篇目1，将情感带进游戏设计中的5大步骤

作者：admin-pagc

虽然市场上已经出现了无数免费游戏和社交电子游戏，但遗憾的是，大多数游戏的收益都不佳，许多开发商和发行商甚至遭遇了巨大的经济损失。出现这种情况的一大原因便是，许多游戏都不能与玩家建立情感联系，游戏设计也未强调情感的重要性。如此便大大遏制了游戏的用户粘性，并减少了玩家愿意为游戏所投入的金钱。

像《坦克世界》以及《CSR赛车》等优秀的免费游戏每个月能赚取1100–2000万美元以及900万美元其实都不是偶然，因为它们都能与玩家建立起紧密的情感联系。

我将在本篇文章里列出5个步骤，引导开发者们如何将情感带进自己的免费游戏中，如果他们能够遵循这些步骤，便能将游戏的玩家转换率从1%-3%提升到10%-30%。

步骤1.明确玩家的属性（当前或目标用户）

判断不同玩家类型的特征

Richard Bartle明确了4种不同玩家类型去研究多用户游戏（MUD）中的玩家行为。这些玩家类型被当成游戏设计过程中识别并应对玩家需求（包括情感动机）的最有效方法。这四种玩家类型包括：杀手，成就者，探索者，社交家。

首先我们需要了解这四种玩家类型以及每种类型的情感驱动元素。

了解你的玩家并创建玩家属性

如果你已经创造了一款游戏并且拥有了一些玩家基础，你便需要找出与这些玩家相关的信息。这能帮助你创建与游戏玩家类型相关的设计属性。举个例子来说吧，如果你发现大多数玩家都是杀手，那便说明你当前的游戏设计太过倾向于杀手玩家及其情感需求，同时也意味着你可能忽视了其它类型的玩家。尽管这并不一定是问题所在（也许杀手就是那些最乐意为游戏花钱的玩家），但是你也需要更加仔细地进行研究。

创建玩家属性的一种有效方式便是面向你的玩家基础，或者更广泛的玩家展开调查。你需要准备一些关于玩家情感动机和需求的问题，并基于Bartle的四种玩家类型去设定问题。调查的目标是明确你的玩家基础中会出现哪种类型的玩家以及当前的玩家组合是怎样的。

如果你的游戏仍处于设计阶段，你还未获得任何玩家，你便拥有两种选择。如果你心中已经构思了一个玩家社区，例如那些曾经玩过你的其它游戏的玩家，你便可以针对于这一群租进行调查。同样地，你也可以着眼于与你当前创造的相同类型的游戏，并尝试着找出这些游戏是如何迎合这四种不同类型的玩家。

明确哪些玩家是最有价值的

当你获得了玩家调查的结果后，你需要为每个玩家创建一个属性，即包含他们的玩家类型（根据这些玩家对于调查的回应所确定的）。

下一步便是决定玩家的终身价值（LTV）——面向每个玩家，然后再面向每种玩家类型。

为每个玩家创造LTV的方法包括：

1.定义一些重要且能够为你们公司带来价值的元素。也许这些元素多种多样，但是一般分为：

玩家消费。根据玩家的消费可以划分为从0到5的级别，0是从未为游戏花钱的玩家，5则是鲸鱼玩家。一个典型的例子便是，Social Gold的首席执行官Vikas Gupta在伦敦的Virtual Goods Forum（2010年7月24日）将用户消费行为描述为国王，骑士，公爵，平民以及农民。

病毒式渠道的使用。可以被划分为从0到4的级别，如非常不频繁，偶尔，频繁，非常频繁，最大化。

社区互动。可以被划分为从0到4的级别，如从未发表任何内容或发表负面内容，很少发表内容但发表的都是正面内容，偶尔发表内且发表的都是正面内容，频繁发表各种正面内容，极度频繁地发表所有正面内容。

忠诚。可以被划分为1到5的级别，包括每个月至少玩一次（但没有其它忠诚的标志了），每个月至少玩一次游戏同时还订阅了时事通讯内容或者你的其它游戏，每周至少玩一次游戏并订阅了时事通讯内容或者你的其它游戏，每天玩游戏，每天玩游戏并订阅了时事通讯内容或者你的其它游戏。

2.基于每种元素为每个玩家分配一个分数，然后评估他们的整体LTV分数。

3.评估每个玩家在首次玩游戏时共花了多少钱。

4.现在你便拥有了每个玩家的LTV，然后面对不同玩家类型去评估这些数值。如此你便能看出哪些玩家类型代表最高价值，从而让你能够做出相应的改变，去吸引那些你想要吸引的玩家类型。

5.与理解玩家LTV一样，基于调查结果以及其它研究结果，你能够挖掘到玩家的情感需求。你需要将其记录下来，并在之后加以利用。

步骤2：评估游戏的文化适应性

创建游戏与玩家间的情感联系的关键元素便是理解他们的文化期待，经历以及需求。文化间的差异总是非常巨大。举个例子来说吧，在巴西，比起《World War 2》和《现代战争》，人们更加喜欢内战和黑帮题材的游戏（游戏邦注：如“贫民窟”），所以以中东或欧洲战争为背景的战争游戏很难在这个国家获得盈利。在亚洲，人们更钟情于偷取其他玩家的道具，认为这是一种可接受的社交互动，但是西方文化却不认可这一点。

以下是我们在考虑文化元素时需要注意的5大重要内容：

1.历史和态度（过去的事件是否会对人们当前的态度造成影响？这是最近的历史还是更早前的事？）

2.当前的热门话题，新闻和事件（这些内容是否能够公开讨论，还是敏感话题）。在不同地区有些主题较为敏感，如巴西玩家都很喜欢基于“贫民窟”和黑帮题材的游戏，但是在墨西哥却不会出现以之为主题的游戏。

3.流行文化和本土品牌。例如城市建造游戏可以突出当地的商店，烹饪游戏可以突出当地的厨师以及食物的名称，赛车游戏可以突出玩家所处城市的汽车品牌。

4.生活品质（思潮，富裕程度，财富的传播，人们对于钱的态度）。

5.生活方式的选择，爱好与兴趣。例如在英国很少人会对火车题材感兴趣，但是在日本这却是个很火的主题。在许多拉美国家，DIY和家居装饰题材并不吃香，但是欧洲玩家却很喜欢这些内容。宗教信仰的不同也是很重要的一大元素，例如避免呈现某种类型的动物。

基于上述内容，我们应该判断如何根据这些元素去调整游戏设计，明确哪些设计原则和特征更有效。如果你需要让游戏能够更好地适应不同文化元素，那就通过头脑风暴去决定各种新游戏元素或作出相应改变。

步骤3：理解玩家的情感需求

在研究玩家的情感需求时我们需要考虑到3种类型的情感：

1.积极情感。包括狂喜，欢乐，惊讶，好奇等情感。

2.消极情感。包括内疚，羞耻，生气，害怕等情感。

3.组合情感。例如幸灾乐祸，即组合了内疚与喜悦的情感。

我不知道有什么方法能够平衡积极，消极和组合情感，因为面对不同的游戏，情感也会发生变化，但是我们可以想办法避开纯粹的消极情感！

如何将情感应用于游戏设计中？

为了明确情感吸引力，情感设计应该专注于一些不同的游戏设计元素。我们将在下文进行详细解释。考虑到这些元素，我们应该创造/更新设计原则，指南以及更高级别的设计元素去反应游戏设计中所需要的情感。

1.内容

内容包括所有能够构成核心游戏机制的虚拟对象，并且这些对象通常都是可收集的，能够吸引玩家与之进行深入互动。例如：

在Natual Motion的《CSR赛车》中，玩家能够驾驶汽车前进（游戏邦注：这便是最强大的游戏情感元素）。游戏中的所有道具都给出了非常详细的描述，从而有效地吸引了玩家的注意。

在《坦克世界》中，玩家可以在战斗中使用坦克。坦克的设计完全贴近主题，因此吸引了利基玩家的注意。游戏中还提供了大量的坦克供玩家收集，并且每种坦克都具有不同的行为，优势与劣势。

《动物之森》包含了家具等可收集道具，能够让玩家去装饰自己的家，同时还提供了各种动物能够让玩家与之进行互动。可收集道具是利用任天堂的IP备份目录以及玩家对于内容的现有情感依附。例如，立体声音乐播放器能够播放音乐磁带，而声音质量也会基于不同的立体声类型发生改变。拥有自己个性的动物也能帮助玩家与他们维系起更紧密的关系，这些动物不仅非常逼真，同时每个角色也都是与众不同的。

《CityVille》拥有大量的建筑和基础设置能够帮助玩家创造属于自己的城市。在《小小大星球》中，玩家可以收集大量资源和目标去创建具有现实特性的全新关卡（并在这些关卡中游玩）。游戏中的目标都非常吸引人，并且玩家可以基于现实方式与之进行互动。

《最终幻想7》提供了各种可游戏的角色，包括他们的咒语，装备，属性，技能与个性。因为玩家需要投入大量时间去发展自己的角色，并打开更多新技能与能力，所以他们将投入更多情感于角色中，并且随着玩家在游戏中的前进，将能遇到各种不同的惊喜，游戏中也总是会出现各种新功能去支持玩家角色的发展。

在《歌星》中，玩家可以下载并演唱各种歌曲和影像。游戏内容将影响玩家与音乐间的情感联系。

从这些例子中我们可以看出，拥有较高用户粘性以及付费者和非付费者比例的游戏总是拥有非常详细且互动的内容，并且这些内容的设计目的都是为了让玩家能依附于其中。这些内容生成了大量积极情感以及少量的消极情感，例如当道具不可行或者难以触及时，玩家便会产生失落感。

2.环境

环境是一种特殊的游戏设置和背景，例如某一特定时间或地点。举些例子来说：

《CSR赛车》是以黑帮聚集的纽约街道为背景

《坦克世界》是设置在第二次世界大战时的德国，俄罗斯以及欧洲的其它国家

《最终幻想7》是发生在一个蒸汽朋克风格，萧条且贫困的城市Migdar

《口袋世界》是以现代幻想世界中的各种区域，如Kanto和Johto等为背景

开发者需要谨慎选择游戏环境，并考虑文化，目标用户群体，玩家性别和年龄等因素。

3.主题和故事

这是指与游戏任务，目标整合在一起的特定类型与故事。例如《CSR赛车》的主题便是玩家使用高性能的赛车与其它帮派的人为争夺最佳赛手的称号在大街上展开比赛。

开发者必须仔细设计主题和故事：

适应你的目标玩家的需求。例如，杀手和成就者对故事便不是很感兴趣，反而更专注于击败其他玩家或在游戏中争第一。而探索者和社交家则喜欢受游戏故事的驱动，乐于让故事去提高他们的社交体验。

考虑文化元素

4.界面

界面本身便能够带给玩家强大的情感影响。如果玩家能够越轻松地表达自己，他们便能够投入更多情感于其中。举个例子来说吧，一直都很畅销的一款电子游戏，《Wii Sports》便简化了互动让玩家能够轻松地模仿各种行动，就好似他们在现实世界中玩网球一样。这便大大提高了玩家的满足感，鼓励他们继续游戏，手势舞动也为游戏增添了乐趣感。

相反地，如果限制了玩家与游戏世界的互动便不利于玩家做出情感反应。例如在《暴雨》中，玩家需要大力左右移动控制器以帮主角刷牙。这是克服普通控制器局限性的一种积极做法，能够鼓励玩家模仿现实中的行动，但是我认为这种移动会破坏我在游戏中的沉浸感，并最终削弱我对游戏的情感反应（产生强大的懊悔情绪）。

《CSR赛车》利用了许多技术为玩家创造一种强大的控制感，即使他们不能直接操纵赛车。即玩家需要仔细安排屏幕碰触的时间（例如在适当时候加速引擎以在比赛开始时获得优势）。

Kobojo的《Smooty Tales》让玩家能够通过来回移动鼠标而为自己的动物角色“洗澡”，从而有效地维系起玩家与动物之间的关系。如果玩家只是点击图标去完成这些任务的话便不可能创造出如此强的情感联系。

《CityVille 2》在玩家收集房租时使用计时器也能够带给他们更深互动感，而不只是点击房屋去收房租。

5.玩家奖励

不同游戏所呈现的玩家奖励也不同，但是提供给玩家足够奖励的重要性也不能被夸大。如果游戏能够提供给玩家适当且足量的奖励，玩家便会觉得自己的付出（游戏邦注：如他们为游戏投入的时间和金钱）有了回报。如果游戏不能有效处理奖励分配，玩家便很容易感到厌倦，并对游戏感到失望，而游戏中的各种情感设计元素也会受到破坏。

以下是5种奖励类型：

1.能够用于互动的新内容（核心游戏机制的重要组成部分，同样也能够支持游戏内容，如游戏角色的新衣服，迷你游戏等）

2.成就，奖杯或其它能够证明玩家在游戏中取得进步的方式

3.收集物，如一些很难找到或需要花时间才能获得的道具

4.募捐内容，如通过馈赠而获得内心的满足，包括对现实的慈善机构所做出的贡献（例如通过社交游戏进行募捐）

5.竞争，不管是与其他玩家还是游戏竞争。这与设置升级的信息或声音一样简单，当玩家打败其他人时总是能够获得强大的情感奖励。《坦克世界》最吸引人之处便在于竞争元素，同时它也谨慎平衡了胜利与失败，让玩家不仅不会因为失败感到耻辱，同时还会因为屡次获胜而感受到自己的进步以及付出的回报。

开发者应该基于不同类型玩家的需求去设计并平衡奖励。例如收集物更适合成就者，而竞争则更适合杀手。

步骤4：设计并创造带有情感吸引力的新内容

基于玩家属性和LTV分配设计工作

如果你能够收集玩家或目标用户的有用信息，包括玩家属性和LTV，这便能够帮助你分配设计工作，决定先创造哪些内容。如果社交家型玩家是你的最高价值玩家，你便可以优先考虑将情感设计整合到设计原则，指南和高层次的设计元素中。

概念设计

尽早明确/更新游戏设计原则，指南和设计元素去反应情感吸引力，然后修改/完善/创造概念设计，以反映之前创造/更新的设计原则，指南和高层次的设计元素。我们可以通过头脑风暴等方式去执行这一工作。

详细设计，构建与QA

当概念设计完成后，我们需要马上进行详细设计，创造/更新游戏设计文件以反应新的情感要求，然后遵循QA和测试结果创造游戏资产与代码。

如果你已经完成了游戏创造，那么你便可以在3或6个月的内容计划中完成新内容的设计与创造，如有规划地引进改变内容。

步骤5：评论和完善游戏内容

在游戏发行后我们仍能继续设计，创造并发行新游戏内容，但我们仍需要考虑是否重复1至4个步骤，或至少重新回顾之前所做的，以确保游戏能够始终与当前玩家的需求保持情感联系。

结论

我认为将情感整合到游戏中是一种费时又复杂的工作，所以很多开发者总是会忽视这些内容，特别当他们面对的是休闲的“非游戏”用户时。

有很多证据能够证明强大的情感联系将提高游戏转换率，并带来更多收益。就像之前提到的，出色的免费游戏，如《坦克世界》和《CSR赛车》每个月能够生成上百万美元的收益，并且有30%以上的用户（至少是对于《坦克世界》而言）愿意为一款免费游戏投入更多资金。

篇目2，镜像神经元引发玩家对游戏角色的情感共鸣

作者：Jamie Madigan

你们体验过Telltale Games游戏《行尸走肉》吗？我曾经玩过，而且每次安装这款情景游戏总会令我震撼其引起的情感共鸣。

这款游戏则较为单调，其感染力主要来自观看角色陷入糟糕且无人相助的情境。就像许多恐怖故事，其感染方式如同过山车那般忽起忽落。其中的角色总充满失望、悲伤、紧张、后悔与绝望之情。

令人惊讶的是，我从《行尸走肉》中体会到这些情感。我十分满意每月安装后的情感体验，因为我需要重获这些感受。然而，为何会出现这种情况？《行尸走肉》这类电子游戏主要依靠哪些心理、神经与生物机制，引起玩家对画面角色的同情，并产生相似情绪？

为解决上述谜团，我们首先从意大利的猕猴实验入手。

几年前，意大利帕尔玛市的神经学家为了理解单个大脑细胞的功能，在猕猴上做实验。他们在其大脑中植入电线，勘测关于抓住食物送到小猴子口中这类功能的细胞活动。2008年，研究人员Marco Iacoboni在《Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others》一书中解释，相关突破性进展形形色色，且疑点重重，但大多数时候，猴子总是连接到电线上，等待下个试验。此时走过来一个测试人员，他伸手抓起一些有趣物品（游戏邦注：比如水果，或是标记“激活释放所有猴子”的大型红色按钮），递给猴子们。

突然，该测试人员根据连接到猴子大脑的设备发现，其抓住行为激活了它们的神经元，即使它们只是看到抓住行为。这种现象十分奇怪，由于大脑细胞通常较为独特，还没有人知道执行动作或是观看别人采取同样动作会激活神经元。而此时，猴子们却有反应，先前激活的神经元只与机械动作有关，而且它们只是静坐观看。

因此，我们首次发现行为中的镜像神经元，它与大脑中的其它神经细胞不同。而且不少研究人员（游戏邦注：包括之前提到的UCLA精神病学与行为科学教授Dr. Marco Iacoboni）相信，它是引发我们同情《行尸走肉》中Lee与Clementine处境的重要因素。

Iacoboni通过邮件告知：“镜像神经元属于运动细胞。它们会向肌肉发送信号，移动身体，采取动作，比如拿起一杯咖啡，微笑等。然而，它们又有别于运动细胞，因为前者还能通过看到他人行为激活。”比如，无论是我抓住Xobx控制器，还是看到好友做出此动作都会激活镜像神经元模仿抓住行为。“即使我们一动不动，只是观察他人移动也会激活该神经元，而后可能会在大脑中进行模仿。”

由于好奇该现象的运作模式，Iacoboni与其同事展开一番研究，利用精密设备监视被测者在观察不同面部表情后的大脑活动。不出所料，此时镜像神经元区域与边缘系统（游戏邦注：大脑中与情感相关的部分）通通被激活，简单来说，只要看到面部表情，便会激活镜像神经元，好像被测者也在做出同种表情，接着触发大脑情绪中心的活动，结果被测者就会真切体会到这种情绪。

Iacoboni解释道：“这种过程几乎不费力气，立马会让我们体会到他人的情绪。这也是我们沉浸在电影与小说情节的原由。”当我们看到《行尸走肉》中，Lee Everett与其它角色面露厌恶情绪时，我们的表情镜像神经元会被激活，好像自己也露出这种神色。接着通过内部模仿，我们会体会到某种程度的情绪，从而理解他人的感受。

我想，《行尸走肉》善于引发情感共鸣的一个原因便在于此：它会频繁展示出角色的各种表情，接着我们会投入大量精力识记并信以为真。因此并不是僵尸引发我们的恐慌感。而是像Kenny在听到Lee述说自己正艰难地在家人之间作抉择时露出的神情。

该作创意总监Sean Vanaman表示：“我们投入大量时间创作角色的面部动作。在编写首个情景后，我们列出角色在故事中的所有情绪，而后制作出相应面部动作。并贯穿在整个游戏中。”

然而，他们在看到表情后不仅会进行模仿。如之前提到的，Iacoboni与其同事在2004年的研究中发现，有些被测者还会做出模仿动作，且内心活动逐渐增多。由此可见，积极模仿表情更有助于我们产生共鸣与理解，其中部分涉及到“面部反馈假设”研究。比如，在2005年，研究人员Paula Niedenthal让两组被测者观看他人表情。

但是，其中一组需咬住一把铅笔，这便严重限制他们模拟他人表情的能力。结果，咬笔一组的面部情绪无多大变化，因为缺乏模仿限制了他们识记别人表情，体会其情绪，并复杂的能力。

总之，我认为此次试验的寓意在于，如果你真的想从《行尸走肉》中获得最佳效果，紧闭双眼或从食指间窥探会抑制你模仿角色表情的能力。这时，镜像神经元就难以让你复制角色陷入厄运时的表情。

篇目3，论游戏设计中的映像情绪和原始情绪

作者：Danc（游戏设计师，现任Spry Fox公司创意总监）

并非所有情绪生来就平等。

思考：阅读到描写母亲将不久于人世的章节，读者悲伤的情绪涌上心头；自己的母亲病危在床而无法抑止忧伤的蔓延，这两种感觉显然是不同的。前者是一种虚无的反射，我们本能地知道那不是一种真实的凶兆。后者是一种伴随着生命发展的、自然的、原始的情感。

我已经看过相关的术语，所以冒着雷同的风险，我们采用以下标签进行说明。

映像情绪（Shadow emotions）：这种情绪的产生与故事、艺术和其他无真实危险的唤起型刺激物有关。

原始情绪（Primary emotions）：当我们所处的情境具有真实可感的影响时，我们就会产生这种情绪。

我所见识过最接近以上概念的是“身体印记理论”（Somatic Marker Theory）。它的基本主张如下：

“当我们做决定时，我们必须利用认知和情绪过程评估选择的诱因价值。当我们面对复杂而矛盾的选择时，我们无法单靠认知过程做决定，且过度刺激的的认知过程本身也无法帮我们决断。

在这种情况下，身体印记可以帮助我们做决定。身体印记是介于强化诱发相关生理情感状态的刺激物们之间的结合体。”

这个理论的关键在于，确定了两类相异的情绪。第一类是紧密对应原始情绪的“体循环”；第二类是呼应映像情绪的“类体循环”。

毫无疑问，这是一个值得好好研究的课题。所以如果哪位学过神经学的人能够提出更准确的分类和相关模型，我乐意修正本文。

这两类情绪的区别看似很学术，但我对游戏激发原始情绪的能力非常着迷。游戏激发情绪的方式对于更加反射性的媒体而言，就算不是不可能，也是相当困难的。作为游戏设计师，我可以且已经将玩家置于体验真实损失的境地。而最引人入胜的电影能做到的不过是激发遭遇损失的映像。

关于记忆与情绪的简要思考

要描述映像情绪的机制，了解一点背景知识是必要的。我们就从记忆与情绪之间的联系开始吧。

记忆往往会影响判断。在一定程度上，记忆的真正功能已经被“数据存储”这个现代化的概念污染了。也许，“教训”更适合解读“记忆”。每一份记忆都贴上了若干个情绪标签。面对某种刺激时，如果我们唤醒了与之相关的记忆，它就会告诉我们如何应对当前的刺激。当你看见人行道上蹲坐着一条狗，你会本能地将它与你现存的思维模式和以往见过的狗的记忆相比较。在这种认知基本活动中，你几乎立即产生某种情绪。如果印像中的狗比较善良可爱，现在你可能觉得舒服和欢喜；如果你回想起的狗是“龇牙咧嘴”的，你也许会感到焦虑袭身。一刹那，你非常清楚你对那条狗的印像。

认为情绪是一种早期的、认知的专门形式，是因为它服务于生存的功能。你经常做决定，但你没有时间思考。你能想到的有：快点！就是现在！此时此刻，你的脑子里灌满情绪的信号。你奔跑、攻击、团结、威胁或踌躇，都是因为这种强烈的、原始的、高效的情绪。与记忆相捆绑的情绪唤醒了数十年的经验，然后将其转化为瞬间的本能反应。

更复杂的认知从容地进行某类决定，这种拖延造成了失败，失败又必然要付出代价，所以要有一触即发的情绪避免损失。如果你受到狼攻击，你不可能还可以谨慎地分析如何对犬科动物进行分类。之后的数秒或数小时，你对处境的意识性理解才开始生效，然后缓和情绪上的反应。更经常的情况是，我们所认为的意识，仅仅是对我们急转直变的情绪作辩解。

情绪是必需的，但并没有受教化。我们很容易就能铭记在最困难时刻遭遇的教训。有些孩子小时候受到“本地霸王”的欺负，要生存就只能奋起反击；孩子成年后，又惨遭老板“穿小鞋”，这时他如果采取相同的反抗形式，那他的麻烦就大了。之所以管理情绪会这么棘手，是因为会触发情绪的情形往往在我们意识到之前就发生了。按照经验教训，我们的情绪迅速转变成一种下意识的行动（游戏邦注：但有时候也可能没有采取行动）。

演绎情绪性情景的叙事方式

你不可能轻易地或有意识地停止完全激活的情绪；然而，你可以提前训练。方法之一是，借助安全的叙述、声音和意象媒介，测试和探索我们的情绪。激发安全的情绪反应的机制，主要是以移情和情绪性记忆的混合体为基础。

刺激物：当我们看到或想到某个唤起情绪的故事或场面。

记忆：我们挖掘储藏在脑海里的相关记忆。

合成：我们把不同的元素组合为连贯的整体。

移情：我们模拟在特定情况下的感觉。

有意识的理解：我们处理从安全距离中生成的安全情绪。

现在想像一下，你看到一条狗蹲坐在人行道上。你非常清楚它不会伤害你，因此你焦虑的情绪舒缓了。然后你激活你的移情活动，最后模拟情绪（假设你那条狗真的在你面前，你会作何感想）。现在你酝酿着情绪并感受它，从多个角度审视它。你本能地融入这种情节中。你不必从狗身边飞也似地逃开了，这种想法让你舒服多了。通过记忆这种校正过的印像，你稍微缓和了未来“见狗”的情绪反应。

从生物学的角度看，这实在是一种太过划算的情绪缓和练习。你不必将自己放到可能有致命的危险的情境中，而只需坐在椅子上好好想想。这种训练虽不完美，但我认为有一定效果。大量实验研究表现了如何通过心理反应的加工和认知标签的运用来区分情绪。如果你可以练习给肾上腺贴上勇敢而不是恐惧的标签，你大约能够克服面对现实情形时产生的情绪吧。

尽管这个理论绝对不是坚不可催，但它至少可以表明，许多流行的科幻小说和艺术品都高度关注激发情绪和强度的剧情链。呼唤型艺术作品往往能表现出危险的、昂贵的或社交中的情形，所以我们得以在安全的形式下练习那些情形。

映像情绪

消耗和模拟呼唤型刺激物能产生相对安全的情绪，也就是我所谓的映像情绪。

映像情绪绝不是虚假的情绪。你的心率增加、手心出汗——过往的情形唤醒了你的真实情绪，你的身体随之作出反应——生理特征的出现就是证明。然而，你理智地知道它是一种能小心控制的实验。

人类生来就对模拟与现实有着不可思议的敏锐理解，所以我们识别出它只是一种模拟体验之后，就可以放下心将其搁置一边了。

映像情绪也并非绝对安全的。回想强烈的情绪是一种紧张、甚至可怕的经历——有过创伤治疗经历的人会认同这个观点。你的模拟实验离最初事件的时间越接近，你的情绪反应就越激烈。

以上理论已经成为强化戏剧和艺术表现的常见手法。以下列表虽不全面，但对激发映像情绪有兴趣的人可以将其作为实用的参考工具：

大量描述突出的刺激物

夸大刺激物

层叠多重刺激渠道

瞄准普遍存在的情绪触发物（游戏邦注：例如爱、死亡、胜利等等）

创造连贯的情景和因果的链条，以促进模拟实验

拟人化刺激物，以便更好地配合个人的情绪经历。

作为艺术家、小说家和游戏设计师，这些我都用过了，不少都能推测出来，所以就没那么神秘了。适当地运用这些技巧，可以增加召唤的映像情绪的强度。“召唤”这个词是关键，因为我们更关心的是运用信号去激发已存在的情绪。同样地，我认为这些技巧主要运用于简化处理我们的唤起型信息的方式或增加信号强度的方式。

映像情绪当然存在于游戏中。事实上，游戏业斥巨资试图确保高端游戏机游戏唤起映像情绪的效果，使像电影或书籍等媒体一样出色。技术狂人鼓吹视觉沉浸、现实主义和游戏作为主要的叙述媒体的支配地位，在他们统治的黑暗时代，千名受缚的技术人员英勇地担负起激发强烈映像情绪的重任。这终于让我们见识到巴洛克般奢华的创作，例如《真人快打》、《战神》或《L.A. Noire》等游戏。这种昂贵的事业仍将继续，因为人类渴望将映像情绪作为通向更有效的情绪认知的道路。游戏开发商受到经济利益刺激，也会主动去填补这种需求。

下次你安全地体验射击恐怖分子的快感时，看着渲染得非常华丽的血液和脑浆喷出的慢镜头，并退一步考虑你正在模拟的情形。这显然不是真实的，但你确实有所触动。也许这些镜头还有益健康。这些是活动的映像情绪。我没有被感动，但也许如果我们以更高的分辨率渲染这些脑壳残片，有朝一日，AAA游戏将抵达意义更深刻的阶段。

原始情绪

在奢侈地追求映像情绪的过程中，我们有时候可能会遗失对更深层现象的探索，这种现像是游戏能够激发情绪的基本原理。

我耗费了大半天时间观察游戏玩家。有些是其他人的观察结果，但还有我自己做的、针对游戏或原型的反应的分离式观察。我看到了不同的情绪在活动——如果他们不明白某种关卡布局，玩家可能会觉得受挫。或者如果玩家的角色永久阵亡（《Realm of the Mad God》），他们可能会感到悲伤。或者，如果他们刚好碰上一个长条方块把四排方块全消了（《俄罗斯方块》），他们可能禁不住兴高采烈。

我可以大胆（但可能没有根据）地断言，这些反应与过去的经历并无关联，看似源自更原始的思维循环。那么哪里才是情绪的源头？并非所有情绪都是记忆的回声。从无到有创造记忆的方法也是存在的。

你历经数个小时创建起来的角色“永垂不朽”，目睹此景会让人痛心疾首。这种永远死亡的系统还没在现代游戏中普及，但每天都有成千上百名玩家“阵亡”在《Realm of the Mad God》这款游戏中。设计者可以从纯机制的角度看待这种体验。玩家投入时间和精力去积累资源和技能。然后很大程度上因为技术失误，玩家中弹，所有时间、一切精力，全都在枪林弹雨中付诸东流。

尽管知道这只是无情的系统属性，玩家仍然感到彻骨的悲痛。这是一种像流淌在静脉中的血液一样自然、原始的情感，足以让人感到窒息般的难过。这种情绪毫无玩笑或冷淡的成分。损失的大小和新旧直接关联到体验的强度。大多数玩家很难释怀第一次巨大损失，却还强装淡定。有些人最终无法承受，只能离开游戏。

有趣的是，这种情绪反应也出现在其他非游戏的场景里。最近，我忘了保存一份文件，结果若干小时的努力成果就在该死的一瞬间灰飞烟灭。自责感和失去感非常相似。更极端的例子是，大萧条时期的股市崩溃，所有财富在一夜之间化为泡沫，有些人的情绪反应太过激烈，最终选择从高楼飞身坠落。情绪的系统性产物是一种惊人的现象。

一定程度上存在差异但同样可重现的情绪存在几种变化。如果玩家因为延时或故障或自认为受其他玩家所害而引起角色死亡，玩家的情绪反应几乎总是处于炽热的阶段。对因果机制系统的小规模调整会导致明显的情绪反应。

不同于由唤起型刺激物引发的阴影情绪，原始情绪的出现归功于交互式情境。原始情绪往往涉及以下几个有效的机制因素：

领土

时间

资源

信息

投入和损失

技能和随机

社交互动

以上列表看似所有游戏的基本原素。是的，我们可以简单地认为游戏是与情绪处于同一范畴的系统。没必要重复唤起型媒体的烂比喻了。作为游戏开发者，我们确实不需要映像情绪的支撑，把“游戏做得像游戏”就可以成功地为玩家创造出有意义的情绪体验。

我希望我可以多说一些关于产生原始情绪的生物学过程，可惜这不是我的专业。现在我能做的就是描述我用来激发许多玩家正面原始情绪的实用过程。对比一下我在映像情绪部分列出的方法——这部分内容相当不同吧。

定义：创造描述以玩家为中心的价值系统的机制和模型。玩家应该关注什么，系统和资源如何强化玩家的兴奋感？

适应：通过与价值结构重复产生相互作用，使玩家适应该价值结构。请特别注意技能和资源的获得及社交关系的形成，因为这些设定必须不断发展成熟。

触发：将玩家直接置于实际的损失或收获的情境中，触发新的原始情绪。

你当然可以在这个过程中运用唤起型刺激物，但它只能充当辅助工具。情绪源于玩家与系统之间的交互作用和体验，不是连续用图片、对话或声音轰击别人就能激发的。情绪与玩家的选择、失败、学习及技能和游戏本身都有关系。

我的朋友Stephane Bura对游戏系统映射情绪做了非常重要的研究，但还远远不够。我强烈推荐你阅读他的原创文章《Emotion Engineering in Games》。要完全理解这个课题需要花上几年的功夫，但我希望你有一个良好的开端。

结论

从原始情绪和映像情绪的差异研究中，我收获了大量实用的价值。只要你吸收了这些概念，就可以看着游戏并清楚地提问：“这名玩家的情绪是怎么产生的？”一旦你理清这种机制，你可以继续增加或弱化观察到的效果。你是该增加视觉反馈的精度或还是纯地改变资源变量？如果你既不知道情绪的类型，也不理解驱使情绪的机制，那么你的设计就太盲目了。

游戏如何产生原始情绪，这是另一个重点。国际象棋中的胜利感是真实的。《反恐精英》中的危机感是真实而本能的。当你被邀请加入某个公会，这种归属感会伴随你的余生。我们不是在反思或移情（尽管可以同时发生）。因为游戏的交互式属性和我们采用游戏价值结构的能力，影响的真实性足以在我们的身体内激发出真实的情绪。这是游戏令人惊叹的基本性质，是其他传统媒体力所不及的特点。让我们继续发挥自己的强项吧。

与其浪费时间纠缠于“英雄之旅”和传统唤起型叙事方式，不如好好探索情绪性游戏设计的无边领域。我们做游戏，游戏自有其伟大的力量。如果你抛弃所有对映像情绪的依赖，将设计工作的重点置于创造玩家的原始情绪，结果又会怎么样呢？

在《Realm of the Mad God》中，玩家死了，永不复生——这是对失败的严酷惩罚。与8×8像素的子弹对撞，没有精度，没有现实，也没有精制的剧情，这意味着某些情绪性的东西，这是任何电影或小说都不能捕获的情感。

篇目4，好游戏如何激发玩家的情感共鸣？

游戏邦注：本文原作者是TGRSTAFF，主要讨论视频游戏给玩家带来的情感联系，以及东西方游戏在情感传达上的不同处理方法等问题。原文发表于2009年7月22日，以下所涉事件均以当时为准。

年轻的时候，我经常逃避现实世界，而躲到书本中的幻想世界中。在那里，我能够真切地感受到人物角色和他们所处的世界是多么的美妙，而且那时，我发现自己的情感变化已经与那个幻想世界完全联系在一起了。虽然视频游戏已经占据了我的生活，但是我却再也没有年轻时候的那种情感体验了。

虽然视频游戏比书本和电影传达的信息更为生动，但是为何它却不能带来相应的情感联系呢？根据我自己游戏生涯中的经历，我认为视频游戏并非与情感体验毫无关联。自从视频游戏《Elite》成功吸引了我的注意力并把我真正地引入游戏世界后，我便开始相信视频游戏拥有较大的发展前景，并下定决心对其进行进一步的研究。但是事实上，视频游戏却很少展露此优点，我认为这一点主要应归咎于游戏叙事手法上的失策。

我们以《Infamous》和《Prototype》两款游戏为例，这两款游戏是用不同的方法陈述游戏的故事情节。《Infamous》提供给玩家两种选择，并且在游戏中对人物主角，他的超人以及能量产生影响。相反的，《Prototype》则采用线性的表达方法，并遵循一个特定的故事，且这个故事也不会因为玩家在游戏中的行动而做出改变。

《Infamous》所采用的双重选择比较不具有说服力。因为尽管我按照自己的意愿改变了游戏中的角色形象，但是却不会因此对游戏实际内容产生任何影响。而且这款游戏是通过一种不合理的方法为玩家呈现出“非善即恶”的两种选择，让他们感觉自己像是在玩《芝麻街》中的幼儿游戏。按照这种方法叙述游戏故事并不恰当，《Infamous》如果能采用线性叙述方法，情况可能更妙。

而《Prototype》正是采用这种线性叙述方法，所以比起《Infamous》显得更有吸引力。但是尽管《Prototype》在故事叙述方面略胜一筹，但在游戏角色设计方面却并不值得称道。《Prototype》主角Alex Mercer的整体形象是黑暗，阴沉的，因此只会给玩家留下不良的第一印象。但是事实上，Alex在游戏中扮演的角色却与其外表判若两人。正是因为这个角色，我对这款游戏失去了兴趣，并觉得这个游戏世界让人感觉极为不快。

这两款游戏以不同的方法叙述西方的故事，但正如《Flower》这款PSN游戏的特征一样，比起其它要素，纯粹的视觉表象更有助于展现游戏故事的魅力。而《Braid》这款游戏的开发者则以复杂的谜题和有意令人困惑的视角，隐藏了故事的真相，让玩家对游戏进程百思不得其解。尽管这种注重画面感的游戏更能让玩家感受到情感体验，但是玩家却常常因为关注于它们的画面效果而忽视了这种情感体验。我想世界上也只有一个人才能够完全理解并感受《Braid》这款游戏的魅力，那就是它的开发者Jonathan Blow。

对于游戏为何不能提供更深层次的情感体验，其实玩家最有发言权。因为如果我们能够通过想象并全身心地投入于游戏角色中，也许我们便能感受到那种久违的情感体验了吧？以我过去所体验的游戏为例，第一款让我获得真正情感体验的游戏是Amiga旗下的《Cannon Fodder》。在这款游戏里，每当载入一个新的游戏关卡时，玩家都能够在屏幕上看到满山遍野的士兵坟墓，而这些士兵正是玩家在游戏中战败的士兵。而当那些新的士兵出现在屏幕边缘，并随时待命时，我瞬间感受到自己的决定对于他们的“生命”是多么的重要。虽然这款游戏听起来有些血腥，但是它所呈现的场景确实让我感受到了战争的可怕，并能够真正融入于游戏场景中，不去想任何的其它事。

《Cannon Fodder》并未刻意堆砌大量煽情的说辞，或营造创建这种情感联系的氛围，它只是通过一些简单但却很有震慑力的画面，并利用角色扮演游戏的一些基本功能而对玩家产生情感吸引力。最近的一些西方游戏多为免费的角色扮演游戏，虽然这些游戏能够让我自行改变性别，外形，身世，但是我所做的这些改变却不能对游戏故事产生任何影响，即不论我做何改变，游戏还是会按照最初的设定进行下去。

在《Elder Scrolls IV：Oblivion》这款游戏中，尽管我在初期投入了大量的时间创造了属于自己的游戏角色，但是渐渐的，我便觉得自己丢失了对角色的所有权了。游戏角色所处的环境与我们玩家所处的环境并不一样，它的游戏环境极为令人失望。尽管游戏任务的主角都有一个专门的配音演员，但是其它次要角色却都是由相同的3个演员配音。当游戏中的人物重复对话时，这种情形就有点滑稽了，同时也让整个游戏世界显得极度失真。《Elder Scrolls IV：Oblivion》中呆板的游戏角色，以及不合理的场景设置使这款游戏变得更加怪异。

西方游戏在陈述故事时通常无法让玩家感受到较深层次，较有意义的游戏体验。我只有在过去几年，才发现了一些日本游戏在叙事手法和情感表达上的过人之处。虽然听故事并自行设想一个特定环境中的故事情节和角色，总不如自己添加故事细节更具沉浸感，但这些日本游戏却让我深为震憾。

《Lost Odyssey》所呈现的游戏世界便是一个典型。这款游戏中的故事情节，以及日本角色扮演游戏模式深深扣动我的心弦，真正地感受到其混合叙事风格的魅力所在。尽管这款游戏在某些方面与《最终幻想》系列颇有相似之处，但是它死亡和损失等方面的处理显得更加成熟，而且它也更加侧重于刻画游戏角色及其游戏进程，这一切让我为之倾倒。

《Lost Odyssey》的第一幕非常戏剧化，即游戏主角在那时经历了从冷漠到痛苦的情感变化。而随着他的记忆一点一点被揭露出来，我便开始慢慢同情起这个可怜的角色。在整个游戏过程中，我对主人公的态度发生了从不喜欢到理解的转变，这也正是我与这款游戏产生情感联系的原因所在。这款游戏仅是通过简单的文本叙述，便能让我真切地感受到主人公的悲惨命运，并因此而泪流满面。尽管在游戏这种视觉印象唱主角的媒介中，它使用的叙事方法多少有点落伍，但因为它让我真正受到了情感洗礼，所以我也无法再挑剔其他的瑕疵了。

《Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4》是另外一款以描述角色为主的游戏，但是它却采取了与上述游戏不同的表现手法。我很关注它的人物角色及其不幸遭遇，所以可以忽略其不甚理想的玩法设置。看到这款游戏的人物角色如此具有深度和吸引力，我无法不为之而触动，也承认自己偏爱其中的Chie这个角色。我也没有想到自己会被这款PS2 3D模式的游戏所深深吸引，可以说，它与玩家之间的情感联系实在是太奇妙了。

日本角色扮演游戏成为最近游戏中最具情感体验的佳作并非巧合，在我看来，日本游戏公司一直致力于制作出色的游戏角色，所以会让它们如此具有吸引力。但不幸的是，这些公司一直停留在同一类型的题材中，且游戏角色的设置也大同小异，很难为玩家再创造出更有趣的游戏世界。

找到一款具有较强情感联系的游戏实非易事，但也绝非完全不可能。那些无法满足玩家情感需求的游戏多因陈腔滥调的故事情节而失利。最近发行的《Infamous》和《Prototype》等这类游戏并无虏获玩家的吸引力，因为它们不是游戏道德取向有问题，就是缺乏令人印象深刻的主人公。而《Lost Odyssey》和《Persona 4》这两者却真正理解了游戏与玩家间的情感联系，并设计了一种由角色推动故事发展的戏剧性游戏体验。如果即将问世的《Heavy Rain》能够向玩家传达一个完整的故事情节，并呈现一个具有说服力的游戏世界，那么我相信这款游戏将推动视频游戏成为该领域文化变革中的绝对力量。而在那天到来之前，我将继续在《Persona 4》中操纵着我最喜欢的Chie Satonaka。

篇目5，设计师解析游戏与玩家达成情感互动的核心元素

游戏邦注：本文原作者是游戏作家兼设计师Chuck Jordan，他在文中探究游戏与玩家叙述式有互动方式，为研究玩家和媒介故事的互动开辟了一条新路径。

当今的游戏开发者仍然在定义电子游戏的故事叙述手法，在此情况下，主要的挑战在于剧情（开发者的预设剧情）和游戏过程（玩家与游戏的交互作用之间）的紧张关系。这个难题构成不像是剧情和游戏机制之间的紧张，而像是作为媒体的电子游戏与作为活动的电子游戏之间的紧张关系。

媒介和游戏的天平

想象一个统一体，一端站着《An Inconvenient Truth》（一部关于全球变暖的纪录片），另一端站着《俄罗斯方块》。一个是完全文字式的：它只是把创作者的想法传达给观众。另一个是纯粹抽象派的：不带文字信息，但却为玩家了提供了一个玩乐的环境。一个是媒体，另一个是活动。

任何电子游戏、任何电影、书籍、电视节目、专辑、舞蹈节目等任何创作，都可以放在这个统一体上的任何一点，判断标准只是“这个作品想表达什么（如果有的话）？”

基于以下几个原因，我们仍然认为这个标准有所用处：

第一，它对两个极端都不存在价值判断。讨论电子游戏的内容（而不是电子游戏的机制）通常充满令人误解的术语，例如有趣和有意义。

当人们为从未遭到炮哄的想法（游戏邦注：例如“游戏不需要意味任何东西！”、“游戏是有意义的！”、“认为趣味性超过其他一切的想法是对媒体的幼儿化！”）辩护时，这些术语常常

对讨论造成干扰，甚至使讨论离题万里。受这个标准的庇护，抽象的、“休闲”游戏逃脱了被摒弃的命运（因为其比剧情游戏肤浅）；此外，该标准使这样的断言息声——高度维护抽像游戏设置的纯洁性；任何想要把游戏做得更线性、更叙事性的人还是去做电影更好。

第二，该标准避免将剧情和游戏分化。作为游戏背景的剧情和靠剧情支撑的游戏，二者之所不应有所倚重——即应把二者当成整体的一部分来看待。

最重要的是，此标准承认了交流（不只是陈述游戏）在游戏设计中的重要性。如果一个电子游戏开发者选择通过游戏来讲述剧情，那么她已经把自己的项目当成媒体了。她不得不考虑这个游戏打算向玩家传达什么信息。

反馈循环

人们往往会下意识地厌恶将游戏归入媒介行列，或者不由自主地反感游戏是不是剧情驱动这样的讨论。因为这种归类和讨论从某种角度上讲亵渎了游戏本身的纯粹性和价值。

但把电子游戏当做讲述故事的媒介并不会平庸化游戏设计，正如用电影来讲述故事，将电影艺术及其剪辑艺术平庸化了一样。任何艺术家选择一种媒介时都有责任决定这种媒介的独特之处，及如何把这种媒介运用发挥到淋漓尽致。

媒介式电子游戏的独特之处当然是它们的交互性。它们在开发者和玩家之间搭建了一座持续的、直接的、系统的、有规则的、双向交流的桥梁。这就是所谓的“游戏”。

当我们考虑将游戏作为媒介来设计剧情叙述过程时，剧情和游戏之间的典型差别看似愈加不得其所。在“思”和“做”之间画清界线毫无意义，“开发者之言”和“玩家之语”的离间也说不通。这么做意味着开发者在游戏中对牛弹琴，而玩家则在游戏中鸭子听雷公。

但过场动画和脚本事件并不是故事。整个游戏才是故事，所有的故事都通过游戏设置来讲述（使这种媒体显示了独一无二特点的元素正是游戏设置）。游戏的目的是得到故事的结局，但游戏的规则却是加诸玩家角色的约束。过场动画和脚本事件阐明了这么一个规则：角色是干扰，此路不再通，碎魔晶才是目标。

这个规则并不是引人注目的新定义，却是理念的细微转变。开发者的叙事过程与玩家活动并没有分离，所有人都在讲述剧情的过程中齐心协力。

讲述剧情的语言不同于我们所认识的传统媒体语言——对话、摄影或者设计等等；但游戏设置的语言却是开发者和玩家之间进行双向交流的语言。

开发者阐述新规则或新情节，玩家则提供一些输入，游戏作出响应——这种投入与反馈的循环，也是电子游戏交流活动最基本的元素，正是这种循环使得交互式娱乐在叙事媒介中独树一帜，并且是电子游戏意义的存在方式。

这种循环还在一定程度上定位了剧情游戏设计之间的极端：传统的故事 vs.系统的游戏结构、线性和控制 vs.开放性和不可预测性、艺术 vs.科学、先天才能 vs.后天努力、客观 vs.主观、直觉 vs.观察。

简单地看待各个电子游戏与玩家产生共鸣的时刻也是有意义的，就算共鸣的程度可能只存在于交互娱乐媒体中。游戏如何超越开发者和玩家各自唱独角戏的模式？游戏如何闭合玩家-开发者-玩家的循环圈？

选择

从书籍《Choose Your Own Adventure》到游戏《质量效应》，封闭这个循环圈的最显著、最有力的方式是，在关键剧情的选项里分支叙述剧情。这样，玩家的行为对剧情发展就有了直接的重要影响。

但分支叙述显然存在着完全实用主义的缺陷：资金和时间上都消耗巨大。即使只是一个单纯的善恶选项也可能得制作双重的关键场景，同时，更细微的选项会大大延长游戏开发时间。因为预算的增加，开支越来越难平衡，因为相当大一部分游戏内容是玩家从来不会看到的，而开发者仍然必须在这些内容设计上投入资金。

自从人们开始制作电子游戏，这种想法——分支叙述剧情的问题只是当前技术的极限，就已经存在了。

这个产业的圣杯，或者更准确地说，这个产业的永动机就成了剧情叙述的发动机，它用有限的内容源源不断地生成选择。

但如果我们把电子游戏看成开发者和玩家之间的交流，那么，剧情叙述的发动机真的是必然的、最理想的终极目标？玩家能立即收到偶然选择的反馈，但玩家仍然会保持与开发者的对话吗？

为冒险游戏《Sam & Max》 或 《Strong Bad》设计迷题的那阵子，我想为玩家重现在工作室里设计游戏的经历。玩冒险游戏时，我们经常谈论“啊—哈”时刻，但设计冒险游戏我们也常常“啊-哈”。

设计剧情冒险游戏的过程与玩剧情冒险游戏的过程（情节发展过程，某种程度上）类似，工作室里的每个人都努力想出最有趣、最新奇、最令人满意的方式来引出下一段剧情。

我们所想的方式未必是最好的或者有逻辑的，但每个人都会对此感叹：“是啊！那太完美了！”给玩家一个机会，让他们尽其所能去想他们的方式也并非我们的目标。事实上，有那么几次，玩家在论坛上和游戏测试中提出的建议，比游戏中使用的更有趣、更合理。

但所谓理想，不是简单的玩家说了算，而是与玩家分享这样一个时刻——我们所做的点点滴滴最终完美契合、玩笑中产生妙语联珠、持续关注得到回报和剧情言之有理（就《Sam & Max》而言，是差不多了）。

当开发者追求建立一种平台（让玩家完全掌控剧情的开放性环境）的目标时，他们必须保证交流的感觉没有遗失。另外，开发者并不是在授权给玩家，只是把玩家封闭在一个回音房里，让他们自言自语。

角色代理

对于电子游戏，玩家角色甚至比玩家选项的概念更根本。即使当自身的活动不能直接改变故事进程时，玩家引导剧情走向的体验，一定程度上可以与剧情产生共鸣，这是传统媒体不能复制的。

从电车轨道第一次穿过黑山的时刻，《半条命》系列就已经建立了玩家角色的概念。Gordon Freeman目睹了所有事件的发生，没有他的辅助，贯穿世界的电缆不会有电流通过，红色大发射键不会被按下。

表面上，彻底沉浸在游戏中就是目标。但玩家从来没有彻底融入故事或所扮演的角色Gordon Freeman，很大程度上是因为角色并不重要，玩家沉迷的仍然是剧情讲述。玩家越来越熟悉环境的细节和关键位置之间的空间关系。玩家越来越意识到时光的流逝和时限压力产生的紧张感。

在《半条命2：第二章》中，有这么个场景，Freeman 和 Alyx Vance透过双筒望远镜观察到一队跨步者和其他联合军的车辆通过桥。玩家在这些场景中别无选择；所有玩这个游戏的人都会目睹这一幕。但与电影《世界大战》中的一个类似场景相比，玩家角色产生的不同点就清晰可见了。在电影中是不能让观众产生如此强大的存在感和直接感。

用户界面

游戏开发者面临的风险是，高估了玩家角色的价值，或者过分依赖毫无意义的交互性（这是游戏真实体验的替代品）。编写冒险游戏对话的一个惯用伎俩是，用一系列殊途同归的“选项”打断剧情阐述顺序。

这个把戏旨在把玩家引入互动活动中从而打散剧情顺序的单调性，但滥用这个手段会引起反作用——玩家甚至意识到更多的是他的选择不会真正影响结果、互动活动徒有其表。

过分依赖融入感也有一个风险。科幻恐怖游戏《死亡空间》设计出游戏地图解释、HUD或玩家互动面板，着实是费了一番功夫使用户界面趋于完美。

这份努力确实让用户界面更加突出，然而，因为大多玩家已经受够独立用户界面，所以很难接受不带解释的用户界面。

如果把游戏当作玩家和开发者之间的对话，那么，开发者应该认为游戏角色和融入感是交流沟通的工具，而不只是装饰。

让玩家掌握控制权，游戏能传达什么？这种用户界面式的互动有意义吗？还是说只是给玩家打发封闭剧情顺序时胡乱拍的按钮？

同情心

游戏角色最有效的用途之一是激发玩家对玩家角色或其他角色的同情心。玩家在这种心情的驱使下，不得不考虑自身行为的后果，即使这些行为是开发者事先设定好的并且不限于分支剧情。

这种同情心能更微妙、更令人信服地传达某种理念，这是任何说教式的过场动画所不能及的，因为玩家渐渐意识到自身在剧情中的角色。

在游戏《Ico》中，牵引公主越过障碍是游戏的核心游戏设置。开发者润物细无声般地在玩家头脑中灌输依恋和守护的感情——这又是任何过场动画望尘莫及的。在游戏《传送门》中，Valve公司给Chell的同伴“超重量级二阶魔方”（对Weighted Companion Cube的戏称）安了一颗心，从而完成了类似的小规模游戏设置。

《Shadow of the Colossus》在这个概念上更上一层楼——将玩家置身于更加不明确的场景中。该游戏的基本结构完全是常规式的：玩家打败一连串越来越难搞定的BOSS，然后救出公主。但本作的陈述方式将玩家的标准游戏冒险体验转变为关于失去、悲恸和无奈的学习体验。

colossi实现了从典型的电子游戏怪物到神圣高尚的生灵的转变，尽管没有文本或对话把这种转变挑明。玩家的选择与此无关——除了退出游戏，玩家并没有所谓的真正选择。但游戏仍然在传达着这么一个理念：玩家的行为影响了结局。久而久之，玩家开始为杀掉这些基本无毒无害的物种而染上罪恶感，甚至当玩家对些情况有所察觉时，他也法从这种情绪中脱身。选择、必然和结果这三个理念，也是《生化奇兵》的重要组成部分。该游戏从表面上看主要是做出一系列的善恶选择——拯救或收服Little Sisters（游戏邦注：这两种选择各有专门的控制键和分支最终动画）。

但玩家与Big Daddy的关系更显微妙。无论玩家选择拯救还是收服Little Sisters，都必须杀掉各个Big Daddy。这些家伙一路高歌并笨拙而颠狂地在地上走着，他们的存在只是为了守护Little Sisters，并不会伤害玩家。

尽管杀掉Big Daddy并不是完成游戏的必须步骤，许多玩家还是毫不犹豫地这么做了。与Big Daddy的恶斗也成了游戏中最精彩的一个场景。直到游戏的后半部分，玩家目睹了关于选择的错觉这部分关键情节，才不得不思考他在整个游戏过程中的所作所为。玩家看到了Big Daddy的诞生和成长，终于明白同情是一种什么样的感觉。

关联性

使内容与玩家个体产生联系显然不是电子游戏的专属，但这种关联经常被忽视。如此众多的游戏，在开发过程中致力于世界观的打造和融入感的培养，导致开发者不但忽视了从游戏世界里提取关联性并直接告之玩家，也缺乏对关联性的兴趣。

我最难以忘怀的电子游戏体验之一是在Dreamcast上玩日本世嘉公司的《Seaman》。这种体验只可能存在于互动娱乐中。

我的宠物人面鱼到达成熟期后，为了更了解我，他曾问我一个私人问题。通过麦克风和语音识别技术，玩家可以与自己的人面鱼交流。在聊天的开头，我的人面鱼偶然问我，我最喜欢的电影是什么。

我知道这个游戏的语音识别技术还不成熟，但开发者为了防止第一次识别失败，给了玩家第二次回应的机会——开发者的工作真是周到。

对这个问题，我决定先说出我真正最喜欢的电影，如果没有被识别出来，我就改说更普遍的回答——《星球大战》。

听到我的回答《Miller’s Crossing》后，人面鱼双目放光，说：“啊，那你是科恩兄弟的粉丝咯！我猜你和你的朋友们成天坐在一起引用《Raising Arizona》的台词聊天吧。”我丢下控制器，惊恐地躲开显示器。

《Seaman》让人记忆犹新的是它独特的概念和以假乱真的创造。但选择Jellyvision作为英语翻译是对原版游戏的最完美的补充，因为该工作室制作《You Don’t Know Jack》系列的非传统的当代内容时在这方面有过经验。

选择这么一种怪诞的回应突破了该游戏的独特前题，并大大强化了玩家融入感。有那么一会儿，我不再使用难以捉摸的技术与3D模型和反应决策树对话，因为我不想再被一个如此了解我的家伙研究着。

当这种打破第四堵墙的工作奏效时，这种关联性就运作得出奇得好了。这种风险当然牺牲了游戏的普遍性。如果玩家做出的回答不在数据库的备选答案中，那么该玩家将不会收到针对他的回应。通过那次游戏经历，我还清醒地感觉到游戏作者和翻译者的存在，我是在与他们本人对话而不是与他们创造的角色交流。

交流渠道

游戏开发者有多种可用交流渠道，因此并非所有游戏要表达的理念都需要展示在动画上。更细微的环境线索可以强化通过“主要”渠道传达的想法，或者只是强化与游戏开发者的交流概念。

在《半条命2》里，玩家经常进入环境障碍的的区域，反而不是遇上一伙前来战斗的敌人。为了把他的快艇开出水库，Freeman不得不建一个坡道；为了上升到理想高度，Freeman不得不操纵升降机。这些举动有可能把玩家拉出剧情的虚幻，推回正在玩电子游戏的现实——玩家不再是击退外星生物的物理学家；而只是一个正在解决电子游戏迷题的家伙。

但几乎所有的区域都有细微的环境元素，用画在附近的用第十一个希腊字母表示。这些环境元素又把虚拟拉回到现实——这不是简单地解开游戏开发者设下的迷题；更是靠顽强的抵抗力来帮助Freeman通过关坎。

这些环境元素同时暗示了开发者和玩家之间的交流正在进行；提醒玩家存在着解决难题的理想方法；玩家不仅仅是陷入一个完全开放的游戏世界，孤立无援。游戏不是一个开放性的模拟，而是一次精心构建的体验。

回到原点

本文显然不是一份详尽的清单。本文的目的不是定义一系列用于与玩家交流的可能方法供游戏开发者使用，而是鼓励理念上的微妙转变。

当我们想到剧情游戏时，无论是做还是玩，我们总是把他们当成两个异体的结合物：一个是传统媒体的叙述技术，另一个是更死板的、更系统的游戏研发技术。如果我们把剧情和游戏当成同一个对话的两部分，我们将会有深化剧情和综合剧情叙述方式的可能。

电子游戏给我们每个人都留下了最喜欢的瞬间，那是其他媒体不能复制的时刻。即使我们不能非常清楚地说出来，我们都明白游戏的所能。这些时刻很可能不只是一种深刻的电影式的设计或者考虑周全的设计的产物，或者一个严格平衡的核心游戏设置，还是游戏世界的创造者和我们之间产生了真正的联系，从而结出了果实。

篇目1，篇目2，篇目3，篇目4，篇目5（本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao）

篇目1，Game Design: Five steps to making games which make more money using emotion

By admin-pagc

Of the tens of thousands of free to play and social video games out there, it is a sad fact that many of them make very little money and some developers & publishers have even seen significant financial losses. One of the main reasons for this is that many games fail to build an emotional connection with their players, with the game design process failing to include a strong focus on emotion. This can drastically reduce player engagement and significantly reduce the number of players willing to spend money on the game, as well as the amounts those willing to pay ultimately spend.

It is no accident that top performing free-to-play games, such as World of Tanks and CSR Racing, are reported to generate $11M – $20M per month and $9M per month respectively – they happen to do an amazing job of forming emotional connections with their players!

In this article I am going to set out five steps developers can take in order to build emotion into their free-to-play games, which, if followed correctly, could increase player conversion from 1-3% to the 10%-30% range.

Step 1. Identify the profile of your players (current and/or your target audience)

Determine characteristics of different player types

Richard Bartle identified four different player types as part of research into player behaviour in multiplayer dungeons (MUDs). These player types are widely recognised as an effective way of identifying and addressing player needs, including emotional motivation, when designing games. These player types include Achiever, Killer, Socialite and Explorer.

As a first step read up on these player types and what the emotional drivers are for each type.

Learn about your players and build player profiles

If your game has already been built and you already have some players, you should find out as much information about them as you can. This can help you to build a design profile for your game in relation to the player types. If you find that a majority of your players are Killers, for example, it may be that your current game design is heavily oriented towards that player type and their emotional needs, which could mean that the other player types are being neglected. While this is not necessarily an issue – Killers might just be those players who spend the most – it could well be and it is something worth looking more closely at.

An effective way to build player profiles is to create a survey which can be targeted at your entire player base or as large a subsection of your players as you can manage. To build the survey, prepare questions which focus on identifying players emotional motivators and needs, based on Bartle’s four player types. The aim of the survey will be to determine what player types are present in your player/userbase and what the current mix is. A good website with some example questions can be found here.

If your game is still at the design stage and/or you have not acquired players yet, you have two options. If you already have a community of players in mind (whom you plan to acquire), for example who already play one or more of your other games, should you have them, you could focus a survey on that group. Alternatively you could consider looking at games from the same genre/type that you are creating and try to find out how those games cater for the four different player types.

Determine who your most valuable players are

Once you have the results from your player survey you should build a profile for each player which should include their player type based on their responses to the survey.

An important next step is to determine player life time value (LTV). This should be done for each player and then overall for each player type.

One way to create an LTV value for each player is to:

1. Define some factors which are important to you and represent value for your company. This can vary but factors to consider are:

- Monetization. This could be scored from 0 to 5 based on player spending, where 0 is never spend and 5 would be whales. A good example to illustrate this is the concept (slide 17) of Kings, Knights, Lords, Commoners and Peasants, as described by Vikas Gupta, CEO of Social Gold, when he presented customer spending behavior insights at the Virtual Goods Forum in London, on July 24, 2010.

- Use of Viral Channels. Could be scored from 0 to 4, e.g. Very Infrequent, Occasional, Frequent, Very Frequent, Maximum.

- Community Interaction. Could be scored from 0 to 4, e.g. Never Posts or posts negatively, Post very rarely but positively, Posts occasionaly and positively, Posts frequently and positively, Posts very frequently and positively.

- Loyalty. Categories could be scored 1 to 5 and include: Plays at least once per month (but no other signs of loyalty), plays at least once per month plus also subscribes to newsletter or other games of yours, plays at least once per week plus subcribes to newsletter or other games of yours, plays daily, plays daily plus subscribes to newsletter and plays other games.

2. For each factor, assign a score to each player and calculate their overall LTV score.

3. As well as an overall score, calculate the amount spent by each player since they first started playing your game

4. Now that you have LTV for each player, calculate this for each player type. This will enable you to see which player types represent the highest value and will provide some insights into changes you may need to make to your game to make it more appealing to the player types you want more of

5. As well as understanding player LTV, based on the survey results and any other research you have done into the types of player you want your game to appeal to, you should have some good insights into the emotional needs of the players. These should be documented and used later.

Step 2. Evaluate the cultural fit of your game

A critical part of building emotional connections with players is to have a very clear understanding of their cultural expectations, experiences and needs. There can be a huge difference from one culture to the next. For example, in Brazil, there is far less interest in World War 2 and Modern Warfare and much more focus on civil war and gang warfare (Favellas, for example), so wargames launched in that country might not monetize well if there is over-reliance on a middle-eastern or european war setting. In asia, the concept of stealing items from other players can be seen as great fun and socially acceptable in certain games, but can be perceived very negatively in western cultures.

Here are 5 important dimensions to consider when determining cultural needs:

1. History and attitudes (what has happened in the past which influence people’s attitude today? This could be recent history or much further back)

2. Current hot topics, news and events (and degree to which these are discussed openly, sensitivity, etc). Some topics can be considered sensitive, such as Favellas and gang warfare in Brazil, but is a highly engaging subject for players who enjoy war games, whereas in Mexico this is not a topic that is discussed or seen as “fair game” for representation in games.

3. Pop culture and local brands. For example, city building games which feature local shops and stores, cooking games which feature local chefs and name of food ingredients, racing games which feature car brands that are specific to the player’s country and trends.

4. Lifestyle quality (climate, degree of affluence, spread of wealth, attitudes towards money).

5. Lifestyle choices, hobbies and interests. For example, train spotting and interests in trains as a hobby is very niche in the UK and seen as very untrendy by many, but is very popular in Japan. DIY and home improvement is not as broadly available or affordable in many Latin American countries, which differs hugely from Europe, so this could impact the perception of games focused on this topic. Religious beliefs differ massively and there can be very important considerations, for example avoiding representation of certain types of Animals.

Based on the above, try to identify how well your game design fits according to each aspect, identifying design principles and characteristics which work well and less well culturally. If there are gaps to fill to make your game fit better culturally, brainstorm new game elements or changes.

Step 3. Understand your players emotional needs

There are 3 types of emotion that are important to consider when looking at the emotional needs of players:

1. Positive emotions. This can include feelings of bliss, joy, surprise, curiosity, etc.

2. Negative emotions. Feelings of guilt, shame, anger, fear.

3. Combined emotions. A good example of a combined emotion is Schadenfruede, which combines feelings of guilt with pleasure

I’m not aware of a magic formula for getting the right balance between positive, negative and combined emotions, this will vary depending on the game, but it probably makes sense to avoid purely negative emotions!

How can emotions be applied to your game design?

There are a number of different aspects of game design where emotional design effort should be focused, in order to identify emotional hooks. These are described below. By considering each of these in turn, design principles, guidelines and high-level design elements should be created and/or updated to reflect the desired emotions in the game design.

1. Content

Content includes all the virtual objects that forms part of the core game mechanic, often collectible, which the player will engage and interact heavily with. Some examples:

- in CSR Racing from Natual Motion, this would include the cars the player drives (which, one could argue, is the strongest emotional element of the game). In this game these items are richly detailed with very strong attention to detail.

- In World of Tanks this includes the Tanks the player uses in battle. The tanks are designed very authentically with very strong attention to detail with subject matter which appeals to a very specific niche. There is also a very wide range of tanks to collect, and each tank has very distinctive behaviour, advantages and disadvantages.

- In Animal crossing this includes the furniture and all other collectible items used to decorate your house, as well as the animals that you interact with. The items that can be collected leverage Nintendo’s back catalogue of IP and the existing emotional attachments players have with this content. Items are very intricately detailed, and behave uniquely. For example, stereo music players can have music tapes inserted and the sound quality varies depending on the type of stereo. Animals have their own personalities which help players form bonds with them, as they seem uncannily lifelike and each character seems unique and individual.

- In Cityville it is the vast range of buildings and infrastructure which can be used by players to create unique cities. In Little Big Planet it is the large collection of materials and objects used to build new levels (as well as to play them) with real-world physics properties. The objects in the game look very appealing to the eye and interaction takes place in a realistic way.

- In Final Fantasy 7 it is the various playable characters, their spells, equipment, attributes, skills and personalities. Players become very invested emotionally in the characters due to the amount of time spent developing them and unlocking new skills and abilities, there is constant novelty and surprise as they progress, with new features gradually made available to support character development.

- In Singstar it is the wide range of songs/videos which the player downloads and sings to. The content leverages players existing emotional connections with the music.

Games which have very high player engagement and have high proportion of spenders to non-spenders, tend to have content which is richly detailed, interactive, has great attention to detail and is designed to make the player form personal attachments. This content generates a wide range of positive emotions and one or two negative ones, for example the sense of loss if the item becomes unavailable or is unattainable.

2. Context

Context is the specific game setting and circumstances, for example a particular time or place. Some examples:

- In CSR racing it is the streets of new york with a gang-based street racing backdrop

- In World of Tanks it is set during the second world war in Germay, Russia and other parts of Europe

- In Final Fantasy 7 it is the steam-punk, depressed, poverty-ridden city of Migdar

- In Pokemon it is the collection or regions including Kanto and Johto, in a modern fantasy world

The context needs to be carefully chosen or adapted to fit the culture, demographics, gender and age of the player.

3. Theme and Story

This refers to the specific genre and the story that ties the game tasks, objectives and goals together. For example in CSR racing the theme is based on racing high performance cars, competing against street-racing gangs from each neighbourhood in order to become the best and richest racer (with the sexiest and fastest cars!)

The theme and story needs to be carefully designed to:

- fit the needs of the player type you want to bring to your game. For example, killers and achievers may be less interested in story, focusing more on beating other players or being the best they can be at the game. Explorers and socializers are more likely to need to compelling story to drive them forward, give them a sense of purpose and provide plenty of hooks for social experiences.

- be culturally relevant

4. Interface

The way that the player interacts with the game can itself have a highly relevant emotional impact. The easier it is for players to express them selves, the more likely it will be that they become emotionally involved. For example, the best-selling videogame of all time, Wii Sports, simplifies interaction such that the player simply mimics the actions as if he/she were playing tennis in the real world. This arguably increased the sense of satisfaction for the player, encouraged them to “play the part”, with wild gesticulation helping create a sense of joy and excitement.

Conversely, by limiting ways in which they player can interact or express themselves in the game world, this can work against the emotional responses that have been designed in to the game. For example in the game Heavy Rain, on one occasion there is a need to move the controller violently left and right in order to brush the protagonists teeth. This is a positive way of overcoming limitations of ordinary controllers, which can struggle to mimic real-world actions, but I felt that the movement required felt excessive and undermined my immersion in the game and subsequently weakened my emotional response to the game (a strong aspect being sadness and remorse).

In CSR Racing, a number of techniques are employed to create a strong sense of control by the player, even though they cannot steer the cars. This is achieved through the player needing to time carefully their screen touches (for example, to rev the engine at the right time to achieve a fast start to the race).

In Smooty Tales, from Kobojo, being able to “wash” the player’s animal character through backwards and forwards motions with the mouse, helps create a strong connection between the player and their animal. The emotional response may not have been as strong if the player simple had to click an icon to do this.

In CtiyVille 2, the use of timers when collecting rent from houses creates a deeper sense of interaction for the player, rather than just clicking the house to receive the rent.

5. Player reward

Rewarding players can take many forms and varies heavily from game to game, but the importance of providing sufficient reward to the player cannot be overstated. Getting the type and amount of reward right, can provide a player with a sense of payback, e.g. that the time and money they have spent in your game was worth it. By getting this wrong, players can become bored easily and disillusioned about your game and a lot of the emotional design elements can be undermined.

The top 5 types of reward that should be considered (in no particular order) are:

1. New content they can interact with (ideally part of the core game mechanic, but can also be supporting content, such as new clothes for game characters, mini games, etc)

2. Achievements, trophies or other means to get recognition for their progress in the game

3. Collections, such as a items that are hard to find and/or take time to acquire

4. Charity-based, e.g. psychological positive feeling from gifting, including contribution to real-world charities (for example, as provided by Playmob)

5. Competition, either against other players or against the game. This can be as simple as positive messages and sounds for levelling up, as well as the strong emotional reward a player gets when they beat someone else. One of the strongest elements of World of Tanks appears to be that there is a strong focus on competiton, but a careful balance is struck between winning and losing so that players rarely feel like they are being humiliated, while they are able to win often enough to feel like they are making progress and that there efforts are rewarded.

Rewards should be designed and balanced to match the needs of the player types. For example, collections are more suited to achievers, and competion more to killer player style.

Step 4. Design and Build New Content with Emotional Hooks

Prioritise effort based on player profile and LTV

If you were able to collect useful information about your players and/or target audience, including player profiles and LTV, this should be used to help guide the design efforts and priorities for designing and building new game content. For example, if Socializer-type players represent the highest value to you, design of emotional hooks into design principles, guidelines and high-level design elements should take priority.

Concept design

Having identified/updated the game design principles, guidelines and design elements to reflect the emotional hooks identified earlier, the next step is to revise/refine/create the concept design, reflecting the design principles, guidelines and high-level design elements created and/or updated previously. This could be done through brainstorming-led design workshops or other preferred methods.

Detailed design, Build and QA

Once the concept design work has been completed, detailed design work can begin, with game design documents created/updated to reflect the new emotion requirements, and game assets then created and coded according to the design, following standard QA and beta testing practices.

If your game is already built and live, designing and building of new content could be done as part of a 3 or 6 Month content plan, such that changes to your game are introduced gradually in a manageable way.

Step 5. Review and Refine Game Content

Post-release new game content can be designed, built and released into your game as per usual, but consideration should be given to repeating steps 1-4, or at least revalidating what was previously done to ensure your game remains emotionally aligned with the needs of the currrent and active userbase for the game.

Final Word

I can appreciate that building emotion into games can be a complex and time consuming undertaking, and it can be tempting to avoid focusing on this especially for those games designed to appeal to a casual “non-gaming” audience, where it may not feel appropriate to spend so much time and effort on the emotional aspects.

However, there is compelling evidence that making games which form strong emotional connections with players does lead to more engaging games which have higher player to spender conversion and revenues than games which do not achieve this. As mentioned previously, to of the highest performing free-to-play games, World of Tanks and CSR Racing, are generating millions of dollar per month, with up to 30% of their userbases (at least for World of Tanks) actively spending money on a free to play game!(source:perfectaffinitygames)

篇目2，The Walking Dead, mirror neurons, and empathy

by Jamie Madigan

Psychologist Jamie Madigan examines the neuroscience of one reason why The Walking Dead is so effective at eliciting empathy from players.

Oh man, have you all been playing The Walking Dead from Telltale Games? I have, and with every installment of this episodic game I’m newly impressed by how hard it yanks on my emotions.

Like the comic that spawned it, the game is unapologetically bleak and its appeal comes largely from watching characters getting crammed into really bad situations from which some of them just won’t emerge — unless they do so groaning and hungering for brains. Like many horror stories it’s appealing the way a roller coaster is appealing. The characters are full of despair, heartbreak, anxiety, regret, and desperation.

And the amazing thing is that the game gets me to feel all those emotions too. I’m glad that it comes in monthly installments, because I need the time between episodes to recover. But why is that? By what psychological, neurological, and biological mechanisms do video games like The Walking Dead get us to not only empathize with characters onscreen, but also share their emotions?

For the answer let us start, as we so often do, with tiny Italian monkeys.

Years ago, neuroscientists in the Italian city of Parma were conducting experiments on macaque monkeys in order to understand the functions of individual brain cells. This involved inserting wires into the brain so that the researchers could detect activity in cells related to functions like grasping and bringing food to little monkey mouths. As researcher Marco Iacoboni notes in his 2008 book Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others, stories of a particular breakthrough are varied and apocryphal, but most of them involve a monkey wired up and awaiting his next round of experiments. In walks a researcher, who then reaches out and grasps something of interest to the monkey like a piece of fruit or a big red button marked “ACTIVATE TO FREE ALL MONKEYS.”

Suddenly the researcher noticed that according to the equipment hooked up to the monkey’s brain, neurons were firing that were associated with grasping motions, even though the animal had only SEEN something being grasped. This was odd, because normally brain cells are very specialized and nobody knew of any neurons that would activate both when performing an action or when seeing someone else perform the same action. Yet here the monkey was, blithely firing neurons previously only associated with performing motor actions while just sitting still and watching.

Thus was the first observation of a mirror neuron in action, a brain cell set apart from many of its peers and which are also present in delicious human brains. It turns out that many researchers like the aforementioned Dr. Marco Iacoboni, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCLA, believe that mirror neurons are important for our ability to empathize with things we see, like the plight of poor Lee and Clementine in The Walking Dead.

“Mirror neurons are motor cells,” Iacoboni tells me via e-mail. “That is, they send signals to our muscles to move our body, make actions, grab a cup of coffee, smile, and so on. However, they differ from other motor cells because they are also activated by the sight of somebody else’s action.” For example, a mirror neuron for grasp is fired when I grab an Xbox controller, but also when I see my friend grabbing a controller. “By being active even when we do not move at all and simply watch other people moving, they sort of create an inner imitation of the actions of others inside us.”

Curious about exactly how this phenomenon works, Iacoboni and his colleagues conducted a study (Carr, Iacoboni, & Dubeau, 2003) where they used very expensive equipment to monitor the brain activity of subjects who watched images of faces expressing different emotions. As expected, mirror neuron areas activated when people saw the expressions, and so did the limbic system, a portion of the brain known to be related to emotions. In short, upon seeing facial expressions, mirror neurons fired as if the subjects were making those expressions themselves, then triggered activity in the brain’s emotional centers so that subjects could actually feel the emotion being imitated.

Iacoboni notes that this process “puts us immediately in ‘somebody else’s shoes,’ in an effortless, almost automatic way. This is why we get so immersed in the movies we watch and the novels we read.” When we see Lee Everett or any of the other Walking Dead characters grimace in disgust, our mirror neurons for grimacing activate as if we were making that expression ourselves. And because of that inner imitation, we actually do feel the emotion to some degree and thus understand what the other is feeling.

I think this is one of the reasons why The Walking Dead is so good at eliciting emotions: it frequently shows us the faces of the characters and lets us see all the work put into creating easily recognizable and convincing facial expressions. And so it’s not the zombies that elicit dread in us. Instead it’s things like the face that Kenny makes when Lee tells him to make a hard decision about his family.

“We spend a ton of time on the facial animations for the characters in the game,” The Walking Dead’s creative lead Sean Vanaman said when I asked him about this. “After writing the first episode we start to make lists of the type of things characters are going to feel in the story and then start to generate isolated facial animations to convey those moods and emotions. Those are then used throughout the game.”

But it’s not just seeing an expression and imagining ourselves mirroring it. In the 2004 study cited above, Iacoboni and his colleagues also had some subjects physically imitate the expressions they were seeing and the cascade of mental activity increased. This suggests that actively imitating expressions helps us better empathize and understand, and it’s part of a fairly established line of research called the “facial feedback hypothesis.” For example, in one 2005 study researcher Paula Niedenthal had two groups of subjects look at the facial expressions of other people.

One group, however, was made to hold a pencil between their teeth, which severely limited their ability to mimic the expressions they saw. The result was that those clenching the pencils in their mouths were less able to detect emotional changes in the faces they observed because the lack of mimicry short circuited their brain’s ability to replicate facial expressions, feel the emotions themselves, and then recognize it in others.

So, I suppose the moral of all this is that if you really want to get the full effect from The Walking Dead, don’t cover your eyes and peek between your fingers in a way that inhibits your ability to mimic the expressions you see on screen. Your mirror neurons don’t appreciate that when they’re trying to get your to replicate expressions of crippling, existential doom.

篇目3，Shadow Emotions and Primary Emotions

by Danc

Not all emotions are created equal.

Consider: It is a distinctly different thing to feel sad while reading about a dying mother than to actually feel sad because your mother is dying. The former is a shadowy reflection that we intuitively understand is not immediately threatening. The later is raw, primary and life changing.

I’ve yet to see existing terminology for this phenomena, so at the risk of stepping on existing toes, let’s use the following labels.

Shadow emotions: The emotions we feel when partaking in narratives, art and other safely evocative stimuli
Primary emotions: The emotions we feel when we are in a situation with real perceived consequences.
The closest I’ve seen to this being described elsewhere is something called the Somatic Marker Theory. It postulates:

“When we make decisions, we must assess the incentive value of the choices available to us, using cognitive and emotional processes. When we face complex and conflicting choices, we may be unable to decide using only cognitive processes, which may become overloaded and unable to help us decide. In these cases (and others), somatic markers can help us decide. Somatic markers are associations between reinforcing stimuli that induce an associated physiological affective state.”

Crucially, the theory identify two distinct classes of emotion. The first is the ‘body loop’ which corresponds closely to primary emotions. The second is the ‘as-if body loop’ which corresponds to shadow emotions.

No doubt this is a well studied topic, so if someone educated in the neurosciences is able to provide even more accurate labels or links to additional models I’ll happily amend this essay.

The distinction between these two classes of emotion may seem academic, but I find myself fascinated by a game’s ability to provoke primary emotions in a manner that is difficult if not impossible for more reflective forms of media. As a game designer, I can and have put the player in situation where they experience real loss.

The best a movie or book can manage is evoking a shadow of loss.

Brief thoughts on memory and emotion

A small bit of background is necessary to describe the mechanism of shadow emotions. It starts with the link between memory and emotion.

Memories come loaded with judgments. In some sense, the true function of memory has been polluted by a modern concept of coldly analytic ‘data storage’. Perhaps a better term for ‘memory’ is ‘lesson’. Each memory has deeply integrated emotional tags that informs us of how we might want to react if we call upon that memory in relation to our current stimuli. When you see a dog sitting on the sidewalk, you instinctively compare it to your existing mental models and memories of past dogs.

In that basic act of cognition, you nearly instantly become awash with emotions. Perhaps you feel a sense of comfort and fondness. Or perhaps a wave of anxiety passes through you as you recall the sharp teeth of past encounters gone awry. In a split second, you know exactly how you feel about that dog.

One way of thinking of emotion as an early specialized form of cognition that serves a clear survival function. Quite often you need to make a decision, but you don’t have time to think about. Quick! Act now! At this moment, you are flooded with an emotional signal. It is strong, primitive and highly effective at making you either run, attack, bond, threaten or pause. Emotions tied to memories help us boil vast decades of experience down into an immediate instinctive reaction.

Hair trigger emotions exists because more complex cognition takes time and for certain classes of decision, delays yield failure and failure is costly. If you are attacked by wolf, it likely isn’t prudent to debate the finer details of how you classify canids. Much later, be it seconds or hours, your conscious understanding of the situation kicks in and moderates the emotional response. More often than not, what we think of as consciousness is little more than a post processed justification of our ongoing roller coaster of instinctive emotional reactions.

Emotions are necessary but they are not civilized. It is easy to imprint rapid fire lessons that trigger at the worst possible moment. A child who learns to lash out in anger as a way of surviving neighborhood bullies might have difficulty as an adult if he reacts the same way when he perceives a more subtle theme of bullying from his boss. What makes managing emotions so tricky is that such emotional triggering situations unfold before we are even aware they are occurring. Emotions are by definition lessons turned into lightning, unconscious action (or inaction as the case may be).

Narrative as a means of playing emotional scenarios

You cannot easily or consciously stop emotions in full activation; however you can train them ahead of time. One method (of many!) is to test and explore our emotions in the safe mediums of narrative, sound and imagery. The mechanism for triggering a safe emotional response seems to be primarily based off a mixture of empathy and the emotional aspects of memory that we’ve previously covered.

Stimuli: When we see or read a particular evocative narrative or scene.

Memory: We tap into our own related stored memories

Synthesis: We assemble disparate elements into a coherent whole

Empathy: We simulate what we might feel in this particular situation

Conscious understanding: We process the resulting safe emotions from a safe distance.

Now imagine that you read about the dog sitting on the sidewalk. You can confront your anxiety with crystal clear understanding that he cannot hurt you. You activate your empathy and simulate how you might feel if the dog were in fact in front of you. Now you roll the emotion around and savor it, examining it from multiple angles. You instinctively role-play the scenario. Perhaps you become comfortable with the idea that you don’t need to immediately run away from all dogs.

By storing this revised impression, you slightly moderate your future emotional reactions.

In a biological sense, this is a surprisingly inexpensive method of practicing how to moderate our emotions. Instead of placing yourself in potentially mortal danger, you can instead read about what it while sitting in a chair. The training that occurs is not perfect, but I suspect that it helps. There is a wide body of experimental research that shows how emotions are differentiated through a process of psychological response and then the application of a cognitive label. If you can practice labeling a rush of adrenaline as bravery instead of fear, you may be able to successfully alter your emotions in real world situations.

Though by no means proof of this theory, it is suggestive that many popular fictional and artistic works are highly focused on evoking emotion and chains of strong drama. Situations that are risky, expensive or socially compromising regularly find their way into the evocative arts and enable us to practice those scenarios in a safe fashion.

Shadow Emotions

The relatively safe emotions that result from consuming and simulating evocative stimuli are what I’m calling shadow emotions.

A shadow emotion is by no means a ‘fake’ emotion. Your heart rate increases, your palms sweat. The patterns of the past carry echos of real emotions and your body responds accordingly. All the physiological signs of experiencing an emotion are present. However, you know intellectually it is a carefully controlled experiment.

Despite hysterical claims to the contrary, humans appear to have a surprisingly robust understanding of simulation vs. reality. We labels our simulations as such and can usually set them aside at our convenience.

Shadow emotions are by no means completely safe. Anyone that goes through a therapeutic process where they directly recall past trauma can bear witness to the fact that recalling strong emotions is an intense and even frightening experience. Distance matters when role-playing stored emotions and the more closely you simulate the original event, the stronger the response.

All this leads to many of the common techniques found in making powerful drama or art. This list is by no comprehensive, but it is a good sample of the practical tools available to a craftsman interested evoking shadow emotions:

Richly describe salient stimuli

Exaggerate stimuli (Peak Shift Principle)

Layer multiple channels of stimuli

Target commonly shared emotional triggers (Love, Death, Triumph, etc)

Create coherent chains of context and causation to facilitate easy simulation

Personalize the stimuli to better match the emotional history of an individual.

As an artist, a story teller and a game designer, I’ve used all of these and they are far less mysterious than many would presume. When such techniques are well executed, you’ll increase the intensity of the evoked shadow emotion. The word ‘evoke’ is key since our concern is more about using a signal to trigger emotions that already exists. As such I think of these techniques clumped primarily into methods of simplifying processing our evocative signal or methods of increasing strength of that signal.

Shadow emotions absolutely exist in games. In fact, the game industry spends ludicrous sums of money attempting to ensure that high end console titles are as good at evoking shadow emotions as media such as movies or books. During the dark reign of the techno-cultists who preached the ascendancy of visual immersion, realism and games as predominantly narrative medium, a thousand chained craftsmen made heroic attempts to evoke stronger shadow emotions. See such baroque creations as Mortal Combat, God of War or L.A. Noire. This expensive pursuit will continue because humans crave shadow emotions as a path to more effective emotional cognition. Game developers, as paid schmucks making disposable and consumable media, have an economic incentive to fill this need.

The next time you safely experience the emotion of shooting a minority-skinned terrorist in the head and watching the beautifully rendered blood and brains splatter in slow motion, step back and consider the emotional role-playing that you are simulating. It obviously isn’t real, but you do feel something. Perhaps it is even therapeutic. These are shadow emotions in action. I remain unimpressed, but perhaps if we render those skull fragments at a higher resolution, AAA games will one day achieve something deeply meaningful.

Primary emotions in games

In this expensive pursuit of shadow emotions, we may have accidentally sidelined deeper exploration of a phenomena more fundamental to the emotional capabilities of games.

I spend large portions of my day observing game players. Some of this is observation of others, but there is also a peculiar detached observation of my own reactions to a particular game or prototype. Repeatedly, I see sparkles of emotion that seem to have different roots than shadow emotions. A player might become frustrated that they don’t understand a particular level layout. Or they may feel anguish when their character suffers permadeath in Realm of the Mad God. Or they may feel elation at finally getting the long tetrimino necessary to clear four rows in Tetris.

I would make the bold and perhaps unsupportable claim that these responses are not a reference to a past emotional experience. Instead they seem to be derived from much more primitive circuitry. Where do emotions originally come from? Not all are reflections of memories past. There are means of creating emotions from scratch.

Consider the sense of anguish that one feels when the character you’ve built up over many hours of dedicated play dies for all eternity. This system, permadeath, is quite uncommon in many modern games, but thousands of players go through the process everyday in the game Realm of the Mad God. As a designer you can think of this experience in almost purely mechanical terms. A player invests time and energy into accumulating a resources and capabilities inside a defined value structure. Then due mostly to a failure of skill, the player gets hit with a barrage of bullets and that investment is irretrievably lost.

Despite the coldly mechanistic nature of the system, the player feels intense anguish. It is a raw, primordial thing that courses through your veins and makes breathing difficult. There is really nothing playful or distant about this emotion. The magnitude and newness of the loss directly correlates to the intensity of the experience. Most players I know have great difficulty setting aside the first major loss and pretending that it did not matter. Some will even quit the game because the emotional intensity is just too much to bear.

What I find intriguing about this particular emotion reaction is that it pops up in other non-gaming scenarios. Recently I forgot to save a file and in one horrible instant lost hours of labor. The self recrimination and sense of loss is quite similar. In a more extreme example, when the stock market collapsed in the 1920′s the emotional response to abrupt and permanent loss was so great that people took to jumping from buildings. The systemic creation of emotion is a powerful phenomena.

There are variations on the theme that result in a spectrum of different yet equally reproducible emotions. If the player is struck with lag or a control glitch or they feel that some other player helped cause their demise, the emotional reaction is almost always incandescent rage. Small adjustments to the mechanical systems of cause and effect result in distinct emotional responses.

Primary emotions appear to be emotions triggered by interactive situations not evocative stimuli. They tend to involve several telling mechanical factors:

Territory

Time

Resources

Information

Investment and Loss

Skill and Randomness

Social interaction

As I write this list, I can’t help but realize that these sound like many of the fundamental elements of games. Yes, we can easily talk about games as systems in same breath as emotions. There is no need to scurry back to the well worn tropes of evocative media. As game developers, we really do not need the crutch of shadow emotions to create a meaningful emotional experience for our players. Instead, we can succeed by making “games as games” not “games as some bizarrely crippled copy of another industry.”

I wish I could say more about the exact biological process behind generating primary emotions, but alas it is not my area of expertise. Instead, the best I can do for the moment is to describe the pragmatic process that I use to create desired primary emotions in a population of players. Compare the following process to the one I listed above for shadow emotions. They are rather different.

Define: Create mechanics and models that describe a player-centric system of value. What should the player care about and how do the systems and resources reinforce their interest?

Acclimate the player to value structures by having them interact with it repeatedly via various loops and processes. Pay careful attention to skill and resource acquisition as well as the formation of social bonds since these must be grown.

Trigger: Put the player directly in situations involve a practical loss or gain that triggers the generation of new primary emotions.

You can certain use evocative stimuli within such a process, but it will always be a supporting tool. The emotions are engineered from the players interactions and experience with the system and not by bombarding someone with images, dialog or sound. Player choice matters. Failure matters. Learning and skill matters. The game matters.

My friend Stephane Bura has done important work in mapping game systems onto emotions, but there is far more to be done. I highly recommend you read through his pioneering essay Emotion Engineering in Games. It took several years before it started to sink in, but I’m hoping that you’ll have a head start.

Conclusion

I’ve derived immense practical value from the distinction between primary emotions and shadow emotions. Once you’ve internalized the concept, you can look at a game and ask with great clarity “How is this player emotion being generated?” Once you know the mechanism, you can then take steps to amplify or soften the observed effect. Should you increase the fidelity of visual feedback or merely change a resource variable? If you know neither the type of emotion nor mechanism driving the emotion, you are designing blindly.

It is also important that we start talking about how games generate primary emotions. The feeling of victory in a game of Chess is real. The feeling of anger at a Counter Strike camper is real and visceral. The feeling of belonging when you are asked to join a popular guild will stay with you for the rest of your life. We are not reflecting or empathizing (though this can occur in parallel). Due to the interactive nature of the game and our ability to adopt the value structure of the game, there are consequences that are real enough for our body to muster actual new-to-the-world emotions. This is an amazing and fundamental property of games that is at best weakly represented in more traditional media. Let’s play to our strengths.

Every second you spend blathering on about the damnable Hero’s Journey or the role of traditional evocative narrative is a second you could instead be exploring the vast and uncharted frontier of emotional game design. We make games. And games are great and powerful entities in their own right. What happens if you strip out as much of your reliance on shadow emotions as possible and focus your design efforts on creating primary emotions in your players?

In Realm of the Mad God, the player dies. And he can’t come back. It is a harsh penalty with strong sense of failure. Colliding with a 8×8 pixelated bullet with no fidelity, realism or crafted narrative means something emotionally that no movie or novel will ever capture.

篇目4，Why Games Fail to Emotionally Connect

By TGRStaff

Adam Standing’s first piece for TGR looks into why games still give him the emotional Connection Failure error, taking a look at the highs and lows, from the West and the East, in his gaming life.

In my youth I spent as much time as possible escaping reality and entering the fantasy worlds of books. Those characters and their worlds were totally engrossing, and I naturally found myself making emotional connections with them that enriched the story. But now that video games have taken over my world, I’ve found my new medium of escape doesn’t produce the same effect.

Why do video games fail to make those connections when they seem to draw the best from both books and movies? I don’t believe it’s because they’re totally incapable of making the link, as I’ve found glimpses and fragments of it happen throughout my gaming life. Ever since the wire-frame magic of Elite did its best to draw me past its vectors and into another world, I’ve wanted and expected video games to develop further, and delve deeper. Yet this advance has rarely shown itself, and for this I lay the blame at the failure of games to get even basic storytelling right.

Let’s take Infamous and Prototype as examples, since both approached storytelling in different ways. Infamous presented binary, good-or-evil choices that over the course of the game affected the protagonist and his superhuman, electrical powers. In contrast, Prototype took a linear approach and followed a defined story arc unaffected by the player’s actions in the game.

The binary choice in Infamous felt very ham-fisted and artificial. Although my character changed visually depending on my choices, it had no effect on the actual story. Also, the game spelt out these choices in the most ridiculous way, giving me such pantomime good-or-evil paths that I felt like I was playing a Sesame Street game. Diluting the narrative in this way ultimately didn’t work, and Infamous would’ve been better served by restricting its story to just one linear thread.

This was Prototype’s method-of-choice, and it felt a stronger game for it. But where it succeeded in narrative, it failed with its characters. The dark, brooding Alex Mercer was immediately unlikable, and he seemed a totally different person in the game compared to within its cut scenes. This fuelled my feeling of disassociation with Prototype, and made it’s world an entirely uncomfortable place to be in.

Both of these games display different styles of Western storytelling, but as PSN hit Flower has shown, you don’t need much more than pure visual imagery to tell an enchanting tale. On the end of the spectrum Braid hid its story behind complex puzzles and deliberately confusing perspectives, toying with players’ understanding of what was actually going on. These more artistic games come much closer to that emotional experience I’m after, although I’ve found their devotion to a particular vision can obscure the experience. For example, I feel that the only person to fully understand and appreciate Braid must be Jonathan Blow – its creator.

Maybe the answer to a deeper experience lies with us, the player. If I used my imagination and filled the heart and souls of characters myself, maybe that that would restore the emotional connection I feel games lack? Looking back into my gaming past produces a few examples of this approach working well. The first game that provided me with a moving experience was Amiga classic Cannon Fodder. As each of the game’s levels loaded, an image was shown of a solitary hill covered in graves – the graves of soldiers I had lost so far. As the new recruits marched towards the edge of the screen, ready to do my bidding, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of their lives upon me. It may sound like bleeding-heart liberal pap, but Cannon Fodder’s imagery made me think about the horrors of war, more so than anything else at the time.Cannon Fodder was one of highest-rated games of its generation, and remains a classic.

But there was no engaging squad chatter or atmospheric graphics to build this emotional connection. Cannon Fodder just used simple, powerful imagery, and basic leveling-up features ripped from role-playing games, and applied them in a practical way. That same attachment to characters seems to have been lost in the meantime.

The closest Western games have come is the free rein approach of some RPGs, yet the ability to change my gender, looks and history as much as I want has such little effect on a game.

In Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion I felt no ownership over my character despite pouring hours into their creation. The world around them never felt like the same one I inhabited as the player, and as rich as the environment was, it always felt disappointingly sterile. This was partly because of the voice acting; although the main quest characters had individual actors, nearly all other non-player characters were voiced by the same three people. It did make for some laughable moment, especially when dialogue lines were repeated incessantly, but it also made the world impossible to believe in. The stilted animation of its characters, and their design firmly slotting into the uncanny valley, made Oblivion feel far more alien than it should’ve been.

It seems that Western games have fundamental issues when it comes to providing deep and meaningful experiences. Only in the past few years have I realized that storytelling in Japanese games is far better at conveying emotion and drama. Being told a story and assuming a character in a particular world doesn’t sound as immersive as filling the details yourself, but it’s in these worlds that the most moving moments have occurred for me.

The world of Lost Odyssey is one such example. For all of its clichéd plot and Japanese RPG tropes, Lost Odyssey struck a deep chord with me, and showed how a mixture of storytelling styles could combine to provoke some raw emotions. And although it shares similarities with the Final Fantasy series, it showed a more mature attitude by tackling subjects like death and loss in an adult way When games attempt this, and focus on character and their progression through a game’s world, I can’t help but be swept away.

It was the development of the main character from aloof and detached to unbridled grief that made the first quarter of the game so dramatic. By revealing his memories piece by piece, I grew more sympathetic towards him as the game progressed. This change from unlikeable to understanding is what gave me that emotional connection to Lost Odyssey. There were times that the game’s infamous memories, told by simple text passages, moved me tears. It might be backwards to use such an ancient form of storytelling in a predominantly visual medium, but if it can elicit such emotions then I cannot fault its inclusion.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is another great example of a game putting characters above all else, but in another way. I was quite happy to ignore the defdeicient gameplay to invest in the game’s characters and their plights. With so much depth & attraction poured into Persona 4’s characters, it’s hard not to be moved by them – and alright, I’ll admit it, I have a soft spot for Chie. But the very fact that PS2 3D model can squeeze some amorous emotion out of me is something I find incredible. It shows that emotional ties are possible beyond the Lara Croft fantasies of old.

It’s no coincidence that the most recent games to make that emotional link are J-RPGs. Their willingness to devote time and effort into developing characters is what makes them so powerful to me. It’s just a shame that they still lock into recycling the same generic story, and using it more as a canvas for characters than creating an interesting world.

Finding games that emotionally connect seems a difficult task. Not impossible, but their failure to reach those heights comes from following a well-worn path of clichés and stereotypes. Recent releases like Infamousand Prototype stand guilty of this like so many others, whether it be through pantomime moral choices or failure to create deep characters. But Lost Odysseyand Persona 4 show glimpses of that elusive emotional connection, doing so by telling unique character-driven stories, packed with believable, dramatic moments. If the upcoming Heavy Rain can deliver on its promise of a mature story and a convincing world, then maybe it can start the cultural revolution I believe video games are capable of. Until then, I’ll be back in Persona 4, fuelling my Chie Satonaka obsession.

篇目5，Closing the Loop: Fostering Communication In Single Player Games

by Chuck Jordan

Game writer and designer Chuck Jordan (Telltale’s Sam & Max, Strongbad) visits ways in which games interact with the player narratively and offers a new way of looking at player interaction with story in our medium.]

As game developers continue to define how video games can be used for storytelling, the predominant challenge is the tension between story — the developer’s predetermined narrative — and gameplay — the player’s interaction with the game. A slightly different way of framing the problem is not as the tension between story and gameplay, but as the tension between video games as a medium and video games as an activity.

An Inconvenient Tetromino

Imagine a continuum with An Inconvenient Truth at one extreme and Tetris at the other. One is completely literal: it exists solely to convey an explicit message from the creator to the audience. The other is completely abstract: it has no message, but exists solely to provide an environment in which the audience can play. One is media; the other is activity.

Any video game — or for that matter, any film, book, television program, album, dance performance, any creative work — can be placed somewhere along that continuum, based on a single criterion: “What, if anything, is this work trying to communicate?”

As thought experiments go, this one is admittedly pretty facile, but it’s useful for a few reasons:

First, it places no value judgment on either extreme. Discussions about video game content (as opposed to video game mechanics) are often filled with loaded terms like fun and meaning.

These can often derail the discussion into unproductive tangents as people defend ideas that were never under attack: “Games don’t have to mean anything!” “Gameplay is meaning!” “Focusing on ‘fun’ above all else is infantilizing the medium!”

It also avoids the tendency to dismiss abstract, “casual” games as more shallow than storytelling games; or, conversely, to claim that purity of abstract gameplay is of the utmost importance, and that anyone who wants to make a more linear, storytelling game should instead be making movies.

Second, it avoids making a distinction between story and gameplay. Focusing on the overall message — instead of story as set dressing for a game, or shallow gameplay that’s bolstered by an interesting story — means treating both components as parts of a common whole.

Most of all, it acknowledges the significance of communication in game design, not just presentation. If a video game developer chooses to tell a story with her game, then she’s placed her project towards the “media” end of the continuum. She has to think about what ideas the game is trying to communicate.

Feedback Loop

There tends to be a knee-jerk revulsion to any classification of games as media, or the discussion of games as being primarily story-driven. The objection is that doing so somehow violates the purity and value of game design for its own sake.

But using video games as a storytelling medium doesn’t trivialize game design, any more than using films to tell stories trivializes the arts of cinematography or film editing. Any artist choosing a medium has a responsibility to determine what’s unique about that medium, and how to use the medium to its fullest potential.

The unique aspect of video games as a medium is, of course, their interactivity. They provide ongoing, immediate, systematic, rules-based, bidirectional communication between the creator and the audience. This is also known as “gameplay.”

When we think about the process of narrative game design in this way, the typical distinction between story and gameplay seems even more out of place. It makes little sense to draw a line separating “thinking” from “doing,” or “developer’s narrative” versus “player’s narrative.” That would imply the creator and audience are speaking entirely different languages, engaged in completely separate activities that only occasionally intersect at cutscenes.

But cutscenes and scripted events aren’t the narrative. The entire game is the narrative, and the story is told via the one thing that makes the medium unique: gameplay. The objective of the game is to get to the end of the story, and the rules of the game are the constraints on the player’s character(s). Cutscenes and scripted events introduce or clarify the rules: this character is an obstacle, this path is no longer accessible, this crystal shard of darkest magick is now an objective.

It’s not a dramatic redefinition, but a subtle shift in philosophy. It’s not the case that the developer’s engaged in telling a story while the player’s engaged in an activity; it’s the case that they’re both collaborating in the process of telling a story.

And the language of the storytelling isn’t what we’ve borrowed from traditional media — dialogue, cinematography, set design, etc. — but the language of gameplay, that bidirectional communication between developer and player.

The developer presents a new rule or new scenario, the player provides some input, and the game responds. That cycle of input and feedback is the most fundamental element of video game communication, it’s what makes interactive entertainment unique among storytelling media, and it’s how video game stories provide all their meaning to the player.

It’s also positioned halfway between the extremes of storytelling game design: traditional narrative vs. systematic game mechanics, linearity and control vs. open-endedness and unpredictability, art vs. science, innate talent vs. rigorous study, subjectivity vs. objectivity, intuition vs. observation.

So it’s useful simply to look at individual moments when a video game resonates with the player on a level that’s only possible in the medium of interactive entertainment. How do games transcend the mode of two independent monologues, the developer’s voice and the player’s voice? How does a game close the loop of communication from player to developer and then back to the player?

Choice

The most obvious and immediately compelling way to close the loop, from Choose Your Own Adventure books all the way to Mass Effect, is to provide a branching narrative based on the player’s choices at key story moments. The player’s actions have an immediate, significant effect on the course of the story.

The most obvious disadvantage to branching narratives is a purely practical one: they’re expensive and time consuming. Even a simple, binary good/evil choice can double the number of key scenes that need to be produced, and more subtle options will increase development time even more. As budgets get larger, it becomes more difficult to justify spending money on content that, by design, a large part of the audience will never see.

For as long as people have been making video games, there’s been the idea that the problems of branching narratives are simply limitations of the current technology.

The industry’s holy grail — or more accurately, perpetual motion engine — has been the realization of a storytelling engine that can take a finite amount of content and intelligently and satisfyingly generate an infinite number of available choices for the player.

But if we’re looking at video games as communication between developers and players, is a storytelling engine really the inevitable and most desirable end goal? The player would be receiving immediate feedback for any choice he happens to make, but would he still be engaged in a conversation with the developer?

While designing puzzles for adventure games for Sam & Max or Strong Bad episodes, my goal was to reproduce for the player the experience of planning the game in the writers’ room. We often talk about “a-ha” moments when playing adventure games, but there are just as many that come up while designing them.

The process of designing a story-based adventure game is similar to the process of playing one — the story progresses to a certain point, and everyone in the room tries to come up with the funniest, most interesting, or most satisfying way to advance to the next story moment.

That’s not necessarily the best or most logical way to advance, but the one that makes everyone in the room say, “Yes! That’s perfect!” Giving the player the option to come up with any solution he can think of isn’t necessarily the goal. In fact, there’ve been several times that a player suggested a solution on the forums or during a playtest that was much more interesting or logical than the one we’d included in the game.

But the ideal wasn’t simply to empower the player, but to share a moment with the player — the exact moment when all the pieces finally fit together, the joke hits the best punch line, the attention to continuity pays off, and the story makes sense (or in the case of Sam & Max, close enough).

As developers continue to pursue the goal of building holodecks, open-ended environments that put players in complete control of the story, they need to make sure that the sense of communication isn’t lost. Otherwise, they’re not empowering the player, but simply locking him inside an echo chamber where he’s only speaking to himself.

Agency

Player agency is even more fundamental to video games than the concept of player choice. Even when the player’s actions don’t directly result in changing the course of the story, the experience of driving the narrative forward can make the story resonate in a way that traditional media can’t duplicate.

The Half-Life series has been built on the concept of player agency from the first moment of the tram ride through Black Mesa. Absolutely nothing happens that isn’t directly witnessed by Gordon Freeman, and without his assistance, power cables across the world remain unplugged and big red launch buttons remain unpushed.

Ostensibly, the goal is complete immersion. But the player is never completely immersed in the story or role-playing as Gordon Freeman, mostly because the character is something of a cipher. Still, the player is immersed in the storytelling. He becomes more intimately familiar with the details of the environment and the spatial relationships between key locations. He’s more conscious of the passage of time and the tension that results from time pressure.

In Half-Life 2 Episode 2, there’s a scene in which Freeman and Alyx Vance watch through binoculars as a convoy of striders and other Combine vehicles cross a bridge.

There’s no player choice involved; everyone playing the game will witness this scene. But when compared to a similar scene in the recent War of the Worlds remake, the difference that comes from player agency becomes clear. There’s a greater sense of presence and immediacy that doesn’t come across in a film.

The risk for game developers is overestimating the value of agency, or the over-reliance on empty interactivity as a substitute for genuine experience. An over-used trick in writing adventure game dialogue is to break up expository sequences with a list of “options” for the player to choose, which all go to the same branch.

It’s intended to break up the monotony of a sequence by pulling the player back into the interaction, but can actually have the opposite effect when used too often.

The player becomes even more aware that his choices have no real effect on the outcome, and the interaction seems even more artificial.

There’s also a risk of over-relying on immersion to the point of distraction. The sci-fi horror game Dead Space puts considerable effort into making the user interface seamless, with a game world explanation for every map, heads-up display, or panel the player interacts with.

This actually causes the interface to draw more attention to itself, however, since most players have dealt with separate in-game UIs enough to accept them without explanation.

Considering the game as dialogue between player and developer, it’s important for developers to think of agency and immersion as tools for communication instead of just flourishes.

What idea or feeling does the game convey by giving control to the player at this point? Is it a meaningful interaction, or does it simply give the player buttons to mash during an otherwise non-interactive sequence?

Empathy

One of the most effective uses of player agency is to foster a sense of empathy for the player’s avatar or other characters in the narrative. The player’s forced to consider the consequences of his actions, even if those actions are predetermined by the developer and not subject to a branching narrative. This can convey an idea or a concept more subtly and persuasively than any didactic cutscene, because the player gradually becomes more aware of his role in the narrative.

In the game Ico, a core game mechanic is holding the princess’s hand to guide her through obstacles. The developers seamlessly and wordlessly instill in the player a sense of attachment and protectiveness, more effectively than any cutscene would be able. Valve accomplished something similar on a smaller scale with Portal, simply by putting a heart on the Weighted Companion Cube.

Shadow of the Colossus took this concept even further by placing the player into a more morally ambiguous situation. The basic structure of the game is completely conventional: to save a princess, the player has to defeat an increasingly difficult series of bosses. But the presentation of the game shifts the player’s experience from a standard adventure to a study on loss, mourning, and inevitability.

Although no text or dialogue makes it explicit, the colossi are transformed from standard video game monsters to majestic, even noble creatures. Player choice isn’t involved — the player has no real choice other than to stop playing the game — but the game still communicates the idea that all of the player’s actions have consequence. Over time, he starts to feel guilty for killing these ultimately peaceful creatures, even while he’s aware that he can’t stop.

That idea of choice, inevitability, and consequence, was also an important part of BioShock. The game ostensibly put its focus on a series of binary good/evil choices — save or harvest the Little Sisters — each with its own dedicated controller button and branching final cutscene.

But the player’s relationship with the Big Daddies was much more subtle. Whether the player chose to save or harvest the Little Sisters, he was forced to first kill each Big Daddy. And these characters were lumbering creatures pacing the floors of Rapture, singing whale song, doing no harm to the player but existing only to protect the little girl in their care.

Many players killed them without a second thought; even if they weren’t necessary to complete the game, the fights against the Big Daddies were the game’s most interesting set pieces. It’s only later in the game, after witnessing a pivotal story moment about the illusion of choice, that the player’s forced to consider what he’s been doing over the course of the game. He sees how the Big Daddies are created and, to drive home the sense of empathy, forced to become one himself.

Relevance

The notion of making content specifically relevant to individuals in the audience is obviously not unique to video games, but it is something that’s often overlooked.

So much of game development is devoted to world-building and immersion that developers either neglect to reach out of the game world and address the player directly, or they have no interest in it.

One of my own most memorable experiences while playing a video game, the type of moment that is only possible in interactive entertainment, was while playing Sega’s Seaman on the Dreamcast.

After my pet Seaman had reached a certain stage of maturity, he’d started asking me personal questions to get to know me better. For those unfamiliar with the game, it shipped with a microphone attachment and used voice recognition to allow the player to speak to the Seaman. At the beginning of one session, mine casually asked me what my favorite movie was.

I was aware that the voice recognition in the game wasn’t completely perfect, but the developers did an excellent job of giving the player a second chance in case the first attempt wasn’t recognized.

In response to the question about my favorite movie, I decided I’d first try with my actual favorite, and then in case it wasn’t recognized, fall back to the more obvious answer of Star Wars.

I answered “Miller’s Crossing.” The Seaman’s eyes lit up, and he responded, “Ah, so you’re a Coen Brothers fan! I bet you and your friends just sit together and quote lines from Raising Arizona all day long.” I dropped the controller and cautiously backed away from the screen.

Seaman will be primarily remembered for its bizarre concept and dedication to creating a completely alternate reality. But choosing Jellyvision to do its English language translation was the perfect complement to the original, because of that studio’s experience making unconventional and contemporary content with the You Don’t Know Jack series.

Choosing such an eerily relevant response broke through the bizarre premise of the game, simultaneously grounding it and also making it shockingly immersive. For a moment, I was no longer using unpredictable technology to talk to a 3D model and a decision tree of responses; I was being studied by a creature who knew me all too well.

When this kind of breaking the fourth wall works, it works astonishingly well. The risk, of course, is sacrificing the universality of the game. A player who had an answer not in the game’s database would not have received a response that seemed so directly targeted at him. I also became acutely aware of the presence of the game’s writers and translators, communicating with them instead of the character they’d tried to create.

Environmental Details

Game developers have multiple channels of communication available, and not every idea expressed by a game needs to happen in a cutscene. More subtle environmental cues can reinforce the ideas that are coming across through the “main” channel, or simply reinforce the notion of communication with the game’s developers.

In Half-Life 2, the player frequently encounters an area with an environmental obstacle instead of a group of enemies to fight. Freeman has to build a ramp to get his speedboat out of a reservoir, or manipulate an elevator to reach a higher level. These have the potential of breaking the player out of the storytelling and putting him back into the mindset of playing a video game. He’s no longer a physicist fighting off an alien occupation; he’s a guy solving video game puzzles.

But almost all of these areas have a subtle environmental element in the form of a lambda symbol painted somewhere nearby. These bring the fiction back into play — this isn’t simply a puzzle left by the game developers for the player; they’re tools left by the resistance to help Freeman past an obstacle.

They also serve as a subtle reminder that a type of communication is taking place between the developer and the player. They remind the player that there is an ideal solution to this obstacle; he hasn’t been simply dumped into a completely open game world and left to his own devices. It’s not an open-ended simulation, but a carefully constructed experience.

Closing the Loop

This is obviously not an exhaustive list. The intention isn’t to define a set of all the possible methods game developers can use to communicate with players, but to encourage a subtle shift in philosophy.

When we think about story-driven games, either making them or playing them, we continue to think of them as combinations of two distinct things: the storytelling techniques of traditional media and the more rigorous, systematic mechanics of game studies. We have the potential for deeper stories and more complex storytelling if we instead look at the story and gameplay as two parts of the same dialogue.

All of us have our favorite moments in video games, the moments when we’ve experienced something that no other medium can replicate. We all know what games are capable of, even if we can’t quite articulate it. It’s likely that those moments weren’t just the result of an effective cinematic, or thoughtful level design, or a rigorously balanced core game mechanic, but were the result of a feeling of genuine connection between ourselves and the people who created the world for us to play in.