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分析《The Foresight Engine》的独特样式和机制

发布时间:2011-05-17 14:49:46 Tags:,,,,,

作者:diannerees

我此前曾撰文描述过《The Foresight Engine》,这款有趣的游戏的设计目的是为了鼓励人们对某个复杂的健康问题开展发散性思维。简要概括下内容,游戏设置玩家身处2020年,此刻神经疾病预计将使美国多达1亿民众受到感染。玩家是小组成员,致力于探索加速研究进展的方法。游戏假设他们可以实现以下目标:获得任何所需的资源;移除任何障碍;改变任何惯例;与任何国家或地区展开合作。

The Foresight Engine

The Foresight Engine

规则

玩家面临的问题包括“我们如何能安全地让临床试验加速进展?”和“下一代非盈利性组织是什么样子的?”。玩家通过卡片对这些问题做出回应。这些卡片可能是新卡片,也可能是构建于他人想法之上的卡片。

新卡片包括“积极想象”卡(游戏邦注:用来回答“你将如何……?”之类的问题)和“消极想象”卡(游戏邦注:用来回答“什么原因可能导致目标无法实现?”之类的问题)。如果你用的是已经玩过的卡片,那么会出现以下各种互动选项:势头卡(如果那件事情发生,后续会发生什么事情?)、对立卡(我不同意,这才是可能发生的事情)、适应卡(如何才能适应不同的结果?)和调查卡(询问或回答后续问题)。

新卡片和势头卡通常会引发发散性思维,其他卡片也有可能引发聚合思维。

如何得分

仅仅出牌并不能得分,你的想法并须有价值,而这个价值通过众包来衡量。比如,当有人对你的想法做出回应时,你便得到1分。如果某个Foresight指导者表示对你的卡片特别感兴趣,你会得到20分。分数会让你升级,通过许多不同阶层最终达到史诗状态。(本文作者已经实现,因而他认为这并不难。)

对于指导者给出的“成就”,会有特别的奖赏。比如,设立“文特尔”奖来奖励那些“带来最大样式变化的微预言”。成就奖励的分数不定,但站点的博客中会提到你,因而赢得这种奖励很棒,还会有精美的“成就”图标显示在玩家的简介中。但是,获得奖项提名的人也可以获得分数。

仪表板

foresight-dashforesight-dash

游戏感觉起来很像Twitter,你的回应限制在140个字,你可以看到系列卡片。随着对话中的卡片不断增多,仪表板的内容会逐渐增加。当更多玩家参与到游戏中时,他们可以回顾之前已经出现的卡片并从游戏进展中找出话题的线索。但是,玩家无法在单个页面查看之前的回应,你需要点击数个页面。因而如果你想要对其他人的观点做出回应,就必须点击好多页面来找到那个原始的卡片。游戏应该设计个不同的界面来改善这些问题。

游戏的优点

我不是游戏设计师,但我确实喜欢玩这款游戏,它让我思考游戏对我个人的好处在哪里。我阅读了许多关于好游戏所具备特性的文章,Mark Oehlert对游戏中“必须拥有”和“最好拥有”的要素有以下描述。

必须拥有:动作;目标;分数/回报。最好拥有:竞争;计时;社交。

动作

该游戏中的动作完全依赖于社交互动和查看对不同时间所提出的不同问题的回应。毫无疑问,更多玩家参与其中便会有更多的动作。游戏刚开始进展很慢,但随着新玩家加入节奏开始加快。从总体上来说,问题的间隔时间长到足够开展动态的头脑风暴,但也显得很短,因而那些漫无目的的参与者或新玩家不会老是重复自己的言论。本作和多数头脑风暴游戏不同,发散思维和聚合思维并没有完全分开。当你从一种模式转换至另一种时,还会突发某些灵感。

目标

当面对不同游戏问题时,目标会完全激发思考者的创意。不同游戏问题的根源都在于,如何在面临这种毁灭性神经疾病的抉择境地之时加速医疗研究。我确实喜欢那些问题,所有问题都很严肃地指出现实世界所面临的问题,而且与我在卫生保健方面的兴趣有关。对我来说,这种相关性和兴趣因子会解决任何问题。

分数/回报

游戏中有计分板,因而你可以看到自己的总得分。你也可以在仪表板上看到其他玩家何时对你的卡片做出回应。当你因特别令人感兴趣的想法而得到奖励分数时,这些想法需要等待其他不同观点的人审视,因而那些真正良好的想法得到回报的时间可能会较晚。我获得过多次特别兴趣分数,但我并不真正了解指导者的兴趣在哪里。特别奖励会通过标题显示,有个链接解释为何授予此奖励。稍带主观性且令人难以捉摸的得分系统让我很难总结出获得分数的方法。

除了查看分数和奖励外,你还可以查看你的“个人能力”。这项数据通过你的卡片类型来衡量,可能在游戏过程中发生改变。审视你在游戏中的能力可以检视总体战略。当我退出游戏时,我的个人能力如下图所示:

strengths

strengths

竞争

你可以看到谁的分数比你高,这样就能刺激玩家产生更多创新思维来提升排名。作为成就获得者被站点博客提及也是很棒的事情。

计时

游戏实时进行但具有异步性,你可以随时离开和回到游戏中。游戏时限漫长,通常长达两天时间。游戏中没有真正的紧迫感,但那些可以花上整整两天时间玩游戏的玩家必然会获得最高的分数。但我认为游戏最有价值之处在于可以听到全球玩家的声音,这足以掩盖某些不足之处。

社交

这款游戏中充满社交,但需要进行些许说明。你通过提供推动谈话的内容来获得分数,发散思维(游戏邦注:如超级有趣的想法,赢得成就奖励等)可以获得最高的奖赏,但聚合思维不会得到明显的奖励。当然,发散思维和聚合思维都需要创新。而且,因为游戏给人的感觉像是Twitter,提出的想法就像漫游在太空之中,让人知道也需要一定的运气成分。

但总体来说,游戏的社交动态很积极,人们通常都能接受其他人的想法,合作来解决问题。就像其他社交情况一样,某些人显得是比他人更好的“听众”和“探索者”。

对于不同人而言,在此类游戏中取得的成功可能有不同的意义。你会看到某些玩家将竞争想法融入社交行为之中。对于此类玩家,萌生有可能真正改变事态的解决方案比获得分数更为重要,尽管此类玩家可能很擅长于赚取分数,因为他们极具创意性。而另一些玩家对游戏感兴趣的原因纯粹是为了挑战以获取最多的分数。此类玩家对提高自身关注度很感兴趣,因为这样最终便有可能获得更多奖励。因而对他们来说,社交互动是个可操控的事物。但是,此类玩家的行为可能会遇到障碍,如果他们不是个创意性思考者的话。这种融入的游戏意图可能产生某些有趣的社交动态。

那么谁会在此类游戏中获得胜利呢?我认为注重社交的玩家会取得胜利。游戏依靠提出的问题而存在,而这正是许多玩家不断思考并展开合作的地方。采用的方式多种多样,玩家会利用到游戏之外的社交网络。在这款游戏中,我觉得多数玩家是以社交为主体的,他们确实想要回答游戏中浮现出的问题。

玩这款游戏让我对社交游戏的想法更为感兴趣,我需要对社交游戏如何创造这种独特样式的方法做更多的研究,随后可能分享更多研究成果。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦)

Reflections on a social game for health innovation

diannerees

In a previous post, I described The Foresight Engine, an interesting game designed to encourage divergent thinking about a complex health problem in an alternative reality. To recap, players involved in the game are invited to imagine a future scenario in 2020 where a neurological disease is expected to infect as many as 100 million in the US. Players are part of a panel investigating ways to speed up the progress of research and are asked to assume that they can: get any resource needed; remove any obstacle; change any practice; collaborate across any boundary.

The Rules

Players are prompted with broad questions such as “how can we safely accelerate clinical trials?” and “what will the next generation non-profit organization look like?” Players respond to these questions by playing “cards.” These can either be new cards or cards that build upon the ideas of others.

New cards include “positive imagination” cards where you answer a “how would you….?” question and “dark imagination” cards where you answer the question “what would make this impossible?” If you work from already played cards, you have a variety of interaction options: Play a momentum card: If that happens, what happens next? Play an antagonism card: I disagree; here’s what might happen instead. Play an adaptation card: How might this play out differently? Play an investigation card: Ask or answer a follow-up question.

While new cards and momentum cards generally support divergent thinking, the remaining cards provide the opportunity for convergent thinking as well.

How points are earned

Merely posting won’t earn points; your idea has to have some value, as measured by crowdsourcing. For example, you get one point when someone responds to one of your ideas and you earn 20 points when one of your cards is deemed “Super interesting” by one of the Foresight guides. Points allow you to “level” through a number of different positions until you reach legend status. (I managed this, so it’s not that hard.)

There are also special awards for “achievement” given out by the guides. For example, there’s the “Venter” award for “Micro-forecast that makes the biggest paradigm shift.” No stated points are awarded for an achievement award (at least, that I could tell from the rules), but you’re mentioned in the site’s blog, so there’s the “cool” factor to winning this and you get a spiffy “achievement” logo in your profile section. However, winners of the award mentioned getting a boost in points as well.

The dashboard

The game has a “Twitter-like” feel in that your responses are limited to 140 characters and you see streams of cards. The dashboard is a bit clunky when it comes to viewing conversations represented as card “builds.” When more players are involved, this can result in repeating earlier played cards and hanging conversation threads and as the game goes on in time, questions are repeated and people may go over old ground without building on previously played cards. Additionally, rather than being able to view a thread of responses on a single web page you have to click through multiple pages, so if you’re following someone else’s build you have to click through quite a few pages to get to the original card. A differently designed interface might have ameliorated some of these issues.

Why it’s a good game

I’m not a game designer, but I did enjoy playing the game and it got me thinking about why it was rewarding for me personally. I did a bit of reading on the attributes of good games and found this description by Mark Oehlert (e-Clippings) of “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves” in a game.

Must-Haves: Action; Goal; Points/Feedback. Nice-to-Haves: Competition; Countdown timer; Social.

The action

The action to this game resides entirely in social interactions and viewing posted responses to different questions being proposed at timed intervals. So needless to say, there’s more action when there are more players involved. The game had a slow start when it opened, but ramped up as new players joined in. Overall, the question intervals were long enough to allow some dynamic brainstorming, but short enough not to let participants flounder or start repeating themselves too much. Unlike most brainstorming games, opportunities for divergent thinking and convergent thinking were not separated in time, which took a bit of refocusing (not entirely efficient) as you switched from one mode to another.

The goal

The goal is to be as creative a thinker as possible when faced with different game questions. The different game questions are all part of the overarching question/problem of how to speed up medical research when faced with the alternative reality of this devastating neurological disease. I really liked that questions all had serious real-world implications and were relevant to my interests in health care. For me, the relevance and interest factor trumped any frustration the goal’s fuzziness might have evoked.

Points/feedback

There’s a scoreboard, so you can see your overall points. You also see the builds on your dashboard, which indicate when other players have responded to your cards. You have to toggle to a different view to see when you’ve been awarded points for having super interesting ideas, so feedback’s a bit delayed when it comes to your really good ideas. I received a respectable number of super interesting points but I was never really sure about what piqued a guide’s interest. Special awards received banner headlines and accessing a link gave you some explanation of why it was granted. The somewhat arbitrary (and mysterious) point system made it a bit hard for me at least to care all that much about gaining points.

In addition to viewing points and awards, you can also view your “personal strengths” which are measured by the types of cards you play and can change throughout the course of the game. Looking at your strengths throughout the game, can allow you to monitor your overall strategy. When I exited the game, my strengths looked like this:

Competition

You can see who has higher points than you have and so that creates incentives to come up with more innovative ideas to rise up the ranks. Being mentioned in the site’s blog as a winner of an achievement award is also pretty cool.

Countdown timer

The game is played in real-time but it’s asynchronous in the sense that you can leave and return to the game area and you have quite a lengthy countdown — the game runs with a break over two days. There’s no real sense of urgency and players who can afford to play the game for all two days are certain to get the highest scores (some sour grapes here, of course). But for what it’s worth, I think the advantage of being able to hear from the maximum number of globally distributed voices really diminishes this weakness.

Social

This game is all about being social, but with caveats. You’re awarded points for providing ideas that prompt discussion and the biggest rewards are handed out for divergent thinking (i.e., having super interesting ideas, winning achievement awards), but there are no apparent rewards for convergent thinking and of course both divergent and convergent thinking are required for innovation. Also, because the game had this “Twitter-like” feel, there is the sense of sending ideas out into the void and that luck also plays a part in being listened to.

Overall, however, the social dynamics of the game were very positive, and people were generally open-minded to what others were saying and worked together on builds. As in any social situation, some seemed to be better “listeners” and “explorers” than others.

Success in a game like this is likely to mean different things to different people. At the one end of the spectrum, you can imagine the player for whom the idea of competition is subsumed by the idea of doing some social good. For this player, it’s less important to get points than to come up with solutions that might have the potential to lead to real change, though this player can be quite good at garnering points if he/she’s inherently creative. At the other end of the spectrum, you can imagine a player interested in the game purely as a challenge to win the most points. This person’s more interested in creating some focus on himself/herself, since ultimately that creates more potential to gain rewards. Social interactions, therefore, have some element of manipulation to them. However, this person’s efforts may be hampered if he/she’s not that creative a thinker. This mix of game intentions can lead to some “interesting” social dynamics.

So who wins a game like this? I do think it’s the social good that wins. The game lives on in the questions raised, which many of the players will continue to think about and work together on, in some way, in their own different social networks that exist outside of the game. In this particular game, I think most of the players were on the social good end of the spectrum and genuinely wanted to answer the questions raised during the game.

Playing this game has made me more interested in the idea of social games in general and I need to do more research on how social games create unique paradigms. I’ll share more about this in a later post. (Source: Instructional Design Fusions


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