开发者从玩家多样性的角度来思考游戏的难度设定

原作者：Keith Burgun 译者：Willow Wu

我想简单说说游戏难度设定这个问题。

首先我要说的是“难度（difficulty）”这个词跟我想做的东西，也就是策略游戏并没有特别大关系，至少是不应该有。任何一个优秀的多人在线策略游戏都会有匹配系统，为玩家找一个实力相当的对手，人们认为这样的游戏就做到了“难度平衡”。我认为在单人游戏中也应该做到这一点，对此我还写过相关文章，并在Auro中实践。

但是本文的讨论是针对非策略向的单人游戏，比如《只狼》，或者去年的《蔚蓝》。“难度”一词在这些游戏中显得更加有意义：要完成某个任务和/或者打通这个游戏有多难？这是一个非固定的标准，但我们可能会说像《只狼》《血源诅咒》这样的游戏比《星之卡比毛线传说》《最终幻想15》更难打。

游戏设计师，同时也是纽约大学教授Naomi Clark曾说过这样的话：

“完成度达到100%、发现所有内容、实现全方位击杀，这样的游戏体验相比较为随性、不刻意追求的游戏体验更好或者是更有意义吗？我玩游戏已经有四十年了，做游戏也有二十年了，但我仍然不敢说这个问题有答案。”

关于Naomi Clark在推文后所附的文章，我认同其中的主要观点“难度并不是只有一个标准”，但有点偏离这篇文章的主题。非策略向的单人游戏技能系统很狭隘(狭隘算是我对这类游戏用的最重的词之一了)，但是这并不意味着它不能给人带来沉浸感或者人们感觉不到被它排斥在外。

我认为Naomi的观点是这样的：“如果我打到75%然后放弃了，这样的游戏体验肯定是比不上100%完成度的，这种想法对吗？”我觉得真的很难回答。但是如果你只打了30%？15%？在某些时候，我确实认为可以说你与这个游戏的互动可能没有那么有意义。

Pokemon Shuffle（from gamefaqs.com）

电子游戏（至少是这类的电子游戏）是可消耗的人造文化产品。同样，我也认可在某些情况下用户的消费方式就是成为游戏中的胜者、看到结局。这样你就可以大胆地参与到社区中，不怕被剧透。发言的时候你心里有底，因为你了解整个游戏，知道自己在说什么，不存在什么没有发现的转折点。

虽然非策略向的高难度单机游戏大部分都不是我的菜，但就个人而言，我一般不会说“我玩过那个游戏”，我觉得这样说有点不太对。这些游戏我通常玩半个小就放弃了，每次都觉得我是个文化意义上的局外人。

高难度游戏

人们似乎要达到某个条件才“有资格”谈论这个游戏，或者才感觉这个游戏属于你、跟你有关系，但电子游戏的文化不应该是这样的。尽管如此，我们得认识到当下的圈子就是这样。我认为比较好的做法是开发者提供一个简单模式、作弊模式等等，降低接触内容的门槛，让更多人享受到完整的游戏体验。

“玩家声望（gamer cred）”这个东西让我想要嗤之以鼻，因为我年轻的时候就已经受够了。事实上，对很多人来说，电子游戏是一个不可忽视的文化现象，就像大家会在一起讨论喜欢的音乐一样，生活中也有热衷于讨论游戏的人。如果你没有打通游戏，人们就会觉得你是假玩家、装腔作势的人。

更糟糕的一点是，很多玩家都赞同这种看法。

排外意识

“专属性”这个东西是具有一定价值的。它指的是只有少数人可以做的某件事、可以接触某个东西。我觉得重点在于为什么人们认为专属内容值得以排外为代价？

我是个男性，我可以告诉你我的成长经历。出于各种各样的原因，有些游戏我必须得玩（或者不能玩）。因此，我变得非常擅长打格斗游戏、FPS游戏、RTS游戏、平台游戏等等——也就是一堆有难度、节奏快、有精准执行要求的游戏。

有很多电子游戏其实很相似，所以从一个游戏玩到另一个游戏，实际上你是在积累通用技能基础。那些没有一直在玩FPS游戏的人，当他们再玩一款新游戏时就会觉得没那么好上手。FPS的设计概念仅仅是利用鼠标控制画面，用WASD移动，但并不是所有人都能适应。

有很多人就是没有时间玩游戏，因为他们要打两份工，或者有家人需要照顾，或者其它各种原因。还有另一些人，他们有不同的能力缺陷，所以打游戏对他们来说并不是那么容易的事。

如果你没注意到的话，我提醒一下现在还出现了一点文化方面的问题——有些人对非传统玩家群体日渐提升的地位十分排斥。我认为高难度游戏在一定程度上也起到了推动作用。

这些并不是竞技游戏，然而开发者们通过提升游戏难度促成了这一点。有些“赢家”是因为有毅力/时间/身心健康才能坐在那反复尝试、练习，直到打出满意的结局。而另一些想要尝试当下热话题热度极高的游戏的人，基本上都受到了某种意义上的惩罚，遭遇嘲讽。

总结

万物皆有它的存在之理，我也想了解那些喜欢高难度单机游戏的人。现实中确实有很多游戏都采用了我的建议。大多数电子游戏都有了不同的难度模式/作弊码，还有其它的新方式让游戏变得更易上手。所以从某种意义上说我针对的只是这类游戏的一小部分。

但是同时，我认为这类高难度游戏拥有部分相同的哲学基因，不仅牵涉到在线竞技游戏，还触及了玩法设计最糟糕的那一面。我想要游戏变得更加大众化，而这类游戏似乎是往反方向走。

我不认为一个人选择简单模式就没有意义，浪费游戏。如果你想要所谓的玩家声望，只要说“我用困难模式通关了”就好了。我理解这些人，以前我也是这样。我认为如果一款游戏没有设定简单模式是为了“表达什么”，那么这个“什么”就一定不是好东西。

我们再回到Naomi的那条推文，我同意，我们无法确切定义什么叫做“真正地玩了一款游戏”。部分原因可能要归根于不同玩家想要的东西不同。这就是为什么游戏——尤其是单机高难度游戏——应该给拥有不同需求和能力的玩家提供更多选项。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

I wanted to write a few words about difficulty in games.

First, the word “difficulty” doesn’t really apply to the kinds of things I want to make: strategy games. Or at least, it shouldn’t. Any good multiplayer online strategy game will have a matchmaking system, which does the very best it can at providing a “equal skill” opponent for you, which you might call a “balanced difficulty”. I advocate for the exact same in single player games, as I’ve written about before, and as I’ve implemented in Auro.

But the conversation now is surrounding single player non-strategy-games, games like Sekiro, or last year, Celeste. In games like these, the word “difficulty” makes more sense: how difficult is it to make progress and/or complete the game? It’s a loose metric, but we could probably say that stuff like Sekiro or Bloodborne is, generally speaking, more difficult to make progress in than Kirby’s Epic Yarn or Final Fantasy XV.

Designer and NYU professor Naomi Clark had this to say, which I think is a good position on the topic.

Is the experience of completely completing, seeing “all of” and “beating” a game better or more meaningful than giving up on it? Look I have been playing games for four decades and making them for two but I’m still not arrogant enough to think there is an answer to that question

As to the piece she is linking to, I think its main claims about there being no “one true difficulty” are true, but kind of beside the point of the conversation. Yes, we are talking about one narrow kind of skill (the narrowness itself being one of my strongest critiques of these kinds of games). But that doesn’t mean it isn’t “real” or that someone can’t really feel excluded by it.

I feel like her second tweet there is a good position to have on this topic, but I also think there’s a bit more that can be explored.

Naomi’s point, I think, is something like “hey, if I get 75% through a game and give up, is that any less meaningful than getting 100% through?”, and I think it’s really hard to answer that. But what if you can only get 30% through? 15%? At some point, I do think it’s reasonable to say that you are likely having a less meaningful interaction with this thing.

Videogames (at least, these kinds of videogames) are consumable cultural artifacts, and I also think it’s valid, to some extent, to say that part of that consumption ritual is beating the game, seeing the ending. Beating a game makes you feel like you can go online and engage with communities without being afraid of spoilers. It confers a feeling that you know what you’re talking about with the game; that there isn’t some 3rd-act-switcharoo you haven’t yet reached that’s going to totally undermine your point.

I know that for me, as someone who really does not like most games that fall into this category, I often feel half-weird about even saying that I played the game. I often abandon these games after playing for only 30 minutes or so, and I definitely feel like I’m culturally “on the outside” of the thing.

Hard Games

Videogames culture should not be such that people feel like they have to reach some bar in order to gain the “legitimacy” of being able to talk about the thing, or feeling ownership or connection to the thing. Nonetheless, I think that we also have to recognize that that’s how it is right now. So while we live in that world, I do think it’s good for developers to do things like provide easy modes (also, finding better names for that is good), cheat modes, and other options which make the full experience of games more accessible to as many people as possible.

It’s easy for me to kind of look down on the whole “gamer cred” thing, as someone who has already locked in tons of that gamer cred for myself when I was younger. The fact is that for many people, videogames are an important cultural phenomenon, and just as people build their identities around music that they like, people build their identities around games that they play. And like it or not, people feel like “posers” or “fake gamers” if they aren’t beating those games.

The most unfortunate aspect to that is that many gamers want it that way.

Gatekeeping

There is value in “exclusivity”. It is something special when you do something, or can access something, that you know not many others can do. I think the question is really, when is exclusivity worth the cost of exclusion?

I’m a dude, and I can speak from experience that growing up as a dude, there’s kinds of games that, for a whole slew of reasons, I am pressured to play (or not play). Because of this, I got very good at fighting games, first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, platformers, etc. Essentially, a lot of games with difficult, fast, precise execution requirements.

A lot of videogames are pretty similar to one another, and so you kind of build up a general basic skill-base that transfers over quite a bit from game to game. People who didn’t spend their whole lives playing first person shooters are going to have a much harder time coming into a new first person shooter than I would. Just the idea of controlling the view with the mouse, or using WASD to move, is something that not everyone is totally used to.

There are many people who just have never had the time to get good at videogames, because they have to work two jobs, or they have a sick relative, or a dozen other reasons. Many people are disabled in various ways which also makes it more difficult for them to make similar kinds of progress.

We have a bit of a cultural problem right now, if you haven’t noticed, of gamers being territorial about women and other kinds of people becoming more visible in games. I think that hard games sort of help facilitate this.

These are not competitive games, and yet we found a way to make them competitive, by making them hard. Some are the “winners” who have the chops/time/physical-and-neurological ability to sit there practicing the inputs until they get them just right. And others who want to be involved in the new cool videogame that everyone is talking about and dares to step into this territory, is basically punished and branded a loser in some sense.

Conclusion

I want to say there’s a place for everything, and I do want to be understanding about people who love these kinds of single player hard videogames. It is certainly true that most videogames already take my advice. Most videogames have less difficult modes, and/or cheat codes, and other innovative features to make themselves more accessible (I recommend this series on advice on that). So in a sense, I am kind of beating up on a pretty small minority in terms of the kinds of games that get made.

But at the same time, I think that these kinds of hard games share some philosophical DNA, not just with online competitive games, but also with some of the worst parts of gaming. I want games to be more inclusive, and these things are sort of in direct opposition to that.

I guess one thing is… I really don’t buy the argument that something is lost because the game has accessibility options. If you want your macho ass-kicker cred, just say “I beat it on Hard.” I get it—I used to do that shit back in the day myself. To the degree that a game is “signaling something” by not having an accessibility mode, that “something” isn’t good.

So, to go back to Naomi’s tweet: I agree, it’s hard to say what “really playing a game” is. Part of this might be because it comes down to what an individual player wants. That’s why games, especially games like these, should have more options to allow players with different needs and abilities to engage with them.

（source:gamasutra.com ）