作者：Greg Johnson

虚幻的路线

让我们从一个有趣的思想运动开始，毕竟这便是我们在虚构路线上所拥有的一切。让我们假设我们暂时拥有最高级且最复杂的互动故事模拟技术。想想我们可以将你置于一个高级的模拟中，即你能够在此按照自己的想法四处走动并做任何想做的事。你可以说话，并完美地控制你的人类角色。假设我们的虚拟现实伴随着值得信赖且受程序驱动的AI角色，完美的实体以及你想做的所有行动的结果的详细细节。实际上，假设我们能够创造一个非常真实的模拟，并且这是与现实生活中不同的模拟。现在想象你所阅读的这个句子便是模拟内容。非常有趣吧？难道你会不喜欢虚拟现实吗？

现在让我们带上自己的游戏设计之帽并问自己一些问题，游戏多有趣？它是否能卖得出去？当然了游戏图像很出色，游戏角色具有很棒的外观，但是它是否具有吸引力呢？你该如何获胜？在这一模拟内容中我们是否添加了摄像机去捕捉最有趣的故事？就此而言，我们该如何保证故事能够令人满意，而游戏又将在什时候结束？

即使拥有世界上最高级的模拟，我们也仍未拥有一款有趣的电子游戏。显然这意味着创造一个高级的模拟并非我们的目标。要想创造一个真正让人信服的人类般的AI是非常具有挑战性的（即使它只是一个外星人或机器人）。而创造一个模拟的“生活世界”也具有非常大的挑战。但即使我们成功创造了这些充满挑战性的设计和工程，这也还是不够的。因为我们仍未能创造出一款有趣的游戏。

所以我们到底遗漏了什么？从根本上来看，到底什么才能创造出真正让人满足的电子游戏体验？如果我们能从模拟体验中获得故事的话，我们又该如何确保所有故事的结果都能让玩家感到满足呢？这便是两个很好的问题。关于第一个问题，“到底什么才能创造出真正让人满足的电子游戏体验？”也许太过基本，但让人感到讽刺的是，一些我们认为再明显不过的事却未能获得别人足够的关注。明确对于所有电子游戏真正重要的东西能够在我们的设计过程中提供帮助。或者并不是如此。让我们慢慢来看。

是什么创造了一款电子游戏？

所以我们需要在模拟中添加什么才能将其变成真正成功的游戏体验？如明确的目标，挑战和成功条件。电子游戏将我们置于一些虚构的环境中，然后会提供给我们一个明确的目标。它们会在我们的前进路上设置障碍并提供给我们克服这些障碍的方法。

另一个定义电子游戏的元素便是奖励。这些奖励可以是游戏中非常明确的元素，如点数，徽章，喇叭响或进程指示器等能够表现自我并让我们觉得自己很厉害的内容；或者它们也可以以影响我们的肾上腺素或多巴胺等形式表现出来。毋庸置疑，对于设计师来说这是较难计划的奖励类型，也许我们能从高级模拟中碰巧获得一些这样的奖励，而因为电子游戏一直在努力创造“瘾性”，或者说表现出“不可抗拒的吸引力”，所奖励便需要在此发挥作用。

奇怪的是，在电子游戏中简单的移动非常关键。仔细想想，当你走在某个游戏大会的地板上或在电子游戏商店中观看游戏预告片时你会看到什么。几乎所有电子游戏都会让玩家去控制移动，各种各样的移动。人类是一种视觉生物。我们的视觉皮层占据着大脑中非常重要的位置，对我们来说视觉是非常重要的一部分。移动可快可慢，但通常情况下它总是包含着类似动物大脑对于移动反应的模拟，即将让我们处于一种流状态中。那时候我们就会像追逐地板上的激光的小猫。这种流状态会让我们感到兴奋，放松，并释放出平时的压力。

总之，电子游戏就像是微观的生活世界，它们能够提供明确的目的以及成功的方法，并且会在我们面前设置可控制的障碍。它们会通过移动吸引我们的注意并将我们置于流状态中，并通过传达我们有多厉害而从实体上和情感上给予我们的奖励。也难怪电子游戏能够创造出巨大的收益。

我们所描述的是所有电子游戏的共同点，为什么它们能够吸引到我们，但这绝不代表所有的电子游戏都是如此。创造一个具有挑战性，吸引力，模拟元素，奖励，以及教育性质的微观生活世界并不简单。而创造能够影响我们的情绪或推动互动创新界限的故事便是真正的艺术。之前我所合作过的一个开发者几乎每天都会重复这句话：“创造电子游戏是很难的。”

讨厌游戏者

关于“是什么创造了一款电子游戏”我遗漏了一个定义。而这一定义也是更广的“所有游戏”定义的组成部分。游戏的主要目标便是娱乐我们。当然了，有时候游戏也可以训练我们并教育我们，但是游戏最主要的目标，特别是对于电子游戏来说，便是娱乐玩家。

让我们想想这句话，“你是如何看待一款游戏？！”这意味着什么？这是关于你做某些只是为了娱乐的事的动机，即你可能不会足够认真地去面对它们。

这也将引出有关非游戏玩家以及讨厌游戏者的观点。不知道你之前是否听过这些内容：“游戏是在浪费时间并且不会提供任何价值”，“我更喜欢‘现实世界’”，“游戏并非艺术”，“电子游戏太过暴力”，“游戏是一种反社交的自我刺激行为”。

我们是否在意这些说法？当你打开Facebook时，你可能会喜欢这样的说法，因为它们其实就像在捍卫所有的游戏和玩家。然而理解为什么有那么多人不玩游戏也是帮助我们理解如何创造出能够为更多用户提供价值的方法。这并不意味着我们就一定要去吸引非游戏玩家的注意。我们可以想办法将这些人变成游戏玩家也可以选择不这么做，但是在理解如何创造能够让非游戏玩家觉得有意义且有价值的体验时，我们将尽力推翻界限并确保能够创造出让我们的游戏玩家更加喜欢的游戏。

所以这些非游戏玩家到底想要什么？好吧，让我来说说所有的这些人，因为我非常清楚他们想要什么。

大多数非游戏玩家想要的：较少的重复行动，较少的杀戮，较少的流血，更多的意义，更多的人性，更多成熟和复杂的故事，更多美感，更多与现实世界相关的内容，以及更多具有学习性的价值。但这并不是说非游戏玩家不喜欢故事或娱乐；他们中的很多人都很喜欢读书，看电影和玩游戏。只是他们所感兴趣的是人对人的互动以及基于角色的故事。也许行动热爱者与电子游戏玩家间具有强大的关联性，这也是电子游戏想要利用的。描绘有趣的角色，互动对话和生活状况，并创造没有杀戮的互动内容并非游戏产业所擅长的或者所感兴趣的事。游戏产业站在擅长并且符合这些非游戏玩家兴趣的便是合作游戏，或者家庭游戏，即能够带给游戏的人欢声笑语。所以这便是我们吸引这些用户的主要方式。也许互动故事还能开启一些全新方式。

除了那些很难与电子游戏世界连接起来的人群，还有另外一个群体是一脚踩在外面一脚踩在里面的人（就像我这样）。这些人喜欢玩游戏的理念，但却为了能够花更多时间与家人相处而没有足够的时间或空间去玩游戏。所以你最好能够为他们创造较短的游戏体验以及没有攻击性的多人玩家体验，即让他们可以将其他非游戏玩家家庭成员带进游戏中与自己一起游戏。

接下来让我们着眼于我们之前提到的真正的路线，即我们在互动故事中当前的艺术状态。我们将从当前的互动故事游戏中最常使用的结构开始。实际上我们将作出一个大胆的尝试，即假设在今天有80%以上的故事游戏都使用了这一结构。

真正的路线

电子游戏类型多种多样。有时候你会听到像“故事游戏”或“互动故事游戏”等说法。这些说法都没有非常明确的界限，所以我们很难去定义到底什么是“故事游戏”。大多数RPG游戏都拥有某种类型的故事。许多带有比赛和过场动画的策略游戏也会提供故事内容。甚至连街机游戏也拥有某种故事设定。所以为了我们的目的，我们将把电子游戏称为故事游戏，而前提是它的主要作用是让玩家能够经历一些故事，如果没有故事便很难去描述整款游戏。但是这么做似乎也很模糊，所以我们只能顺其自然了。

也许今天的故事游戏从表面看来非常不同，并拥有各种图像风格，主题，游戏机制和范围，但奇怪的是，当你从结构角度去看它们时却会发现它们都差不多。因为当我们想到“故事游戏”时，我们便会发现这些结构都是默认的，许多游戏制作人都不会去考虑其它替代内容便使用了这样的结构。

我们将这样的结构称为“路线结构”。在这些“路线”游戏中，玩家将沿着预先设定好的路线（游戏邦注：可能很窄，也可能很宽，即拥有各种宽度）移动。在他们的前进道路上会设有障碍和门。障碍将基于挑战，谜题，战斗或各种类型的钥匙和锁等移动形式表现出来。通常情况下，路线游戏总是结合了这些障碍。最小故事元素总是伴随着玩家行进的路线进程传递。当玩家到达能够彻底止住他们的脚步而他们又必须想办法通过的位置时，这便是我们所谓的门。在这里游戏通常都会传递一下主要的故事元素，因为玩家必须在继续前进前经历这些内容。门同时也会提供给设计师去创造其它满足前进的条件（游戏邦注：例如拥有可收集的资源，升级或获得与故事状态相关的成就等）。它们同时也让设计师能够基于全新背景和音频视觉资产，角色，迷你游戏，boss或改变故事环境而加载全新关卡。

Tomb Raider(from verycd)

像《古墓丽影》，《最后的生还者》《神秘海域》，《黑暗之魂》，《生化奇兵》，《合金装备》和《镜之边缘》等大规模的AAA级游戏，《古堡迷踪》，《旺达与巨像》，《旅程》，《骤雨》，《撕纸小邮差》等中等规模的游戏，以及像《2-Brothers》，《Magicka》，《视觉之上》或《Orphan》等小规模游戏都使用了同样的游戏风格。但这并不是说这些游戏在其它方面也是相同的，这也不是说它们都是虚构或原创的。基于这样的基本结构，它们能在主题，美术风格，范围，音频，剧本或游戏机制方面创造出一些全新内容。而玩家的目标始终都是沿着一条或多条路线向前行进，游戏的主要“工作”则是在玩家的行进道路上设置挑战和有趣的障碍，并传达给他们一些预先创造好的故事。

（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）

Designing Interactive Story (PART TWO)

by Greg Johnson

THE IMAGINARY ROAD

Let’s start with a fun thought exercise, after all that’s all we have on the Imaginary Road anyway. Let’s suppose for a moment, that we had the most advanced and sophisticated Interactive Story simulation technology ever. Imagine that we could put you into an advanced Simulation where you could go anywhere or do anything you wanted. You could speak, and control your human avatar perfectly. Suppose our virtual reality came with totally believable, procedurally driven AI characters, perfect physics, and incredibly detailed consequence to every action you could think of doing, or anything might say. In fact, suppose we could create a simulation that was so real, it was indistinguishable from real life. Imagine that your life, right now, as you’re reading this sentence IS that simulation. Pretty impressive, huh? Don’t you love virtual reality?

Now let’s put on our game designer caps and ask the question…. how fun is this game? Is it going to sell? Sure the graphics are great, and that avatar is really good-looking, but how engaging is it? How do you win? Where in this simulation do we put our camera to capture the most interesting story? For that matter, how do we guarantee that the story will be fulfilling at all, and when does the game end?

Have I beaten this point to death enough yet? Even with the most advanced simulation in the world, we still don’t have a fun video-game….far from it. Clearly this means that creating an advanced simulation can’t be our only goal. Creating deeply believable human-seeming AI (even if it’s an alien or a robot or whatever) is a huge challenge. Creating a simulated, “living world” is a huge challenge too. But even if we manage to pull off both of these amazing feats of design and engineering, it’s not enough. We still don’t have a fun game.

OK…so… what’s missing? What makes for a fulfilling video-game experience, at the most basic level? Also, if we are able to have stories emerge from our simulated experience, how can we make sure whatever stories result will be fulfilling and complete for the player? These are two good questions (thank you very much. I asked them myself) Our first question, “what makes for a satisfying video-game experience?”, may seem almost too basic, but ironically, things that seem obvious to us, tend to get less explicit attention. Being clear on what is fundamentally important to all video games might help us in our design process. …Or then again, it may not. Since we’re not in any rush, lets tale a look and see.

WHAT MAKES A VIDEO GAME?

So, what would we need to have in our simulation to turn it into a successful game experience? Here are a few things: clear goals, challenges, and clear success conditions. Video games set us up with some fictional context, and then they provide us with a clear purpose, or goal. They put obstacles in our way and they give us a means of overcoming those obstacles.

Another defining aspect of video games are rewards. These rewards can be explicit elements within the game, things like points and badges, fanfares, or progress indicators, all of which stroke our egos and make us feel competent; or they can operate on a more subtle physiological level in the form of shots to our systems of adrenalin, or dopamine.[1] Needless to say, this type of reward is a little harder for designers to plan, and we might get some of this by chance from our advanced simulation, but video-games strive to be “addictive”, or perhaps more favorably put, “irresistibly appealing”, and this is part of why this works.

Oddly enough, simple movement is a key part of video-game expectation. Think about it for a second. What do you see when you walk the floor of a game convention, or watch game trailers in a video-game store. Almost all video games involve players controlling movement …lots of movement. Human beings are visual creatures. Our visual cortex takes up significant real-estate in our brain-organs, and vision is… well pretty big for most of us. This movement can be fast or slow but more often than not it involves a certain level of animal-brain movement-response stimulation that is designed to put us into a flow state.[2] We’re like cats chasing the laser light on the floor. This flow state can excite us, or it can relax us and give us a release from daily stress. (how many video games you have on your mobile device?)

In short, video games are like microcosms of life – they give us clear purpose, and ways to clearly succeed, and then throw manageable obstacles at us. They engage us with movement, put us into flow-states when they can, and reward us, chemically and emotionally, by telling us how awesomely competent we are. It’s no wonder video-games make billions of dollars.

This overly simplified view of video-games may seem a bit cynical, so perhaps it’s worth adding a nod to game makers out there. What we’ve described is what all video games have in common, and why they “work” on us, but this is by no means all that they are, or can be. Crafting a microcosm of life that challenges, engages, stimulates, rewards, and sometimes teaches is no easy feat. Creating games that elevate us, or that push the boundaries of interactive innovation is truly an art. A developer friend I used to work with had a saying….one he would say to me almost every day when we worked together, and it eloquently captured the vast array of challenges that game developers face every day… …“Making video games is hard.” Mike Badillo (well said, Mike).

GAME HATERS

There’s actually one more piece of the definition to “what makes a video game” that I forgot to include. Ok, I didn’t forget, it just wasn’t so relevant to the point above. This definition is actually part of the broader definition of “all games”. It’s the fact that games are arbitrary, and their primary goal is to entertain us. Sure, games can sometimes train us and teach us, but the overriding perception of the purpose of games, especially video games, is they exist simply to entertain us.

Think of the phrase “what do you think this is, a game!?” What does that mean? It refers to the fact your motivation for doing something might be only for entertainment, and you might not be taking something seriously enough.

This leads us to the topic of non-gamers and (shudder) game haters. When have you heard this before: “Games are a waste of time and offer nothing of value”, “I prefer the ‘real world’”, “Games are not art”, “Video-games are way too violent”, “Games are for anti-social self-stimulating geeks” (ouch that one hurts).

Do we care about any of this? Well if you hang out on Facebook you probably love these statements because they offer an awesome excuse to climb up onto a soapbox, flamethrower in hand, and gloriously defend all games and gamers. Still, understanding why many people don’t play video games is a clue to understanding how to make games that offer value to a wider audience. This doesn’t mean we will necessarily choose to appeal to non-gamers. Maybe we’ll pull some of these people into the gamer-fold and maybe we won’t, but in the process of understanding how to build experiences that even die-hard non-gamers find meaningful, and valuable, we’ll push our own boundaries, and make games that we gamers love even more.

So, what is it these non-gamers want? Well, allow me to now speak for all those people because I know exactly what everyone else wants….. ok not really. Still speaking as someone with one foot in the gamer camp and one foot in the “Is this all the game industry has to offer?” camp, I’ll take a brief shot. If you happen to be a non-gamer and are reading this (which would be really impressive) you can attest to how spot on, or not, this assessment is…

What most non-gamers want: Less repetitive actions, less killing, way less blood, more meaning, more humanity, more mature and sophisticated story, more beauty, more relevancy to the real world, and more value in the area of learning. It’s not that non-gamers don’t enjoy story or entertainment; many of these people are big book readers, movie goers, and board game players. Generally what they are interested in is people-to-people interaction, and character-based stories. There is probably a strong correlation between action lovers and video-gamers, after all, that’s what videogames tend to be. Portraying deep and interesting characters, interactive-dialogue, and life situations; and making that interactive without the killing, isn’t what the game industry seems to be good at, or very interested in doing. …Certainly not so far. What we do, we do really well. One thing the game industry is good at, that overlaps with these non-gamer interests, is cooperative play, or family play, and giving people reasons to laugh and smile together. This has been our main avenue to reach this audience so far. Perhaps Interactive Story will open up some new paths.

In addition to that population of people who have trouble connecting with the world of video games, there is another big group out there of people (like me) with one foot in and one foot out. These are people who love the idea of playing games, but simply don’t have the time or room in their lives for hours and hours of gaming that isolate them from family members. For these people the answer lies in shorter play experiences, and in non-aggressive multi-player experiences that can pull other non-gamer family members into the experience with them.

Well let’s leave that for now and take a look at the ‘Real Road” we mentioned above, which is to say, our current state of the art in Interactive Story. We’ll start with a look at the most common structure used in current Interactive Story-Games. In fact I’ll make a bold statement as say that perhaps 80%, or more, of all of today’s story-games use this same structure.

THE ‘REAL’ ROAD

There are quite a few different genres of video games. Sometimes you will hear the terms “story-game” or “interactive story game”. These terms don’t have very clear boundaries and it can be debatable as to what qualifies as a “story-game”. Most RPG games have some sort of story in them. Lots of tactical games with campaigns and cut scenes offer stories. Even arcade style games will often have some story-set up and story resolution that caps the experience. For our purposes, we’re going to call a video-game a story-game if its primary role is to allow players to live through some story, and if it’s difficult to describe the game without describing the story. Again, this is admittedly vague, but so be it.

Today’s story-games may look very different on the surface, and have wildly different art styles, themes, play mechanics, and scope, but oddly enough, when you look at them from a structural perspective they are all very similar. This is so true, that we have come to think of this general structure almost by default when we think about “story-games”, and many game-makers launch into building with this structure without even considering alternatives.

We’re going to slap a label on this structure and call it the “Path Structure”. In these “Path” games, players move along a pre-determined path which can be narrow, wide, or of variable width. Obstacles and gates are placed in the player’s way. Obstacles take the form of movement based challenges, puzzles, fighting challenges, or keys and locks of various types. Almost always, path games have a combination of these barriers. Minor story elements are often delivered along the path as players progress. When players reach points that stop them completely, and that they must pass through, we call these gates. Gates are usually where major story elements are delivered because players are guaranteed to experience these before advancing. Gates also give designers the ability to require other conditions be met for advancement (for example, having collected resources, or leveled up, or having achieved story-state related accomplishments, etc.). They also allow designers to load new levels with new backgrounds and audio visual assets, characters, mini-games, bosses, or change the story context.

Big Blockbuster AAA games like: Tomb Raider, or The Last of Us and Uncharted, Dark Souls, BioShock, Metal Gear Solid, and Mirror’s Edges, as well as medium scale games like ICO, and Shadow of the Colossus, Journey, Heavy Rain, Tearaway, or even smaller scale indie story-games like 2-Brothers, Magicka, Beyond Eyes, or Orphan all use this same game structure. This isn’t to say that these games are similar in other ways, and it’s not to suggest for a moment that they aren’t imaginative and original. Within this basic structure they all bring new things to the table when it comes theme, art style, scope, audio, writing, and especially play mechanics. Still, the goal of the player is almost always to progress forward along a path, or set of paths, and the main ‘job’ of the game is to place challenging and entertaining obstacles in the player’s way, while delivering bits of pre-created story.（source：Gamasutra）