作者：Jason Kapalka（PopCap首席执行官）

Popcap主要致力网页和下载游戏。以下是休闲游戏设计10大误区。

popcap from ipadown.com

1. 内容非常困难。让玩家在每个关卡失败5、6次。惩罚新手玩家。相比休闲游戏，玩家倾向在掌机游戏中投入更多学习时间。通常玩家在决定是否购买某可下载游戏前，可以先体验1小时。休闲游戏不能太简单。游戏完全依靠技能或运气会非常枯燥。糟糕指南会让简单游戏看起来很难；游戏需投入大量时间指导玩家。

2. 游戏具有多个普通模式，而非单个优质模式：例如，不要给玩家过多选择。玩家想要进行体验，他们最初没有足够信息进行明智决策。此外，Jasons表示玩家喜欢多种模式，这也是Popcap在其游戏中所采取的策略。我想这里存在细微差别。

3. 技术要求过多：过多内存和不必要3D技术，内容过于庞大。很多玩家依然使用调制解调器。10mb是成功下载作品的上限，我很惊讶竟然有这么高。3D或许能让游戏视觉效果更好，但很多休闲玩家都未采用此技术，他们大多使用驱动器陈旧的古老设备。设置备选编码，这样就不需要3D技术。你添加的每个额外技术要求都会缩小你的用户规模（游戏邦注：质量管理非常重要）。

4. 奇怪定价。随便签订发行协议。定价过低或过高都不正确：平价定位会让玩家觉得游戏质量一般。同发行商进行合理沟通；这是小规模领域，他们同开发商交易时具有众多选择。考虑尝试不同奖励方案和模式，以增加玩家数量。

5. 使用鼠标右键。没有休闲游戏玩家使用鼠标右键进行操作。而其他平台给予的建议是：“留心界面和互动设计”，例如很多手机每次不能点击超过1次，这让快节奏射击游戏变得非常棘手。若玩家无法在5分钟内弄懂游戏，他们会选择离开。

6. 糟糕名字或主题。Jason列举一款他们称作“EggSucker”的游戏。地下城、机器人和骷髅头之类的主题：“游戏以身处太空地下城的机器人骷髅头为主题怎么样？”相反，游戏应坚持可爱、有趣、明亮和非暴力的彩色风格。游戏名称要易于读出和拼写，使用简单商标。确保主题适合游戏。

7. 奖励低分：毕竟即便玩家觉得游戏低水准也没有关系。Jason建议你添加从0-X的积分奖励标准，这很受玩家欢迎。

8. 认为玩家会进行阅读。他们不会。你融入的文本越多，他们阅读的可能性就越小。不要一次性解释所有内容。理想休闲游戏不应含有文字：玩家应能立即把握。阅读是项工作：玩家希望进行体验，而不是进行工作。在指南中花费心思，而不是简单把它附在后面。

9. 游戏富有挑战性，耗费脑力。Jason认为益智游戏不属于休闲游戏：“只有一个解决方案的游戏非常令人沮丧：玩家或成功克服，或变成失败者”。玩家失败时不应感到非常糟糕。游戏应给予大量提示。让玩家以自己希望的方式进行体验。我觉得Jason忽视了益智游戏的流行程度，但我同意其提示观点。

10. 忽视评论。“妈妈测试”：若妈妈都会玩，这就是款好游戏。若妈妈会玩游戏，免去指示角色会更好。妈妈是游戏测试的最新资源。休闲游戏开发社区主要是男性；而玩家社区主要是女性。你需要新鲜用户：熟悉游戏的玩家很难提供有用信息（游戏邦注：因为他们不再是游戏新手）。

上面是10大误区。下面3点有用建议。

1. 给予玩家回馈。隐藏界面，这样玩家就会同“游戏密切联系”。在玩家瞄准积极目标进行系列操作过程中，融入逐渐升高的音效。

2. 考虑玩家特点：他们或许和你不同。考虑年龄和视力因素。

3. 因游戏而感到兴奋：若你其实并不感兴趣，游戏会体现出来。

注解：

* 30% Popcap玩家都使用调制解调器。

* 为获得最大覆盖范围，假设玩家使用5年之久的设备。

* 下载-购买转换率大于1%说明游戏运作良好。达到2%以上说明表现卓越。

* Popcap曾尝试制作多人游戏，但玩家并不感兴趣。但看看Pogo，他们始终维持25万用户。开发商很难在多人游戏中找到商业模式。

* “在韩国，《Lineage》或《魔兽世界》之外的游戏都是休闲游戏。”这是个截然不同的市场。欧洲和美国市场所欢迎的游戏类型非常相似。

游戏邦注：原文发布于2006年2月7日，文章叙述以当时为背景。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

“10 ways to make a bad casual game”

By Jason Kapalka

Popcap are mainly web and downloaded games (all my emphasis)

1. Make it really hard. Make people fail each level 5 or 6 times. Punish newbies. Players tend to invest more time in learning to play console games than they do casual games. Usually downloadable games give you an hours play before you have to make a decision on purchasing. Casual games can’t be too easy. Relying entirely on skill – or chance – can be boring. Bad tutorials make an easy game seem hard; put lots of time into educating players.

2. Have a dozen mediocre game modes rather than one good one: i.e. don’t give players too much choice. Players want to play, they don’t have enough information to make an informed choice at first. But at the same time Jasons says that players like multiple modes, and that Popcap put them into their games. I suppose there’s a fine line here…

3. Require too much, technically: too much memory, gratuitous 3D, too large a download. Lots of users are still on modems. 10mb is the drop-off point for successful downloads – I’m surprised it’s that high. 3D might make games look better but it’s not really supported by lots of casual gamers, who are on older machines with outdated drivers etc. Have a fallback mode so that 3D isn’t required. Every extra technical requirement you add shrinks your audience for the game. QA is vital.

4. Price it weirdly. Self-distribute. Sign any deal you can. Pricing too low or too high can be a mistake: cheap implies crap in some peoples minds. Be reasonable when talking to publishers; it’s a small industry and they have lots of choice when dealing with developers. Consider trying different incentives and models for upselling players.

5. Use the right mouse button. No-one playing casual games will ever use the right mouse-buton. On other platforms the lesson is, “be careful about interface and interaction design”: for instance, many handsets won’t let you handle >1 keyclick at once, which makes doing faced-pace shooting games tricky. If players don’t get it in 5 minutes, they’ll move on.

6. Give it a terrible name or theme. Jason shows a game they had called “EggSucker”. Themes like dungeons, robots, skulls: “How about a game with robot skulls… in a SPACE DUNGEON?”. Go cute, funny, light, non-violent brightly coloured instead. Make titles easy to spell and pronounce, easily trademarked. Ensure the theme fits well with the game.

7. Award low scores: after all, it doesn’t matter if people think the game is low-scoring. Jason recommends you add a zero to all of the points you award: players like that.

8. Expect users to read. They won’t. The more text you have up there, the less they will read. Don’t explain everything at once. The ideal casual game would have no words whatsoever: it would be immediately clear to players. Reading is work: players want to play, not work. Put time into the tutorial – don’t just tack it on to the end.

9. Make it challenging and cerebral. Jason doesn’t see puzzles as being casual games: “games which have only one solution are inherently frustrating: you either solve it or you’re a loser”. Players shouldn’t feel bad when they lose. Games should be generous with hints, letting players play the way they want to. I think he’s missing the everyday popularity of puzzles but agree with his points on hints etc.

10. Ignore what everyone else says of your game. “The mum test”: if his mum could play the game, it was good. If she could play it without him hovering over her should then even better. Mothers are an untapped resource for games testing. The casual game development community is largely male; the player community is largely female. You need fresh audiences: players familiar with games are less able to give you useful information: they’re not newbies any more.

That’s the 10 bad things to do. 3 good things:

1. Give feedback to players (even if subtly). Make the interface invisible so the user is “one with the game”. Use a rising pitch in sound effects when players are doing a sequence of actions towards a positive end.

2. Consider your customer: they may not be like you.
Take things like age and eyesight into account.

3. Get excited about your game: if you’re not genuinely interested it’ll show.

Notes from questions:

* 30% of Popcaps customers have modems.

* For maximum reach, assume your customers have 5 year old machines.

* A conversion rate of >1% from download to purchase (of a web game) is decent. 2% or more is good.

* They’ve tried doing multiplayer games but players weren’t interested. But look at Pogo, who at any one time have 250k people playeing games. It’s hard to find a business model in multiplayer games.

* “Anything that isn’t Lineage or WoW is a casual game – in Korea”. It’s a very different market. Europe is close to the US when it comes to game genres.（Source：tomhume）