作者：Ian Bogost

2004年秋天，我曾就哥本哈根IT大学的“Other Players Conference on Multiplayer Phenomena”大会发表了《异步多人模式》。想要清楚了解2004年的游戏开发和研究状况，不妨参考如下事件：

Facebook公司在2004年夏天成立，当时的服务范围主要集中在哈佛、斯坦福、达特茅斯、哥伦比亚和耶鲁大学。

“Other Players”大会是首个电脑游戏盛会，主要就提交的意见陈述进行同行评议。

此时Xbox Live已问世，不过还只是原始掌机的附加组件。完整版Xbox 360直到1年后才出现。

当时首款Nintendo DS才刚问世，提供对等掌上体验，这在当时是独一无二的。

当时的“多人游戏”主要指MMORPG游戏（游戏邦注：其全称是大型多人在线角色扮演游戏）。当时没有人想到“multiplayer phenomena”大会会瞄准这些游戏。

我当时的那篇《异步多人模式》文章算是某种程度的平衡局面，旨在说明一味关注即时多人模式游戏会忽视同样或者甚至更加有趣的小型休闲异步多人游戏。下面是文章摘要：

高预算、高投入的3D MMORPG游戏已带来丰厚营收及相应回馈。但这些游戏仍旧忽略多数休闲玩家。文章旨在说明多人模式，尤其是采用异步多人模式的休闲游戏，或者是系列玩家相继参与的游戏具有光明前景。

cow clicker from files.wordpress.com

听起来很熟悉，是吧？当然我是从高层面切入主题，这些游戏比Facebook MMO游戏更加热门。姑且先不看《Cow Clicker》的讽刺性，我稍后将对社交游戏现象进行批判，我已省略许多细节，没有详述如今的游戏和我描述的区别何在。

在最近的波尔多“2011 Foundations of Digital Games”大会中，Mia Consalvo发表了文章《Using Your Friends: Social Mechanics in Social Games》，这份研究他早前就已分享过（游戏邦注：其中包括在“ 2011 GDC 社交游戏峰会”）。

Mia在文章中指出社交游戏共有的设计模式，其中更多关乎传播和影响性，而非异步性：好友栏、礼物和邻居拜访无处不在，而玩家之间的挑战和交流却非常有限。

我不确定2004年发表的文章算不算得上综合陈述，但我7年后阅读仍然颇有感触。我在文章中提出异步体验4大特点：

1. 异步玩法支持多人依次体验，而非采用同步模式。

2. 异步玩法要求持续状态。

3. 玩家间歇性是异步玩法的原则。

4. 异步玩法不是游戏最突出的特点。

我想当前社交游戏最缺乏的是第2点。最近成绩突出的《Cow Clicker》就是此社交机制的典范，游戏提供所有玩家都能够自主选择的环境，这反过来也会影响玩家行为 。

其次，第3点也是很多Facebook游戏所缺乏的，或者准确说，这通常只应用在玩家获取阶段。我在批评社交游戏的文章中谈到结构化和强制性是当前异步多人游戏的两大特点。正是这两个特点使得社交游戏鲜少瞄准我2004年（游戏邦注：即玩家游戏内外日益提高的连贯性）谈到的异步内容，或者是提出这样的问题：游戏设置和真实生活之间的差异为何日益扩大？（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Revisiting Asynchronous Multiplayer Games

by Ian Bogost

In the autumn of 2004, I wrote a paper titled “Asynchronous Multiplay” for the Other Players Conference on Multiplayer Phenomena, which was held at IT University, Copenhagen in December of that year. To give you an idea about how long ago 2004 was on the timescale of game development and game research, consider a few facts:

Facebook was incorporated in the summer of 2004, and the service was available only at Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Yale.

The “Other Players” conference was the first computer games conference ever to perform peer review on full paper submissions.

Xbox Live existed, but only as an add-on for the original console; the Xbox 360 with its integrated version wouldn’t be released for another year.

The first Nintendo DS had just been released, offering peer-to-peer handheld play, which was unique at the time.

At that moment, “multiplayer games” referred almost entirely to MMORPGs. It wasn’t even clear that a conference on “multiplayer phenomena” would be interested in anything other than those games.

I wrote the Asynchronous Multiplay paper as a kind of intervention, suggesting that the then-current obsession with real-time massively multiplayer games obscured the equally and perhaps even more interesting promise of smaller-scale, more casual, asynchronous multiplayer games. You can download the full paper [PDF], but here’s the abstract:

Big budget, high commitment 3D MMORPG’s have generated significant revenues and theoretical bounty. But these games still alienate most casual players. This article offers a promising future for multiplayer experience, especially casual experience, in the form of asynchronous multiplayer games, or games in which small or large numbers of players play a game in sequence rather than simultaneously.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Certainly I got a lot right at a very high level; this is just the sort of game that did indeed became even more popular than MMOs on Facebook. But before you race ahead in your eagerness to note the irony of the creator of Cow Clicker apparently predicting the social games phemomenon I would later revile, note that I missed a lot of details too, details that make today’s games very different from the ones I envisioned.

This week at the 2011 Foundations of Digital Games conference in Bordeaux, Mia Consalvo presented a paper, “Using Your Friends: Social Mechanics in Social Games.” It’s a version of research she’s shared elsewhere, including at the 2011 GDC Social Games Summit.

Mia’s paper points out the design patterns that are common to social games, most of which have more to do with spread and influence than they do with asynchrony: friend bars, gifts, and neighbor visits are ubiquitous, while player-to-player challenges and communication are limited.

I’m not sure if the 2004 paper counts as claim chowder or not, but it’s certainly an eye opening read for me, seven years later, after so much has changed. I offered four characteristics of asynchronous play in the paper:

1. Asynchronous play supports multiple players playing in sequence, not in tandem

2. Asynchronous play requires some kind of persistent state which all players affect, and which in turn affects all players

3. Breaks between players are the organizing principle of asynchronous play

4. Asynchronous play need not be the defining characteristic of a game

Of these, I think it’s characteristic 2 that’s least embraced by today’s social games. In that respect, my recent financial blackmailing of Cow Clicker players offers a unique (if perverse) version of this sort of social mechanic precisely because it offers a condition that all players affect and that affects all players in turn.

Secondarily, characteristic 3 above hasn’t been taken seriously in most Facebook games—or more accurately, it’s been taken seriously only as exploitation. In my critique of social games, I’ve cited enframing and compulsion as two features of the current crop of asynchronous multiplayer games, and features that ought to bother us. These are perhaps the features that make these games least likely to focus on the aspect of asynchronous games that interested me in 2004: an increased connectedness of intra- and extra-game player attitudes, or asking the question what happens in the gaps between gameplay and real life?（Source：gamasutra）