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多位开发者以产品为例谈三消游戏的设计关键

发布时间:2018-10-10 09:09:05 Tags:,,

多位开发者以产品为例谈三消游戏的设计关键

原作者:Tracey Lien 译者:Willow Wu

三消解谜市场是个拥挤而混乱的地方。

你在App Store的搜索栏中输入三消能得到超过2200个结果。宝开公司的《宝石迷阵》(Bejeweled)位列搜索结果的第一位,然后后面跟着很多图标相似、名字相似的游戏。有Jewel World——宝石主题的三消游戏,有Jewel Mania——宝石主题的三消游戏,有《糖果传奇》(Candy Crush Saga)——糖果主题的三消游戏,有Candy Blast Mania——糖果主题的三消游戏,有Matching With Friends——三消配对游戏,还有其它2000多种游戏……

三消市场已经处于饱和状态了,而且经常会因为缺乏创新而招致批评。无论是老的还是新的三消游戏,它们经常会被称为“类似《宝石迷阵》的游戏”或者是“山寨版的《宝石迷阵》,”基本上很快就会被玩家抛之脑后。这些批评中确实包含着不可否认的事实——克隆游戏确实很多,有不少游戏开发者是想借别人的成功捞一把。业内人士也认为一个好的三消游戏除了相似的核心机制之外,还应该有更多与众不同的东西。

“作为一个拥有十多年休闲游戏开发经验的人,我们已经习惯了人的误解,他们认为所有的益智游戏都是差不多的,”King公司的CCO Sebastian Knutsson说,他们的代表作就是《糖果传奇》。“除非你有经常玩,否则你就会觉得它们是一样的。但我知道我们的活跃玩家对游戏中的差别和细微变化非常敏锐。这一切都归结于玩游戏的真实体验,而不仅仅是看看游戏的截图、描述信息什么的。”

Candy Crush Saga(from pocketgamer.biz)

Candy Crush Saga(from pocketgamer.biz)

根据Knutsson的说法,当人们不熟悉某类游戏时,他们很容易会变得目光短浅,以偏概全。但是对于一个经常玩三消游戏的人来说,各个游戏之间的差异是显而易见的,而且非常重要。他告诉Polygon,其实那些说他们的游戏是山寨的都是“局外人”——他们并没有玩过,甚至根本对King旗下、或者是其它任何三消游戏不感兴趣。“你可以说单人纸牌游戏都一样,但是确实是有非常多的人喜欢这类游戏,能够欣赏不同游戏的独特之处,”他说。“所以我认为人们对于三消游戏的看法就是分为两类:一是玩过的,能看出、欣赏游戏所具有的特色,另外一群人就是没玩过游戏,对这三消一概而论。”

此外,丹麦皇家艺术学院的副教授、作家、游戏设计师Jesper Juul表示FPS游戏也有类似的情况。Juul说三消游戏实际上并没有那么相似,看似大同小异是因为游戏刚开始的玩法都差不多。

“第一人称射击游戏显然都是非常相似的,这类游戏已经有30多年的历史了,”他说。“但我觉得如果你真正投入于某类游戏,你一定能够发现各种有趣、重要的区别。所以如果某个人是射击游戏的死忠粉,《战地》和《使命召唤》之间的不同在他们看来肯定是非常关键的。但如果你并不是FPS的爱好者,那么这些游戏在你看来肯定是非常相似的,我想三消游戏的情况也是这样。”

对于那些不玩射击游戏的人来说,如果不看剧情和主题就很难辨别出是哪个游戏。玩家不停地移动瞄准器,用一个按键锁定目标,另一个进行射击,这类行动贯穿了大多数射击游戏。虽然现在没什么人会指责FPS游戏的山寨问题,但曾经它们都被人们称为类《毁灭战士》游戏。直到玩家终于把FPS划为一个单独的类别,理解它们与其它游戏有着细微但是独特的不同之处,人们才开始注意到这些区别的趣味所在,颇具创意而且非常重要。

“剧情对FPS游戏来说也非常重要,而且我认为这能更加凸显游戏个体的精巧之处,”游戏设计师、纽约大学游戏中心负责人Frank Lantz说。“人们往往会比较关注游戏主题和剧情。从本质上讲,三消是一种抽象性游戏,它们的核心是形式逻辑。不管这些元素是宝石是可爱的小动物是昆虫还是石头,玩家要思考的是当下的选择以及你要怎么重新排列这些元素。也许这就是人们说三消游戏都一个样时想要表达的真正意思——也就是主题这种表象的东西其实对他们来说是无关紧要的,除去‘包装’后的玩法、机制都差不多。”

Nigel Li是Storm8的艺术总监,他们发行的游戏有Bakery Story、Candy Blast Mania、Jewel Mania、Kingdoms Live等等。这家工作室的目标就是争取做他们产品所在领域的佼佼者,其中就有三消类别。剥离艺术以及音效设计之后,Candy Blast Mania的核心机制就是让玩家不断匹配三个同样的糖果,直至达成关卡目标。这听起来就跟宝开的《宝石迷阵》、King的《糖果传奇》非常相似。但正如Li所说的,是机制之外的这些东西才让游戏有了完全不同的体验。

“我认为艺术设计对休闲游戏有非常大的影响作用,”他说。“事实上,我认为它是填充、塑造游戏世界和剧情的关键素材,并且还能激励玩家对游戏增加投入。玩家刚进入游戏时是什么样的感觉?他们玩得好吗?我们要怎么引导他们?我们会依赖于艺术手段,把它当成是视觉奖励。艺术也是一种交流语言,语言的好坏将会直接影响游戏的表现。”

决定游戏体验好坏的当然还不止于艺术。Li说Storm8的开发者会反复测试他们游戏中的每一个元素,以确保它们不出差错。“就比如Jewel Mania和Fruit Mania,光是宝石或者是水果的消除方式我们就进行了10、20、30次测试,”他说。“我们想找到对的感觉,制作出酷炫的效果,让玩家有种成就感。”

Heather Hazen是《宝石迷阵》的监制,她相信,这款游戏的成功不仅仅是因为它抢占了市场先机,和Li的看法相同,她将其归因于对细节的关注。“游戏看似简单,但正是那些细节的精致感才能让玩家获得有趣的游戏体验,”她说。“宝石不应该是硬生生地掉入面板,它们落下时应该会受到重力的影响,触碰到面板时应该会发出清脆的响声。

同样地,宝石匹配后也不应该是直接消失,它们要有一个华丽的爆炸效果,并对面板上的其它宝石产生一定影响。每个细节都需要与游戏的整体体验保持连贯。”

有些三消游戏的特色还不止于音效或者是视觉特效。把《宝石迷阵》和《糖果传奇》放在一起对比,前者是让玩家自由争取高分记录,而后者采用的是关卡进阶方式。《宝石迷阵》中,玩家每局的游戏面板都是随机的。而《糖果传奇》的每个关卡都是指定的,是这几百个关卡中的一环。在Candy Blast Mania中,有些关卡就是boss战,玩家要通过匹配特定的糖果来对敌人造成伤害。像Puzzle Quest这样的游戏就包含了角色扮演元素,而Puzzle and Dragons则融合了三消和地牢元素。所有的这些游戏都是以三消为基础,但是游戏经验丰富的玩家和并不丰富的玩家看到的是两个完全不一样的世界。

“如果把核心机制看作是主要原料,那么制作水平就是原料的处理以及呈现方式,”Lantz说。“这非常重要。”

1994年,俄罗斯程序员Eugene Alemzhin为DOS做了个游戏叫Shariki,它被认为是历史上第一个三消电子游戏。将三个一样的东西匹配到一起,从游戏面板上消除,这种简单而抽象的机制到了20年后依然没有改变,但是三消游戏变了很多。

“如果你去回顾下初代的《宝石迷阵》,你会发现它很扁平化,远没有现在的立体,”Juul说。“随着时间的推移,很多事情都发生了改变。用户的期待也变了,几年前觉得很新颖的东西放到今天就会有完全不一样的感觉。”

Hazen说创新的空间一直都有,即使是在核心机制不改变的情况下。PopCap的联合创始人John Vechey在Reddit中说过,很多游戏都是受《宝石迷阵》的启发,但是他自己也承认PopCap的竞争者,比如King,都对游戏进行了创新。

“King公司可能是我们的竞争对手,很明显《糖果传奇》和《帕帕弹珠》分别借鉴了《宝石迷阵》和《幻幻球》,但是它们并不是山寨,”Vechey说。“《糖果传奇》在三消的基础上加了不少新机制,不仅仅是saga meta部分,还有强化道具以及随着游戏进程所呈现的一系列变化。如果要把《糖果传奇》说成是《宝石迷阵》的克隆游戏,那就相当于说《半条命》克隆了《雷神之锤》。

“他们是竞争对手,但是如今他们的确做得很好……我必须坦诚地说,虽然这些游戏都参考了我们的游戏机制(也是受别的游戏启发),但是他们也在此基础上创造出了很多新颖的内容,它们并不是在克隆。”

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

The match-3 puzzle game market is a cluttered space.

Typing “match-3″ into the iTunes App Store yields more than 2,200 search results. PopCap’s Bejeweled sits at the top of the list alongside similar-looking titles that share similar names. There’s Jewel World — a match-3 gem game, Jewel Mania — a match-3 gem game, Candy Crush Saga — a match-3 candy game, Candy Blast Mania — a match-3 candy game, Matching With Friends — a match-3 matching game and, well, some 2,000 more.

The market is saturated and frequently faces criticism for its seeming lack of innovation. Match-3 games both new and old are often called “Bejeweled clones” or copycats, and are quickly dismissed for all being the same. And while there is some truth to the criticisms — there are indeed lots of video game clones, and there are puzzle games that exist only to capitalize on the success of others — members of the games industry believe there’s more to a good match-3 game than a similar core mechanic.

“Having developed casual games for more than 10 years, the misconception that all puzzle games are the same is something we’re used to,” said Sebastian Knutsson, the chief creator officer of King, a company best known for Candy Crush Saga. “Unless you play them regularly, you’ll see that they’re the same, but we know our active players are very perceptive to the differences and nuances. It all comes down to the actual exposure of playing them as opposed to just reading about these games.”

According to Knutsson, it’s easy for people to be myopic and make sweeping generalizations about entire game genres and categories when they’re not familiar with them. But to a player who regularly plays match-3 puzzle games, the differences between them are clear, and the differences matter. He told Polygon the copycat and cloning criticisms the company faces tend to come from “outsiders” — people who either haven’t or aren’t interested in playing King’s games, or any match-3 puzzle games. “You can always say that all card Solitaire games are the same, but there’s tons of people who love them, who appreciate the different variations that are out there,” he said. “So I think you either play them and appreciate the difference or uniqueness, or from the outside you just judge them all as the same type of game.”

A similar analogy can be drawn with first-person shooters, according to author, game designer and associate professor at The Royal Danish Academic of Fine Arts — The School of Design, Jesper Juul. Juul says the similarities between popular match-3 games are over-blown, and that genres tend to be similar because that’s how they form to begin with.

“Shooters are obviously very, very similar, and have been going for almost 30 years now,” he said. “But I think what happens is if you’re really into a particular genre, you see all kinds of interesting, important distinctions. So if somebody is a big shooter fan, the distinctions between the Battlefield series and Call of Duty will be really, really important to them. But if you’re not a shooter fan, those games look incredibly similar, and I think that’s what’s happening with match-3 games.”

To the outsider who doesn’t play shooters, when the stories and themes are stripped from the game, it can be hard to differentiate them. Players are moving a reticule around and using one button to aim and another to shoot. This is fairly consistent among most shooters. And while first-person shooters don’t face copycat accusations any more, there was a time when all first-person shooters were known as Doom clones. It wasn’t until players eventually recognized the first-person shooter as a genre and understood the subtle distinctions that separated the games that people started paying more attention to them as interesting, creative and important.

“First-person shooters are also heavily-framed by narrative, and I think that helped to make the distinctions between different first-person shooters feel more substantial,” said game designer and director of the NYU Game Center, Frank Lantz. “People tend to focus a lot on theme and narrative and, by their nature, match-3 games tend to be kind of abstract games. They’re more about the kind of formal logic of what you’re doing and how you’re re-arranging the elements. It doesn’t matter if those elements are themed as gems or cute little critters or bugs or rocks. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say all match-3 games are the same — that the theme, the sort of representational surface is kind of immaterial, and what they’re really saying is under the hood, all these games are the same.”

Nigel Li is an art director at Storm8, a studio that has worked on titles like Bakery Story, Candy Blast Mania, Jewel Mania and Kingdoms Live. The studio aims to have the best game in each category it enters, one of which is the match-3 category. When stripped of its art, sounds and design, the core mechanic of Candy Blast Mania requires players to match three of the same kinds of candy to achieve certain goals. This description alone makes it sound a lot like PopCap’s Bejeweled and King’s Candy Crush Saga. But as Li says, it’s everything else about the game that makes it a completely different experience.

“I think art plays a huge role in casual games,” he said. “In fact, I think it’s a key ingredient to painting the world and the story, and encourages the player to be invested. How does a player feel when they first enter the game? How well are they doing? How do we guide them through the game? We rely on the art as visual rewards. Art is a language we use to communicate with them, and how good that language is has a direct result on how good the game is going to do.”

It’s not just the art, either. Li says developers at Storm8 iterate on every element of their games to make sure they feel right. “For Jewel Mania and Fruit Mania, just the way that you either pop the jewel or pop the fruit has gone through 10, 20, 30 iterations,” he said. “We try to get the feeling right, to make it feel rewarding and very snappy.”

Heather Hazen is the executive producer of Bejeweled at PopCap. She believes there’s more to the game’s success beyond it being one of the first to market and, like Li, she puts it down to attention to detail. “The game looks and appears simple, but it’s the nuances that make it a great experience,” she said. “Gems shouldn’t just drop onto the board; they should fall with an obvious relationship to gravity and land with a satisfying ‘clink.’

“Gems shouldn’t just disappear when they are matched; they should explode in a visual flourish with an exciting effect on the rest of the board. Every detail needs to be consistent with the overall experience.”

Some of the differences between match-3 games are bigger and more obvious than the sound effects and visual flourishes. When comparing Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga, the former offers a raw system where players try to score as high as possible, while the latter offers distinct level progression. In Bejeweled, players are given a different, randomized board each time. In Candy Crush Saga, players are given a specific, composed level that is part of a series of hundreds of levels. In Candy Blast Mania, levels are punctuated with boss battles where players have to match certain kinds of candy to inflict damage on the enemy. Games like Puzzle Quest tie in a role-playing element, while Puzzle and Dragons merges a match-3 mechanic with a dungeon crawler. All of these titles use match-3 as their base, but to the seasoned and even not-so-seasoned player, they’re worlds apart.

“If the core mechanic is the main ingredient, then the production values are the way that ingredient is prepared and presented to the player,” Lantz said. “And that’s really important.”

There’s a puzzle game by Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin called Shariki. Developed for DOS in 1994, it is believed to be the first video game to feature the match-3 mechanic. The simple and abstract mechanic of matching three of the same items to clear them from the board hasn’t changed in more than 20 years, but match-3 games have.

“If you look at something like the original Bejeweled, it’s very flat,” Juul said. “A lot has changed over time. The audience’s expectations have changed, and something that felt very new a few years ago just feels different today.”

Hazen says there’s always room for innovation, even if the core mechanic remains the same. PopCap’s own co-founder John Vechey said in a Reddit thread that many games have been inspired by Bejeweled, but even he acknowledged that PopCap’s competitors like King have innovated.

“King may be a competitor, and clearly both [Candy Crush Saga] and Papa Pear are inspired by Bejeweled and Peggle respectively, but they’re not clones,” Vechey said. “Candy Crush has added a lot of great mechanics to the match-3 genre, not just the saga meta-game, but the power-ups, and how they change the game as it goes. Calling Candy Crush a Bejeweled ‘clone’ would be like calling Half-Life a Quake clone.

“They’re a competitor, and right now doing quite well … I must be candid and honest that they’ve done a lot of innovative things around mechanics we originally created (which were inspired by other games), and that’s not cloning.”(source:polygon 


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