Kate Edwards谈提升游戏世界真实性的6个技巧

原作者：Marie Dealessandri 译者：Willow Wu

在游戏行业，大家所理解的文化化是指为某种特定文化量身打造游戏，不仅仅局限于语言。国际游戏开发者协会（IGDA）前任理事，同时也是咨询公司Geogrify的创始人Kate Edwards认为文化化还能发挥更大的作用，她在上周的Plan B Project活动中发表了一篇题为“利用文文化创造更好的游戏世界”的演讲，其中就强调了这一点。

在她的演讲中，有很大一部分内容都是在解释为什么文化化与本地化一样重要，以及如何处理敏感主题，从而让你的游戏触及更多观众。然而，关于如何更好地构建游戏世界，她也给出了一些有用的建议。

“作为游戏开发者，我们创造的世界很多都极其复杂，”Edwards说。“比如《上古卷轴5：天际》，环境非常逼真，细节满满，然而剧情设定是一个奇幻世界。或者《光环》，故事确实是发生在地球上，但是在时间设定在遥远的未来。游戏包含了很多科幻元素，呈现出了创作者想象中的未来世界。甚至像《任天堂大乱斗》这样的游戏也有世界设定、环境和叙事。

“还有《侠盗猎车手5》这样的游戏，我称它为超真实的世界。这里几乎就是洛杉矶，但又不完全是洛杉矶。它叫洛圣都，但是开发者们很出色地重现了洛杉矶的生活氛围，将它作为洛圣都的基础。”

所有这些游戏都有一个共同之处：开发者利用了特定的技能来让玩家相信除了眼前的这一切，游戏宇宙应该是更加宏大的。

理解游戏世界构建的关键

游戏背景设定、复杂程度还有构造框架，这些是游戏世界构建的关键，也是你最先应该思考的问题。

“一边是真实世界，一边是虚构世界，当然这中间还有一个相当广阔的重叠区域，”Edwards说。“这从来都不是黑白分明的。你可以看到有些游戏从里到外都是虚构的，这是叙事本身的需求，另外还有些游戏则是基于全真实设定，但时代可能不同或者稍有改动。

“如果你把游戏设定在一个真实世界中，沿用真实的地理环境、文化和历史，那么你所需遵循的是另一套不同的规则。从文化化的角度来说，这是尤为关键的。”

Edwards强调她所讲的是打造一个非常真实、令人信服的世界（例如哈利·波特宇宙、魔戒宇宙），不要跟游戏的写实性混淆。

“写实是一种设计决策——团队想要游戏看起来有多逼真。真实化是游戏叙事目标和体验目标的紧密结合。游戏背后的故事是什么？玩家要在游戏中究竟要做什么？这是你需要思考的一个最基础的问题——你的真实化目标是什么。真实化目标基本上就决定了你实际需要创造多少内容，这一点真的很重要。”

你可以使用一些结构化的工具来真实化你的世界，并让你的游戏设定变得更具有说服力，让人觉得它归属于一个更大的宇宙——即使这个宇宙从未完整地呈现在玩家眼前。

通过主题层提升完整性

在创造世界的时候，你可以利用主题层（thematic layers）让世界更加完整。Edwards指出，以下清单可以包含更多层次的细节，这要取决于你所构建的宇宙类型。

·气候和天气

·地理

·生态

·角色分布特征(物种、年龄、性别、种族)

·文化特征（语言、历史、符号学）

·文化系统（信仰、政治、经济、交通运输）

但是，要注意这些主题层的使用方法——他们需要通过一种合理的方式跟叙事结合。

“在《塞尔达传说:旷野之息》中，天气会直接影响游戏玩法，”Edwards说。“你在群山环绕的环境中跑来跑去，有时会被雷电击中，有时会被冻住。开发团队决定要在游戏中加入天气系统，这其实是很合理的，因为这能对叙事和游戏体验造成直接影响。我看过另外一些游戏，它们也有天气系统，但完全是个摆设，不存在实际影响。只是为了调节一下气氛。

“虽然问题不大，不过我的忠告是要想清楚你需要什么样的主题层来让游戏世界变得更加真实——这也是我提出的层级方法的原因。大多数游戏都会需要一些真实的地理环境，比如地形地貌，但也许你并不需要。

“所以，你必须认真思考，为了游戏的体验和叙事，游戏世界的最基本结构应该是什么样的。如果你走到了这一步，你就可以思考是否要增加额外的层次来提升视觉效果、增加环境的吸引力，但在满足最基本的真实化需求之前，我不会去考虑这些。”

依赖地图和语言

你可能觉得这个建议很普通，但是地图和语言确实是让游戏世界具备真实感的关键部分。

“我认为我们之中的大多数人都是从JRR Tolkien那里获得灵感的，”Edwards说。“他在构建《魔戒》世界时利用了自己出色的语言创造能力创造出了精灵语、矮人语，然后他以此为核心，发展出相关的文化，让这个虚构世界充满生机。”

《模拟人生》也是一个语言促使游戏世界变得更加真实的优秀例子，Simlish就是原创语言。虽然它听上去有点像是在胡乱叨叨，但其实是有逻辑的，TechRadar上的这篇文章（https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-turned-into-the-most-recognisable-language-in-gaming）就做了详细介绍。正是这一切让玩家感觉自己的角色是宏大宇宙中的一部分。

这并不是说你每开发一个新游戏就要创造一门新的语言，但是你可以通过使用一种特定的表达方式、方言或者口音来创造一种归属感。Tolkien通过地图来呈现游戏的环境地理，进一步增强了这种归属感，这也是奇幻小说中常见的一种手法。

“奇幻小说经常会出现地图，通常是为了增强虚拟世界的真实感。我们对地图的反应是很真实的，把它们看成是一种在实际探索和研究中使用的工具。所以对很多作者来说，创造地图就等于是在告诉玩家‘我去过这个地方，你们即将看到的故事基本上就是我在那里的所见所闻。’

“这种使用地图的方式往往会让人产生一种真实感——如果没有地图来呈现这个世界或者相关的背景知识，你是不会有这种感觉的，这很有趣。”

创造文化元素

游戏世界真实感的另一个来源就是文化元素， Edwards表示这本质上就是一个“编东西”的过程。

“概念设计阶段已经过去了，现在团队中的各位创意人员准备着大刀阔斧。但在这个阶段经常会出现的情况是人们创作过头和/或他们不加思考地设计环境，把各种东西都扔进去——实物、符号、旗帜。他们只是把这个世界打扮得漂漂亮亮，让它看起来很有生活气息。”

然而，如果你想让你的游戏世界更有一体化、真实的感觉，那么你需要认真思考一下该怎么进行填充。

“对待创意不能偷懒，” Edwards说道。“你创造东西应该是带有目的的，而不是仅仅因为这个东西你会做。所以，当你创造出一个东西，打算把它扔进游戏世界里时，你需要思考一下它为什么要出现在环境中？有什么意义？它跟叙事、还有其它正在发展的东西有什么关联？并不是所有东西都必须与玩家有直接关系，但它被创造仍应该是有原因的，而不是因为你试图快速完成某个主管给你的任务清单。”

她还指出团队中的应该有人去向设计师们提出这些问题。

“应该有人问他们：它有什么意义？为什么要把它放在这？你的想法是什么？并不是说要你质疑每一件事，我想表达的是，有时候有这种meta方面的质疑可以起到帮助作用，不仅是让创作者们退一步审视他们的创造，也是让他们在之后的创作中提醒自己。”

确保逻辑的一致性

你不仅要确保文化元素对游戏世界是有意义的，这所有的一切都要跟这个宇宙的设定保持一致。

“我们拥有一套逻辑规则，这个世界中的所有东西都要遵循它，” Edwards说。“为什么这很重要？因为即使是在Tolkien宇宙中，他很大程度上还是沿用了现实世界的规则——比如重力、地形地貌学以及水文学。就算他往叙事里添加新的东西——比如说魔法，魔法的施展方式还是保持了逻辑上的一致性。只有特定的人才能使用魔法，并且只能在特定的时间、特定动机下使用这种能力。

“这些就是规则，不管你的游戏是奇幻类还是猎奇类，游戏中的东西都应该跟逻辑规则保持在同一棵树上。我们要确保在创作的时候，无论是我们的叙事意图、体验，还是游戏内容，都不存在矛盾之处。”

Edwards以2005年Rare开发的游戏Kameo为例进行讲解，这是个完全虚构的宇宙，与我们的世界毫无关系，但游戏中出现了不少类似于基督教十字架的符号。当Edwards询问说它们有什么意义时，设计师说这是坟墓标记。

“有意思的是，Kameo宇宙中是不存在基督教的，那为什么游戏中的人还会使用木制十字架？这一点都说不通啊。那时，设计师给我的回答是：‘不然我还能怎么标？’我就说设计个符合Kameo宇宙设定的坟墓标记如何？”

暗示复杂系统

为了暗示你游戏世界的系统复杂性，你需要在角色、地点和建筑之间创造联系，你可以在不完整刻画宇宙的情况下让玩家了解这些知识。

“很多游戏叙事都是利用这种方法来制造出游戏世界的宏大之感，”Edwards说。“有些东西你不必介绍得很全面或者深入探讨，但你必须创造联系。这样一来你就可以在不用实际创造庞大宇宙的情况下制造出这种氛围。”

你只需要让玩家跟游戏中涉及到背景设定的某本书或者物品互动。Edwards拿《光环》做实例讲解：在战斗过程中让玩家了解设定概念。

“你在这个场景中跑来跑去，可以看见这些先行者（游戏中的一个外星种族）留下的建筑——我记得当时有很多人都觉得这个环状建筑的故事非常感兴趣。它为什么会在这里？这些人都是谁？从游戏的主线叙事中，你很难了解到先行者到底是谁，这个环状建筑发生过什么事，但是游戏中有一种名为终端机的东西，玩家跟它们互动就会弹出一个屏幕，告诉你一些关于这个世界的背景知识。

“所以只需要这一个动作：点击，玩家就能获得背景资料，游戏世界的叙事格局突然之间就变大了。你不需要设计一个全新的关卡，不需要额外设计一些角色，你只需要创造一个小窗户，让玩家窥到更广阔宇宙的一片风景。”

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Culturalisation is mostly known as the process of tailoring your game for a specific culture, beyond language translation. But it can do much more, as former IGDA director and Geogrify founder Kate Edwards highlighted in her Plan B Project talk last week, ‘Building better worlds through game culturalisation’.

A lot of her presentation was dedicated to the reasons why culturalisation matters as much as localisation, and how to navigate sensitive themes so your game can reach a wider audience. However, it also contained useful advice on improving your approach to building game worlds.

“A lot of the worlds that we make as game developers are very complex,” Edwards said. “Take something like Skyrim, which is very detailed, very realistic and yet it takes place in a completely fictional universe. Or things like Halo, which actually takes place in our universe but in the far future. It involves a lot of science fiction elements and imagining things the way they might be at the time. Even something like Super Smash Bros still has a world, still has an environment, still has a narrative.

“[There are also] games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and this is the kind of world that I would call hyperreal. So it’s almost Los Angeles but it’s not quite Los Angeles. It’s Los Santos, but they did such a remarkable job of recreating the vibe of LA as the basis for their world building.”

All these games have something in common: they use certain tricks to make the player believe that there is a larger universe beyond what they can see in the game.

Understanding the core aspects of world building

Setting the context of your game, thinking about its complexity and the structure of its world, are all key aspects to world building, and the first questions you should ask yourself.

“We’ve got the real world and we’ve got fictional worlds, and then of course we have this broad zone of overlap in between,” Edwards said. “It is never black and white. You often have games that are purely fictional because the narrative demands it, and you’ve got others that are completely in the real world, but they might be in a different time or somewhere in the middle.

“This is important because it does matter in terms of culturalisation decisions. If you’re setting your game in the real world and using real geography with real culture and history, you have a different set of rules you have to follow.”

Edwards is talking about the realisation of your world — not to be mistaken with the realism of your game, she pointed out.

“Realism is a design decision — how realistic they want [the game] to look. Realisation is the combination of the narrative goals of your game and its experience goals. So what’s the story behind the game and what is the player actually doing in your game? That’s the most basic level to define; what your realisation goals are. The realisation goals basically set out how much of the world you actually need to make, and that’s really important.”

From there, there are structural tools you can use for realising your world and making your game’s setting believable, by making it feel like it belongs to a larger universe, even when that larger world is never seen.

Build world familiarity with thematic layers

There are thematic layers that you can use when creating a world that will make it feel more complete. Edwards pointed out that this list could include many more levels of details, depending on the type of universe you’re building.

·Climatology and atmosphere
·Geophysics
·Biosphere
·Demographics (species, genders, ages, ethnicities)
·Cultural identities (language, history/lore, symbology)
·Cultural systems (faith, politics, economy, transportation)

However, be careful about how you use these layers — ideally, they need to add to the narrative in a meaningful way.

“A game like Breath of the Wild, the climate system is directly impacting the gameplay,” Edwards said. “You’re running around in the mountains, you get zapped with lightning, you freeze. When they decided to put a weather system in the game, it actually made sense because it all has a direct impact on the narrative and on the experience. Now, I’ve seen other games where they built a weather system, but it really doesn’t do anything. It’s just there for atmospheric purposes.

“Now, that’s okay, but my warning to you, and the reason I bring up the layer approach, is to think very carefully about what layers you need to realise the game. I would recommend you start with that. Most games are going to need some kind of actual geography like landforms, but maybe not [yours].

“So you have to think very hard about what exactly [is] the most minimal version of the world to serve the experience and narrative goals [of your game]. And then, if you at least get that far, then you can make decisions [about] whether or not you want to add additional layers that might enhance the visuals, that might enhance the environmental appeal, but I would not go there until you’ve actually at least satisfied the most basic realisation needs.”

Rely on maps and languages

This may sound like common sense, but maps and languages are both crucial steps to making a world feel alive.

“I think the inspiration for a lot of us came from JRR Tolkien,” Edwards said. “What he did in his world building process [was] using his core strength, which was language. And so he was able to create languages like Elvish and Dwarfish, and he used [them] as a basis for creating a culture around that language, which then populated this world.”

A great example of a game language that led to a realised world is Simlish, the language invented for The Sims. While it may sound like gibberish there’s actually some logic to it, which you can read about in this excellent article on TechRadar. It all participates in making the player feel like their character is part of a wider world.

No one is expecting you to create a new language every time you develop a game, but you can achieve a sense of belonging to a culture by using specific expressions, dialects or accents. Tolkien also enhanced this feeling by creating geography in his world by using a map, which is a common trope in fantasy.

“There’s a lot of maps that get created for fantasy works and it’s often the author’s way of solidifying the reality of the world that they created. We respond to maps as being factual, we see them as being something like an artifact of actual exploration and research. So for a lot of authors, when they create a map, it’s their way of saying: I was there, I went to this place, and now the story that you’re going to read is basically the story that I saw first-hand when I was there.

“It’s an interesting notion, and using maps in that way often gives a certain sense of reality that you would not get if you didn’t have the map there to illustrate the world and the context of the world.”

Build cultural evidence

Cultural evidence is another strong tool to create a fully-realised world, and it’s essentially the process of “making stuff,” Edwards explained.

“You’re past the concept phase and now you’re basically letting loose all the fantastic creative people on your team. But what happens often during this phase is that people over-create and/or they just build environments and throw all kinds of stuff in there — objects, symbols, banners. They just dress up the world and make it look lived in.”

However, if you want your game’s world to be cohesive and well realised, you need to think carefully about how it’s populated.

“Don’t be lazy with creativity,” Edwards continued. “Don’t just create stuff because you can. You need to always create with a purpose. So when you’re creating an object and throwing it in the environment you need to think: Why is this going into the environment? What does it mean? What relevance does it have to the narrative and all the other things that are going on? Not everything always has to have a direct relationship to the player, but it still should be created with a purpose, not just kind of thrown in there because you’re trying to rush down a checklist that some manager gave you.”

She also pointed out that someone in the team should always ask artists those challenging questions.

“Somebody should ask: what does that mean? Where did that come from? What was your inspiration? Now you don’t have to question everything, but I’m saying sometimes having that meta level of question really helps, not only the creators to step back from what they did and think about what they actually created, but also to catch things that may be potentially problematic later on.”

Ensure logical consistency

Not only should the cultural evidence you’re building make sense for the universe you’re creating, but everything should be logically consistent with the design of the world.

“We have logical rules that exist and they apply to everything that’s within the world,” Edwards said. “Why is this important? Because, even within Tolkien’s universe for example, much of his universe is built on real world rules — rules of gravity, geomorphology, hydrology. Even when he adds things into his narrative, like magic for example, the way that magic is used has to have a sense of logical consistency. Only certain people can [use magic] and only at certain times do they evoke that power for certain reasons.

“Those are rules. If you have something in a game, whether it’s something fantasy or bizarre or whatever, it still should be rooted in some kind of logical rule. We want to make sure that when we’re creating things there’s not a contradiction either between the narrative intent that we have and the narrative experience, or the content that’s in the world.”

Edwards took the example of Kameo, a 2005 game developed by Rare that she worked on. This completely fictional universe that has nothing to do with our world featured symbols that resembled Christian crosses. When Edwards questioned what they were supposed to be, the artist said they were grave markers.

“That’s interesting because there’s no Christianity in this universe of Kameo, so why would they be using wooden crosses? That doesn’t make any sense. At the time, the answer I got from the artist was: ‘What else would I use?’ And I’m like: maybe create a grave marker that fits the narrative of the Kameo universe?”

Imply complex systems

In order to imply complex systems in your world, you need to create connections between characters, locations, architecture — you need to imply lore, without necessarily building it.

“This is a concept that a lot of narratives use to basically convey the sense of a much larger world,” Edwards said. “You can mention something without having to fully explain it or to go into depth about it, but you’ve made a connection. And to make that connection is all you need to do so you can convey a much bigger sense of a universe without actually building that universe. ”

All it takes is an interaction with a book or an object in-game that explains some lore for instance. Edwards took the example of Halo: Combat Evolved to explain the concept.

“You’re running around in this environment, and you’re seeing this really interesting architecture that was made by the Forerunners [an alien species in Halo]– I remember in that original game a lot of us were really fascinated by the story behind this ring. Why does it exist and who are these people? The core narrative the game gives very little evidence about who the Forerunners are and what happened on this ring, but the game [had] these things called the terminals, and if you interact with them, up would pop a screen and it would give you a whole sense of backstory as to what was going on in this world.

“So just by doing that one thing, one point of interaction, you click on it, you read something, all of a sudden you’ve expanded the narrative of the world. You didn’t have to build a whole other level, you didn’t have to build a whole bunch of other characters, you basically were able to open a little window into a broader narrative around the universe you created.”

（source: gamesindustry.biz ）