游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

帮助你创造真正吸引人的游戏的5大元素

发布时间:2016-12-23 10:30:44 Tags:,,,,

作者:Felipe Lara

一款游戏的成功取决于你的目标,有时候是关于收益,有时候是关于下载,有时候则是关于对玩家的影响,等等。但是通常专注于这些结果并不能带给开发者多大帮助,相反地开发者更应该基于用户粘性去定义游戏的成功,因为用户粘性总是与我们在开发过程中需要作出的种种决定具有直接联系的。

在之前的文章中我曾提到用户粘性遵循了4个步骤顺序:突出,联合,吸引与发展。所以对你来说下一步便是去明确游戏中能够帮助你做到这些的元素。我将在本文讨论能够帮助你的游戏或VR体验长期提高用户粘性的5大元素。

你的元素

我花了许多年时间面向休闲玩家(游戏邦注:孩子们和家庭)创造MMO,在这里我发现吸引玩家注意并让他们长久留在这里的4大基本元素:美术,有趣的机制,故事和社区创建:

GameIngredientsBlack(from gamasutra)

GameIngredientsBlack(from gamasutra)

美术—-美术是玩家对你的游戏的第一印象,所以你必须借此让他们愿意更深入了解你的游戏。一开始玩家不可能了解你的游戏的特定机制或故事,他们只能通过视觉效果去决定是否继续玩你的游戏。

乐趣—-但不管美术本身多优秀,它也很难长期吸引玩家的注意。而找到一些有趣的事去做便是让玩家更长久待在你的游戏中的简单方法。

故事—-除非存在一些更大的意义或目的,否则再有趣的东西也很难吸引人们反复关顾。而创造长期目的或故事能让玩家找到自己愿意不断回到游戏中的原因。就像虽然投篮很有趣,但反复投篮几个小时将让玩家快速失去兴趣,除非投篮这一行为是培养玩家去打败竞争对手的更大型故事中的一部分。

社区—-所有优秀的故事都需要一个结局,而如果玩家能够作为社区中的一份子,他们便愿意长久继续游戏。那些能让玩家反复游戏的内容都是能让玩家与自己所关心的人保持联系的游戏。

所有这四个元素对于创造一款能够遵循我所说的四个步骤顺序的游戏来说非常重要,但对于不同步骤来说不同元素的重要性也是不同的:就像比起故事,突出更多地侧重于美术,而用户粘性则更多地侧重机制和故事,发展主要依赖于社区创建。我也曾亲眼看过许多游戏因为缺少这些重要元素而遭遇了失败。

我们同样也必须清楚,不管是免费手机游戏还是VR游戏或教育游戏,大多数游戏都会因为拥有所有这些元素而大获其利。如果你认为并不需要其中的一个元素,或者如果你认为自己不需要故事或社区创建机制,那么你就需要找出不需要这些元素的具体原因,并且你必须清楚如何做才能利用自己所选择的元素而完成突出,联合,吸引与发展这四个步骤。

除此之外游戏中还有一些非常重要的元素能够确保游戏开发的可持续发展,如盈利。或者市场营销,这能够帮助你的游戏更好地吸引玩家的注意。但我认为市场营销中更重要的部分不是推广本身,而是你如何去定义并看待你的目标市场,并在开发过程中想办法从目标用户那获得反馈。如此你的美术,机制,故事和社交机制便能让玩家产生共鸣,你的市场营销机制也能够真正整合到你的其它元素中。

主题的强化

这几年来我注意到,那些将上述所有元素都整合在一起并相互影响的游戏总是能够更有效吸引玩家的注意。而拥有一个强大的“主题”则能够帮助游戏更好地整合这些元素并与玩家产生情感联系。但为了获得这样的主题,你便需要真正理解主题是什么。主题并不是话题。就像如果你说你想要创造一款海盗游戏是远远不够的。关于一款海盗游戏还存在许多不同的潜在元素,如这是否是关于收集珍宝?这是否是关于违抗法律?这是否是关于舰船战斗?或者这并不包含任何冲突?如果只是说明海盗和无敌舰队间的冲突去明确游戏主题是不够的。你还需要清楚你正在阐述的冲突是关于什么:“海盗生活非常丰富,因为他们非常自由且每天都充满刺激感。”如果你能够更清楚地阐述游戏主题,你便能够更清楚自己需要怎样的游戏机制和故事。如此你便能够以作为一名海盗且无需承担任何责任的乐趣为中心展开游戏故事。Jesse Schell在自己的著作《游戏设计艺术》中便曾以我们致力于为Walt Disney Imagineering和DisneyQuest创造海盗虚拟现实ride为例子。在书中他便写道,我们很快便敲定了ride的主题,随后许多有关美术风格的设计决策,游戏机制,故事以及技术等等也迅速明朗化。所有的这些元素最终也将相互支持去创造出更加强大的VR体验。

结论

这5大元素的结合能够帮助你创造出更吸引人且更成功的游戏:美术,机制,故事,社区和主题。当你在游戏或体验中将这些内容整合在一起时:图像将能让你的用户产生共鸣,机制将让玩家感到有趣且让他们拥有明确目标,故事能够带给他们更多意义和游戏背景,社区能让他们觉得自己是更大团体中的一份子,而主题则能够将所有这些内容更好地整合在一起并与你想要传达的观点联系在一起,如此你便能够创造出更吸引人的游戏体验,并最终能够获得游戏的成功。

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

5 Ingredients that Create Long-Term Engagement in Games and VR Experiences

by Felipe Lara

What makes a game successful depends on your goals, sometimes it is revenue, sometimes it is number of downloads, impact on your players, etc. However focusing on these outcomes is usually not very helpful as a developer, it is much more helpful to define success in terms of engagement because engagement can be linked directly to the kinds of decisions we need to make during development.

In a previous article I mentioned how engagement follows a 4-step sequence: stand out, connect, engage, and grow. The next step is to figure out what are the ingredients in a game that can help you do that. In this article I am going to talk about 5 ingredients that will help your game or VR experience be more engaging in the long-term.

Your Ingredients

In the many years I spent developing MMOs for casual gamers – kids and families- I saw how there are four basic elements that can be combined very effectively to get the attention of players and have them stick around: art, fun mechanics, story, and community building:

ART – Art is what first catches your players’ eye and makes them want to take a closer look at your game. At first players won’t know much about the specific mechanics and stories in your game, it is through visuals that resonate with them that they decide to pay more attention.

FUN- But art by itself, no matter how cool it is, won’t keep your players for long. Finding fun stuff to do that is easy to understand, with clear goals, is what makes players want to stay more than a few seconds.

STORY- Even fun activities get repetitive unless there is a larger meaning and purpose. Having a longer-term purpose or story that players can relate to is what makes them want to keep coming back. Shooting hoops is fun, but doing it everyday for hours can get boring quickly, unless the activity is part of a larger story like training to defeat an old rival team.

COMMUNITY- All good stories need an ending, but the meaning and purpose that you get from being part of a community can last for years. The games that we keep going back to over and over are the ones that let us connect and be around people that we care about.

All these four elements are important to create a successful game that follows the sequence stand out-connect-engage-grow, but some are more important for one step and some are important for others: standing out depends much more on the art and how things look like than on the details of the story, but engagement depends much more on the mechanics and story than the art, and growing depends heavily on the community building aspect. I’ve seen many good games that don’t succeed because they lacked one or more of these important elements.

It is also important to notice that most games, from free-to-play mobile games to VR experiences and educational games, will benefit from having all these ingredients. If you decide that you don’t need one of these ingredients, if you think don’t need a story or you don’t need community building mechanics, at least you should have a clear reason why not, and you should have an idea of how are you going to get your game to stand out, connect, engage, and grow with the ingredients you choose to include.

There are other elements in a game that are very important like monetization, which is essential to make the game development sustainable. Or marketing, which can help your game get noticed. But the part of marketing that I think is more essential is not the promotion itself, but defining and thinking about your target market, and getting feedback from your target players all through out the development process. Then, your art, mechanics, story and social mechanics will resonate with your players, and your marketing will be embedded into your other elements.

Power Up With a Theme

What I’ve noticed through the years is that games are much more powerful and effective at engaging players when all the elements mentioned above -art, mechanics, story, and social interaction- work together and reinforce each other. Having a strong “theme” will help tie together the elements of your game and will make much easier to connect emotionally with your players. But for a theme to do that, you need to have the right understanding of what a theme is. Theme is not topic. Saying you want to do a pirate game is not enough. There are many different potential approaches to a pirate game: is it about gathering treasure? Is it about fighting the law? Is it about ship battles? It is not about a conflict either. Defining your theme as the conflict between pirates and the Spanish Armada is not enough. You need to pick a side, you need to have an opinion about the topic or conflict you are talking about: ” A pirate life is a wonderful life, because it is more free and exciting.” When you state your theme as a clear point of view you get a much clearer idea of what mechanics and what stories you need. In this case, it all would need to revolve around the excitement of being a pirate and being free of responsibilities and commitments. In his book “The Art of Game Design,” Jesse Schell relates an example from when we worked on a pirate’s virtual reality ride for Walt Disney Imagineering and DisneyQuest. In his book he writes how as soon as we nailed down a theme for the ride, many of the design decisions about art style, game mechanics, story, and even technology became clear. As a result all these ingredients ended up supporting each other to create a much more powerful and award-winning VR experience.

Conclusion

There are 5 ingredients that in combination help your game be much more engaging and successful: art, mechanics, story, community, and theme. When you put those things together in a game or experience: art that resonates with your audience, mechanics that are fun and have clear goals, a story that adds meaning and context, a community makes you feel part of something larger than yourself, and a theme that ties it all together and connects to points of view that you resonate with, you get a much more engaging experience, and your chances of success grow exponentially. You can find more info at felipelara.net(source:gamasutra

 


上一篇:

下一篇: