.

In a platformer: reduce the number of health/ammo powerups. Now the hero needs to start counting bullets and health points.

In a strategy game: the player is flanked on three sides by the enemy, or even better, after his allies left him or dies in the previous stage, he is now stuck with a tiny defensive force and has to fight his way out through a painful gauntlet. We want the hero to be standing alone against the horde at the end of this stage.

In multiplayer shooters: give the defenders a great ambush chance, or a great sniper nest. Those two particular obstacles are a serious blow to the attacker (hero) morale and can definitely elicit the feeling of going through a major setback. However, make sure that those particular ambush/sniper nests are also possible to overcome. Do not place them in spots where enemies can easily get to them over and over, or you will have inadvertently created the climax before
the players actually reach their goal.

In order for a climax to work best, we want all elements (closing in on the goal, final push, lots of conflict, balanced fight) to come together at the same time.

Stage 5 – The final push

In stage 3, the hero had all the benefits. In stage 4 the two sides were balanced out. Now it is time to give the antagonist(s) (in TF2, the defenders) the teeth. Provide the enemy with great sniper position, and good cover. In TF2 the fact that the conflict points are now closer to the defender base provides a natural benefit to the defenders. In all other games, this is the time where the player constantly has to switch weapons because they run out of ammo, and has to use up a lot of potions or they simply won’t function. The final push is an intense and uphill battle (literally making this an uphill battle is a great way to use the symbology in game where having higher ground gives the enemy benefits, e.g. in most shooters or strategy games).

During this stage, the hero needs to be able to see the goal (the last control point, or the last waypoint on a TF2 payload map e.g.). He needs to be able to get to the conflict point really fast (in Battlefield games, there would be multiple fast vehicles at the control point right before the last one) and the final battle area needs to be very concentrated. Do not create wide open areas or trenches for this stage. Make the conflict direct. Also don’t forget to give the enemy lots of benefits that will really hurt the hero, and if your game mechanics allow for time-limits use them in the nastiest possible way at the end of this stage. This is the only part of the level where the level designer can go all-out sadistic on the player, and as long as there is some chance of the player being able to punch through, they will not be whining too much (well, they will, but they will also see the point and enjoy the fast pace).

I have pointed at some of the elements needed to create a final push stage in your game. How can we implement those in different genres?

In a strategy game: After the hero got through the major setback alone, he is now replenished with all possible units in the game, and the enemy is overrunning the planet with all of their forces.

The final battle is set in an hourglass level with huge waves of enemies eating away at the players defenses in a concentrated area. As we near the climax, the waves get larger, and the player’s army keeps pace. At one point the fighting gets so furious that the player starts to feel the pressure of micromanaging units. There is also a timer before the enemy is able to produce their nuke unit If the player cannot destroy their factory, and the enemy is starting to use larger and larger, and maybe even hitherto unseen units.

In a platformer: in this level platforms fall as you walk over them…you need to be fast and constantly move forward, and the enemies are relentless… sometimes it becomes more viable to just dodge their bullets and run instead of trying to kill them. There is only one visible and viable path, and very little time to choose anyways. No puzzles here….just relentless fighting and moving forward. Maybe the world behind you is crumbling at a constant speed – maybe you can hear the screams of your avatar’s “romantic interest” as she is being assimilated by Cthulhu himself ….

In an RPG: you have discovered the dungeon where the final boss/enemy resides, but his minions are not willing to serve up their master. Wave after wave of progressively stronger enemies come at you from the front, and from behind, and there is no time to explore, or maybe even open those loot chests. Monsters spawn so fast that going back and resting is not an option. Then there are the vilest minibosses in the game that you have to go through, before reaching the
chamber of Jronichiloctiel the Soul crusher!

In a multiplayer shooter: This is the fight for the final control point, or the capture of the enemy base. Allow the attackers to spawn nearby, or get there fast. Give them all the fancy weapons they want, but give the defenders an awesome position (e.g. let them have higher ground, or force the attackers through an hourglass level – you should of course never have only one path to go through, but you can always have one seemingly easy way to the enemy base and
multiple really dangerous ones ). For this to work, you need to give attackers/heroes an awesome forward staging area (i.e. if your game/spawn mechanics allow for this) and let the defenders have access to all sorts of defensive turrets, etc.

Turning point 5 – The climax (@90~99%)

The climax is the hero’s chance to overcome that one last giant obstacle to reaching his visible goal. In a game level this is the final boss battle, the capturing of the enemy base, or killing the last enemy standing. Here are some point to remember about the climax:

1. Don’t reduce tension artificially right before the climax. This is a stupid gimmick akin to screaming at your audience “Haha got you there!” Instead let it arise naturally from the already rising tension in the “final push”.

2. In order to overcome the final enemy, the player should use a lot, if not all of his skill/knowledge gained in the latter parts of the game. This is not the time to introduce new mechanics – it’s the time to demand the most of players based on already seen mechanics. For example, if success in your game was based on constant movement and quickly dodging enemy attacks, don’t put the player in a static turret that shoots at some giant end-boss!

3. It must resolve the hero’s quest. There is no more challenge after the climax whatsoever. After the climax it’s done! There should be no cleaning up to do. If the boss spawned adds during combat, once he is gone, the adds should blow up or something. Don’t distract the player from their huge achievement. Let them fully enjoy it. And then let them get their reward before the sweat on their brows dries!

In terms of level design, the climax is a natural extension of the final push, with the addition of one more element. This could be a final bomb that needs to be installed at the gates of the enemy base, or an end-boss, etc. Once the climax point is reached, it is not wise to suddenly negate all the prior challenges the hero was facing; no calm before the final storm here.

If you have a fighting game the arena where the final climax takes place normally has a central area where it all happens. It has entry points all around the arena, and players should be given no reason whatsoever to fight it out outside of this arena. Lock any backdoors that would distract from the final battle, and don’t let the defenders sneak pass attackers and backstab them. Also, avoid having any complex or smart enemies (except for the final boss) at this stage: having to think reduces pace, and new enemy behavior slows down flow – we don’t want any of that.

If you are making a puzzle or adventure game, this is where you repair that awesome giant mechanical contraption that will align Gaia’s energy with the center of the galaxy and save the world!

In an MMORPG, this would be the final boss in the story missions that needs to be beaten, or in case of dungeons it would be the end-boss battle.

In all of these cases make sure that the visuals tell the player that they have reached the end of the level before they enter the final battle (e.g. circular arena with tons of opening and no exit behind the boss), and make sure the final boss/challenge tests the players in multiple ways (speed, coordination, smarts, gear, armor, sensible tactics, etc.)

Stage 6 – The aftermath

After all the madness in the final push and the climax, and after the final goal has be resolved (hopefully in a final and definite way) it is time for the heroes to have a rest and enjoy their reward. A few points that might need repeating here are:

1. Make sure the player knows that he has won. Enemies should not be shooting at you anymore, and players should not find ANY challenges in their environment after the climax.

2. Give the player time and space to enjoy his reward. In TF2, successful attackers get to chase down and crit cowering defenders. In RPG’s players get access to all the treasures strewn about in the Boss’s chamber. In MMORPG’s this is when loots gets divided up. Many games simply announce that you won, and load the next level. Sometimes you don’t even get enough time to check out the leaderboards: this is bad design and rushing the player who gets no sense of closure and reward.

3. Avoid half-assed aftermaths. Let the player utterly defeat the antagonist or marry the girl in a happy ending or allow the Hero’s beloved one to die in a sad ending (instead of them being hurt e.g. or leaving the hero). Don’t let the nemesis get away, at least put him in prison, or magically lock him in a rock for good. Players hate to see that after all their trouble nothing happens to the baddies. Leave a clue for the sequel if you want to, but also give a good sense of closure to players.

There aren’t many level design tips for the aftermath except that:

a) Do not forego this stage and rush your player out the door into the next adventure.

b) Give players ample reward and time/space to enjoy that reward. Praise them, and show them how well they have done. If the player saved the princess have the princess kiss them, or have a marriage ceremony or something , or if they were supposed to destroy the enemy base, show them in gory detail how they bombed and burned their enemies and how all the structures came down in beautiful Destruction2 ?.

c) If this was a mini-story (like a dungeon in a larger MMORPG) don’t make players work in the aftermath of their success, e.g. teleport them out of the dungeon instead of making them walk out.

Give them a magical glow and let them feel like kings for a while.

In the next installment of this article, I will create a TF2 Payload map that follows the Hollywood formula, and I am sure you will start to see parallels with existing popular payload maps. Go ahead and play around in the map a bit before you read the full details of the design. I would also love to hear from you about other ways to make the Hollywood formula work in different games, and if you are a designer, let us know if you have ever consciously followed this or a similar flow design formula in your own level designs.

In part I of this article I discussed the six-stage Hollywood storytelling formula and how it can be applied to level design. I also promised to show you a practical example in the form of a TF2 Level. If you want to play the level before ccompanying me through the design process go ahead and have a look.

If you can’t play the level you might have to get the latest Unity 4 web player plugin for Mac or PC. You will need at least version 4.0.0f5.Zzzzz…

Glad to see you are back! Now the boring/educational part:

TF2 Class Rundown for Level Designers*

Before we start designing the map, we need to remember who we are designing it for, namely the player classes in TF2. Each of these classes has their strengths and weaknesses, and they all must be catered to both as attackers and defenders. Even though players do switch classes when they have to, they also have favorite classes that they play well (or think they play well) and a map that allows all classes to be utilized in interesting ways at different stages will be popular with players.

Here is a quick rundown of the classes in TF2 and how they affect the design of our level:

Pyro: excels at ambushing groups of enemies at close range and finding/killing spies in narrow tunnels and in closed to open area transitions. They are easily killed in wide open areas. (Element = Narrow Corridor/tunnel)

Soldier: excels when above target especially when hard-to reach or see perches are available. Most powerful at medium ranges and when standing in an open area that faces an enemy exit point. Is weak at close ranges or very long ranges and when fighting one on one in open areas without obstructions. When a medic can hide nearby the soldier can cause havoc on enemies with splash damage (Element = open area facing an enemy exit or when on high-ground)

Medic/heavy: excels in killing enemies at close range when medic can hide while healing heavy or if close to a cart and where the heavy faces a narrowly spaced group of enemies. Is a large target for snipers and rockets, and is slow so cannot really duck. Also draws spies like dung draws flies so is very weak in tight sneaky areas. Heavies are generally better for defense (due to low mobility) than attacks, unless they are ubercharged of course) (Enemy funnel next
to protected area for medic)

Scout: excels at flanking and fast surprise captures when aerial access exists to go around enemy defenses – this also enables them to do quick hit and runs. Scouts do well in multi-level areas and places where they can outrun enemies around corners. When they have to take the common routes or when enemy heavies and pyros are around scouts are easy canon-fodder. (Element: exploitable height-differences and bends that allow loss of LoS)

Spy: excel in open areas with nooks and crannies they can regenerate in. Excel at getting behind enemy lines or to where only one turret can stand. Very weak against two or more turrets, tight spaces, and open areas with no hidden nooks. (Element: areas with lots of rooms)

Demoman: excels at killing units at entrance/exits (especially exists) with sticky traps. Traps also come in handy when defending enemy gather points. Excels at lobbing grenades into windows or around corners of defensive positions which makes him excellent at defending choke points. Demos fail in wide open areas against sniping and are weak against fast units like scouts or at very close range. (Element: Mazes/Corridors/cave funnel exits)

Sniper: excels when hiding behind windows or obstructions, and facing a wide open area or an enemy exit at large ranges (Generally you should not give them LoS towards narrow exits). Spies are weak in close combat or when spies have alternate access to their perches. (Element: windowed rooms with good LoS on open area)

Engineer/sentry: Dominate area when hidden behind 90 degree angle in path and if defended against grenades. Defenseless in open areas or narrow tunnels when there is no bend or in areas that are easily accessible by spies (backdoors). (Element: defensible 90 degree bends)

Now that we know which elements each class excels at we will give them access to ample opportunities to use those elements. We will also use this knowledge to weaken or strengthen the positions of attackers or defenders when needed to drive our six-stage Hollywood inspired narrative.

Overview

Our narrative will be applied to a single TF2 level vs. a map consisting of related levels that players cycle through as in the original ”Goldrush” map. Each turning point will be marked by a “checkpoint”. Checkpoints provide a perfect symbol to signal to the players that a new stage in their journey has begun, and since our narrative turning points are evenly spaced, it is easy enough to adapt them to be equivalent to checkpoints. Additionally, Stage one and six which are the setup and the aftermath will happen inside the friendly (attacker) and enemy (defender) bases, respectively, and they are clearly defined by the game rules, so we will not spend too much time designing the level for them, other than following simple best-practices. So here is the breakdown into narrative stages

Stage 1 – The setup

Here the attackers haven’t started the fight yet. They are allowed to pick classes, load their ubercharges, overcharge, get acquainted, taunt, and generally be silly. This is the perfect analogue to the every-day life of a hero. The only rule to remember is to provide multiple exits for the attacker base that provide quick break-out opportunities for the different classes. In our case our attackers have three exits. The main exit (B) s wide and provides no protection – it is also the closest exit meant for heavies and ubercharged attackers. It is also the closest point to the cart. Exit (A) allows for support
classes to exit somewhat protected by the protrusion. Exit (C) provides a protected exit further away from the possible sentry gun that might be behind the protrusion at (A). There is also a protected exit that leads to the watchtower at D which also provides a good overview of the field to snipers via windows. Though enemy soldiers can rocket-jump into (D) they won’t stand much of a chance when the gates open.

Turning point 1 “the opportunity” happens when the gates open after the count-down. Again a perfect metaphor, as the life of our heros now suddenly changes and battle ensues.

Stage 2 – The New Situation

As soon as players break out into the new situation we want to create a complex interactions with enemies and the environment. This area will set the tone for the future stages. In order to allow attackers to explore the area above all we need nooks and crannies where enemies can hide – yet we cannot give the enemies full territorial control. To this end, we will give enemies points (E) through (H) which with seemingly good firing and ambush positions. These points are designed to tempt the enemy to set ambushes and sentries, and yet they are easy enough to overcome because they are open to attacker firing lines. As you can see, from Point (A) attackers will have a great view towards all enemy setup points.

The new situation is generally an understandable and easily overcome challenge, therefore we have a straight track out of the area, and it should be easy enough for the attackers to break through to the first checkpoint (= turning point) which is the “change of plans”.

The “change of plans” turning point is where the hero makes a choice or is driven to the visible goal of story. Therefore we place our first decision point of the level here and now things go from interesting and fun in stage 2 to challenging and requiring tough decision in stage 3.

Stage 3 – Progress

This stage is all about ups and downs. Our heroes are challenged, and they are in the thick of things. This is where, after the initial shock of the new situation, they create a plan for their future and start to work towards it. In order to force players to make a plan we need to provide them with important choices.

Here is how we do it:

Choice of path: Attackers get to choose if they will stay on the main track, clear out building (T1) or move on to building (T2). If they are in (T2) they can choose if they want to exit on the top and enter the tunnel (B) or exit right unto the raised gallery to the left of (T2).

Choice of class: the area is designed to be full of twists and turns (which symbolize the ups and downs of the hero’s progress), and for the first time “real” ambush points (T1 and T2 and around corners) and defendable sentry points for the enemy are introduced. This is where the attackers meet their first challenge and will be forced to switch classes if they were snipers or heavies, etc. as most of their Line of Sight benefits are lost.

I provided the enemy with a quick path to the point of conflict (PoC) through tunnel (B) to even out the teams at this point. This equality will give the attacker team a sense that they have now entered the stage where they need to start coming up with a plan.

Stage 3 ends with the “point of no return” (A) above – we want to make the heroes (attackers) feel that they have left their base behind and are now entering a whole new setting – where they are required to make painful decisions. In a war movie, this would be where the heroes chopper crashes behind enemy lines. In the Hollywood formula the point of no return always poses a painful decision between two contrasting things (e.g. shoot the criminal or call 911, Charge head-on or escape, cheat on a loved one or stay loyal). In order to create this stark contrast I implemented a huge change of venue from the building to building combat in Stage 2 to an environment that gives players a choice of backstabbing the enemy (via tunnel (B) above or charging ahead into sniper territory via ramp (A) above. Each player has to make a choice here and the difference between the choices is a big as it gets, i.e. being a hero in a wide open area vs. a ackstabber in a dark tunnel.

Stage 4 – Complications

Besides providing a change of venue, the exposed ramp and area beyond creates a delightful sense of “Oh crap!” in the attackers. Stage 4 forces an all-or- nothing combat style.

If the player has taken the ramp he will be fully exposed to sniper fire from the end of the field. If he manages to get to the entrance to the tunnel at (E) below he will have to face enemy ambushes to fight his way into the tunnel and to silence the snipers, and during all that time his team mates pushing the cart will be completely exposed to enemies jumping down from (G) below, and snipers through the windows.

As you can see in the image above the snipers in the sniper gallery could be duck-hunting on the ramp (A) and along the track. In my first tests this was just too easy to defend– so I added obstructions (the Tesla coils) where attackers can hide, even if for a short while before pushing the cart forwards. The coils are also meant to add to the “Oh crap!” feeling!

On the other hand if the attackers had taken the tunnel (from (A) to (B) below) they would have had to overcome an extreme disadvantage at the tunnel exit when they faced the enemy machicolations first, and an easily defendable position close to the defender base thereafter. Both cases offer a “now or never” situation.

This stage ends in turning point 4, “the major setback”. For the cart pushers this is symbolized by a ramp that leads upwards and where the enemy has the higher ground and a path to flank them (by jumping down the ledge to the open area. For anyone being able to exit the sneaky tunnels towards the enemy base, the building in front of them will be very hard to surmount. I did need to inject a glimmer of hope as in any good Hollywood movie, and that’s why I connected the sniper gallery in front of the open area via a secret tunnel to an area close to the enemy base.

Stage 5 – The final push

Nothing symbolizes a final push as a bridge does; hence, I went all-out Jungian and jammed a bridge in there. I also liked the multi-level combat tactics that the exit into the water, the bridge, and the higher up buildings and balconies surrounding it allow players on both sides. Here the enemy is very close to his base, and the only comfort, albeit a small one, I could offer the attackers was the shielding (B) and (C) on the bridge and the fact that they have access through the tunnel and further protection from the high columns behind the bridge. The water needs to be there to provide people burned by pyros with some relief and we needed the ramps so attackers blown off the bridge get a second chance.

In the image below you can see the bridge opening (A) which is totally in LoS from the enemy base, the tunnel exit (B) from the sniping gallery which will give attackers relief and a chance to attack the enemies exiting their base, the ramp (C) out of the tunnel that leads behind the large columns that offer cover to attackers, and water (D) under the bridge.

If the major attacker force decided to make the final push through the tunnel (which also provides them with a quick access to the final PoC, the will need to take control of points (B), (C) and (D) below ad give their cart-pushing buddies a chance to get on the bridge.

This stage ends in turning point 5 “the climax” which needs to be very close to the end of our narrative. It is where the enemy has all advantages and the attackers by extreme measures and personal sacrifice overcome the enemy. In our level this is the exposed mid-point of the bridge. Once attackers are past it, we get to stage 6.

Stage 6 – The aftermath

After the bridge mid-point the attackers get some cover, and from there it is only a few meters to the final checkpoint. I kept this distance really short, so that the battle for the mid-point is not overshadowed. If the attackers have gotten this far they get to enjoy the fruits of their labor by blasting away at cowering enemies!

Before I finish, I do want to remind you that just like the attacker base, the defender base needs multiple exits, and in this case, since the defender base is so close to the PoC, I also gave it good LoS over the bridge mid-point (B) and quick access to other areas (D) and (C) from their main protected exit (A) as you can see below.

Conclusion

As you see it is entirely possible to lay out the six stage narrative of Hollywood writers by using well-understood symbology (twisting alleys, exposed areas, down/up ramps, bridges, secret tunnels, etc.), controlling the level of challenge/relief for the attacker team, by allowing for multiple types of choices at specific points, and by controlling the duration it will take the attackers to go through each stage and reach the turning points. If you have more ideas on how to control and shape the narrative, without taking away control from the players, or a critique of how the level was lain out I would love to hear from you.

篇目3，Designing game narrative: How to create a great story

By Terence Lee

In this article, we talk about why storytelling needs to revolve around the interactive nature of the medium. Come and learn how to identify great game narrative, and to understand the importance of interactive – rather than cinematic – storytelling.

Imagine one day you are struck with a flash of inspiration: freshly seared onto your mind is a story, one that is undoubtedly the greatest tale ever conceived by Man. It has all the elements of a great narrative: a gripping plot, nuanced characters, and an evocative setting.

How would you write a book to convey this story?

First, let’s look at how the medium of literature works. Writers use words to express ideas, arranging them in ways that draw the reader into the world of the story. Writers use descriptive language to evoke the senses; they construct dialogue to reveal personalities; and they structure words into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, to set the pacing and flow.

Now, let’s say you write your book while disregarding all of these guidelines. You use trite descriptions, a destitute vocabulary, and you reveal your characters in unsubtle ways. An excerpt of this book might read:

“It was a dark and stormy night. Bob was an evil man. He said to John, the good guy, ‘I hate you and I will kill you.’”

You continue to churn out the whole book in this horrible style, somehow still managing to communicate the bare facts of the amazing story you had in mind.

People who read the book would laugh. Even though it may actually contain the outline of an amazing story, it fails to properly put it into words – you could say that it didn’t take advantage of the medium of expression (literature). The story and the storytelling are not the same thing; you’ve only conveyed the facts of your story, but not the greatness of it.

Of course, you know better. Let’s say instead, you write the book beautifully, creating the best novel of all time. Great job! Now, you have a new task: you must convey your great story as a movie.

Now, let’s look at the medium of cinema. Whereas literature can be characterized by using words to present ideas over the course of time, cinema builds on that by adding a second dimension of expression: sensory input.

The audiovisual experience in a film is a whole new realm of possibilities for artistic expression. Whole pages of descriptive language in a book can be represented by a brief scene of imagery in a movie. A conversation between characters is now enhanced by their body language, their tone of voice, and the cinematography.

So, to make your movie, what do you do? Here’s one method: hand a random person your amazing, book version of the story, and film them reading it out loud. Perhaps you also sprinkle in some beautiful panoramic landscape shots. That counts as a movie, right? It’s got audio and visuals set to ideas presented over time.

Well, despite containing narration of the best novel of all time, the movie is a failure. Again, it did not take advantage of the medium of expression – the visuals and the audio are not used in a way that brings the story to life. Anyone who viewed it would laugh at how it tried to tell a story with complete disregard of the entire sensory dimension of cinema. If you’re just going to watch a movie of a guy reading a book out loud, you might as well just read the book yourself.

What about the beautiful, panoramic shots? They’re nice, but if you haven’t unified the narrative elements with the cinematic ones, then all they are is a distraction. The visuals and the audio are the primary vehicle for telling the story; they shouldn’t be treated as mere artifacts of the medium. The level of cinematic quality of the panoramic shots needs to be permeated throughout the whole storytelling; you can’t just segregate the story part and the video part. It’d be like trying to save that bad book we wrote earlier by sprinkling in Shakespeare quotes. You can’t just staple on pretty cinematics to a book and call it a film adaptation.

Of course, again, you know better – this is all obvious stuff. Instead, you film an amazing movie. Good work! With that achievement out of the way, you have one final task: to tell your amazing story using a video game.

We said that cinema was kind of like two-dimensional literature, the second axis being sensory input. Video games introduce a third-dimension: interactivity.

In books, depth comes from the words you read; in film, additional nuances emerge from hearing and seeing a scene. In games, you can discover further depth from doing the scene. With interactivity, you now get to experience the story firsthand. When you play as the protagonist, you have the opportunity to take on their motivations and emotions. You hear and see things via your own discovery, not from the guiding lens of a cameraman. We could say that video games communicate depth of narrative experientially, whereas cinema did it visually.

So, to adapt your story to a game, you do this: you take your amazing movie version of the story, cut it up into its individual scenes, and create a computer program that plays back the clips. You code some fun segments of gameplay that are tangentially related to some unimportant parts of the story, and then sprinkle them in between the movie scenes.

Well, despite having the best story, the best writing, and the best cinematic representation of it, the game again fails to take advantage of the medium of expression – it did not integrate the interactivity into the narrative. What about the fun gameplay sections you sprinkled in? Well, just like the Shakespeare sprinkled in your bad book, and the panoramic shots in your bad movie, those gameplay sections don’t do anything to advance the narrative. All you’ve done is segregate the game into its story parts and gameplay parts. No matter how fun the gameplay part is, no matter how good the story part is, if there is minimal overlap between the two, then you can hardly say that the story was successfully told through the medium of games. All you’ve done is staple gameplay onto a movie.

Now, people who play this game would laugh at how poorly the narrative is presented, right? Well, no, they wouldn’t.

You may be unsurprised to learn that almost all big-budget games present their narrative in that method — story, gameplay, story, gameplay, with minimal overlap.

Story versus storytelling

Wait-a-minute: this method isn’t actually bad storytelling, is it? I mean, people love these games, don’t they? They sell well, and people always talk about how good their stories are.

Well, yes, I would say that it is bad storytelling. Now, that isn’t to say that the games themselves are necessarily bad, or even that their stories are bad. Narrative isn’t automatically a crucial component in games, as it often is in film or literature. Interactivity is the defining feature of games – and indeed, games that excel in their gameplay are most often great games. However, a large number of games appear to have serious narrative ambitions, yet they try to tell their stories by jamming together the mismatching puzzle pieces of cinematic control and interactivity.

It doesn’t matter how good your story is. What matters first is how good your storytelling is, and that’s defined by what medium you’re telling that story in, whether it’s a book, movie, or game. The aforementioned games with big narrative ambitions have great stories but bad storytelling.

So what makes storytelling good, and how do we identify bad storytelling?

A note on game criticism

Before we answer those questions, let’s all get on the same page regarding some concerns: Isn’t this all subjective? If everyone likes it, then what’s the big deal?

Is the quality of game storytelling subjective? Only partially. A story-focused video game, like any form of creative expression, is an act of communication. The goal of a game designer is to communicate an experience and theme to the player. What’s subjective is the value of that desired experience and theme.

However, what’s not as subjective is the effectiveness of the communication of those ideas. Most game criticism about stories tends to discuss the subjective themes, while taking the clarity and presentation of the theme for granted. It’s like if critics were discussing the horrible movie that we made earlier, and rating it positively solely because of the content of the narrated story, overlooking the fact that the story is presented in a horrible way.

But people like these games; they have fun and they enjoy the stories. Well, I don’t mean to diminish their positive experiences. Rather, I hope to show that enormously greater experiences are possible. We have very low standards, mostly because there are such few good examples out there. This is reinforced by popular game journalism reviews, which really is just an extension of the game industry’s marketing arm, a symbiotic feel-good loop that ensures that only the most easily digestible game concepts are explored.

We think what we want are movies with a dash of interactivity, when there is actually an entirely unexplored universe of possibilities out there. Once you think about what the theoretically perfect game narrative could be, you realize that what we currently have falls drastically short. We already have works in literature and cinema that are close to ideal perfection, but we don’t even know what the ideal is in games.

The goal of this article is to show that games have barely even figured out how to present a theme, and that we should first focus on how to properly use the medium as a tool of expression before we start to worry so much about what is being expressed.

How to measure artistic quality

Before we talk about storytelling, let’s first talk about how to even identify good qualities in a game. One of the strongest indicators of artistic quality or good design is how effectively the individual elements work together to communicate the theme. In a good movie, everything should work to reinforce the thematic ideas, from the colors and the angle of the camera, to the music, acting, and makeup. If one of these elements instead contradicts the theme, then it sticks out and detracts from the power of the message, or at the very least, misses an opportunity to strengthen the message.

For example, in The Matrix, colours are used to emphasize the idea of opposing realities. All the scenes that take place in the simulated matrix world have a green tint built into the very props, wardrobe, and lighting, while all the scenes that take place in the cold and harsh real world have a blue tint. This visual cue helps the viewer subconsciously distinguish the contrasting worlds. It’s an elegant way to subtly reinforce that theme.

If the color palettes were instead chosen arbitrarily, the theme of contrasting realities would be that much weaker, that much less coherent. A good cinematographer finds and takes these opportunities in order to maximize the strength of their ideas. Likewise, in game storytelling, we also find opportunities to reinforce the message of the story with game elements like interaction and decision making. To ignore the theme while designing these elements is to have a weaker storytelling experience. This is a restatement of our earlier revelation, that we must take advantage of the traits of the medium in order to effectively tell a story in that medium.

A creative work made with this attitude feels elegant and consistent, because it manages to communicate many related ideas with few components. A less coordinated game instead feels unfocused, clumsy, and conflicting. If we want to identify weak storytelling, these are the attributes to look for, which we can detect by playing through a game and paying attention to see if our mind fills with dissonance.

Three kinds of dissonance

Cognitive dissonance – it’s an internal, mental conflict, and is usually quite subtle. It happens when you hold two conflicting beliefs or ideas in your mind at the same time. What kind of dissonance do we feel when we play these kinds of games? Here are three kinds that I’ve identified.

Conflicting experiences

The first – and most apparent – kind is ludonarrative dissonance. What does that mean? Ludonarrative dissonance is when you watch a game cutscene where the hero laments his distancing relationship with his family, and then in the next moment, you’re driving a car over a hundred people. Ludonarrative dissonance is when a great warrior ally monologues about how cunning and fearsome he is, only in the next moment, he’s running in circles, blocking your path annoyingly, and then gets shot dead instantly. It’s when what the story says and what the player does or experiences don’t match up.

This kind of dissonance happens quite often when you segregate the narrative and the gameplay, because the narrative is in the hands of the writer in one moment, and the player the next. It makes it hard to take seriously what the story is saying, because it conflicts with what we are actually experiencing.

“Who am I?”

The next kind of dissonance is a dissonance of identity. To explain this, let’s first back up a bit to the analogy of literature, cinema, and games as dimensions. Another way to look at this triplet is in their increasingly intimate point of view. Think about books: a lot of literature could be described as third-person storytelling: the events are verbally recounted to you by a third party – the author – and you interpret the words on your own.

Movies, on the other hand, are second-person storytelling: you watch the events unfold before your eyes, seeing things directly as they are. Lastly, video games are first-person storytelling: you are the actor living out the story. Instead of simply being told what’s going on, or watching it happen, you’re experiencing it firsthand!

However, in poor game storytelling, we often have a big dissonance regarding your identity. In one moment, you are the protagonist, exploring the world and fighting enemies. In the next moment, you jump out of your body and watch your character interact with others without your control, walking and talking on their own.

You’ve switched from first-person to second-person. Who are you? Are you the actor or the viewer? Games should be consistent with their point of view. It severely diminishes the importance of your actions if it constantly feels like the game distrusts you with making the important ones.

It diminishes the importance of your actions if it feels like the game distrusts you with making the important ones

One of the basic principles in writing is to show, don’t tell. If you want to convey that a character is nimble, don’t explicitly say “Bob is nimble,” show it: “Bob dodged the falling boulder.” In games, the principle should be to do, don’t show. Don’t just show a cinematic of your character dodging a falling boulder, do it: have the player dodge the boulder himself. Now it is the player themselves who feels nimble, instead of just his avatar. This conversion of character development into personal development is the key to immersive storytelling in games.

The problem with cutscenes

The last kind of dissonance is the weird modal shift that happens every time the game awkwardly tries to switch between “narrative mode” and “game mode”. One minute you’re playing a game, the next you’re watching a movie. It breaks the immersion, reminding you constantly that you’re consuming a piece of media. Not only that, it strips away any tension and emotion that was built up during the gameplay.

Imagine you’re playing an intense game where you’re fighting for your life. You’re in a really difficult segment: the whole time you’re on your toes and watching your every step, making sure you don’t make any mistakes. The stress and tension you are filled with is real: it’s genuine, tangible pressure, not just because your character is in a thematically tense situation with bullets flying and zombies shambling, but because you yourself are being challenged, trying to master the gameplay and pull victory out of a tricky situation. This part right here is good storytelling: the emotions the player is feeling matches up with the thematic situation at hand.

Converting character development into personal development is the key to truly immersive storytelling

While you are playing through this part of the game, all of a sudden, the camera zooms out, and now it’s a cutscene. Instantly, all your internal tension is gone. You put your controller down and sit back and watch. Even though the characters on-screen might now be engaged in an even more thematically tense situation, jumping from helicopters or something, you as a player don’t really care about that. Deep down inside, you know it’s just “movie mode”: anything that happens now is just supposed to happen; it’s all just “part of the story”.

Any mistakes you made before, during the gameplay mode, actually mattered: they caused you real world stress. But now, since you have no more control, any mistakes that you see your character doing during movie mode are all “part of the plan”. You no longer have skin in the game. You find yourself relaxing when it switches to this mode. You’re relaxing during the climax! What’s supposed to be the most intense part of a game is now the moment for your to ease your muscles and take a breath of relief. The game wasted a hard-earned emotional buildup in the name of being more “cinematic”!

Every time the game switches from gameplay mode to movie mode, your attachment to the player character switches from 100% emotionally invested, to 100% detached. That’s pure, jarring, dissonance right there.

Here’s another, very different example of this kind of modal shift, this one happening outside of games: silent movies. These films have pretty good cinematography and very good acting. You could say that they fill out the visual experience quite well. However, every once in a while, an intertitle comes up.

Intertitles are those fullscreen captions that describe what is happening or contain dialogue. During these captions, the film regresses back a dimension – it ignores the sensory experience, the thing that makes film unique from literature, and puts straight up literature on the screen. If we were to graph the progression of a silent film on our 2D chart, it would look something like this:

Over the length of the film, it generally maintains high levels of visual experience; however, whenever an intertitle comes up, the amount of sensory experience drops down to near zero. The exact same thing happens with game cutscenes!

When a cutscene happens, you ignore the whole dimension of interactivity, the thing that makes games unique from film, and put straight up film on the screen. Games with cutscenes are the silent films of games. At least silent films are excused by their technical limitations – no comparable excuse exists for games. The worst part is that the most important plot points tend to happen during cutscenes, while keeping you at a safe distance from actually participating.

Games with cutscenes are the silent films of games.

Let’s look at a counter example to cutscenes. The Half-Life series has an alternative approach: instead of showing a movie, they unfold the content of the scene naturally during the gameplay, and you never lose control of your character. Characters start talking around you, impressive visuals happen in front of you, but you’re always in control. You may be confined to a gated area during these parts, but you’re still free to walk around and examine things, and watch the action unfold while remaining in-character.

This works pretty well: the immersion is not broken, and you don’t change point-of-view – you never stop being an actor in the story experiencing things firsthand. It’s not perfect though: the formula does eventually get a little bit predictable, and the illusion wears away once you start realizing, “okay, I’m now in a story room,” but for the most part it works well, far better than a cutscene.

Explicit stories and player stories

We’ve talked a lot about what games are doing wrong. How do we improve our storytelling? To figure that out, let’s first take a look at the concept of narrative itself more deeply.

What even is narrative? Do all games have it? Do all games need it? Let’s lay down some definitions. First of all, there are two kinds of narratives in games: the first is the traditional kind, the kind we think of when we talk about plot, characters, and dialogue; and the second kind is the narrative of the player’s personal experience.

The first kind is what I call the explicit story. It’s what games are about. This game is about fighting off zombies. This game is about exploring the world and saving the princess. This game is about saving the world from aliens. It’s the aesthetic context of the game, explicitly stated by visuals, sounds, and words. Not all games have this kind of narrative, but it’s in most. RPGs, adventure games, and action games usually put a lot of emphasis on the explicit story. Other games eschew it completely, like many puzzle games and most traditional card games. Even a game like chess has a tiny amount of it: the game is loosely styled as a medieval war game.

The second kind of narrative is what I call the player story. It’s the player’s personal experience. As they play through the game, a lot of things happen in the player’s mind: they experience a variety of emotions, they develop perceptions and interpretations of characters and events, and they form relationships between their own actions and the on-screen results. These things all work together to create a different kind of narrative experience, one with its own pacing, characters, plot, and dialogue, separate from the explicit story.

A good player story should always be the end goal, while the role of an explicit story should be to support the development of a good player story.

Are these player stories actually real stories? Yes – in fact, players will often just outright tell these stories to others. Ask someone about their intense Tetris match.

“I was trying to beat my friend’s high score. I had a great start, but near the end I just couldn’t get a line piece. It was up to the final few rows, and finally I got one! I used it to put myself in the clear, and went on to beat my friend’s high score.”

That’s a real story. Maybe it doesn’t sound that exciting when you put it in words, but in the player’s mind, it’s a fully developed experience with a real conflict, climax, and conclusion. It’s felt deeply by the player, because it’s something that happened directly to them.

All games have this kind of narrative. Even a game like football has its own stories – people tell them all the time, recounting exciting matches and plays. Many games have both kinds, both an explicit story and the player’s story.

However, a good player story should always be the end goal, while the role of an explicit story should be to support the development of a good player story. A game with an amazing explicit story and a horrible player story is like the book we made earlier that had a great plot but a horrible delivery of it; it’s the movie we made with the bad narrator and boring visuals. You can’t just design both stories separately: as we saw earlier, fun gameplay that is segregated from the explicit story makes for dissonance, meaning you’ll end up with a disjointed and bad player story.

Unifying the two narratives

So how do we tell a good player story and a good explicit story together? By knowing this: the best game storytelling is when the explicit story is indistinguishable from the player story.

Ideally, when you play a game, you should never have to ask yourself, “What am I supposed to be doing?” In a good game, what you are supposed to do should intersect with what you want to do. If the emotions and motivations you feel while playing a game feel natural within the context of the game, then something amazing has happened.

In a good game, what you are supposed to do should intersect with what you want to do.

Here’s an example from the first Portal game. In this game, you play as a test subject with a portal gun, trying to advance through different test chambers. Near the end, you are riding a slowly moving platform to what you are told is a reward for your good test performance. Suddenly, it’s revealed that the platform is actually taking you to a fiery death.

When I was playing this scene, I genuinely panicked: I was deeply immersed in the game at this point, feeling good about myself for beating the puzzles, ready to be rewarded for it, and now I was being betrayed. Without thinking, my eyes lead me to an ideal surface for firing my portal gun, and I created an exit for myself, escaping certain death. For just a moment, I genuinely thought I broke the system. I had outsmarted the enemy with my wits!

Now of course, it turns out that I was actually supposed to do that. But when I did it, it was purely out of my own motivation for self preservation, not because I wanted to “advance the story”. There’s a night and day difference between just watching a character narrowly escape, versus doing it firsthand via your own wits and finesse, experiencing genuine anxiety and relief. A key plot element has progressed naturally, without dissonance. What I wanted to do and what I was supposed to do was the same.

Everything in the earlier parts of the game worked towards making this scene happen naturally for the player: the training in the portal mechanics; the witty dialogue that foreshadowed doom; the test chamber format that made you want to escape; the little hints that escape could be possible.

Let’s break this scene down to the two narrative types: The player story is that you used your wits to escape a stressful situation. The explicit story is that your character, Chell, used her wits to escape a stressful situation. They’re identical!

There’s a night and day difference between just watching a character narrowly escape, versus doing it firsthand via your own wits and finesse, experiencing genuine anxiety and relief.

Let’s compare this scene to a similar one in a different game. I’ll use the new Tomb Raider as an example, although there are countless situations in other games that play out the same way. In one scene, you are watching a cutscene of your character running from danger, and suddenly it’s revealed that a large boulder is about to crush you. You have exactly one option: press the × button within the next half second. If you do, your character jumps out of the way safely. Any other action causes your character to die.

On the outside, both scenes in Portal and Tomb Raider seem to have the same amount of danger: in both cases, failure means a gruesome death for the heroine. Yet in Tomb Raider, the situation is experienced largely emotionlessly by the player. Perhaps you cringe a bit when you see the grisly death animation, or maybe you experience frustration as you miss the button the first few times. But there’s never the excitement of using your wits to save yourself from danger, as there was in Portal.

Even though the Tomb Raider scene may be more cinematic and visually impressive, it’s forgettable. You almost got killed! Shouldn’t that be memorable? It’s not, because the player story clashes with the explicit story. The player story is that you’re watching a cutscene, and suddenly the game tells you to press a button in an obvious and annoying way, and you are forced to press it under the punishment of boring repetition. The explicit story is that your character, Lara Croft, narrowly escape grave danger using her keen senses and agility. That’s a huge disconnect between the two! How dissonant is that?

This is what I mean when I say that the explicit story is the aesthetic context to the player story. It’s a way of framing your actions and motivations, a way to increase consistency and to reinforce themes. The two narrative types work together. If there was no explicit story in that Portal scene, you would just be jumping from gray boxes into gray walls, so that you don’t fall into the red zone that would reset your position. You might feel good about figuring out the puzzle, or enjoy that you’re getting pretty good at the mechanics, but you wouldn’t feel like you “beat the system”, or that you used your wits to cheat death.

On the other hand, if there were no player story, like if you had just watched a really cinematic video of the situation, you wouldn’t have felt those things either. You may get excited by the visuals, or feel happy that the protagonist survived, but you wouldn’t feel any personal achievement or any risk to yourself.

Linear, scripted, cinematic stories

So we just saw a good example of how tell a good story of a short action sequence. How can we extend these principles to the entire story of the game?

Well, it’s hard. Not many games have pulled it off very well, especially games with a linear, scripted, cinematic format. By this format, I mean games with a big emphasis on the explicit story, with scripted events, lots of characters and dialogue, and usually a definite ending. There are a lot of weaknesses with this format: a lack of choice; an over-emphasis of dialogue, even though the player has little control over it; a rigid, linear progression. These aren’t weaknesses in a film, but in a game, these traits clash quite heavily with the medium’s emphasis on interactivity.

Portal is one of these games, but it manages to do a great job at storytelling. However, I think it is an exception, in that it is unique in its ability to take advantage of those weaknesses. The lack of choices, the one-sided dialogue, and the linear progression, all made sense in Portal’s test chamber format. You’re forced to do what is told, since you’re just a guinea pig; you can’t talk back, since there are no other characters except for a disembodied computer; and you only have one direction to go in those test chambers.

This convenient format means that none of the usual dissonances arise. But you can’t really generalize these techniques to other games. It’s as if the only way to overcome these weaknesses is by embracing them and building them into the story itself. That’s not an option for most game stories.

Maybe the linear, scripted, cinematic story just isn’t a great format for games. Some games with this format do a pretty decent job, at least in some aspects, but I doubt we’re going to see great advances in this style for a long time. It’s a style that is imperfectly adapted from movies, and it just doesn’t fit very elegantly in a medium about interactivity, choices, and personal experience.

I don’t think it should be the go-to format for game stories. What other formats are there? There are a few options, many of them experimental, but there’s one in particular I want to explore in this article: emergent narrative.

Putting the player back in control

We saw that the weaknesses with the linear, scripted, cinematic format all revolved around control. The writer in us wants to create a string of concrete events that unfold unvaryingly, but what if we loosened up on that desire? What if we gave up that strict control? A common thing we saw in those games is that they first created the explicit story, and then designed the player story around that. They have their script all written out, and then built the gameplay with the script in mind, trying to get it to match up. What if we did the opposite? What if we designed the player story first, and then built the explicit story to match that?

Now, I don’t mean to simply make a fun abstract game first, and then write a scripted story that makes sense with it. That’s certainly a great method to try out, but it’s not exactly what I’m talking about at the moment. What I mean is, instead of having any scripted elements at all, we let the explicit story describe the player story. We let the plot, climax, and characters all emerge from what the player experiences. In short, the story describes what the player did, instead of what the player needs to do.

What would that look like, exactly? Here are a few examples.

Journey

The first example is the game Journey. In the game, the explicit story appears to be very loose. When you start out, all you know is that you’re some sort of person or creature in the desert. That’s it. There are no explicit goals, motivations, plot, conflict or dialogue. However, these things naturally emerge, simply through the design of the game.

Early on, you see a beautiful, gleaming beam of light on a mountain far in the distance. Either consciously or subconsciously, your goal becomes to get to that mountain, as it always seems to be in your view. Along the way, you encounter some characters. These are other human players, going through the same experience as you. You can’t talk to them with words, but you can communicate with body language and a singing ability.

At this point, the story is different for everyone. Some people partner up with a curious new player, solving problems together, building up their friendship, reaching the end together. Others have conflicts with the other players, and choose to go it alone. Others make a great friend, but become separated from each other through their own struggles in the game, and they mourn the loss of their friend. Others find a mentor, an experienced player who can guide and teach them along their way.

These are all great stories that are deeply meaningful to the players, since they are personal experiences that they created for themselves. And they’re not just personal like an intense Tetris game, but also emotionally complex, like a good movie. I mean, imagine this:

You’re alone in the wilderness, and then you get stuck at the bottom of a cliff. You have great trouble getting out, but then a stranger comes out of nowhere and helps you. The two of you become great friends and you explore the world together. However, as you cross a windy bridge, your friend falls off!

You yell for him, hoping he hears you. You are filled with despair, knowing you may never see him again, but suddenly you hear him wailing faintly in the distance. You know that voice, that singsong pattern that you’ve heard him chirp before. Eventually, you go down and rescue him, as he had rescued you earlier. You journey to the end together safely.

That’s like something out of a movie! However, the experience is even stronger than a movie, because it actually happens to you. It happens not because a writer decided it should, but because of the actions you and your new friend did. You formed real relationships, felt real emotions, real despair and joy. A scripted version of the experience would only be a vicarious one; never a genuine, firsthand one like it is now. You could call it a literal narrative, since everything that’s important actually happens in real life, short of physically going into a mystical desert.

A scripted version of the experience would only be a vicarious one; never a genuine, firsthand one like it is now

It’s not that the designers didn’t design any explicit story. Rather, instead of trying to come up with very specific plot lines, characters, dialogue, and events, they chose to design a context that would highlight those elements when they emerged.

When you find another player, there are visual cues that underscore their presence and introduction. When you communicate with them through singing and body language, all sorts of imagery forms in your mind about the other player’s personality (that’s character development!). When you both are getting along fine, a big hazard tests your relationship. These are all elements of a great story, and they are explicitly designed by the designers. They’re just not shoved down your throat – they happen naturally.

Dwarf Fortress

Let’s look at another example. We talked about letting the story emerge out of the player experience; this game takes that concept to a whole new level: Dwarf Fortress.

It’s hard to describe Dwarf Fortress, but in short, it’s a detailed simulation of a kingdom of dwarves. It looks graphically primitive, but don’t let that fool you: the game is ridiculously detailed. This is a game that simulates everything from rivers cutting through canyons over thousands of years, to an individual droplet of rain on the eyelash of a child. It’s a sandbox game, and you try to build up your kingdom until a catastrophe naturally emerges through the complexity of the simulation, wiping everything away.

One great aspect of the game is that its visual simplicity allows your mind to fill in the blanks and assign meaning and motivation to the details in the game. It’s like how when you read a good book, your mind naturally creates what the characters look and sound like. Through this and through the game’s complexity, you can imagine what kinds of stories must emerge. DFstories.com catalogues many of these: some filled with action, some unexpectedly heartfelt and touching, others just plain silly. Check them out to see just what kind of imagination and emotions get stirred up by people playing this game.

While I would consider Dwarf Fortress to be on the extreme side of its style of storytelling, as it is quite inaccessible to most people, there’s still a lot from it that we can learn. The main thing we can take away is that an emergent situation – whether it came from the interaction of complex rules, the player’s experimentation, or even just through random chance – can be just as impactful to a player as a scripted situation, sometimes even more so.

The beauty comes when the situations feel purposeful and add depth to the player story. The fact that a situation is emergent means it’s likely unique, making the experience feel special for the player, since they know that no one else has encountered it before. It’s like when you play Minecraft the first few times and find a beautiful natural formation. You feel a sense of awe, knowing that you’re the first person to have ever seen it. It must be what old explorers felt when trailblazing. That’s a hard feeling to create with scripted situations!

Brogue

A final example of emergent narrative is a roguelike game called Brogue.

In Brogue, you are an adventurer exploring a procedurally generated cave, trying to reach the artifact at the bottom and bring it back up in one piece. It’s very difficult: death is permanent, and there are an infinite number of mistakes to make. The explicit story is minimal: all you know is what you’re looking for, and that the world around you is highly dangerous. Like Dwarf Fortress, the minimal visuals let the player form their own interpretations of the action.

However, the game is filled to the brim with opportunities for the emergence of great player stories. There are complex interactions between items, enemies, and the environment, and you always have a myriad of options for dealing with the current situation. Grass catches on fire; enemies can turn into allies; dropped items can trigger switches. There are so many interactions between individual elements, yet there are no scripted sequences. What kinds of emergent stories can arise from this? I watched my friend play the game once:

There he was, stuck on a wooden bridge over a deep chasm, goblins closing in on both sides, blocking the bridge exits. He is at low health and can’t fight them all. All he has is an unidentified potion, which he can only hope is a potion of levitation, so he can fly off the bridge to safety. With the goblins just steps away, he drinks the potion. Unfortunately, it was a potion of incineration!

A huge burst of flames erupts, setting him, the goblins, and the bridge on fire. The bridge burns away and everyone falls into the chasm below. Fortunately, he lands safely in a pool of water, which also puts out the flames. Some of the goblins survive, while others hit the ground nearby and die. However, one of the flaming goblins lands in a bog filled with explosive gas, and triggers a massive explosion that wipes out the remaining goblins. My friend escapes, and continues his journey deeper into the cave.

That scene is packed with action. It’s just as exciting as any action movie or game cinematic, and it’s just one of many equally amazing scenes that I’ve seen happen in the game. Despite that, none of it is scripted; it’s not even directly intended by the designer. It simply emerges from the interactions of the mechanics. The difficulty progression in Brogue means that as you get further in the game, the more elements you’ll encounter, meaning more interactions and more intense sequences like these will happen.

We should stop looking to cinema as inspiration for our narrative, and start realizing that nontraditional structures can be a stronger storytelling technique than the ones in the biggest scripted and cinematic games

A playthrough of Brogue truly does contain a genuine story: the story of the player’s adventure through the dangerous caves. Just because there aren’t names or dialogue or cinematics doesn’t make it any less of a story. I honestly think the storytelling in Brogue, despite the game being entirely untouched by plot writers, is superior to the storytelling in a game like the new Tomb Raider.

Yes, Tomb Raider has a more complex plot and more detailed characters, but remember: the story and the telling of it are not the same thing. Perhaps Tomb Raider would make for a better movie than Brogue, but we’re talking about games. Tomb Raider is that book we wrote at the beginning of this talk that has a good story but uses words and sentences poorly. Brogue is like Hemingway, with a simple plot, simple vocabulary, and simple sentence structures, but is written masterfully, in a way that deeply communicates its themes. I think the themes of action and adventure resonate much more deeply in Brogue than in Tomb Raider.

A new frontier

Emergent narrative is still a fairly unexplored technique, one that I think is particularly promising, since it delves so deeply into forming personal experiences. It’s one of many possible storytelling methods, and I think designers will have to first branch out in these areas if we want to discover the ideal form of game narrative. Until then, let’s remember to focus on the player story when building the explicit one.

Video games are a young medium of creative expression. Books have been around for millennia; cinema for a century. Video games became popular only just a few decades ago. We’re still just passing over the silent film era of games. I don’t think we’ve fully understood yet what it means to have great narrative in games, so we need to be open minded about different storytelling formats.

We should stop looking to cinema as inspiration for our narrative, and start realizing that nontraditional structures can be a stronger storytelling technique than the ones in the biggest scripted and cinematic games. Let’s redefine game narrative to mean more than just plot and dialogue – what we really care about is the story that happens in the player’s mind.