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社交游戏设计不应遵循传统玩家分类理论

发布时间:2011-06-20 12:35:27 Tags:,,,

作者:Jim Cummings

从十二星座到《哈里波特》中的霍格沃兹分院帽再到Facebook上的小测试,我们都不难看出人类似乎痴迷于根据组群特性将自己分类。或许将自己打上此类标签会让人产生积极的心理作用,让我们有了某种归属感,可以用外在理论来解释内在的“真我”想法,能够结合理想状况来找到自身存在的意义。比如,我深信自己本质上有73%与狡猾的蝙蝠侠或《The Wire》中的Omar类似。我知道自身存在的这些特性,它们会很明显地表露出来,某些简单的性格测试就能够证实它们的存在,而且可以为全世界所知晓。

当然,有些潮人在网络上发布的20个问题的测试缺乏科学严谨性,除了帮我确认自己对自身的积极设想外别无它用。然而,确实存在其他鲜活明确且有所价值的象征性测试。比如,企业管理和人力资源行政人员通常将Myers-Briggs性格测试作为应聘者的才能评估工具。

同样,人们认为玩家类型学有一定价值。玩家类型不仅可以让玩家在特定玩家风格或角色的环境中审视自身,还可为设计师提供有用的深刻见解。如果设计师试图确保游戏满足特定类型用户的诉求,抑或是想要制作大众化内容,研究玩家类型可以让某些提升设计功能的内容产生启发性的吸引力。

到目前为止,Bartle的4种类型精编版(游戏邦注:完整模型包含8种类型)是最为著名的玩家类型框架。Bartle概念化的成就型、探索性、社交型和杀手型简洁且容易理解,可以轻易为玩家和设计师所领会,即便是那些对多用户虚拟空间游戏(游戏邦注:Multiple User Domain,下文简称“MUD”)和大型多人在线(游戏邦注:下文简称“MMO”)游戏不甚熟悉的人也不例外。或许这也是该理论通常可用于各种玩家的原因,虽然其源于对MUD环境的观察。但是很不巧,讨论这些玩家类型所着眼的游戏通常与研发框架的原始游戏场景的相似度并不高。

Bartle’s  set of four gamer types(from reply-mc.com)

Bartle的四种玩家分类(from reply-mc.com)

最近我发现有不少开发商尝试运用Bartle理论来设计社交游戏,我认为这是个错误的做法,原因有三:其一,典型MUD和MMO游与社交游戏环境有本质区别;其二,玩家行动和互动间也存在差异;其三,两类游戏类型设计的“成功”有着不同的内涵。

MUD和MMO与社交游戏间最显著的差别在于“空间”的不同。MUD和MMO通常有着大范围的“实体”世界,主要玩家是知道如何在硬性规则和浮现的社交规范中运转自如的人。MUD和MMO中确实是沙盘式的动作和互动,为成就型玩家明确构建起的奖励,以及让社交型玩家产生的归属感和感情使他们在这片空间里忙碌。相比之下,目前许多社交游戏的机制空间只限于玩家界面,其中预设的社交互动反映出某些玩家类型的目标。也就是说,社交游戏的可玩性通常注重于个人成就和体验,架构于游戏之上的社交元素使玩家可以进行社交互动(游戏邦注:赠礼、满足玩家请求或招募新玩家),帮助玩家沿着某种特别的游戏内成就度量发展。

换句话说,社交游戏中的社交互动带有功利性。诚然,现有交流理论辩称MMO中的社交行为也是因为玩家需要得到满意之物。然而,从团队活动到舞蹈表露情感,MMO社交的复杂性以及所需的投入涉及范围较广。也就是说,MMO设计为社交互动提供了足够的空间,可以是明确为完成某项成就,也可以不带任何成就目标。而社交游戏通常做不到,游戏内的朋友被当成玩家现有网络中的可用资产来利用,包括那些可能数年都未曾说过话的人(游戏邦注:在游戏内互惠互利的赠礼过程中二者仍然没有交谈)。

上述并非纵向比较两类游戏的好坏,只是想要表达我们在探讨两种不同游戏的观点。Bartle类型学所基于的虚拟空间在设计中为不同类型用户提供不同的体验。相比之下,多数社交游戏设计的大部分机制利用的是玩家社交网络的核心资源,将游戏成就和社交行为混为一体。在此类情况下,Bartle的类型学便无法恰当应用其中。综上所述,特定玩家类型学只能用于特定游戏设计中。Bartle类型学无法用于社交游戏,但还有其他类型学可用于这些游戏的机制,比如对“竞争型”和“装饰型”的研究可能对萌生新设计元素更有用。

然而,如不考虑类型学对特定游戏设计的适用性,此类标签最终也只是衡量行为并进行分类。以Facebook中的性格测试为例,从本质上来说它们也只能提供世界现存分类。但对许多开发商,尤其是那些依靠微交易而并非一次性购买或延伸订阅来盈利的社交游戏开发商来说,他们感兴趣的不只是玩家分布数据。除描述玩家行为外,此类开发商关心的是如何进行预测。正如上文所述,社交游戏玩家将网络中的朋友视为可提升成就,并且可用现实世界中的时间和金钱来衡量的资产。社交游戏设计师感兴趣的是玩家愿意花费的金钱数目,以及如何精确调整设计使其满足用户需求。对这些内容的领悟单靠类型学是不够的,还需要对不断变化的用户兴趣进行数量化评估。

因而本文得出的结论是,类型学在分类玩家和理解新游戏设计方法是否产生某种玩家体验时能够发挥作用。也就是说,类型学对游戏内用户意义的描述很有作用。相对而言,如果开发商对创造游戏体验不甚感兴趣,更关心预测和刺激特定样式的行为,那么设计时最好参考基于遥测的玩家类型,也就是类似在Amazon和Netflix等非游戏环境中监测到的数据。但是,这样设计出的游戏还会好玩吗?(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

To Bartle or Not to Bartle?: Capturing Player Behavior in Social Games

Jim Cummings

From horoscopes to the Hogwarts Sorting Hat to Facebook quizzes, we humans seem to have a certain fascination with categorizing ourselves in terms of group identities and fitting ourselves to archetypal models. Maybe this is because of the various psychological perks that come with coding oneself within such sets of labels: we’re provided with a sense of belonging, we’re given a chance to externally corroborate internal thoughts about our “true” selves; we’re able to find meaning by aligning ourselves with an ideal. For instance, I have no doubt in my mind that my essence has a 73% correlation with the cunning vigilantism of Batman or that of all the characters from The Wire I am most like Omar. I know these things about myself; they’re obvious, and simple personality tests can verify them in a manner for all the world to see.

Of course, a twenty question test made up by some fanboy and posted online lacks a certain scientific rigor and offers little use beyond helping me to confirm my own positive assumptions about myself. However, there certainly exist other typologies that have come to establish themselves as valid and/or of tangible, applied value. For example, it is not uncommon for Myers-Briggs personality profiling to be used as an aptitude assessment tool by corporate management and human resource officials.

It is in a similar vein that player typologies are thought to provide value. Beyond simply allowing players to think of themselves within the context of a given gamer style or role, player types may also offer useful insights for designers, providing convenient heuristic hooks on which to hang design features when attempting to ensure that a game speaks to a particular audience or, alternatively, has “something for everyone.”

By far, the most well known framework of player types is Bartle’s condensed set of four (as opposed to his full model of 8 types). Bartle’s conceptualization of achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers is elegant and intuitive, allowing it to be easily grasped by players, designers, and even those unversed in MUDs and MMOs. Perhaps this is why it often gets applied to gamers in general, despite being specifically extracted from observations made in MUD environments in particular. And, unfortunately, the games being considered when these player types are discussed often have little in common with the gaming scenarios from which the framework was originally derived.

For example, I’ve recently witnessed attempts to apply Bartle types when describing the player habits found in social games. I would argue that such an application is mistaken, considering 1) some key distinction between typical MUDs/MMOs and social game environments, 2) the resulting differences in player actions and interactions, and 3) the underlying differences in what is meant when each of these types of designs are considered “successful”.

The most obvious distinction between MUDs/MMOs and social games may be the difference in the play “spaces” themselves. MUDs and MMOs are often large-scale “physical” worlds, geographies populated by players who learn to operate by both hard-wired rules and emergent social norms. Indeed, MUDs and MMOs are sandboxes of actions and interactions, with explicit reward structures for the achievers as well as hang-outs and / emotes for the socializers occupying the space. In comparison, one might argue that until now many social games have been interface-bound sets of mechanics, in which social interactions are pre-coded to reflect a certain type of player goal. That is, gameplay in social games is often about individual achievement and experience, with social elements layered on top in a manner that permit social interactions (gifts, help requests, new player recruitment) to assist in progressing along a particular in-game achievement metric.

In other words, social interaction in social games is utilitarian. Granted, established communication theories like uses & gratifications would argue that socializing in MMOs is also about need satisfaction. However, MMO socializing has a tremendous range of investments and complexity, ranging from raid groups to goofy dancing emotes. That is, MMO designs provide room for social interaction that is expressly accomplishment-oriented as well as that which serves no achievement purpose. Social games, on the other hand, typically do not. Rather, in-game friends are harnessed like available assets from one’s pre-existing network, including people one may have not spoken to in years (and still does not speak to within the process of reciprocal in-game gift-giving).

Such a comparison is not meant to be a vertical one – rather, the point is that we’re dealing with apples and oranges. The virtual spaces on which Bartle’s types are based offer different experiences for different types of users in their designs. In contrast, the majority of social game designs are mostly “diamond” game mechanics that leverage “heart” resources from the player’s social network, conflating achievement and socializing. As such, Bartle’s types do not neatly apply. The point is that the aptness of a given player typology is based upon a given game’s design. In the case of social games, Bartle types do not fit. However, other typologies more in tune with the particular mechanics and exchanges of these games – say, “competitors” vs. “decorators” – may make for more accurate – and in turn, more useful – hooks on which to hang new design elements.

Yet, regardless of the aptness of a typology for a game design’s player base, the fact remains that such labels are ultimately just categorical measurements of behavior. Like the Facebook personality tests, they are descriptive in nature, merely offering taxonomies of what already exist in the world. However, many developers, particularly those of social games who rely on micro-transactions rather than one-shot purchases or extended subscriptions for revenue, are likely interested in more than demographic data. Beyond describing player behavior, such developers are concerned with predicting it. For example, as noted above, social game players leverage network friends as social capital to put towards achievement, assets which are exchanged with and valued in terms of time and real world money. Social game designers are interested in how much of each of these currencies a given player is willing to expend and how they may fine tune a design to reach the desired proportions. Such insights cannot be extracted by typologies alone, and instead require telemetering, which offers quantitative assessment along continuous variables of interest.

Therefore, to answer the title question above, we might conclude that, typologies can be useful when trying to categorize and label your players and to understand how a new design may or may not afford particular player experiences. That is, typologies are good for describing user meaning in a game. In contrast, if a developer is less interested in creating experiences and more concerned with predicting and incenting particular patterns of behavior, designs might be better informed through telemetry-based player profiling, similar to the data tracking underlying non-game choice environments like Amazon and Netflix. …But where’s the fun in that? (Source: Gamasutra)


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