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游戏设计中有关玩家感受的设计

发布时间:2015-12-23 10:52:56 Tags:,,,,

作者:Anatoly Shestov

我们将从很早以前说起。让我们假设游戏必须是有趣且吸引人的。我们不会直接切入主题,所以让我们接受这点并继续向前走。

我们经常会遇到“是什么原因让游戏变成现在的样子?”的问题。我认为这么问是不对的,而应该问,是什么让我们觉得有趣且兴奋?

从一方面看来,感兴趣是一种对某些内容的详细了解并与之进行互动所产生的内在感受,另一方面,这是对于与这些内容的互动所产生的可能结果的有限理解。我们都了解规则,我们也清楚过程,但是我们却不知道最终的自己会在哪里。当然了,并非所有人会对一切东西都感兴趣并完全符合这一定义,但是所有有趣的东西都拥有这样的特征。就像象棋,暴走族,侦探小说等等都与它有关。

而感到兴奋则意味着你受到持久的情感调和的影响。如流水的状态,好听的音乐,以及各种仪式都与它有关。

所以这两种情感便影响着我们对于一款游戏好坏的判断。而质量标准则是取决于你自己。明确的元素与已知问题间的互动过程将服从于整体的调和。就像我们拥有遥控器,巫师和文明。

除了质量标准外,游戏还带有语义内容。如果一款游戏是关于媒体(游戏邦注:所以在此我们直接面对的是电子游戏),它便带有一些理念。这其实是一种有意识且基于公式的内容。这可能是一个理念,一个故事,一次阐述,一件轶事—-即任何不一定要以情节形式表现出来的思想形式。顺便说下,那些擅于表达这些内容的人便是我们所谓的叙述设计师。

当然了,每一个游戏回合都是由一个特定的人所游戏。他们拥有自己的心智能力,氛围偏好,游戏技能,环境,教养以及空闲时间。尽管开发者始终坚守着“我们的目标用户非常广”的座右铭,但是他们也经常是面向特定对象在创造游戏,即使这一对象的设定非常泛,就像“一个25到29岁,拥有较高文凭,完整家庭且带有较高收入的稳定工作的人。”

当然了,像这样的普通人也拥有自己的项目期许。就像RPG粉丝希望在一款PRG游戏中看到一个严谨的结构以及任何类型的情节。而射击游戏粉丝则期待能在一款射击游戏中看到很酷的图像和逼真的物理体验。喜欢科幻内容的玩家更想感受一些魔幻且宏大的冒险。

而游戏设计的要点到底是什么呢?这是关于为普通人创造“让人兴奋”且“有趣的”感受,尽可能地满足他们的期许并传达特定的思维形态,维持在特定资源以内并创造出一定的资金标准。

创造感受听起来可能很美妙,但其实却非常玄乎。为了更清楚地说明,让我们回想下自己的父母(或别人的父母)为了在一个重要场合会见客人而投入准备的情景。你是否还记得那些让你不舒服的服装,奇怪的菜肴以及各种丑陋的装饰物?这便是你的父母想要改变氛围的方式,即表现出平常与特殊日子的区别。他们会花好几个小时在聊有关远亲或学校的朋友的无聊琐事,从而让客人们觉得自己已融入其中。换句话说,他们只是在尝试着创造这样的感受。

游戏设计师也在做同样的事,尽管他们不知道哪个用户会在哪里带来什么,为什么会带来这些以及这种情况会持续多久。当然了,对于游戏设计师来说事情也更加简单—-因为他们能够面向特定用户创建一座特定城市。他们所需要做的只是预见用户所有可能的休闲选择,最初的创造者会创造那些必要的工具。所以他们需要做的只是收集一些理想的城市并以最佳方式将其呈现在用户面前。

在我们描绘出玩家可能拥有的所有情感后(创造“情感卡片”是所有任务中最困难的),我们需要明确我们要采取的方式。让我们以生气为例。当然了,我们并不希望玩家生气,但在一些特殊时刻,为了添加一些强调内容,我们可能需要回应这种感受—-这是玩家与情感相维系的一组感受。对于普通人来说,生气指的是什么?我们必须将其拟人化,但这便无趣了。所以我们将以我的感受为例。我们将分析我生气时的感受并草拟出执行这种个体组件的最显著的选择。

angry(from dangdang)

angry(from dangdang)

我们可以将任何感觉分解成最基本的生理组件。一旦你完成了感觉的设定,你便能明确一个项目的愿景。我们是否完成了所有的感觉设定?恭喜你,从游戏设计师的角度来看,你已经能在开发过程中运行你的项目了。

诚实地对待自己的感受能够帮助你更好地理解为你和其他人创造出某种感受的缘由。当然了,一些专业的行动/直接体验或心理上的残疾也能帮助你面向一些不同的个体设计感受,但这种情况毕竟较少。这也是为什么我会认为个性差异是游戏设计师需要掌握的最重要的原则之一。

一旦你明确了感受架构及其执行功能,你便需要开始创造感受:将它们和谐地组合在一起,添加一些可选择的思维形式,创造源自玩家的明显感受等等。而所有的这些内容都需要成为其它说明的主题。

补充:

使用表格的能力,对于基本参数和个体用户的盈利原则的理解,关卡和界面设计能力,技术任务和脚本的编写能力等等都是专业游戏设计师必须掌握的。

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

Game design as design of experience

by Anatoly Shestov

We’ll start from afar. Let’s assume that games must be interesting and exciting. We won’t go into the subject, so let’s just accept and move on. If you happen to see the vital game components in your own way – feel free to share in the comments. With your permission, I will continue.

We often come across the “What makes the games the way they are?” question. I don’t think it’s correct. It would be better to ask, what makes us feel interested and excited.

Being interested, generally, is nothing but an intellectual feeling that is caused, on one hand, by the detailed understanding of the components and their interaction and, on the other, limited understanding of the possible outcome of the interaction of these components. Long story short, we know the rules, we understand the processes, but we have no idea where we’ll find ourselves in the end. Of course, not everyone is interested in everything, falling within this definition, but all the interesting things have these signs. Chess, mobs, whodunits are all about it.

Being excited, generally, means being affected by the lasting emotions harmony. State of flood, good music, all kinds of rituals are all about it.

So these two feelings – interest and excitement – form our understanding of how good a game is. The quality criteria, if you wish. The processes of interaction of clear elements with open issues, obedient to the overall harmony. We have the clickers, and the witchers, and the civilizations.

Besides the quality criteria, which is quite simple (of course, if we only speak about it), games may (not must, but may) have a semantic content. If a game is of a media kind (so here we are almost dealing with the video games directly), it may have some idea. Not the clean and untainted sensation for the sake of sensation (hey, tetris, football and the goat simulators), but the conscious and formulated content. It may be an idea, story, exposition, personalia – any thoughtform that may not be obligatory expressed as a plot. By the way, those who specialize in expressing it, are called the narrative designers.

Of course, every single game session will bу played by a particular person. They will have their personal mental abilities, atmosphere preferences, gaming skills, environment, upbringing and spare time amount. Despite the “Our target audience is as wide as possible” mottoes, developers often make their game for a particular person, even if this person is very generalized – like a “a man 25-29 years old, with higher education, family and a stable job with a particular salary”.

Surely, this generalized person will have their project expectations. RPG fans will expect a serious construction and and any kind of a plot from an RPG. Shooter fan will expect cool graphics and realistic physics from a shooter, fantasy man expects to see some magic and epic adventures, and so on.

What’s the point of the game design? It’s about constructing the “excited” and “interested” feelings for the generalized person, meet their expectations as fully as possible and pass the formulated thoughtform, having kept within the given resources and reached the money metrics.

Constructing the feelings sounds beautiful, but too mysterious. In order to make it more clear, recall the way your parents (or not your) were preparing to meet guests on an important occasion long time ago. Do you remember the uncomfortable clothes, strange dishes and those ugly decor stuff? That’s the way your parents would change the atmosphere, pointing out the difference between an ordinary and a feast day. They would talk for hours about boring life events of their far relatives and school friends, so that the guests would feel like they belong. In other words, they tried, if not always consciously and not always skilfully, to construct the feelings.

A game designer does the same thing, though they are unaware who, why, for how long and where their main guest would bring. Of course, it’s more simple for game designers – they can build a special city for this special guest. All they have to do is to foresee all possible combinations of leisure options for the dear guests, and the creators of zero and one will write the necessary tools. The only thing to do is to gather the desired city and show it to the guest in the best way possible.

After we picture all kinds of emotions a player will have (doing this “emotion card” is the most difficult professional task of all), we have to figure out the way we’ll do it. Let’s take anger as an example. Of course, we don’t want our player to feel anger, but in a particular moment we, in order to add some emphasis, may offer an echo of this feeling – a set of feels the player will associate with the emotion. What is anger in terms of this generalized person? We have to personalize them then, but it’s not so interesting, so we’ll just take me. We will dissect my feeling of anger and sketch out the most obvious options of the implementation of its individual pieces.

There are light “needles” on the upside sides of the throat (ambient, no bright sound or visualization in the perception moment), inside-eyes-pressure (convex parts with smoothing to the center contrasts), attention fixing on the anger source (it’s hard to look away, the sounds of the world around are quieter), not related directly to the source of anger visual details are blurred even in the primary field of view (filter on the image), requiring the aggressive thought action (even if QTE) and rapid decrease of options to handle this anger (timer, cutting off options), falling tone when defeating anger (colors environment, debuffs) or instant colorization with brightness and powerful release of energy (filter, effects, buffs).

Similarly, we can decompose any sensation to the most basic, almost physiological components. Once you are done with rod feelings – you have a vision of the project. Have we finished with all the sensations? Congratulations, from the point of view of the GD you can run the project into the development.

Being completely honest to oneself and attentive to your own feelings will help to understand how to cause any particular feeling for you and people, similar to you. Of course, some professional acting\ directing experience or mental disabilities will enable to design feelings for very different individuals, but they are scarce. That is why, by the way, the maximum diversity of personalities seems to me one of the most important principles of the formation of the GD department.

Once there is a matrix of sensations and the functional for its implementation, you need to build up the feelings: to bring them to harmony, fill with the selected thoughtform, make some sensations obvious and caused by the player, provide some transitions between the sense of open questions, and much, much more. But all this has to be the theme for other notes.

P.S.

The ability to work with tables, the understanding of the basic metrics and principles of the monetization of individual users, the level and interface design, the writing of technical tasks, scripting and much more are skills, inherent in the profession of game designer. Personally I work with more pleasure and efficiency, when I understand why I apply these skills in each individual case. I wish you would also have this understanding.(source:Gamasutra

 


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