篇目1，阐述游戏设计的5个趣味等级

作者：Brice Morrison

体验游戏究竟能够获得多少乐趣？

我的游戏设计原理是游戏创造体验。在现有游戏中，几乎所有公司、学生开发者及独立开发商追求的都是让游戏富有趣味有趣。

但我们应该争取创造多少乐趣？有没有什么方式能衡量趣味？评级和评价是游戏成败的参考标准，通常基于百分制，主要瞄准细节。但若我们不考虑游戏整体质量，只讨论趣味性呢？若游戏已几近完美，所有设计选择都无懈可击，其奖惩机制设置合情合理，那其趣味性如何？

这是所有设计师最终都要面临的问题。此问题非常有趣，不仅关乎游戏设计，还涉及人类哲学。查看游戏趣味性相当于了解玩家从中收获的乐趣。若从玩家体验角度看待此问题，我认为趣味性可分为5个等级。

涉及多少词汇呢？

探究研究范围或情感波动深度和宽度的一个有趣方式是查看相关词汇数量。这些语言不是来自字典，而是来自其中群体形容此世界的语言。我们通常使用所知语言形容理解信息和希望分享的内容。但当新体验无法为既有词汇所描述，新词语便诞生。

例如，“Unfriend”（游戏邦注：即删除好友）是个动词，是近来出现的词汇，在社交网络时代到来前，其毫无意义。但如今几乎所有人都有删除他人或被他人删除的经历，这成为大家经历的一部分，所以该词语便诞生。

日本和中国有很多形容武术动作、武术哲学和风格的词汇。法国有很多描述烹饪、品尝和食物的词组。在各领域中，同某主题相关词汇的多寡直接反映人类从中获得体验的丰富程度。通过查看现有形容某物的词汇，我们能够获悉其定义的清晰度。

胃部状态

一个有趣的例子是关于吃和饱度。在某种程度上，你可以把胃当作量杯。你通过吃往里填充东西，填满了你也就吃饱了。

在填充过程中，你的胃就会给出诸如“两分饱”、“五分饱”之类的标记。但这其实并不存在。在康乃尔大学所做调查中，其将参与者聚集某室内，告知他们能够尽情喝汤。有些人使用正常汤碗，饮用至饱，而有些人则使用有导管的汤碗，参与者边吃汤边补充。所以即便喝很多口后，汤还是和原来一样多。

结果怎么样呢？你或许会认为使用填充碗的参与者会最终喝饱，然后在碗仍旧填满的状态下放弃饮用，对吧？

其实，研究者发现使用魔术碗的参与者饮用的量比使用正常碗的多得多，多达73%，而他们却浑然不知。他们似乎并未觉得比平时饱很多。食用过后，两个群体似乎相差无几，都是处于撑的状态。

这说明什么？说明人类很难准确描述其饱度。有趣的是这体现在我们描述胃部状态的词汇中。看看如下描述胃部状态的词汇：

* 饥饿

* 饿

* 有点饿

* 不太饿

* 饱

* 撑

当然词汇远不止这些，但人们通常都联想到这些词语。本质上看，就是这么回事。我们通常只用6种程度形容自己的胃部状态。足以说明吗？当然。但全然不是我们设想的100分标准。

趣味等级

所以若我们赞同描述体验的词汇数量反映程度级别，那我们就能够从体验游戏和游戏趣味中获得有趣发现。

我从小就玩游戏，致力游戏制作有10年之久，参与游戏测试也有7年。游戏测试意义很大，设计师亲自观看玩家体验游戏，观察其情感变化，提问相应问题。你观看他们操作游戏，同时目睹游戏给予的回馈。他们是否饥饿难耐？

任何参与游戏测试多年的开发商都会告诉你，他们已把握玩家情感模式。就我看来，玩家获得的游戏趣味可分为5大等级：

* 无趣

* 挫败感

* 感兴趣

* 满足感

* 欣喜

大概就是这样。等级名称合情合理。令人惊讶的是这些词汇竟然能够用来形容玩家游戏感受。下面让我们逐一进行分析：

无趣。当玩家对体验内容毫无兴趣，其就无法理解其中内容，内容就会令其困惑，或无法激起他们的想象，然后他们就会觉得很无趣。他们几乎就要退出游戏（游戏邦注：除非游戏提供长期奖励，促使他们回访游戏），除非内容出现变化。若你在他们觉得无趣的时候问说，“想要再玩一次吗？”他们定会回答“不要”。

无趣无疑是最糟情况，对设计师来说，这是游戏的最坏状态。无趣内容是指那些无法引起玩家兴趣的游戏。这不会让他们的生活变糟，也不会让他们的生活变好。这是趣味性的初级水平。

挫败感。接着就是挫败感。当玩家常因某内容感到沮丧，那么他们就陷入挫败当中。他们不理解游戏运作方式，不断失败，或者非常不认同游戏机制，那么玩家就会变得挫败。

但挫败总好过无趣。为什么？若玩家因你的游戏而感到沮丧，说明他们至少还关心游戏。若玩家毫不关心游戏，一去不复返，他们就不会在乎UI不完善，或第三个boss过于健壮。觉得无趣的玩家不会希望游戏变得有趣，因为他们不再投身其中。所以虽然初级趣味让玩家处于矛盾状态，但其实第二等级才会减少其生活乐趣，因为他们感到挫败。

感兴趣。当玩家开始体验游戏，探索能够吸引眼球的元素，揣摩游戏目标，希望继续体验，他们就处于感兴趣状态。这或许是角色外观设计或基础机制中的趣味感，但也是吸引玩家体验游戏，不断回访的元素。他们希望从中进行学习，观赏更多，体验更多。

这是玩家享受游戏时常有的感觉。《最终幻想》玩家探索世界，挖掘财富。《使命的召唤》玩家需寻找对手地图。在这些游戏中，玩家都希望继续游戏。他们不会感到无趣或沮丧，他们饶有兴致，兴趣促使他们完成整个体验过程。

满足感。兴趣通常持续好几小时，而满足感只是针对某个环节的短暂感受。若某人因某款游戏而感到满足，他们就会充满成就感和喜悦感。他们因自身行为、游戏发展或个人预言而感到自豪。他们愿意体验更多游戏内容。游戏带给他们一定程度的欢乐（游戏邦注：这是游戏的优势所在）。

满足感并不需要通过游戏目标形式体现。当然若玩家在《新超级马里奥兄弟》中晋级，他们也会很有满足感。但若mayor在《虚拟城市》中建成玩家帝国，玩家也会感到满足。当有人获得高分，拯救同伴，升至12级，他们就会获得相应时间投入回报，进行充分享受。

欣喜。虽然游戏达到满足程度就能算是成功作品，但令人玩家感到欣喜的作品才能长久掳获玩家芳心。欣喜不是单纯的“更具满足感”。欣喜与美妙时刻（游戏邦注：这通常只会持续几秒钟，每隔几天或几周出现）截然不同。欣喜是游戏体验的最高境界。令人玩家感到欣喜的游戏通常已完全融入其生活当中。

完成游戏或因结局、情节起伏感到惊讶通常令玩家觉得欣喜。《Braid》或《Bioshock》的欣喜时刻通常会激起整个论坛的激烈讨论。在《星际争霸》中同好友一起赢得原本以为会输的艰难比赛，会令你感慨“不会吧！我没想到我们竟然赢了！”这就是个欣喜时刻。看到Kirby吃掉整只熊，对其可爱态势忍俊不禁，也是个欣喜时刻。或者回访情有独钟的Facebook游戏，看到妈妈送给你一个礼物，即使你们已好几天没有讲话，都是令人欣喜的时刻。这对设计师来说颇有难度吧？毫无疑问。但欣喜时刻是游戏的魅力所在，是游戏趣味性的第五等级。

你的游戏处于何种等级？

我要说的是5大趣味等级并不能覆盖所有游戏情绪。《生化危机》带给玩家的是惊恐，《汪达与巨像》产生的则是惊讶。《暴雨》让玩家陷入沉思，感到愧疚，而《飞驰竞速》则让玩家心跳加速，七上八下。5大趣味等级无法涵盖所有玩家体验，但足以用来衡量游戏趣味程度。

5大趣味等级推动游戏领域发展成当前态势：创造有趣体验供全球数百万玩家在其日常生活内外尽情享受。创造激发兴趣、富有满足感和欣喜感，且避免出现无趣和挫败感的游戏体验，能够促使玩家持续回访。

篇目2，构建紧密的因果系统有助于提升游戏趣味性

作者：Daniel Cook

为了玩好一款游戏，玩家必须掌握一种因果心理模式。例如，你按下某个键可以向前移动一步。你算出移动的结果是避开火箭。你观察到在敌人进攻以前有一阵短暂的停顿，那正是爆头的好机会。在学习的各个阶段，你都形成新的假设，通过你的行动验证它，然后改进你的心理模式。

改进和掌握新的心理模式是必要的，因为这正是使许多游戏有趣的原因。这种掌握显然取决于玩家。但也受到设计师和他们所创造的系统的支配。

并非所有系统都可以通过因果模型的直观形式轻松检验出来。作为游戏设计师，你的职责是创造一种系统，玩家在掌握它的过程中感到有趣，而不觉得受挫。如果系统太容易预测了，玩家就会觉得它无聊。如果系统完全不能预测，我们就说它是随机的。这两种都是失败的系统，因为无法鼓励玩家去掌握它。

紧密和松散的系统

作为一名系统设计师。我将系统和反馈（即玩家与系统之间的交互作用）之间的相关程度描述为“紧密”或“松散”，这一重要概论对我帮助很大。在紧密的系统中，有明确的起因和后果。而在松散的系统中，则很难区分起因和后果的关系。

系统中不存在正确的“紧密度”。然而，增加紧密度或松散度却有清楚的方法。

调整紧密度的技巧

为了方便阅读，我将用于调整系统的紧密度的方法罗列成下文。并非所有的方法都适用于某个系统，但内行的设计师都应该掌握这些方法。有些方法当然比不上专门的书籍文献，所以我要为自己的肤浅提前道个歉。例如，概率有太多微秒之处，以至于有些设计师倾其一生都在研究它如何影响玩家预测结果的能力。本文至多只是一个综述。

为了增加系统的紧密度，我要让因果关系更显著。为了增加系统的松散度，我要让因果关系更隐蔽。

反馈的强度

紧密：具有多种均衡反馈的渠道，如颜色、动画、声音和触摸，这些可以互相加强。经典例子是《幻幻球》。游戏采用星星、彩虹、《欢乐颂》和时间延长让玩家知道游戏结束、得到积分。

为了达到效果，我使用了所有可能的渠道吗？

反馈顺序是否正确，以便玩家充分理解？

反馈是否影响现有的心理模式，使之变得更加有效？

松散：有一种不太明显的反馈渠道。例如，在多人FPS游戏中，有人逼近时，唯一的感知方法就是听来人微弱的脚步声。资深玩家因为了解关卡的知识，再加上隐蔽的提示，能够估计对手的方位，因此能在这种预测中感到极大的乐趣。

反馈是否存在临时检查时不易理解的细微差别？

反馈是否可以与其他的不明显的信息相结合，使骨灰级玩家在脑中形成清楚的图景？

噪音

紧密：由原因导致的后果具有清楚的信号。

玩家现在需要的信息中，最重要的一小部分是什么？

是否移除了干扰玩家的无关元素？

反馈是否处于玩家关注的焦点？

松散：存在大量矛盾的、干扰性的信号，并且与原因无关。在Jeff Minter的《Space Giraffe》中，最关键的技巧之一就是，学习理解迷幻背景的视觉噪音。

有没有能干扰但又不激怒玩家的外界元素？

噪音是否能够给玩家制造感知谜题？

感官类型

紧密：视觉或触觉反馈往往更容易被感知。考虑到每年都有几十亿美元砸在提高视觉反馈技术上，所以我们有理由相信玩家看到子弹打在模拟得很逼真的肉体上时，内心的感受更强烈。紧密的视觉反馈的作用是很强大的；它能高效地向玩家传递结果信息。这不只是制作精美的画面。在《三重小镇》（Triple Town）最近的更新中，我们改变了颜色方案，使背景与前景物品具有相同的常规值。结果很漂亮，但玩家很不乐意，因为图标不像以前那么显眼了。

是否使用了良好的视觉设计，如颜色、动作、对比、线条、空白、阴影、体积、视角，使画面更容易理解？

当需要某物发挥功能时，是否使它更好看？

什么反馈是功能性的，什么是情绪性的，什么是美观性的？

是否在视觉反馈上投入过多？

松散：相比于视觉和触觉，听觉和嗅觉反馈更难被感知。这方面的运用不多。但因为系统的松散度，运用声音的系统也有被玩家掌握的可能。有些讽刺的是，虽然大多数音乐游戏与掌握听觉反馈有关，但都可以关掉声音玩。

挖掘现有的心理模式

紧密：严格地将主题、反馈和系统映射到现有的心理模式中。因为接触了流行文化十多年，玩家知道僵尸怎么移动和怎么躲避僵尸。要让玩家很快知道某类慢速移动的怪物是什么，最好的办法之一就是把群怪物命名为“僵尸”。

玩家头脑中的卡通模型是什么（不是“现实世界运作的真实模型”）？

主题是否支撑机制？

主题是否使核心机制产生有用的变化？

为了适应主题，是否犯了削弱机制的错误？

松散：脱离现有的心理模式，引入玩家从未经历过的新系统。想想《俄罗斯方块》中的隐喻。怎么处理下落的图形，我们的头脑中相当熟悉。排成行的图形消除后，玩家得到积分，但这时响起的却是俄罗斯音乐？这与我所知的任何隐喻都无法匹配，不过，游戏仍然是好游戏。

什么时候不再需要导入模式，游戏可以凭借内部一致性而独立？

有没有超越现实或刻意干扰的因素？

能否摆脱旧的模式，引入新的体验？

离散性

紧密：离散的状态或低值的数字。二进制是最紧密的。例如，最近我们正在玩以各种速度移动的单位。让它们以1/2/4格每秒的速度移动，玩家会很明显地知道如何区分各个单位类型。处理难控制的系统时，这是我最喜欢的技巧之一。

为了创造有意义的选择，数字的最小值是什么？

玩家能否清楚地区分各个值的增量产生的影响？

如果必须将变量减少成3个离散值，会产生什么结果？

松散：类似值或高值的数字。例如，在《愤怒的小鸟》中，游戏允许玩家以任意角度和速度发射小鸟。这使结果非常不确定。如果游戏只有2个不同的角度和速度，那这款游戏就太容易预测（无聊）了。

玩家是否有足够的创意游戏的范围？

值是否给选择增加了有趣的不确定性？

速度

紧密：因果相隔的时间比较短暂。在《暗黑》中，玩家将鼠标放在发现的箱子上，鼠标放在道具上和悬浮对话框出现之间有一个时间延迟，这段延迟设定不当是常见的错误。如果延迟太短，悬浮对话框出现时玩家还没发现。如果延迟太长，玩家会觉得对话框响应太迟钝（以我的经验，200毫秒是最理想的。在这段时间内，你决定做某事，但清醒的意识还没完全跟上）。

游戏在什么地方发生延迟？

如果加速计时，结果是什么？

如果减速计时，结果是什么？

什么系统允许间接地变化计时？

当可以使用算法循环调整速度时，是否使用了手动？

松散：因果相隔的时间比较漫长。如果延迟太长，玩家完全不会发现原因产生了结果。想象一下，在RPG中，玩家有一个开关和一个计时器。如果玩家按下开关，计时器显示60秒后，门才打开。极少人会认为门打开是因为按下那个开关。另一方面，在《Alpha Centauri》中，过早投入工业会导致外星人攻击。这创造了更丰富的系统，使玩家要权衡很长时间。

游戏中的长循环是什么？

是否有长期效应导致玩家重新考虑他们长期以来的游戏模式？

线性

紧密：线性增加的变量更容易预测。在《塞尔达传说》中，比较一下以直线抛出剑刺中敌人，或者用弧形运动的回旋镖，哪个更容易预测呢？

如果简化模式，使反应呈线性，结果是什么？

如何从早期的玩法中移除非线性的系统？

松散：非线性增加的变量，更难预测。在《恶魔城》中，美杜莎的头对许多玩家来说非常难打，因为头的活动不是常规的线性运动。即使像重力那么常见的东西也会使玩家离开游戏。毕竟，我们琢磨出如何准确着陆炮弹都花了上千年的时间。

什么系统本质上是指数形发展的？

如何约束非线性系统，使之更容易预测？

如何通过反馈循环创造有趣而无秩序的行为？

间接性

紧密：起因与初始效应直接相关。还是以《塞尔达传说》为例，主要的攻击具有高度的直接性。你按下键，剑弹出，同时命中附近的敌人。

要移除什么系统才能使动作的结果更加明显？

认知负担是否足够大？

松散：起因引发次级（或三级）系统，再由次级系统引发效应。模拟和AI之所以无法破解，是因为无数重的间接性。在《模拟地球》中，玩家通常搞不清楚事情是怎么发生的。然而，无数的间接性产生的系统使玩家可以玩上几十年。

简单的系统如何创造实用的间接效应？

如何层叠实用的效应，为玩家创造丰富的表现机会？

隐藏信息

紧密：可见结果非常明显。例如，在《三重小镇》中，我们可以明显看到当前位置有一匹配。这款游戏不是纯粹地匹配图形，所以游戏的设计目标是让可用的移动机会尽可能明显。

是否隐藏了不应该隐藏的东西？

是否有不重要，但很显眼的东西？

松散：隐藏信息或没有显示在屏幕上的信息。像《Mastermind》这类游戏完全就是一团隐藏的代码，必须通过间接线索仔细地破解。改编为电脑游戏的棋类游戏通常会意外地隐藏信息。传统棋类游戏的系统不可能隐藏，因为它是由玩家手动操作的。然而，在电脑棋类游戏中，规则往往在后台执行，将之前容易理解的系统转变成难以理解的乱码。

隐藏信息是否完全地或部分地导致玩家更难掌握？

概率

紧密：具有确定性，即特定的起因总是产生相同的后果。在国际象棋中，移动的结果总是相同的；骑士以“L”形移动，捕获前方的棋子。你可以想象一下，如果是转动骰子决定赢家，概率是多少。你可以通过限制概率使系统更加紧密，这样某个人转到的骰子数就比其他人的更大。用20面的骰子玩《Pawn of Doom》，概率就非常小了。

如何使结果具有高度的确定性？

如果重复上百次，这种直接作用仍然有趣吗？

松散：具有可能性，即有时候产生这种结果，有时候产生另一种结果。在我做过的一个原型中，行为和后果的间隔时间很长，相关性很大，但结果仍然是半随机的。玩家认为游戏是完全随机的，不存在任何逻辑。如果你的速度够快，反馈够强，你可能可以把这个游戏当作老虎机。

是否需要简单的方法来模拟复杂的系统？

是否需要提高游戏速度？

除了随机性，玩家是否感到自己的情况是受控制的？

推算复杂度

紧密：需要模拟少量步骤就可以预测到结果。在垂直滚动射击游戏中，你可以看到子弹向你飞来。你马上就会想到如果你还待在原地，肯定会被射中。

玩家在指定的时间内可以进行多少思考？

玩家在游戏过程中是否感到精神上的疲惫？

松散：需要模拟多步才能预测到结果。另一方面，在《三重小镇》中，好的玩家会提前想到好几步。想遍各种得到理想结果所需的步骤，给玩家带来很大的认知负担。玩家的计算出现一点差错，都会产生意料之外的结果。

玩家是否感到自己聪明？

玩家可以提前计划多个步骤吗？

玩家可以解释为什么自己的计划行不通吗？

选择的复杂度

紧密：玩家要考虑的选项很少。在最近的升级系统中，我给玩家3个升级选项。我原本可以给他们60种升级，但那样太多了。只给出几个重要的选择，玩家就有思考的余地，然后选择效果最好的一个。

是否可以减少选项？

如果必须移除一个选项，要移除哪个？游戏是否会因此而更好？

哪个选项最有意义？

松散：玩家要考虑大量选项。在围棋中，可能的走法有很多，产生的次级走法就更不少。正是因为这种选择复杂度，围棋才会成为流行了上千年的游戏。

当前选项如何产生大量后来选项？

如何重新平衡结果，使更多选项实用？

社交复杂度

紧密：另一个人可以明显地表达意图、能力和内心状态。在MMO中，一个穿得像高级术士的玩家站在特定的集会地点，这是邀请他一起去冒险的好机会。或者在一个交易窗口，当他拿出一瓶作用于剑的药水，你就知道怎么回事了。这些都很清楚。

通过角色的当前动作，是否可以自动地表现其意图？

选项数目是否合理，使玩家能够根据其他玩家的合理行为预测到他们的意图？

玩家是否足够了解其他的玩家的目标和资源情况？

是否花了足够的时间与其他玩家相处，以猜测他们的内心状态？

玩家之间是否有可预测的互动方法？

松散：另一个人可以伪装、曲解或隐藏意图、能力和内心状态。

玩家是否可以交流？

玩家是否可以说谎，会有什么影响？

玩家是否可以伤害、帮助其他人？是否有影响？

玩家的选择在多大程度上取决于其他玩家的选择？

影响行为的群体动态（游戏邦注：这是指小团体内成员间的个人相互关系）是什么？

时间压力

紧密：要求以玩家偏好的速度模拟模型。这与推算和选择复杂度有关，因为玩家只能以给定的速度执行自己的心理模式。如果时间压力大大减少，玩家更可能知道因果关联。例如，《NetHack》具有错综复杂的系统，需要真正的侦查工作才能解释。为了使玩家更能理解因果关系，游戏设成回合制，这样玩家就可以花任意时间完成一个回合。随着情况变得越来越复杂，甚至优秀的玩家也会放慢游戏速度，以便理解所有分支后果。

玩家理解当前情况需要多少时间？

可否让玩家选择自己的速度，或者是否必须强制世界时间？

多玩家的分支后果是什么？

松散：要求玩家非常快地模拟自己的心理模式。在《瓦力欧制造》中，各个谜题其实没有太多复杂度。但是我们将计时器时间缩短，极大地增加了玩家的认知负担和结果的不确定性。

时间压力是否迫使玩家的认知负担变成愉悦的流状态？

玩家是否感到分析不能？

玩家是否感到无法控制？

运用紧密的技巧

当我遇到玩家不理解系统这一常见的情况时，我通常让系统更加紧密，这样系统的因果关系就更明显了。在绝大部分时候，我的调整是根据亲自玩原型或观察别人玩原型得出的。我发现这些技巧用于协调系统时最有用，但在没有功能代码的情况下制定大计划时，这些技巧就不太可靠了。

游戏玩法是由循环组成的，这些循环有清楚的层次（动作、规则、反馈、玩家心理模式的更新）。根据观察到问题可能出现在循环中的位置，我采用不同的技巧来调整。

动作问题

*选择复杂度

*速度

规则问题

*推算复杂度

*概率

*间接性

*线性

反馈问题：当处理或执行已知的系统时，反馈失败是最常见的错误。大多数新设计师都会犯反馈错误。中级设计师往往专注于排除其他问题区域的反馈。

*反馈的强度

*噪音

*感官类型

*隐藏信息

*离散性

建模问题

*时间压力

*挖掘现有的心理模型

紧密度和玩家的掌握阶段

技能循环是按顺序建立的。《马里奥》的跳跃变成高级平台通过技能。我发现的是，通常最低级的技能循环必须最紧密。玩家在开始玩游戏的最初几秒就应该很明白这些低级系统。也就是说，它们是通向游戏其他部分的大门。控制选项数目，挖掘现有的心理模式，尽可能让因果关系明显。当玩家对基本系统得心应手时，就可以引入更松散的系统，这需要玩家付出更多努力才能掌握。

玩家对紧密度和松散度的接受程度是不断变化的。当我们掌握技能时，会形成心理模式。曾经令我们迷惑的事情就会变成容易重复和操作的模式。所以由多个前导技能的模块组成的高级技能才会让我们觉得很清楚很明显。新玩家认为很困难棘手的任务，资深玩家却能完成得又快又好。玩家的精通可以将松散的系统变成紧密的系统。

结论

新手设计师往往认为游戏的核心系统是不受干扰的。狙击步枪的属性、《街头霸王》的战斗系统或农场游戏的精力系统常被当作数学实情。你可以调整一些值，但基本系统总是存在的，并且一直存在。但事实是，这些系统是发明的，然后被采用，因为它们具有实用的属性。它们容易收集，却提供足够的深度应长期掌握之需。它们是设计好的人工产品。

我们可以设计出位于深奥与无趣之间平衡点的新系统。通过考虑以上所列的问题（有些我可以忘了），你可以反复调整新游戏的系统、模式和技能，使之或多或少地更易理解。遵循一套系统的设计过程，你可以将无趣的游戏变成有趣的游戏。

篇目3，解析游戏趣味性的成因及7项要素

作者：Tony Ventrice

游戏化是人们最近热议的话题，圈内许多人士都在讨论游戏化与游戏体验之间的相似性。

我对这种讨论持有两种观点：

1.“游戏化”这个词汇带有机会主义色彩，并且定义模糊。它看似包揽了游戏的所有优点，但其实际作用目前仅停留在积分和徽章奖励这个表面上——例如忠诚及名望系统。

2.游戏的意义极为丰富，当前游戏化形式的起步并不算糟糕。将忠诚及名望系统与网站或产品绑定的做法已不鲜见，相信游戏玩法的其他元素也将接踵而至。

在这里，我想为游戏趣味性的“结构”下定义，并探索这些元素应用于现实商业的可行操作方法。本文将主要剖析游戏、有趣、玩这三个概念之间的交集。

游戏为何具有趣味性？

不少学者和游戏设计师都曾探讨过这个问题，游戏设计界对此问题的普遍回答是：游戏让玩家选择和学习。先来看看一些游戏行业元老的观点：

Raph Koster在《A Theory of Fun》中指出：

趣味性就是大脑处理问题的活动。

Jesse Schell在《The Art of Game Design》的看法则是：

游戏就是人们通过的玩乐的心态解决问题的活动。

我完全同意这二位的说法。我自己也做过几乎相同的定义：（趣味性就是）有趣的决策（Sid Meier也说过同样的话）。我下此结论的原因是，我个人很喜欢游戏中的“决策”和“挑战”元素。

如果你是为像我、Raph和Jesse这类人设计游戏，这种定义应该十分管用。电子游戏设计已经有30多年的发展史，假如你的工作是解析游戏，并在企业网站等全新领域中重新运用“趣味”元素，那么深入理解其定义必将为你派上大用场。

出人意料的事实

我们看到有不少游戏正逐渐丧失其教育性，《FarmVille》和Foursquare尽管其中所涉决策有点无趣，可供人学习的知识极少，但仍然被称为“游戏”。如此看来，通过“选择”和“解决方案”来定义游戏似乎有些片面。

但也有一个观点可支持原来的定义。《FarmVille》当中还是有一些可让人学习的元素。至于Foursaquare，我想人们从中学到的通常就是在哪能保住自己的市长头衔，在哪会失去这顶“乌纱帽”……

但我并不是在为游戏的旧定义背书。事实上，我认为这些“游戏”中的学习层面太肤浅，几乎不能算是具有教育性。就算你假设《FarmVille》玩家的智商略低于一般的“真正游戏”玩家，那也不能解释他们长期逗留游戏的原因——他们是持续数月泡在游戏中，这么长的一段时间早就足够傻子学会游戏中的一切操作和活动。

我们其实只有两种选择：要不就否认它们属于“游戏”范畴，要不就承认游戏的意义远甚于传授知识。

在深入讨论这个话题之前，我们也许可以再给旧定义一个辩驳的机会。Schell和Koster并没有说游戏只是传授知识，他们称游戏是以“玩乐”或“好玩”的心态学习新事物。Raph的解释如下：

趣味性与情境有关。我们融入一项活动的原因极为重要。

所以，有趣游戏的定义并不仅局限于学习知识，但Koster和Schell两者都无法用一句话简要概况游戏趣味性的定义。看来，“有趣”确实是一个非常微妙的词语。

哪些元素构成了游戏趣味性？

正如上文所述，游戏设计师已有自己的答案，那就是游戏趣味性的要素之一：学习。我认为这确实是一个恰当的说法，有些游戏的趣味性几乎完全围绕“学习”而设计，例如《魔术方块》（Rubik’s Cube）和《珠玑妙算》（Mastermind）。

我想设计师对此话题还有其他高论，但为了节省时间，现在得轮到学术界发表观点。

如果你看过Salen和Zimmerman的《Rules of Play》，那就应该听说过社会学家Roger Caillois对四种玩游戏形式的看法：

竞争、机会、角色扮演和改变观感。

虽然Caillois是社会学家而非游戏设计师，其总结的四种玩游戏形式看似过于随意，但我们仍然不得不佩服他能够在不同角度下此定义。我认为他的观点颇具独创性。

竞争很显然属于趣味性范畴，从晒出外州车牌照到与他人比赛快速挖煤，几乎每一项具备这种特点的活动都可以转变为游戏。

角色扮演也很显然属于此列——我们还能用其他词语来解释孩子们玩过家家、模仿消防员等此类行为和活动吗？

改变观感可能是Caillois最有趣的提议了。

电子游戏中偶尔也会出现这种情况（游戏邦注：有些游戏通过曲扭规则来“迷惑”玩家，有些游戏则以光影和音效创造一种令玩家产生“幻觉”的体验），但虽然我很想把它添加到我们的趣味性元素列表中，但从总体上来看，改变观感应用范围有限，在商业项目中尤其如此，所以我们将跳过并忽略此项。

最后就是机会。机会是一个可望改变既定结果的机制。两名技能并不在同一水准的玩家如果在一款缺乏机会的游戏中相遇，那就很容易在游戏开始之初辨出胜负。机会对保证游戏平衡性和产生悬念来说十分重要，但并不一定具有趣味性，也并非玩游戏的必要前提。

游戏设计师Marc LeBlanc所列出的元素比Caillois更详细和实用，尽管从他的职业来看我应该将其划分到上文的内容中，但我发现他的工作更适合从学术角度发表观点（游戏邦注：Marc LeBlanc与美国西北大学的学者合作甚密）。

LeBlanc认为游戏趣味性具有8要素：

感觉、友谊、幻想、叙事、挑战、探索、表现和服从。

感觉包括坐着过山车在半空盘旋呼啸的刺激感，跑步者的兴奋感，或者按摩时的舒适感，但在游戏化环境中，它的应用甚至比改变感观还少。

友谊要涉及社交层面的概念，它与友好和归属感有关。我们很难找到一款完全以友谊为支柱的游戏，但许多人就是因为这一点而喜欢玩派对游戏。

举例来说，我发现《Apples to Apples》是一款傻气十足的游戏——它的赢家是随机选择的，但我还是喜欢玩这款游戏。为什么？因为我发现自己会忽略其中的竞争和学习元素，总是沉浸于社交互动和众人欢笑之中。对我来说，友谊就是我玩这款游戏的唯一原因。

幻想和叙事彼此相关但又十分相似（我认为它们分别描述了游戏故事的前提和过程），我不知道是否有人会将故事称为游戏，但从营火会故事或卧谈会故事来看，我们总会不禁发现幻想和叙事的相似性，或者至少会承认它们存在乐趣。

许多游戏都包含故事元素，我甚至还听说有人只是为了知道故事结局而玩游戏。我认为凭这一点已经足够将这两者纳入趣味元素列表中了。

挑战和探索正是Koster和Schell已经提到的元素，所以它们毫无疑问当属此列。

表现与角色扮演十分相似，具有许多共同特征。

服从这个词听起来让人颇为不悦。LeBlanc将服从定义为“无意识地玩游戏”，尽管它似乎也应该纳入我们的列表，但它却并不具有任何教育性。如果它也算是有趣，那么凌晨3点的电视广告也很有趣，那我想大家就会觉得我们对趣味性的定义过于广泛了。

所以在Marc的8个要素中，我们只撷取其中的6个。

下面我要介绍的一位学者是Nicole Lazzaro，她的研究范围包括我们前面谈到的“选择”和“挑战”，但她主要关注游戏玩家的情感和心理研究。

在她看来：

调查结果表明人们多数时候是为了游戏所创造的体验（例如：肾上腺素兴奋，错位的冒险经历，脑力挑战），或者游戏构造提供独处或好友陪伴等因素而玩游戏。

她看起来是从情感角度来研究游戏（游戏邦注：作者认为这种研究角度的实用性存在疑问），但也确实提出了一个有价值的观点：纯粹的情感因素在“有趣”概念中占有重要地位。

人们究竟为什么要看恐怖电影，与伴侣调情，相互恶作剧？因为他们发现这些活动可以强化恐惧感，激励感、幽默感、悬念和意外感。

说到这里，我要再介绍一位可能好像从未与这些话题沾边的学者Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi，他是我们所知的心流理论专家。在他看来，所谓“心流”就是：

当人们完全沉浸于某项活动中时，就会丧失时间感。在这种状态下，人们的每一个动作，每一步行动和想法都与前者流畅衔接在一起，就像玩爵士乐一样。

人们常把心流状态用于描述“平衡的难度”，或者将其视为另一种心理状态而忽略它。我认为这个话题比以上的任何一种解释都要有趣得多，它当然也应该纳入我们的趣味元素列表中。如果要说明哪些心流状态可以称为“游戏”，我可能会以重复将球弹向墙壁的现象为例。尽管此类活动也包含学习技能的要素，不过我认为这种技能并无价值，也许应该包含更多有意义的内容。

总结

综上所述，我们现在可以整理出一份构成游戏趣味性的元素列表：

1.学习/挑战/探索

2.角色扮演/表达

3.竞争

4.友谊

5.幻想/叙事

6.情感

7.心流

以下则是我根据自己的看法进行调整后的简化版列表：

1.发展

2.选择

3.竞争

4.身份

5.故事

6.情感

7.心流

我认为如果还有其他什么需要添加的元素，也都可以归入以上7个要点的范畴。

假如我们将“游戏”一词定义为：为寻找乐趣而进行的一种活动，我想这更有助于推进我们对游戏化的分析和研究。

我将在之后的文章中对以上各个元素进行说明，解释它们独立存在时会发生的情况，以及它们运用于传统游戏领域中的情形。

简化列表元素的原因

我们在文章开篇已经提到了三个概念：学习、挑战和探索。这里我还要添加第4个概念：成长。成长意味着超越原来的水准，向更高更好的方向前进。

我之所以更情愿使用“成长”一词，原因在于比起其他三个概念，它更为直接地切入重点：我可能学习了一些东西，但却并不感觉自己在朝有用的方向进步；我可能在进行挑战，但却讨厌那些不必要或无意义的障碍；我可能探索到了些东西，但却发现它们毫无意义。只有发展这个概念同时准确地表达了一种个人发展和积极体验的状态。

如果你将故事（它包括幻想和叙事）的概念忽略不计，就会发现角色扮演和表现这两者十分相似。它们都可以提供一种让你无拘无束，表达自我主张和新价值观的机会。这似乎又贯穿了两种元素：身份和选择。身份很重要，但它实际上在本列表其他元素中已无所不在（如下文），因此不再赘述其意义。由此可见，选择，或称为自主权确实该在本列表中占据一席之地的元素。

友谊是一个很有趣的词语，我们这里指的是一种归属感——即在一个社会环境中的角色或地位。没有哪一个词比身份更适合形容它。我知道自己是谁，其他所有人也都知道这一点。虽然友谊通常暗指一种纯粹的朋友社交关系，但又不能用友情这个过于准确的词取代它——毕竟几乎所有人都追求一种身份感，但大家却不一定都喜欢与人打成一片。

至于幻想/叙事，我之前已经提到，这两者分别描述了故事发生的前提和过程。“叙事”可能更易同时概括这两种状态，但若要用于表达拥有趣味性的故事，却不免显得过于正式和冷漠。用户都喜欢称为“故事”，而我也觉得这个描述确实更有深意。

篇目4，从体验的结构分析寻找游戏趣味性来源

作者：Christian Philippe Guay

趣味性是个大家都很熟悉的词，但直至今天仍难以定义。我们确实拥有奇怪的能力，能够理解如何让事物变得有趣，但是对其真正来源知之甚少。数年以来，我向自己提过许多问题：

1、它从何处来？

2、它能够通过何种方式制造出来？

3、趣味性是否具有主观性？

4、是否有可能创造出让所有人都感到有趣的东西？

5、趣味性是否来源于对新事物的了解？

6、相对比新游戏，为何我更喜欢老游戏？

7、我们对趣味性的理解是否正在减弱？

8、参与度与趣味性是否相同？

9、电子游戏未来将如何发展？

10、是否存在统一的趣味性理论？

对于这些问题，我无法从网络的任何文章和书籍中找到合适的答案。但是，调查确实使我更深刻地理解趣味性，因为多数文章或书籍都会列举许多产生趣味体验的因素。

但是，它们从未清晰地解释何为趣味性以及如何创造趣味性。经过数个月的调查，我发现即便我们不理解趣味性的本质及其来源，行业中依然产生了如此多的有趣产品。我们到目前为止所取得的如此成就着实令人惊叹。

于是，我开始思考上述问题的答案。我之前花了数年的时间来寻找答案，但更为重要的是，我低估了自己的体验在解决问题方面的价值。经过15分钟的思考后，我得出了自己对以上所有问题的看法和见解。

正是在此刻，我意识到其实我们对趣味性颇为了解，只是对自己不够了解而已。阅读完这篇文章后，我确信多数人都会为自己对趣味性的了解感到惊奇，会发现真正的问题只是没有将已知的内容串联起来。

趣味性来源于何处？

所有东西的存在都具有一定的结构，包括菜谱、书籍、电影、视频游戏和化学方程式等。我们都知道，趣味性的感觉产生于体验中或体验过后。换句话说，如果能够更好地理解体验的结构，就能够更好地理解趣味性。我们会发现，在创造过程中，结构是创造体验的必要因素。

无论是针对特定目标用户还是基于个人灵感，首先我们都会创造出游戏愿景。有些设计师或许更喜欢将其称为“蓝图”。这个蓝图就是位于脑中或纸上的想法。蓝图无法理解或互动，但这个步骤却是创造体验的核心。

要使蓝图具有互动性，我们需要让它变得能够被人类所理解。如果想法是制作出有趣的敌人，那么我们首先必须制作3D模型。我通常使用“情境”进行描述。在战场上的战斗与在移动电梯上的战斗并不相同，不是吗？有些游戏中含有故事情节。可理解的故事也属于这个层次。

让想法变得可为人们所理解之后，我们就要为其添加“机制”。我们向角色添加血肉，这样他就能以我们设定的方式移动。需要记住的是，所有可理解内容都会强化机制，这也正是为何老式8位游戏不一定比当代游戏更好，即便前者向玩家呈现的是更酷更具创新的游戏玩法。

设计师的最终目标是基于玩家影响世界、AI和其他玩家的工具，也就是以玩家为中心的游戏和挑战。游戏中的背景故事是可理解的故事，但也有某些层次的故事是玩家在游戏过程中创造出来的。

现在，我们的体验有了机制和互动性，接下来需要做的是添加微妙的“情感”层次。我们往往会遗忘这个步骤，但这对创造出优秀和令人深刻的体验至关重要。你是否会向玩家发射火箭弹，使其产生极度的紧张感？你是否会创造出空旷的房间，让玩家知道他需要准备战斗？你是否愿意让玩家感觉到这是个安全或危险的地区？

玩家做出互动行为后，游戏就会根据因果关系呈现直接“结果”。他是否抵挡住攻击？他是否消灭了自己的对手？他是否听到某种音效？他打开宝箱后得到什么宝物？重点在于，要记住挑战是和奖励并存的，而且在设置挑战时就要考虑到奖励。对于体验的创造，还需要些许额外的步骤。

玩家获得结果后，就会知道完成体验所耗费的“时间”。时间观念能够缓和体验的紧张感，营造节奏或重复。

最后，玩家在明白体验所耗费时间后，对整个体验才有了全面的“认识”。当他在脑中记忆这个历程时，会将其质量与以往的其他体验相比较。在这个最终的过程中，玩家还做出了自己的评判。在创造体验的过程中，我们对用户也做出了评判。这是个自然的演变循环，我们都是其中的一份子。

体验的结构

体验的结构由7个层次组成，每个层次都包含一定的内容，以下列举部分范例：

1、蓝图：愿景；游戏设计文件；挑战；预告片

2、背景（游戏邦注：包括所有可理解的内容）：2D美术；3D环境；3D模型；3D动画；音乐；音效；特效；菜单；HUD；可理解故事

3、机制：游戏玩法机制；学习曲线；控制；难度曲线；人类工程；关卡设计；可玩故事

4、情感：快乐；愤怒；恐惧；惊讶；悲伤

5、结果：玩家找到新装备；玩家找到捷径；玩家获得分数；玩家解锁新功能

6、时间：紧张；节奏；重复

7、认识（领悟）：理解如何游戏玩法机制的运作原理是否对游戏有帮助？我们在故事中有什么新的收获？这个冒险跟10年前的那个相比是否更加有趣？

更为重要的是，要理解一个体验可以由多个小体验组成，也可以成为更大体验的一部分，就像游戏由关卡组成、关卡由游戏玩法序列组成、游戏玩法序列由游戏玩法组成、游戏玩法由动作组成这样的递进关系。层次可以无限大和无限小地划分。

比如：生活；活动；电子游戏；游戏；游戏关卡；游戏玩法序列；动作；控制

这便是微观和宏观间的关系，具有一致性、相对性和不规则性。这也正是分析不同层次会让人感到困惑的原因所在，因为所有层次的位置都会发生改变，所有层次间的关系都是相对的。

参与度的7项原则

我们的7项原则可以被视为让玩家进入更好参与状态的7个线性步骤。如果玩家不喜欢其中一个步骤，就会使她的体验难以继续发展下去。理想情况下，我们希望玩家能够受所有这些步骤的诱导一步步发展下去。简单地说，所有的步骤都应当比之前的游戏、电影、书籍或音乐更好。

当我们体验质量更高的内容时，所获得的趣味性体验也就越好。从根本上来说，参与度使游戏具有呈现其趣味性的潜力。

然而，所有的产品都有自己的强势之处。有些游戏提供更好的视觉效果，有些游戏呈现更好的机制或情感。

要制造出更好的参与状态，呈现的内容越少效果就越好，因为我们添加的细节越多，我们犯错或呈现可能破坏体验的内容的机率就越大。

更为重要的是，制作出的所有内容都必须有个充分的存在理由，理想情况下这个理由应当能够强化其他层面。如果属性没有实际的效果，那么即便给角色增加50项属性也毫无用处。披肩的颜色、形状或移动方式就已经能够传达出大量的信息。

应当记住一点：时间就是金钱。

趣味性是否因人而异？

对于一款游戏，不可能每个人都觉得有趣，游戏总是针对特定群体和用户而设计的。我们能够吸引的这部分群体就是玩家。每个人都是游戏玩家吗？当然不是。

趣味性是主观概念，但并非完全主观。从某个角度来说，因为我们所有人的经历和生活都各不相同，所以有些人觉得有趣的东西，有些人并不一定会觉得有趣。但是，这并不影响我们对体验的构建。如果你理解用户的想法，显然能够以用户为目标将内容制作得更为有趣。

这意味着，如果我们不了解用户，也就无法制作出比用户此前经历更有趣的东西，这样趣味性才变成完全主观的东西。

技能等级不同，趣味性不同

玩家的技能等级也会影响他们体验到的趣味性。正如之前提到的那样，趣味性只是种潜在的东西，玩家的技能越好，他就越能够理解和欣赏内容。

简单地说，用户可以分为以下3种类别：新手玩家；高级玩家；资深玩家

玩家技能等级上的差异不一定是肢体上的，更重要的是心智认知上的差异，因为肢体技能可能因缺乏实践而随时间逐渐变弱。

显然，新手玩家指刚刚接触游戏的玩家，主要关心的是基础内容——“我只想向他人射击”。如果我们为他们设计地图，可能会让他们无法理清头绪。

资深玩家的需求与新手玩家完全相反。他们需要地图，才能调整节奏和利用各种技巧和战略。高级玩家处在二者中间，在这两个极端层面的游戏中都能感受到乐趣。

理想情况下，游戏应当提供能够同时让这3类玩家感到满意的游戏玩法和地图。更为重要的是，多人游戏应当提供根据玩家类别来进行配对的系统。否则，资深玩家会轻易地战胜新手玩家，这会让新手玩家完全感受不到体验中的趣味性。

趣味性不是静态力量，它具有发展潜力

我们无法制作出具有特定程度趣味性的体验。正如之前所述，趣味性与玩家以往的经历和之前接触的所有产品有关。游戏开发者做的就是向玩家提供工具，让他们利用这些工具来体验到某种程度的乐趣。

通常情况下，随着玩家对游戏的逐渐精通，趣味性也会增加。通过技能的提升，玩家会增加对游戏中所发生内容的认知程度。这也就会加强游戏的趣味程度，游戏令人愉悦的原因便在于此。

但是，游戏开发者还必须确保玩家学习游戏的过程不会过于艰难。有些游戏缺乏足够的信息或教程，玩家不理解如何玩游戏并找到其中的趣味性。大量多人游戏都面临这个问题，而这个问题很容易便可以得到解决。

如何提升创作有趣产品的能力？

我们必须明白之前的制作方法，因为不重复之前犯过的错误是很重要的。

如果你想要在制作蓝图方面有所提升，那么你必须研究许多东西。了解现状，预测接下来的趋势，提升找到市场空白处的能力。学习和理解营销和心理学也很有帮助。

如果你想要提升自己制作背景的能力，那么过程或许会更加困难。你需要研究学习艺术、音乐、电影、电子游戏和摄影等内容。

如果你想要制作出更好的机制，那么我推荐你去体验和研究各种游戏、运动和战争艺术。对于所有设计师，我都会推荐他们在一款游戏上花足够时间直至精通。有些东西只有真正体验过才能够正确地理解。事实上，我们对某种体验越精通，对其他类似的体验也就越熟悉，因为这片领域中所有内容都是基于相同的原则。我们意识到，使用的机制都是相同的，只是背景不同而已。通过以上方法，你就能够更容易地制作出有趣的游戏玩法机制或学习如何修改不足之处。

制作出更具情感化的体验可能是最困难的任务，因为对游戏开发者来说这还是种相对较新的概念。如果能够理解哪些内容能够让玩家产生激情，那么势必会对此有所帮助。如果你想要寻找灵感的话，或许可以研究电影、书籍、电子游戏和日报。多数幽默作家知道如何来调侃读者，在故事中添加转折点能够触发特别的情感。

如果你想要提升自己制作结果或奖励的能力，那么电子游戏显然是最佳的参考对象。

如果你想要让人获得非凡的领悟，那至少应当确保这种体验值得一试，而且要比之前体验更好。

我曾经认为，研究当代最棒的游戏会帮助我们更好地理解如何制作出更优秀的游戏。但是，这些游戏往往极具吸引力，可能会使我们不会将注意力放在学习其制作方法上，因为当我们在玩这些游戏时，我们并没有批判地思考它们的构建方式，我们是以玩家的身份来体验这些游戏。然而，如果我们玩那些最糟糕的游戏，那么所有令人产生挫败感的东西都会涌入我们的脑中。于是我们就会知道哪些内容需要提升，这会迫使我们改善创造力，寻找弥补这些问题的方法。

光明的未来

未来将会出现更多有用的游戏，这是行业的发展趋势，我们可以通过许多方法来实现这个目标。主要想法在于，要制作出教育性和娱乐性并存的游戏。这是我们接触过的最简单和最具易用性的媒介。我们在玩游戏的时候不会受伤，因为我们不用冒任何肢体上的风险，所以我们能够不断学习下去。电子游戏是种让用户在短时间内体验上千种东西的简单方法。如果电子游戏成为教育系统的一部分，相信这会产生很不错的效果。

现在，电子游戏成为研究和理解现实性的方法，是帮助个人成长的强大工具，这是我们必须推广的内容。

我希望你能够将本文视为阐述趣味性的统一哲学而不是理论。趣味性的这7项原则还包含很多内容，本文的目标就是激发你的思考，让你自行找到剩余的答案。至少，现在你知道了寻找答案的方法。

篇目1，篇目2，篇目3，篇目4（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

篇目1，The 5 Degrees of Fun

by Brice Morrison

Exactly how much fun is it possible for someone have playing a game?

My game design philosophy has always been that games create an Experience. For the vast majority of games that are made, I would say around 99%, the core experience that companies, student developers, and indie developers are shooting for is for the game to be fun.

But how much fun should we be shooting for? Is there a way of measuring fun? Sure, ratings and reviews give us a scale of how well made a game was, on a 100-point scale. That’s a very high level of detail. But what if we aren’t talking about the overall quality of the game, we’re just talking about how fun it is? If a game has been polished to infinity, if every game design choice was perfect, thePunishment and Reward Systems tuned perfectly, how fun could it possibly be?

This is the ultimate question for every game designer. It is a very interesting question that not only ask questions of game design, but also of human psychology. To understand how fun a game can be is to understand how much fun people can have across all their experiences. And if we look at it from that perspective, I would propose that there are only 5 Degrees of Fun that players can experience at any moment in a game.

How Many Words?

One interesting way to look at the level of depth and breadth of an area of study or emotion is to count the number of words associated with it. Language does not come from a dictionary; language is created on the fly by people who are trying to describe the world they are experiencing. We use the words that we know to describe what we understand and what we want to share with others. But when new experiences commonly occur that can’t manage to be encapsulated by existing words or phrases, new ones tend to be invented.

For example, “Unfriend” was a verb (“I unfriended her on Facebook.”) that didn’t exist until the last couple of years, because it didn’t really make any sense before the age of social networks. However now many people have experienced being unfriended or unfriending other people — the idea has a place in people’s experiences, and so the word itself was born.

Japanese and Chinese have thousands of words to describe martial arts moves, philosophies, and styles. French has thousands of words to describe cooking, tasting, and food. In different areas of expertise, the number of words associated with a subject can be a strong indicator to the variety of experiences people can have with the subject. And by looking at the words that exist to describe something, we can see the number degree of definition that something can sustain.

The Degrees of Fullness

One interesting example is the subject of eating and fullness. In some ways you can view your stomach as a kind of measuring cup. You can put food in by eating, and when it fills up you get full.

You would think then that on its way to being full, your stomach would pass markers like “20% full”, “50% full”, and so on. But this doesn’t actually happen. In a study done at Cornell University, participants were sat down in a room and told that they could eat as much soup as they wanted. While some of the participants had normal bowls of soup and ate until they were full, others had unusual bowls of soup hooked up to tubes that, unbeknown to the diners, refilled the soup as they ate. So even after a couple bites, the soup would in reality be just as full as it had been.

So what happened? You would think that the ones with the refilling bowls would get stuffed and quit eating while the bowl was still full, right?

Actually, the researchers found that the people who had the magical refilling bowls ate substantially more soup than people who had a normal bowl. However, these participants, who ate up to 73% more soup than the other participants, didn’t notice at all. They didn’t say that they felt more full or bursting at the seems. After the meal, both groups actually sounded basically the same. They were stuffed.

What does this mean? It means that people generally can’t tell how full they are to the degree you and I would imagine. And what’s interesting is that this is reflected in the number of words and phrases we have (at least in english) to describe how full we are. Consider the follow words which represent the degrees of hunger:

* Starving

* Hungry

* Kind of hungry

* Not hungry

* Full

* Stuffed

Of course there are other words, but they essentially align themselves with these measures (“peckish” is the same as “kind of hungry”, “satiated” is the same as “not hungry”). But essentially, that’s it. We only have about six degrees of being able to tell how full we are. Enough to help us get by? Certainly. But not exactly the 100 point scale we were imagining.

The Degrees of Fun

So if we agree that the number of words around an experience can reflect the degree to which people can measure themselves, then we can make some interesting observations around playing games and having fun as well.

I have been playing games my whole life, making games for over 10 years, and playtesting games for more than 7 years. Playtesting is incredibly valuable, where you sit a player down, watch them play your game, reading the emotions on their face and asking them questions. You watch what they do in the game, and in turn you see what the game does to them. Do they pur

After doing years of playtests, any developer will tell you that they will begin to see patterns in how players feel. In my experience, there are only 5 different Degrees of Fun that players can experience and describe having in games:

* Bored

* Frustrated

* Interested

* Satisfied

* Delighted

That’s it. The names of the Degrees themselves may not be surprising; what’s most surprising is that one of those five words can accurately describe the feeling that players have in any given game in any given situation. Let’s break these down:

Bored. When players aren’t interested in what they are doing, they don’t understand it, it’s confusing, or just doesn’t strike their fancy, then they are bored. They are just about to quit playing (unless they have a strong Long Term Incentive to pull them through) unless something changes fast. If you ask them in the moment of being bored, “Would you like to play this game again?” they would likely respond, “No.”

Being bored is the absolute bottom of the barrel, the worst place that your game could be in as a Designer. A boring game is a game that has failed to interest the player. It’s doesn’t make their life worse, but it doesn’t make their life better either. Thus we have our first degree of fun.

Frustrated. Next up is frustrated. When players are actively becoming upset at something, then they are frustrated. They don’t understand how the game works, they are losing over and over, or they strongly disagree with how the gameplay is going, then players become frustrated.

However, being frustrated is actually better than being bored. Why? Because if people are frustrated with your game, then at least they care about it. Players who don’t care about your game, that just go, “meh…” and move on, they won’t be upset that the UI isn’t working or that the third boss has way too much health. Bored players don’t want your game to be fun because they aren’t invested. And so while the first Degree of Fun leaves players ambivalent to your game, the second actually reduces their enjoyment of their life because of the frustration.

Interested. When players are just starting to play a game, exploring something that catches their eye, understand what they goals are and want to continue going, then they are interested. It may be the Aesthetic Layout of the characters or the fun feeling of the Base Mechanics, but something has pulled the player into the game and beckons them to keep going. They want to learn, they want to see more, and they want to play more.

You can see this almost any time you see someone playing a game they enjoy. A Final Fantasy player exploring the world and looking for treasure. A Call of Duty player searching the map for opponents. These are moments where players are continuing to play the game of their own free will; they aren’t frustrated or bored with the game, they are interested in it, and that interest compels them to continue on through the play experience.

Satisfied. While being interested can last for hours on end, being satisfied is often only a single moment within a play session. When someone is satisfied with a game, then they have a feeling of accomplishment and a spark of happiness. They are proud of what they has done, what is happening, or what they know is about to happen. They would be happy to play the game more. The game gives them a small degree of joy, which is one of the things that games are the best at.

Satisfaction doesn’t have to always come in the form of game-driven goals. Of course when a player completes a level of New Super Mario Bros., they are satisfied. But they are also satisfied when a mayor completes building his empire in Sim City. When someone beats a high score, saves a comrade, or rolls a 12, then they receive payoff for the time they have invested in the game and enjoy themselves.

Delighted. While a game that satisfies players is often enough of a goal to make a successful game, games that allow players to be Delighted are the ones that find special places in their hearts. Delighted is not simply “more satisfied”. Delighted is a distinctly different magical moment, a moment that may only last for a few seconds and occur every few days or weeks. Delight is the pinnacle of a game experience. Moments when players are delighted are moments that stay with them their whole lives.

Completing a game and being dazzled by the ending or a plot twist often delights players – the delighted moments from Braid or Bioshock spawned entire forums full of discussions . Winning a tough match in Starcraft with your friends that you were sure you were going to lose, yelling “Holy cow! I can’t believe we won!” is a moment of delight. Watching Kirby inhale an entire bear and laugh out loud at the unbearable cuteness is a moment of delight. Or coming back to your favorite facebook game to see that your mom has sent you a present, even though you haven’t talked in days — these are moments of delight. Difficult to engineer? Most definitely. But moments of delight are some of the magic of games, and mark the fifth Degree of Fun and enjoyment.

Which Degree does your game reside in?

I should make a note that the 5 Degrees of Fun do not speak at all to the other emotions of playing a game. Resident Evil makes players frightened, while Shadow of the Colossus gives a sense of wonder. Heavy Rain causes players to think deeply and feel regret, while Forza gets players hearts racing and lifts their emotion up and down. I do not claim that the 5 Degrees of Fun are a complete vocabulary with which to describe all player experience. My only claim is that is a sufficient vocabulary to measure the aspect of Fun.

The 5 Degrees of Fun have made the game industry what it is today: an industry of creating fun experiences for millions of players around the world to enjoy apart from, inside, and along with their normal lives. Creating moments of interest, satisfaction, and delight while avoiding boredom and frustration is what entices players to come back to games again and again.

篇目2，Building Tight Game Systems of Cause and Effect

To play a game well, a player must master a mental model of cause and effect. You learn that pressing a specific button moves you forward. You figure out that a sequence of controller moves lets you dodge a fired rocket. You observe a slight pause before an enemy attack and theorize that you could fire off a headshot at that exact moment. At each stage of learning, you create a hypothesis, test it via your actions and refine your mental models of the whirring black box at the heart of the game.

This escalating refinement and mastery of new mental models and tools is essential to what makes many a game enjoyable. Such mastery obviously depends on the player. Yet it also is dependent on the designer and the systems they build. You can accidentally create a broken black box.

Not all systems are readily amenable to the intuitive formation of models of cause and effect. As a game designer, it is your job to create systems that are intriguing to master without being completely baffling. If the system is too predictable, it becomes boring. If it is not predictable at all we assume that the system is either random or spiritual in nature. Both of these are failure conditions if you are attempting to encourage mastery.

Tight and Loose systems

I am a mechanic who fixes broken black boxes. One importance concept that has served me well is to think of the relationship between systems and the feedback the game uses to describe interactions with the systems as either ‘tight’ or ‘loose’. A tight system has clearly defined cause and effect. A loose system make is more difficult to distinguish cause and effect relationships.

There is no correct ‘tightness’ of a loop. However there are clear methods of increasing either the tightness or the looseness.

Techniques for adjusting tightness

For your reading pleasure, I’ve put together a list of tools that I use to tweak a system’s tightness. Not all are applicable to any given system but all of them should be part of an expert designer’s toolkit. Some of the tools are worthy of dedicated books so I apologize up front for any obvious shallowness. For example, probability has so many subtle flavors that some designers devote their lives to studying how it impacts a player’s ability to predict outcomes. At best this is an overview.

To tighten a system, I’m making the cause and effect more obvious. To loosen a system, I’m making the connection between cause and effect less obvious.

Strength of Feedback

Peggle

Tighter: Multiple channels of aligned feedback such as color, animation, sound, and touch that reinforce one another. The classic example is Peggle which uses particles, rainbows, Ode to Joy and time dilation to let you know that yes, the match is over and glorious points are being scored.

Am I using all the potential channels I need to make an impact?

Is the feedback sequenced correctly so that player can read it clearly?

Does the feedback leverage an existing mental schema so that becomes more impactful?

Looser: One channel of feedback that is weakly evident. In multiplayer FPS games often the only sense that you have that another player is near comes from the faint patter of their footsteps.

Expert players gain immense satisfaction from being able to predict the location of their opponent by combining knowledge of the levels with tiny hints of where they might be.

Does the feedback have nuance that is not readily understandable upon casual inspection?

Can the feedback be combined with other non-obvious information to give a clear picture to an expert user?
Noisiness

Space Giraffe

Tighter: A clear signal of effect that is related to the cause.

What is the most important piece of information the player needs right now?

Have I removed extraneous elements that distract the player’s attention?

Is my feedback at the center of the player’s attention?

Looser: A multiplicity of conflicting, attention sapping signals, which are not related to cause. One of the critical skills in Jeff Minter’s Space Giraffe is learning to see through the visual noise of the psychedelic backgrounds.

Are there ambient elements I can add that distract, but don’t annoy?

Can noise create a perceptual puzzle for the player?

Sensory type

Assassin’s Creed 3: Nice use of contrast and perspective

Tighter: Visually or tactile feedback is often more clearly perceived. Consider the many billions of dollars spent on improving visual feedback each year so that we can demonstrate the visceral impact of a players bullet on simulated flesh with ever greater fidelity. Tight visual feedback is highly functional; it communicates the effect to the player in an elegant efficient fashion. It is not just about making pretty pictures. In a recent update of Triple Town, we changed the color scheme so that the background was the same general value as the foreground objects. The result was attractive, but players were pissed because the icons weren’t nearly as visible as before.

Am I using good visual design such as color, motion, contrast, line, white space, shadow, volume, perspective so that my visuals read clearly?

Did I make something pretty when I needed something functional?

What feedback is functional and what is evocative or aesthetic?

Am I over investing in visual feedback?

Looser: Auditory and smell are less clearly perceived. Not as much has been done here, but due to the looseness that come such systems it would seem that there are potential systems of mastery. It is perhaps ironic that most music games, a topic typically associated with auditory mastery, can be played with the sound turned off.

Tapping Existing Mental Models

Plants vs Zombies

Tighter: Closely map the theme, feedback and system to existing mental models. Due to decades of exposure to pop culture, players know how zombies move and that they should be avoided. One means of quickly communicating the dozens of variables in a particular slow moving group of monsters is to label them ‘zombies’.

What is the cartoon model that players have in their heads (vs the ‘realistic model of how the real world works)?

Does my theme support my mechanics?

Does my theme inspire useful variations on my core mechanics?

Am I engaging in the cardinal sin of watering down my mechanics to fit the theme?

Looser: Step away from existing models and introduce the player to new systems that they’ve never experienced. Consider the metaphors involved in Tetris. Falling elements are something our brain can process as reasonably familiar. Tetriminos that you fit into lines that disappear to earn points while Russian music plays? That doesn’t fit any known metaphor that I know, yet it results in a great game.

At what point do I no longer need a gateway schema and the game can stand on its own internal consistency?

Are there opportunities for surrealism or intentional disorientation?

Can we step away from cliches to synthesis fresh experiences?

Discreteness

Advance Wars: Limited units and small numbers.

Tighter: Discrete states or low value numbers. Binary is the tightest. For example, recently we were playing with units moving a various speeds. By making them move a 1, 2, and 4 tiles/sec, it suddenly became very obvious to the player how each unit type was distinct. This is one of my favorite techniques for getting unruly systems under control.

What is the minimum number of values that I need to create meaningful choices?

Can player clearly distinguish between the effect of each increment in value?

What would happen if I had to reduce this variable to 3 discrete values?

Looser: Analogue values or very high value numbers. For example, in Angry Birds, you can give your bird a wide range of angles and velocities. This makes the results surprisingly uncertain. Think of how predictable (and boring) the game would be if you could only pick 2 distinct angles and velocities.
Do I have enough range that players can play creatively?

Do my values add interesting uncertainty to choices?

Pacing

Diablo Loot Pacing

Tighter: Short time lapses between cause and effect. When creating mouse over boxes like you find in Diablo, a common mistake is to add a delay between when the mouse is over the inventory item and when the hover dialog appears. If the delay is too short, the hover dialog pops up when the player doesn’t expect it. If the delay is too long, the dialog feels laggy and non-responsive. (In my experience, 200ms seems ideal. That’s right inside the perception gap where you’ve decided to do something, but your conscious mind hasn’t quite caught up)

Where does the game play lag?

What happens if I speed timing up?

What happens if slow timing down?

What systems allow me to vary timing in an indirect fashion?

Am I adjusting pacing using manual content arcs when I could instead use with algorithmic loops?

Looser: Long time lapses between cause and effect. Too long and the player misses that there is an effect at all. Imagine an RPG where you have a switch and a timer. If you hit the switch, a door opens 60 seconds later. Surprisingly few people will figure out that the door is linked to the switch. On the other hand, early investment in industry in Alpha Centauri resulted in alien attacks deep in the end game. This created a richer system of interesting trade off for players to manipulate over a long time span.

What are the longer loops in the game?

Are there long burning effects that cause players to reconsider their models for long term play loops?

Linearity

Castlevania Medusa movement (via Kotaku)

Tighter: Linearly increasing variables are more predictable. Consider the general friendliness of throwing a sword in a straight line in Zelda versus catching an enemy with an arcing boomerang while moving.

What happen if I simplify the model and make the reaction linear?

How can I remove non-linear systems from early gameplay?

Looser: Non-linearly increasing variables, less so. The Medusa heads in Castlevania pose a surprisingly difficult challenge to many players because tracking them breaks the typical expectation linear movement. Even something as commonplace as gravity throws most people off their game. After all, it took thousands of years before we figured out how to accurately land an artillery shell.

What systems are exponential in nature?

How do I constrain my non-linear systems so they are predictable?

How do I create interestingly chaotic behavior via feedback loops?

Indirection

SimEarth

Tighter: Primary effects where the cause is directly related to the effect. In Zelda again, the primary attack is highly direct. You press a button, the sword swings out and a nearby enemy is hit.

What systems can I remove to make the results of an action more obvious?

Is my cognitive load high enough?

Looser: Secondary effects where the cause triggers a secondary (or tertiary) system that in turn triggers an effect. Simulations and AI’s are notorious for rapidly become indecipherable due to numerous levels of indirection. In a game of SimEarth, it was often possible to noodle with variables and have little idea what was actually happening. However, the immense indirection yields systems that people can play with for decades.

How can simple system interact to create useful indirect effects?

How can I layer useful indirect effects to create wide expressive opportunities for the player?

Hidden information

Mastermind

Tighter: Visible sequences that are readily apparent. For example, in Triple Town we signal that a current position is a match. The game isn’t about matching patterns so instead the design goal is to make the available movement opportunities as obvious as possible.

Is there something hidden that shouldn’t be?

Is there something visible that doesn’t matter?

Looser: Hidden information or off screen information. A game like Mastermind is entirely about a hidden code that must be carefully deciphered via indirect clues. Board games that are converted into computer games often accidentally hide information. In a board game, the systems are impossible to hide because they are manually executed by the players. However, in computers the rules are often simulated in the background, turning a previously comprehensible system into mysterious gibberish.

Would hiding information fully or partially make mastery more challenging?

Probability

Tighter: Deterministic where the same effect always follows a specific cause. In a game like chess, the result of a move is always the same; a knight moves in an L and will capture the piece in lands upon. You can imagine a variant where instead you role a die to determine the winner. You can make that tighter again by constraining the probability so that certain characters roll larger dice than others. The 1d20 Pawn of Doom is a grand horror.

How do I make the outcome highly deterministic?

Is this direct action still interesting if repeated hundreds of times?

Looser: Probabilistic so that sometimes one outcome occurs but occasionally a different one happens. In one prototype I worked on there was both a long time scale between the action and the results as well as a heavily weighted but still semi-random outcome. Players were convinced that the game was completely random and had zero logic. If you pacing is fast enough and your feedback strong enough, you might be able to treat this as a slot machine.

Do I need a simple method of simulating a complex system?

Do I need a means of adding interesting pacing to the game?

Does the player perceive that they have the situation under controls despite the randomness?

Processing Complexity

SpaceChem

Tighter: System requires simulating few steps to predict an outcome. In a vertically scrolling shooter, you see the bullet coming towards you. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to figure out that if you stay in that location you are going to be hit.

How much can the player process in the time allotted?

Are players getting mentally fatigued playing the game?

Looser: System requires simulating multiple steps to predict an outcome. On the other hand, in Triple Town, good players need to think dozens of moves ahead. Thinking through all the various machinations necessary to get the result you want adds a serious cognitive load to the player. A single mistake in the player’s calculations yields unexpected results.

Do players feel smart?

Can players plan multiple moves ahead?

Can players debug why their plans didn’t work?

Option Complexity

Steel Battalion

Tighter: Fewer options are available to consider. In a recent upgrade system I was building I give players 3 choices for their upgrades. I could have given them a menu of 60 upgrades, but that would be rather overwhelming. By focusing the user on a few important choices, I give them the mental space to think about each and pick the one with the biggest impact.

Can I reduce the options?

If I had to remove one choice, what would it be? Would the game be better?

Which options are the most meaningful?

Looser: A large number of options must be considered. In a game of Go there are often dozens of potential moves and hundreds of secondary moves. This options complexity is a large part of why the game has been played for thousands of years.

How do current options yield an exploding horizon of future options?

How do I re-balance outcomes to make more options useful?

Social Complexity

Death of Lord British in Ultima Online

Tighter: Another human broadly signals intent, capabilities and internal mental state. In an MMO, a player dresses as a high level healer and stands in a spot where adhoc groups meet up. There’s a good chance you know what they’ll do if you ask them to go adventuring together. Or in a managed trade window, you know exactly what you are getting when he puts up a potion for your sword. There is little ambiguity.

Can I make a character automatically signal future intent via their current actions?

Do the options collapse to a reasonable number so that I can predict what the other player might do if they are acting rationally?

Do I know enough about the goals and resources of the other player?

Have a spent enough time with the other player to model their internal state?

Are there predictable methods of interacting between players?

Looser: Another human disguises, distorts or mutes intent, capabilities and their mental state.

Can people communicate?

Can people lie and what is the impact of that?

Can people harm others? Can they help? Are there repercussions?

To what degree is my choice dependent on another player’s choice?

What are group dynamics that influence behavior?

Time Pressure

WarioWare

Tighter: Requires simulating the model at the player’s preferred pace. This is related to processing and option complexity since players can only execute their models at a given pace. Players are more likely to make causal connections if the time pressure is greatly reduced. For example, the game NetHack has complexly interwoven systems that require real detective work to decipher. In order to increase the likelihood that players will make the connection, the game is set up as a turn-based game where players may take as much time as they want between turns. You’ll see that as the situation becomes more complex, even good players will slow down their play substantially so they can understand all the ramifications.
How much time does the player need to understand what is happening?

Can I let the player choose their pacing or do I need to force a universal timing?

What are the multiplayer ramifications?

Looser: Requires simulating the model quickly. In a game of WarioWare, there isn’t really much complexity involved in each individual puzzle. However, we can dramatically ramp up the cognitive load and increase outcome uncertainty by setting a very short timer.

Would time pressure push the player’s cognitive load into a pleasurable flow zone?

Is the player feeling analysis paralysis?

Is the player feeling wildly out of control?

Applying the tightening techniques

When I run into the common situation where players don’t understand the system, I often use the tightening techniques to make the system’s cause and effect relationship more crisply defined for the player. In almost all cases, my changes are in response to observations stemming from playing a prototype myself or from watching someone else play a prototype. I find them to be most useful as tuning techniques and less reliable for making grand plans in the absence of functional code.

Gameplay is composed of loops and these loops have distinct stages (Actions, Rules, Feedback, Updating of the player’s mental model). Depending on where in the loop the observed issue might be, I use different techniques to tweak it.

Action Problems

Option complexity

Pacing

Rules Problems

Processing complexity

Probability

Indirection

Linearity

Feedback Problems: Feedback failures are the most common error I find when dealing when implementing known systems. Most new designer make feedback errors. Intermediate designs often focus on feedback to the exclusion of other problem areas.

Strength of feedback

Noisiness

Sensory Type

Hidden information

Discreteness

Modeling Problems:

Time pressure

Tapping existing mental models

Tightness vs the stage of player mastery

Skill loops build upon one another. The jumping in Mario evolves into advanced platform navigating skills. What I find is that often the lowest levels of skill loops need to be the tightest. These are the systems you need to be most obvious in the first seconds of play…they are the gateway into the rest of the game, so to speak. Keep the number of options low, tap into existing mental models and make the cause and effect as crisp and obvious as possible. Then once the player is comfortable manipulating the basic system, you can introduce looser connections that take more effort to master.

The player’s perception of tightness and looseness changes over time. There’s a mental chunking operation that occurs as we master skills. Sequences that were once confusing and complex get reduced down to easily repeated and manipulated patterns. So the higher level skills that are made of multiple chunked precursor skills end up feeling very clear and obvious. You’ll often find controls that a new player describes as twitchy or sloppy are described by an expert player as extremely precise and tight. Mastery can turn loose systems into tight tools.

Conclusion

New designers often treat the systems at the heart of their games as inviolate features of nature. The properties of a sniper rifle, the combo system in Street Fighter or the energy system in a farming game are treated as mathematical facts. You can tweak some values, but the basic system has always existed and will always exist. Yet the truth is that these systems were invented and then adopted because they had useful properties. They are easy to pickup, yet provide sufficient depth for long term mastery. They are designed artifacts.

We can design new systems that hit the sweet spot between mysterious and boring. By looking at you new games through the lenses listed above (and likely some others that I’m forgetting) you can iteratively tune the systems, models and skills at the heart of your game to be more or less understandable. By following a methodical process of invention, you can take a weak game and turn it into a great game that dances hand-in-hand with player capabilities.

篇目3，Gamification: Framing The Discussion

by Tony Ventrice

[As a prelude to a full-on examination of gamification, Badgeville's Tony Ventrice digs deep into what makes games games, using work that's come before as a basis to explore this new tool -- the first of his ongoing series of articles on gamification.]

A lot has been said about gamification recently, and a lot of circular arguing has gone around what it means to compare an experience to a game.

I have two responses to this discussion:

1. “Gamification” as a term is indeed opportunistic and vague. While the word seems to imply a land-grab for everything that is great about games, in current practice it only represents points and badges: loyalty and reputation systems.

2. Games have a lot to offer, and the current form of gamification isn’t a bad place to start. There is a lot to be gained from tying loyalty and reputation systems to a website or product and, as the concept evolves, other aspects of gameplay are sure to follow.

What I would like to do is define the full scope of what makes games fun (not a trivial task by any means) and then explore the practical application to real-world businesses. This journey will be made in multiple parts.

* Part 1 will be to dissect the concept at the intersection of the following words: Game, Fun, Play. The objective will be to end with a list of aspects — aspects of what make games fun.

* Each of the following parts will explore how these aspects might be applied to business enterprise.

What Makes a Game Fun?

This question has been asked many times, by both academics and game designers. A common conclusion on the game design side is that games represent choice and learning. I’ll let a few of the most prominent experts in game design put it in their words.

Raph Koster says in A Theory of Fun:

Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally.

Jesse Schell says in The Art of Game Design:

A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I came to basically the same conclusion when I defined gameplay for myself as: interesting decisions (apparently Sid Meier said the same thing — I may have got it from him.) I came to this conclusion because personally decisions and challenge are what I enjoy about games when I play them.

And this definition is perfectly functional if you’re designing games for people like me and Raph and Jesse; games like the video game industry has been designing for the past 30 years, and will go on designing for the next 30 years. A deeper understanding is only really useful if it’s your job to deconstruct a game and rebuild the “fun” in a completely new context, like, say, a corporate website.

An Unexpected Truth

Gradually, we’ve seen examples of games where the learning has been peeled away. FarmVille and Foursquare are evidence that people are willing to call something a “game” even if the decisions are vapid and the learning is simplistic. Defining a game by choices and solutions doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.

An argument can be made to defend the old definition. There is learning in FarmVille, if just a little bit. And Foursquare, well, I suppose you learn where you have a chance at maintaining mayor status and where you don’t…

But I’m not buying it. The fact is, the learning aspect to these “games” is so thin it hardly counts. Even if you posit that the average FarmVille player is less intelligent than the average “real game” player, it doesn’t explain why FarmVille players play for so long — we’re talking about months, more than enough time for even a simpleton to learn everything there is to know in the game.

The truth is, we have only two options: either refuse to call these things “games” or admit that there is more to games than just learning.

But before we move on, we’ll give the old definition one more chance. We’ll note that Schell and Koster didn’t say games were just learning, they said games were learning with a playful or fun attitude. Raph elaborates:

The lesson here is that fun is contextual. The reasons why we are engaging in an activity matter a lot.

So, the definition of a fun game is more than just learning, and neither Koster nor Schell has found it simple enough to condense into a one-sentence definition. Fun, it turns out is a very tricky word.

Once Again: What Makes a Game Fun?

The game designers had their say, and have given us the first aspect of fun for our list: learning. I think it’s a suitable first element, and examples of games where the fun is represented almost solely by learning might include pattern-solving puzzles like Rubik’s Cube or Mastermind.

I’m sure the designers have a lot more to say on the topic but, in the interests of time, I’d like to give the academics a turn now.

If you’ve read Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play, you’ve heard of the sociologist Roger Caillois. Caillois posits there are four forms of play:

Competition, Chance, Role Playing and Altered Perception

The list seems rather arbitrary. As a sociologist, Caillois is not a game designer, but you have to appreciate the distance he’s given himself in his definition. And I think he’s made some rather unique observations.

Competition seems like an obvious addition to our list — almost any activity that can be measured has been turned into a game at one point or another, from spotting out-of-state license plates to shoveling coal faster than the other guy.

Role Playing also seems obvious — what other way can you explain children playing house, or firemen, or any other game young children play?

Altered Perception is probably Caillois’ most interesting proposal. From recreational drug use to rolling down a grassy hill and then attempting to run in a straight line, altered perception is an undeniable, albeit often over-looked aspect of play.

It even turns up in video games occasionally (some games “mess” with the player by distorting the reality of the game rules unexpectedly, while others bombard the player with lights and sounds, resulting in a “trippy” experience). I’m tempted to include altered perception to our list — yet, by and large, this is not an aspect of play with many practical applications, particularly in the context of business, so out of the interest of space, I’ll omit it.

Finally we have Chance. Chance is a mechanic desirable in competitive play to avoid deterministic outcomes. Given two players of unequal skill, in a game without chance, the outcome is known before the game even begins. Chance is a very important mechanic for game balancing and building suspense (something I’ll get to later), but not inherently fun, or a reason, per se, to play a game.

Game designer Marc LeBlanc gives us a slightly longer and more practical list than Caillois. While LeBlanc might find better company in the previous section with the other designers, I’ve included him here because in his work he’s chosen to take a more academic approach (he’s even collaborated with academics at Northwestern University).

LeBlanc’s list of eight kinds of fun:

Sensation, Fellowship, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Discovery, Expression, Submission

In the interest of time, I’ll cut through these quickly, picking out which to keep based on their value to our investigation.

Sensation might include fun things like the plunge of a rollercoaster, a runner’s high, or a pleasant massage — but in the context of gamified experiences, it is probably even less useful than Altered Perception.

Fellowship introduces the idea of a social aspect — a sense of friendship or belonging. Finding a single game represented purely by fellowship is difficult, but many people choose to play party games solely for this reason.

For example, I find Apples to Apples to be an asinine game — winners are chosen arbitrarily — yet I enjoy playing the game. Why? I find that to enjoy the game, I ignore the implied competition and learning, and focus instead on enjoying the social interplay and collective laughing. For me, the only reason to play Apples to Apples is the Fellowship.

Fantasy and Narrative are relevant but quite similar (I’d say they respectively describe the premise and events of a story). I don’t know if anyone would call a story a game, but in watching the interplay of a campfire story or a bedtime story you can’t help but see the similarities and at least admit the presence of fun.

Many games contain stories, and I have even heard of people playing games that were terrible simply because they wanted to know how the story turned out. I think this is enough evidence of fun to keep these two — at least as a single shared entry in our list.

Challenge and Discovery are What Koster and Schell were talking about (the player discovers new techniques and applies them to challenging problems) so we’ll categorize these with learnign.

Expression is very similar to role playing, and we’ll group the two for now and see if we can’t come up with a common feature.

Submission is, honestly, a bit unexpected. LeBlanc defines Submission as “game as mindless pastime”. Although this is a very tempting addition to our list, it unfortunately says nothing informative. By this inclusion, 3:00 AM television infomercials are fun, and I think anyone can agree that such a stretch results in a definition far too broad for our purposes.

We’ve made it through Marc’s list and retained 6 out of his 8 items, at least in some respect.

Next, I’d like to introduce an academic named Nicole Lazzaro. Nicole’s study covers the basics of choice and challenge that we’ve already talked about, but what she does differently is focus her studies around the emotional state of gamers.

In her own words:

Game Advertising Online

Our results revealed that people play games not so much for the game itself as for the experience the game creates: an adrenaline rush, a vicarious adventure, a mental challenge; or the structure games provide, such as a moment of solitude or the company of friends.

While she seems to view every aspect of a game from the perspective of emotion (and the utility of this perspective may be questionable) she does raise a worthy point: pure emotions most likely have a role in the concept of “fun”.

After all, why do people watch scary movies, flirt with their own spouses, play practical jokes on each other, or play Crocodile Dentist? They find surges of emotion like fear, arousal, humor, suspense and surprise to be fun.

I have one more academic who never seems to get integrated properly into these discussions, and his name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi is the foremost expert in what we know as flow. In his own words, flow is:

Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.

Flow is often used to mean “balanced difficulty”, or is just as often dismissed as simply another emotional state. I believe the topic is actually much more interesting than either of these interpretations, and warrants its own entry in our list. For examples of flow that might be called “games”, I might cite bouncing a ball repeated off a wall or flinging cards at a hat. While these activities do involve learning a skill, I think the fact that it is a worthless skill might be indicative of something else going on.

What Makes a Game Fun? A Summary

We’ve heard from some of the most recognized experts on the subject (hopefully I haven’t abbreviated their voices unfairly), done some paring for utility, and here’s our working list of features that make games fun:

1. Learning / Challenge / Discovery

2. Role Playing / Expression

3. Competition

4. Fellowship

5. Fantasy / Narrative

6. Emotion

7. Flow

Before moving on, I’d like to do a little editing — nothing serious, just some renaming and a little shifting of shared similarities. I’ll include my reasons below for anyone who cares to argue.

Final List:

1. Growth

2. Choice

3. Competition

4. Identity

5. Story

6. Emotion

7. Flow

We now have a list of aspects that make games fun. I believe any proposed addition can be categorized under one or more of these seven. If it can’t, I’m more than willing to add another entry (or acknowledge and dismiss it, like sensation).

If we take the word “game” to be defined as: an activity engaged in for the pursuit of fun (and this is basically how the dictionary defines it), I think we’re ready to move on with our analysis of gamification.

In further articles, I will address each of the aspects on our list, what they might look like independent from the rest and how they might be used in a context outside of traditional gaming. Given the breadth of the content, I won’t be able to go into exacting detail, but I hope to cover each enough to set a trajectory towards further constructive thought.

How I Arrived At the List

For our first entry, we already have three proposed names: learning, challenge, and discovery. I would like to propose a fourth to represent them all: growth. Growth conveys an unequivocal sense of going somewhere, improving on a previous state.

What I prefer about “growth” is that it cuts more directly to the center of the desired experience than the others; I might be learning something, but not feeling as if it’s progressing towards any useful end. I might be challenged, but resent it as an unnecessary or pointless obstacle. I might discover something, but feel it to be irrelevant. Only growth clearly conveys both personal development and a positive experience.

Once you filter out the concept of story (covered under fantasy and narrative), role playing and expression are actually very similar. They describe an opportunity to assert the values that make you who you are and the freedom to try out new values without judgment. This seems to convey two things: identity and choice. Identity is important, but it’s already been covered elsewhere on the list (see below). That leaves us with choice, or autonomy, which is important enough to warrant an entry of its own.

Fellowship is a funny word that can’t help but conjure up images of Hobbits. What we’re really talking about here is a sense of belonging — a role, or place, in a social context. Nothing seems to describe it better than identity. I know who I am, and so does everyone else. While fellowship implies a purely friendly social relationship, friendship may be too specific — it’s probably safe to say almost everyone desires a sense of identity, but not everyone craves harmony and alliance.

For fantasy / narrative, as I mentioned earlier, these two respectively describe the premise and events of a Story. “Narrative” is a probably the more inclusive of the two, but yet seems too cold to properly convey the fun feeling of getting wrapped up in an engaging story. The users call it “story”, and I feel it makes the most sense to do the same.

篇目4，The Origins of Fun

Christian Philippe Guay

Fun is a familiar word and, to this day, it is still hard to define. We do have that strange ability to understand how to make something fun, but so little understanding of its actual origins. For years I’ve been asking to myself many questions:

Where does it come from?

How can it be produced?

Is fun exclusively subjective?

Is it possible to create something fun for everyone?

Is fun all about learning something new?

Why do I still enjoy older games more than the most recent ones?

Are we losing our understanding of fun?

Is engagement the same thing as fun?

What is the future of video games?

Could a unified theory of fun exist?

I never found a proper answer to these questions in any articles on the internet, nor any book. However, I did find out a lot about fun, because most articles or books pointed out a lot of the factors that result in fun experiences.

They never, however, clearly explained what fun was or how to produce it. After months of intensive research on the subject, I had a hard time believing how many fun products we’ve made as an industry without even understanding what fun is or where it comes from. It’s amazing, really, what we’ve accomplished so far.

Desperate and without answers, I started to think. I spent years looking for those answers and, more importantly, underestimated the value of my own experience in solving the problem. Fifteen minutes later, I found my own answers to all of those questions.

That’s when I realized how much we know about fun, and how little we know about ourselves. By the end of this article, I’m sure most of you are going to be amazed by how much you knew about fun, and discover that the real trouble was in connecting the dots.

Where Does Fun Come From?

Everything that exists follows what we call a structure: recipes, books, films, video games, chemical formulae, etc. We all know that fun can be experienced during or after an experience. In other words, by better understanding the structure of an experience, we will gain a better understanding of fun. We’ll find that structure in the creative process is necessary to create an experience.

Whether it’s based on a specific audience target or simple personal inspiration, we first create the vision for a game. Some designers might prefer to call it a blueprint. That blueprint is, exclusively, an idea located in the mind or on paper. It is not yet perceptible or interactive, and yet this step is the heart of the experience.

To make that blueprint interactive, we need to make it perceptible to our human senses. If the idea was to create an interesting enemy, we would have to make the 3D model first. I usually use the word context to cover all that. Fighting on a battlefield is different from fighting in a moving elevator, right? Also, some games feature a story. The perceptible story is found on this specific layer.

Once we’ve made the idea perceptible, then we can give it a mechanism. We add to our character the bones he needs to move in the intended way. Just keep in mind that everything perceptible will always empower the mechanism and make it better; that’s why old school 8-bit games aren’t necessarily better even when they offer cooler, more innovative gameplay than contemporary titles.

The ultimate goal of a designer is to give to players tools to influence the world, AI, and other players; it’s all about the mind game and the challenge. When it comes to the story, while the context covers the perceptible story, this layer covers the one that we create as we play.

Now that our experience has a mechanism and is interactive, what we want to do is to add that subtle layer of emotions. That’s actually one of the steps we often forget, but it is absolutely crucial to the creation of a great and memorable experience. Do you want to throw rockets that will profoundly stress the player? Did you create a room so empty that the player will know for sure that he needs to prepare for the next big fight? Do you desire the player to feel that this area is a peaceful or dangerous place?

Once the player performs the interaction, from cause and effect there is a direct result. Did he counter an attack? Did he eliminate his opponent? Did he hear a sound? What treasure did he find by opening the chest? It’s important to notice that there is a challenge and a reward, but the reward is not the last thing to think about. There are a few other steps to an experience.

Once the player gets the result, then he can be conscious of the time it took to complete the experience. The notion of time moderates the intensity of an experience, and it creates rhythm or repetition.

Finally, it’s only once the player is aware of the time that he can achieve a full realization of the whole experience. That’s the moment when he registers the data in memory and can compare its quality with other past experiences. By going through this final process, the player also forges his judgement. By creating an experience, we also forge our audience; a natural evolution cycle of which we are all part of.

The Structure of an Experience

The structure of an experience consists of seven layers — categories or guidelines. It really doesn’t matter what we call them. The following bullet points contain examples of what each layer comprises.

Blueprint: Vision; Game design documents; Pitch; Teaser; Trailers

Context (everything perceptible): 2D art; 3D environment; 3D models; 3D animations; Music; Sound effects; Special effects; Menus; HUD;Perceptible story

Mechanism: Gameplay mechanics; Learning curve; Controls; Difficulty curve; Ergonomics; Level design; Playable story

Emotions: Joy; Anger; Fear; Surprise; Sadness

Result: The player found new equipment; The player found a shortcut; The player gained points; The player unlocked a new feature

Time: Intensity; Rhythm; Repetition

Realization: Did it help to understand how to perform a gameplay mechanic? Did we learn a new twist in the story? Was this adventure more enjoyable than the ones made 10 years ago?

It’s even more important to understand that one experience can be made of multiple and smaller experiences, or be part of a bigger experience — just like a game is made of levels, and those are made of gameplay sequences, and those are made of gameplay, and that is made of actions, etc. It grows infinitely big and infinitely small.

Life; Activities; Video games; Games; Game levels; Gameplay sequences; Actions; Controls

It’s the ancient principle of correspondence, the theory of relativity, the phenomenon of fractals, or the relationship between the microcosm and macrocosm. That’s also where it easily gets confusing to analyze the different layers, because things move up or down the scale, and everything is relative.

Seven Principles of Engagement

Our seven principles can be considered as seven linear steps that can put the player into a greater state of engagement. If the player dislikes one step, it can be enough to prevent her from continuing the experience. Ideally, we want the player to be seduced by all the steps as much as we possibly can. Simply put, all steps should be better than what can be found in past games, films, books, or music.

A greater degree of fun is experienced when we simply experience something of greater quality. Basically, engagement allows the potential fun of a game to emerge.

Still, all the products have their own strengths. Some games will offer greater visuals and others greater mechanism or emotions.

In order to produce greater states of engagement, to do less is more, because the more we add details, the more we increase our chance to make a mistake or to create things that are disruptive or disturbing to the experience.

More importantly, everything created must have a compelling reason to exist, and ideally it should empower the rest. It’s pointless to add 50 accessories to a character if none of them actually tells us more about him. The simple color of the cape, the shape, or the way it moves should alone tell a lot.

It’s always great to keep in mind that time is money.

Is Fun Different for Everyone?

A game isn’t supposed to be fun for everyone; it was designed for a very specific audience. The group we can attract is gamers. Is everyone a gamer? Absolutely not.

Fun is subjective, but not entirely. From one perspective, because we all experience different things and are born with a certain approach to life, we might find things fun that wouldn’t necessarily be so for others. Still, experiences forge our judgement; those experiences are limited to what exists. That means if you understand what exists, you can obviously make something that’s more fun for your audience.

That means fun is only wholly subjective if we don’t know what is out there, or if we can’t create something more fun than what the audience can create in its own mind.

Different Skill Levels, Different Perspectives of Fun

The different skill levels of the players will influence how they perceive fun. As mentioned earlier, fun is only potential, and the more a player develops her skills, the more she can understand and appreciate.

A simple approach would be to break down the audience into three categories: Newcomers; Advanced players; Pro players

Those are not necessarily representative of their physical skill level, but more their mentality, because physical skills can be lost over time due to a lack of practice.

The newcomer is obviously new to the game and mostly cares about something basic: ”I just want to shoot people”. If we were to design a map for them, it would be smaller and more chaotic.

The pro players need the total opposite. They would instead need a map that offers better pacing and plenty of tricks and strategy. The advanced players are right in the middle and can enjoy both aspects of the game.

Ideally, a game should offer gameplay and maps that can please the three categories of players. More importantly, every multiplayer game should also offer a system that matches the players based on their categories. Otherwise, pro players will always give a hard time to newcomers, and some of them might just not enjoy their experience at all.

Fun isn’t a Static Force, It is a Potential

We do not create experiences that are fun to a very specific degree. As said earlier, fun is relative to the past experiences of the players and to everything created in the past. What game developers do is give to players tools; by taking advantage of those, they can experience fun, to a certain degree.

Usually, the fun will also increase as the player progresses in mastery of the game. By improving her skills, she will increase the degree of memorable moments that happen. That will also intensify the degree of fun — and that’s why games are so enjoyable.

However, game developers must also make sure that the learning curve isn’t too intimidating. Some games lack sufficient information or tutorials, and players can’t understand how to play them, or what about them is fun. A lot of multiplayer games suffer from that problem, and that can be easily solved.

How can I Improve My Ability to Create Fun Products?

We have to be aware of what has been done before, as it is important to not repeat past mistakes.

If you want to get better at creating a blueprint, then you have to study pretty much everything. Be aware of what is going on, anticipate what is coming next, and develop the ability to find holes in the market. To study and understand marketing and psychology might also help a lot.

If you want to get better at creating context, what is perceptible, it’s going to be difficult. You would have to study anything artistic; music, films, video games, photography, etc.

If you want to get better at creating a mechanism, then I suggest you play and study a lot of games, sports, and martial arts. I would suggest to any designer to take one game and spend enough time to master it. There are things that can only be properly understood once they’re truly experienced. In reality, the more we master an experience, the more others become alike, because everything in this universe is based on the same principles. We realize that the same mechanics are used, but in a different context. By doing this, it becomes easier to create interesting gameplay mechanics or learn how to fix them.

To create more emotive experiences is probably the most difficult task, because it still is fairly new to game developers. It is always a plus to understand what makes other passions so great. Films, books, video games, and the daily news might be great things to look at if you need inspiration. Most humorists understand how to trick the audience, add a twist to a story, and trigger very specific emotions.

If you want to get better at creating a result or a reward, video games are obviously the best reference.

If you want to create a great realization, then at least make sure the experience was worth it, and better than what you experienced before.

I tend to think that to study the greatest games of all time would help us to better understand how to make better games. However, those games are often so engaging that we might not see how to make greater things, because when we play them, we aren’t thinking critically about how they’re constructed; we’re experiencing them as players. However, if we play the worst games, then everything frustrating will jump in our faces. Then we will see what needs to be improved, and that forces us to be creative and find how to fix those problems.

A Bright Future

The creation of useful games is the way of the future, and there are many approaches we can take to achieve that. One idea: the creation of games that are as much educational as they are entertaining. This medium is one of the easiest and most accessible we’ve ever had. We don’t get injured while playing games, because our body isn’t at risk, so we can keep learning. Video games are an easy way to experience thousands of things in a short period of time. It would make perfect sense if video games became part of a new educational system.

Right now, video games are an easy way to study and better understand reality on a physical level; powerful tools for self-development, and that’s something we’ll have to push.

A Unified Philosophy of Fun

I invite you to perceive this article more as a unified philosophy of fun rather than a theory. There still is a lot more to say about these seven principles of fun, but the goal was to give you the keys that will allow you the find the rest of the answers on your own. You will, at least, know where to look.

I hope you enjoyed reading; feel free to comment, ask questions, or debate.