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谈选择、选择对应的结果与玩家规划能力的重要性

发布时间:2017-07-13 09:32:06 Tags:,

本文原作者:Thomas Grip 译者游戏邦ciel chen

比方说,你在玩一个类似于《行尸走肉》或者其他交互式电影的游戏,摆在你面前的是要不要救一个伤者的选项。你决定了,你要帮助那个人,然后那个人在游戏的剩下内容中不见踪影。重新载入游戏存档,再过一遍那个游戏场景,你选项不救他,结果同上。简言之:在这种情况下,你的选择没有产生任何对应结果。

The Walking Dead(from venturebeat.com)

The Walking Dead(from venturebeat.com)

尽管那个场景是捏造的,但也体现了一个很多人看法不同的典型情景——有些人对这样的场景完全能接受,而且接受的理由各种各样。然而另外有些人则不这么认为,他们觉得这样缺少结果的场景会破坏游戏的整个体验,因为你的选择根本没起到作用。这些人经常容易被说成是玩的方法不对或者没有以正确的方式沉浸到游戏当中。然而,我认为,进一步研究这种反应是非常重要的,因为它让我们得以更近距离地看到叙述型游戏的一些基本问题。

那些对这些没有选择感的选项感到恼火的人观点是这样:如果每个选项分支都回到相同的游戏线路上,那么你对游戏的发展其实就没有任何发言权。这样的话你根本算不上在玩游戏,你只是假装你在玩而已。就相当于你在玩多画面游戏时,然后突然注意到你一直在看错误的一边。玩游戏的感觉成了仅仅是一种幻觉。没人能够忍受在玩《超级玛丽》的时候是跟着事先编好的剧情走——而不是玩家的技巧(决定了他们能否继续生存下去的一个跳跃),所以为什么要忍受所有的选项都通向相同结局的游戏呢?

有人可能会反驳说,这些选项的意图只是想让你感受到一个进退两难的境地,而游戏是为了让你对不同选项产生不同的情绪反应而已。也就是说,这些选项并不是要影响游戏的发展方向,而是要进行一场情绪波动的旅程。如果你要求游戏给你所选行动的对应结果,你就不算能浸入到游戏的故事当中了——你这样的想法只是希望去优化一个系统。确实有这种情况发生,不过我也认为这种想法忽略了真正的问题之所在:玩家在思维模式上的落败感。

先让我们从问题的分解开始吧。一种思维模式,正如前一篇文章中所解释的那样(前篇文章——是玩家对游戏世界以及他们在游戏中所扮演角色的看法。当你在玩游戏的时候,你就会慢慢地构建起一个有关构成游戏的各种对象和系统的思维模式,并添加上各种附加属性在上面。

起初,一个盒子可能只是背景的一部分,但是当你知道可以通过破坏它来得到物品时,你就会为它添加对应属性。当对象的复杂性增加时,也可能发生相反的情况。比如说,当你第一次看到一个你认为你能与之交谈的角色所以你会给他贴上各种你认为人类应该有的属性,但是当你发现这个角色只不过是背景的一部分没有任何帮助的时候,大部分你给他添加上的属性就丧失了。

在游戏过程中,你的思维模式是在不断修改的,这在任何游戏中都是如此。事实上,这正是包括书籍以及电影在内的任何媒介的核心部分。所以很显然,当你在玩一款交互式电影游戏的时候,你不仅仅是在对一连串信息做出反应而已,你是在根据你的思维模式回答问题。

就拿我刚才“你是否愿意帮助你受伤的同伴”这个场景例子来说。你的选择不仅仅基于你从电视剧里联想到的相关内容,它相当于你经历过的所有事情的结合,以及一系列的个人了解和偏见。即使是比如“受伤”还有“同伴”这样的基础概念都并非此刻才建立起来的,他们经过你开始玩游戏的那一刻起到现在的这一段漫长时间所构建而来的。

当你面对假设一个同伴受伤的情景时,你面对的不仅仅是屏幕上一个会动的形象,你面对的是你脑海中构建起来的整个世界——这就是你做出选择所基于的大环境。虽然每个人面对的都是同一个场景,但实际上他们可能处在一个相当不一样的设定当中。

所以,当有人为缺少结果而感到恼怒的时候,不一定是因为缺少直接的结果,真正的原因是他们脑海中真的有一个人需要帮助,并且为这个人的未来行为进行了思维构建。所以当游戏显然并没有把这部分作为游戏本身一部分模拟出来时,玩家的思维模式就遭到了破坏,他们会感到大失所望。记住,我们不光是在屏幕前玩游戏,我们玩的是我们自己在脑海中感知到的游戏世界。所以当你发现想象中的世界是假的时候,这会产生巨大的影响。

当我们一点认识到规划是一种游戏玩法基础,情况就更糟糕了。正如上篇文章所阐述的,游戏吸引人指出很大程度上在于玩家能够做游戏规划。这个方式的工作原理是这样的:玩家先在自己的思维模式里模拟一遍行动流程,然后他们再尝试在游戏中执行一遍。这是一个持续的过程,“制定计划和执行计划”基本上和玩游戏可以画上等号。交互式电影通常没有那么多的游戏性,而且它真的只有在选择的时候玩家才会感觉到自己是在有真正在玩这个游戏的。因此,当玩家做出的选择没有产生相应结果时,制定计划也就很明显不可能做到了。然后这也意味着任何有意义的玩法都成了不可能,游戏的体验感就从根本上被破坏了。

就拿我玩《暴雨》的体验作为一个例子来说吧:

【……】我在其中一个场景本来制定了一个行动计划:首先把一个昏迷的人捆绑起来,然后翻他的东西。真的没什么能阻止我这样做的,然而相反的是游戏让我在照顾这个人之后直接和去和他互动。这个游戏把我解读成想要去帮助这个人,觉得我不再想翻动他的东西了,它认为这两个行为是相互排斥的。当然我不这么认为,而且我觉得之后在去翻他东西这种做法没毛病。

我觉得那些最埋怨结果缺失的人们对类似这样的情景会格外敏感。但是,就像我之前说的,这不是由于结果缺失本身导致的,而是因为这样的情形让玩家思维模式和玩游戏时感觉失去了一致性。需要注意的是——这并非出于玩家缺乏某种程度上的沉浸感或者角色扮演能力;恰恰相反,就像我刚才描述的,很多的问题都是因为玩家思维中模拟的游戏世界和人物形象太真实了所导致的。

所以我们面临的问题不是结果的缺失,而是因为游戏的基础系统没能模拟出玩家群体的思维模式。解决这个问题的一个方法当然就是增加更多的对应结果,但这不是一个有持续性的解决方案——额外的结局分支会呈指数式地增长,很快地,想覆盖所有的选择结果就变得不可能了。取而代之的——专注于创造更多的强健的思维模式会是更好地解决方法。当然了,这可能会让选择的影响变大,但是这只是一个可能的解决方案——并不是最终目标。

正如我在前一篇关于SSM框架的博客中概述的那样——跟踪游戏系统与故事内容是如何让玩家在脑海中形成思维模式的有着非比寻常的重要性。比方说,如果你开始一个存在“你的不同行动会有对应不同结果”模式的游戏,那会让玩家的脑海中马上浮现出各种想法和概念。即使是与发行的PR也会影响到这一点。所有这些都成为了游戏在玩家头脑中构建思维模式的基础,并且在游戏过程中确保这个思维模式保持稳定是非常重要的。

要记住其中最主要的一件事就是保持一致性。千万记住,当玩家在玩游戏的时候,他们实际上正在事情的发展原理构建一个思维模拟模型。如果你提供的信息中表明某些实际上不可能的事情是可能的,那么你就会冒着破坏玩家思维模式的风险。要么你就得把这类信息删除,要么就确保他们永远不会碰到这种破坏实际游戏与玩家思维模式一致性的情况。

然而,有一点最重要的需要要铭记于心的事情就是——规划能力。结果的确实会让人感觉如此不好的一个主要原因就是因为选择所产生的对应结果是玩家游戏规划的一部分内容。所以当这些对应结果显然不存在时,整个游戏的概念就坍塌了。平心而论,这对某些类型的游戏来说是可以接受的,因为如果游戏的目标仅仅只是一部交互式电影,那么市区一部分玩家可能是可以接受的。但是如果游戏的目标是能做出合适的交互式叙述游戏,那么把制定计划作为游戏核心体验的一部分是至关重要的一件事。

那并不意味着玩家做出的每个选择都要基于他们所制定的计划。但是这种情况下,还需要有其他类似时间尺度的东西是可以预测并纳入到计划当中的。我认为,这个问题的一个解决方法是——用一个更加系统化的特性,这个特性要能和更加模糊化的叙述选择一起运作。当玩家做出选择时,他们的思维模式将围绕着这种更加抽象的系统使用预测力最强的技巧。然后当更多叙述性选择出现时,他们会感到更强的游戏性以及身处于真实模拟的一部分当中,尽管这里并非真的有任何对应结果产生。

有一个简单明了的例子就是——你必须在《请出示文件》中做出的选择。这个游戏的驱动力就是典型的生存模拟形式,在游戏里你需要获得绩点(通过做好正确的护照检查)才能保障你的家庭生活。这里的选择是关于你将允许什么人入关。很多选择对应的结果并没有什么深远影响,但是这些并不重要,因为你的规划力依旧效果明显。但除了发挥玩家的规划力之外,游戏的选项依旧令人感到乐趣十足并且会让人的情绪也随着选项变化而波动。

这种方法主要靠的是将一些元素结合起来,为的是制造一种实际上可能并不存在的感觉。这种方法被用于广泛的应用当中——包括从我们对所看到电视图像产生对应的看法,到电影通过剪辑所创造的戏剧化效果。我们解决问题的方式不需要那么直接,通常最好的方法是把问题拆分成很多的小问题,然后单独地去解决这些拆分过的小问题。这样以后再把这些解决后产生的效果结合起来看,就会像是解决原始问题的方法了。这不仅对于这方面,而且对于其他叙述性问题都是非常重要的解决问题技巧。我将会在之后写一篇博文来进行更多的细节描述。

当你的游戏有了一致性,并且除了更多的叙述类选择外还有具备了某种规划性,那这款游戏让玩家满意的概率会大大提高。不止如此,,那时将不仅仅限于某一类玩家——所有的玩家都会在你游戏带给他们的叙述性体验上得到提升。在这样的情况下我认为格外珍惜重视这些额外敏感的人是公平的,他们在更重大的问题上应该作为我们的首要反应对象。

这篇博文肯定解决不了有关选择和对应结果的所有问题,但是希望它提供一种思考问题的新方式,以及提供一些解决问题的基础方向。我不认为我们能找到解决选择问题的完美方案,但是只要我们能更加了解潜在的原因所在,我们就能提供更好的游戏体验。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Say you are playing a game like The Walking Dead, or any other interactive movie, and you are faced with the choice whether or not to help someone who is hurt. You decide that you want to help the person, after which you never see them again for the rest of the game. Reloading a save and playing through the scenario you find out that if you chose not to help, the same thing plays out. Simply put: in this case, your choice really has no consequences.

While the scenario is made up, it presents a very typical situation that opinions are heavily divided on. Some people are totally okay with it for various reasons. But others will argue that this lack of consequences ruins the entire experience, as your choices doesn’t really matter. It’s really easy to say that people who feel this way are simply playing the game the wrong way or are not properly immersed. However, I think it’s really important to investigate this reaction further as it gets us closer to some fundamental problems of narrative games.

The argument from people who get annoyed by these non-choices goes something like this: if every branch leads back to the same path, then you really don’t have any say in how the game plays out. You are not playing a game, you are only pretending that you are. It’s like when you are playing a split-screen game and notice you’ve been watching the wrong side. The feeling of play is just an illusion. Nobody would tolerate a Super Mario where a pre-written script – not the player’s skill – determines whether or not they survive a jump, so why tolerate games where all choices lead to the same conclusion?

One could counter that by saying the intention is to put you into a hard position and the game is about your varied emotional reactions as you ponder the different choices. It isn’t about affecting how the game plays out – it is about making an emotional journey. If you require the game to show you the consequences of your actions, you are not immersed in the game’s story – you are simply trying to optimize a system. This might sometimes be the case, but I also think this line of thinking is missing what the actual problem is: the failure of the player’s mental model.

Let’s start by breaking down the problem. A mental model, as explained in this previous post, is how the player perceives the game’s world and their role in it. As you are playing a game, you slowly build a mental model of the various objects and systems that make up the game and attach various attributes to them. At first a box might just be a piece of the background, but as you learn you can destroy it in order to gain items, attributes are added. The object gains complexity. The reverse can also happen. For instance, when you first see a character you might think that you are able to speak to it and therefore label it with various attributes you know that humans usually have. But when you find out that the character is really just a piece of the background without any sort of agency, most of those attributes are lost.

Your mental model of a game is something that is continually revised as you are playing, and it is something that always happens, no matter what the game is. In fact, this is a process that is a core part of any medium, including books and films. So, obviously, when you are playing an interactive movie game, you are not simply reacting to a direct stream of information. You are answering questions based on your mental model.

Take my “will you help your hurt companion?” scenario from above. The knowledge you take into account about that choice is not just what is currently projected at you from the TV screen. It is a combination of everything you have gone through up to this point, along with a bunch of personal knowledge and biases. Even basic concepts like “hurt” and “companion” aren’t just created in this moment. They are ideas that the game has spent a lot of time building up, be that for good or bad, from the very moment you started playing.

When you are faced with the hypothetical scene of a hurt companion, you are not just dealing with an animated image on a screen. You are dealing with a whole world constructed in your mind. This is what your choice will be based around. While it might objectively seem that everyone is reacting to the same scenario, they may in fact be dealing with quite different setups.

So when someone gets annoyed by the lack of consequences, it is not necessarily the direct consequences that are missing. The issue is that they have constructed a mental around a real person in need, along with that person’s future actions. So when it becomes apparent that the game doesn’t simulate that as part of its own model, the player’s mental model is broken and it feels like a big let down. Remember that we don’t play the game that is on the screen, we the play game as we perceive it in our heads. So when it turns out that your imagined world is fake, it has a huge impact.

It gets even worse once we take into the fact that planning is fundamental to a sense of gameplay. As explained in a previous post, engaging gameplay is largely fueled by the ability to make plans. The way this works is that the player first simulates a course of action using their mental model, and then tries to execute that in the game. This is a continuous process and “planning and executing the plan” is basically the same as playing. Interactive movies normally don’t have a lot of gameplay and it is really only in the choice moments that the player gets to take part in any actual play. Hence, when the choices turn out to have no consequences, it becomes clear that planning is impossible. In turn, this means that any meaningful play is impossible and the experience feels fundamentally broken.

As an example, take this experience I had with Heavy Rain:

[...] one scene I had made a plan of actions: to first bandage an unconscious person and then to poke around in his stuff. There really was nothing hindering me from doing so but instead the game removed my ability to interact directly after caring for the person. The game interpreted me wanting to help the guy as I also did not want to poke around, thinking that they two were mutually exclusive actions. Of course I thought otherwise and considered it no problem at all to do some poking afterward.
I think that people to complain the loudest about the lack of consequences are extra sensitive to situations like this. But, as I said, this is not due to lack of consequences per se, but due to the impact it has on the consistency of their mental model and sense of play. It is really important to note that this is not due to some sort of lack in immersion or ability to roleplay. On the contrary, as I have described above, many of the issues arise because they mentally simulate the game’s world and characters very vividly.

So the problem that we are faced with is really not a lack of consequences. It is because the underlying systems of the game are not able to simulate the mental model for a subset of players. One way of mending this is of course to add more consequences, but that is not a sustainable solution. Additional branches increase exponentially, and it quickly becomes impossible to cover every single possible outcome. Instead it is much better to focus on crafting more robust mental models. Sure, this might entail adding consequences to choices, but that is just a possible solution – it is not the end goal.

As I outlined in the previous blog on the SSM framework it is incredibly important to keep track of how systems and story help form a mental model in the player’s mind. For instance, if you start your game saying “your actions will have consequences”, that will immediately start filling up your player’s imagination with all sort of ideas and concepts. Even how pre-release PR is presented can affect this. All of these then become things that lay groundwork for how the game is modeled in the player’s head and it is vitally important to make sure this mental model remains stable over the course of the game.

One of the main things to have in mind is consistency. Remember that as someone is playing a game, they are building up a mental simulation for how things are supposed to work. If you provide information that certain events are possible when they are in fact not, you are running the risk of breaking the player’s mental model. You either need to remove this sort of information or to make sure that they never take part in situations where these sort of events feel like a valid option.

However, the most important thing to keep in mind is the ability to plan. A major reason why the lack of consequences can feel so bad is because these consequences were part of the player’s gameplay plans. So when it becomes apparent that they don’t exist, the whole concept of play breaks down. In all fairness, this might be OK for certain genres. If the goal is to simply to make an interactive movie, then losing a subset of player might be fair. But if the goal is to make proper interactive storytelling, then this is of paramount importance – planning must be part of the core experience.

That doesn’t mean that every choice is something the player needs to base their plans on. But in that case then there need to be other things that lie on a similar time scale and which are possible to predict and incorporate into plans. I think that one way around this problem is to have a more system-focused feature that runs alongside the more fuzzy narrative choices. When the players make choices, their mental model will have the best predictive skills around this more abstract system, and play revolves mostly around this. Then when more narrative choices are presented they will feel more game-like and part of the a solid simulation, despite not really having any consequences.

A simple and good example is the choices you have to make in Papers, Please. This game is driven by a type of survival simulation where you need to gain credits (though doing proper passport check) in order to keep your family live. Entwined into this are choices about who you will allow into the country. Many of these don’t have any far reaching consequences, but that that doesn’t really matter because your ability to plan is still satisfied. But despite that, these choices still feel interesting and can have an emotional effect.

This sort of approach relies on combining several elements in order to produce the feeling of something that might not actually be there. This is something that is used in a wide range of applications, from how we view images on a TV, to how films can create drama through cuts. We don’t always have to have solve problems straight on, but often the best way is to split the problem into many and to solve each problem on its own. The combined effect will then seem like a solution to the original problem. This is a technique that is super important for not just this, but many other narrative problems. I will write a blog post later on that goes into more details.

Once you have a game that is consistent and that has some sort of planning apart from the more narrative choices, the probability of satisfying the people will be greatly improved. And not only that, your narrative experience will improve over all, for all players, not just a subset. In this case I think it is fair to view these extra sensitive people as canaries in a cave, something that is first to react on a much bigger issue.(source:gamasutra.com  )


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