作者：Kyle Orland

通关玩竞争性电子游戏并不难，只要你能够完成游戏的预期目标便能成为赢家。这就意味着那些拥有好对策，较快的反应力以及较好视觉敏感度的人都能成为最终获胜者，这并不包含任何运气因素在内。

但是随着越来越多游戏的出现，还有一些我们看不见的因素影响着游戏胜负的决定因素，而这个因素与游戏预期规则和目标并不存在直接的关系。这种游戏背后的对策便是亚对策。我们可以在现今很多竞争类游戏中发现它的踪影，游戏设计者更应该将其牢记于心以创造出更好的竞争性游戏。

prose-with-bros(from thenextweb.com)

到底什么是亚对策？首先我将以自己最喜欢的一款iOS游戏《Prose With Bros》为例进行说明。这是一款诗歌竞争游戏，两名玩家（游戏邦注：由游戏随机搭配或玩家自行组配）将各自分配到一系列单词。通过使用这些单词以及可选择的标点符号，创造出一些句子并将其发给其他玩家进行投票。而在12个小时之内获得最多投票的玩家将赢得游戏。

这款游戏的出色之处便是设计者并未在投票者做决定时提供任何引导（游戏邦注：玩家全凭自己的判断标准做出选择）。因为投票机制是这款游戏的主要部分，所以这款游戏中较为有趣的亚对策便是计算出哪一种类型的句子较能吸引公众的注意力。

这种亚对策的奇特之处便是它考虑到了一些演变策略。当我最初接触投票机制时，我很幼稚地将游戏中所提示的一些单词，如“poppycock”，“knickers”，“chunky”，“hotpants”和“doink”等组成一个笑话。我想通过这个笑话吸引到那些评判标准较低的投票者，因为曾经政治领域的拉票竞争表明，这是一个不赖的策略。

但问题是，其他人也有自己的策略。像往常一样我与别人组成对手开始不修边幅地造句，但是有时候随意性却也能形成一个极为精确的句子。所以在这些竞赛中我的输赢比例是一致的，虽然我认为我应该赢得更多。所以我在设想一个能让我做得更好的策略。

所以我决定在别人直行前进时来个回转弯。从之前投票时看到一个让我捧腹大笑的句子里得到启发，我开始推敲我的句子，让它看起来尽可能地古怪但却不乏意义。比如，我会编写一些穿着裤子的老虎，格子花纹的小型货车以及行尸走肉的鸭子等。除此之外，我还喜欢将一些古怪的食物配对在一起，如豆腐火鸭鸡，芒果红辣椒，以及蛋糕等等，以此凸显我的句子。

我的亚对策执行得很顺利–比起那些与我之前一样还在组着一些庸俗句子的玩家来说，我的句子更加具有吸引力。但是我还是要有所警惕，因为不知道什么时候新来的玩家也许口味会不同，不一定会喜欢我的造句风格，甚至，也许会有其它玩家开始模仿我的策略而对我造成威胁。

这便是亚对策的魅力所在，在那种基于经验和积分的计分系统已开始让人们索然无味的情况下，这种亚对策更是凸显其独特魅力。

万智牌旅法师对决2012(from demodownloads.blogspot)

在我最近喜欢的另一款游戏《万智牌旅法师对决2012》中，亚对策也扮演着极其重要的角色。比起《Prose With Bros》，这款游戏拥有更多明确的策略，玩家将从对立甲板上获得卡片，并以此向对手发起初攻击，削弱其20点能量。

在这款游戏中，玩家需要在游戏深层次且复杂多变的规则设定中反复思考并做出各种选择，包括该使用哪一张卡片和能力，什么时候使用最合适，如何扩大自己有限的资源，以及如何平衡防御与进攻的需要等等。

然而一旦你熟知了《万智牌旅法师对决2012》中的策略，它便可以被归结成一个相对简单的亚对策：即只要你选择了正确的牌组即可。虽然是一款纸牌游戏，但它又与传统纸牌游戏不同，它提供了各种各样的牌组类型，而可下载的掌机版本则提供了10款牌组类型供玩家选择，玩家可以在游戏过程中通过手中所持有的卡片打开相对应的牌组。

一会后你便能够清楚地判断每一个牌组的类型，并决定每一个牌组该如何与其它九个牌组相抗衡。例如较慢的“Hidden Depths”牌组将可能会输给快速的“Unquenchable Fire”牌组，反之，“Unquenchable Fire”牌组也有可能败给“Guardians of the Wood”或者“Wielding Steel”牌组。这些牌组都较容易受到其“Blood Hunger”或“Realm of Illusion”牌组的威胁，因为后面两者都有可能打倒玩家手中所持有的关键牌。

毫无疑问，一些牌组会比其它厉害，但没有一个牌组完全无敌，它们至少会与其中一者相克。而这一点很重要，因为如果打破了这种战略平衡，那么游戏开始之前所选择的“亚对策”就会成为游戏胜负的最终决定因素。

我很清楚地记得中学时经常玩的一款拳击游戏《Tekken 3》禁止玩家使用游戏中小巧而无敌的橙色恐龙Gon，因为很显然，如果拥有Gon，即使对手再强大，玩家仍有95%的胜算能够赢得游戏。《Super Street Fighter II Turbo》中很多高层次的比赛项目也禁止玩家选择Akuma，原因与此相同。

但是在《万智牌旅法师对决2012》的配对屏幕上，这种“剪刀石头布”模式的牌组支配机制能够提供给玩家一种更有趣的配对模式，即在对立双方都同意开始比赛前，游戏将隐藏双方所选择的牌组信息。毫无疑问，这种设置更像是让玩家自主选择竞争对手，而非与随机性的玩家对决，这就会迫使玩家充分考虑牌组的总体优劣势再做出决定。

但是正因为这种情况，我不只一次遇到那种中途退出的随机性玩家，因为对方不满他自己不断改变选择之后，我也用调整牌组的方式作出回应。

以上所提到的观点或许有助于游戏设计者制作出一款优秀的竞争类游戏，尽管在很多人看来它们并不是现实中游戏里应该具备的因素。一个适当且经过妥善安排的亚对策可以为原本简单的游戏概念注入一些新鲜血液，但是如果这个亚对策是错误的，那么将严重影响整款游戏以及游戏本身的其它策略。游戏设计者应该在设计下一款竞争性游戏时牢记这些隐藏于游戏背后的因素。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Analysis: Designing For The Metagame

by Kyle Orland

The way competitive video games are supposed to work is simple: the person who is better at achieving the game’s stated objective is the winner. This means the person with the better strategy, or the better reflexes, or the better visual acuity will be the victor, absent any confounding factors of luck.

But with many games, there’s a largely unseen factor in determining the winner, one that’s not directly related to the game’s stated rules and objective. This game behind the game — the metagame — is where a lot of the emergent fun can be found in today’s competitive titles, and designers would do well to keep it in mind when creating competitive systems.

What do I mean by metagame? I’ll start with an example from one of my favorite recent iOS releases: Prose With Bros. The game is essentially competitive magnetic poetry — two players (randomly matched or specifically paired) get the same set of a few dozen random words.

Players use these words, along with optional punctuation, to create sentences that are then sent to other players for votes. Whoever gets the most votes in a 12 hour period wins the round.

Part of the game’s genius is the fact that the designers offer absolutely no guidance as to what voters are supposed to be looking for when picking sentences (though even with such guidance, players would doubtlessly go by their own criteria anyway). While the voting system is an integral part of the game, the much more interesting metagame is trying to figure out what kind of sentences can attract the votes of a fickle public.

The vagaries of this metagame allow for a surprising amount of evolving strategy. My first few times through the voting wringer, I went the puerile route, spinning suggestive words like “poppycock,” “knickers,” “chunky,” “hotpants” and “doink” into the crudest jokes I could manage. My idea was to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which, as any politician will tell you, is rarely a bad strategy in a popularity contest.

The problem: everyone else had the same strategy. I was routinely paired up against sentences that were similarly raunchy or, sometimes, raunchy in almost precisely the same way. I won as many of these matches as I lost, and even though I think I deserved to win more of them, I figured I could do better with a different strategy.

So I decided to zig while everyone else was zagging. Taking a cue from the kind of sentences that made me laugh out loud when I was voting, I began to craft sentences that were as wacky as possible without being totally nonsensical. I wrote about tigers in trousers and plaid minivans and zombie ducks. Odd food pairings were also a common subject that I felt would be easily relatable: tofu turduckens, mango chili, and cakes all figured in to my sentences prominently.

My metagame strategy worked beautifully — sentences that stand out from the crowd tended to attract a lot more votes than those in the “me too” raunch brigade. But I have to be ever-vigilant — the voting winds could shift as new players with different tastes come in, or as more players cotton on to my kind strategy.

That’s the beauty of this kind of metagame — it will continue to thrive and change well after the point where a more empirical, point-based scoring system would have gotten utterly stale.

The metagame also plays an outsized role in another recent favorite of mine, Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012. This is a game with a much more defined strategy at its heart than Prose With Bros, with players using cards drawn from opposing decks to be the first to inflict 20 damage on their opponent.

There are layers upon layers of choices over which cards and abilities to play when, how to maximize the efficiency of limited resources, and how to balance the needs of a good offense and defense across the game’s deep and varied rule set.

Yet once you’ve attained a certain level of familiarity with that strategy, Magic 2012 essentially boils down to a relatively simple metagame: that of picking the right deck. Unlike the card game it’s based on, which offers unlimited variety in deck types, the downloadable console version offers only ten deck archetypes to choose from, which can be modified only slightly with digital cards unlocked through play.

After a while, it’s easy to suss out the patterns and determine how each deck is likely to fare against the other nine (or even against another version of itself). For instance, the slow-building Hidden Depths deck will almost always lose a well-played match to the fast-paced damage dealing of the Unquenchable Fire deck. which in turn can have trouble dealing with the multitude of small, quick threats in the Guardians of the Wood or Wielding Steel decks. Those are themselves susceptible to disruption from a deck like Blood Hunger or Realm of Illusion that can counter or overpower their key cards.

While some decks are unquestionably better than others, there’s no one deck that isn’t generally weak against at least one other deck type. This is crucial, since without this balance the pre-game “selection” metagame could easily overwhelm the competitive game itself.

I distinctly remember my regular high school fighting game crew banning anyone from playing tiny, nigh-unhittable orange dinosaur Gon in Tekken 3, after it quickly became apparent that a decent Gon player could win 95 percent of the time against much more talented opposition. Many top tier Super Street Fighter II Turbo tournaments ban players from choosing Akuma for similar reasons.

But the rock-paper-scissors style of deck dominance can lead to some interesting jockeying for position in Magic 2012′s matchmaking screen, which shows both players which deck their opponent has chosen before letting them both approve the start of the match. Surely hiding this deck choice information would create an experience more like playing a pick-up game against a random Magic opponent, and would force players to consider a deck’s strengths and weaknesses against the entire field.

As it stands, on more than one occasion I’ve had a random player drop out of the lobby in disgust after I spent a full minute switching my deck choice in response to his ever-changing selection.

These are the kinds of issues that can make or break a competitive title, even though they aren’t part of what most people would consider the actual game. A well-considered and well-managed metagame can add extra life to even the simplest of game concepts, while a bad one can do a lot to ruin a title that otherwise has a deep and varied strategy. Designers would do well to keep these largely hidden issues in mind when designing their next competitive title. （source: gamasutra）