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阐述游戏与现实生活之间的关系

发布时间:2011-10-11 17:01:49 Tags:,,,,

作者:Kevin

虽然有时感觉生活就像是一场游戏,但是就发生在我身上的事情而言,游戏与现实生活还是有很大差距。是否有可能或者值得拥有能够真正反映现实生活的游戏呢?

生活就像游戏

在生活中,我们总是遵从某些规则。我们在与他人一起用餐、乘坐公共汽车、在街道上步行、工作、上学和参加葬礼时,其中都有一定的“可接受行为”规则。而且,还有法律确保社会的正常运转和安全性(游戏邦注:比如规范行车的交通法)。大多数的规则中都包含有奖励和惩罚,比如同龄人的赞赏、在公共汽车上让座后看到可爱小女孩的迷人笑容、试图占某人便宜时挨揍或者在高速公路上因超速而收到的罚单。

而且,在生活中我们也有可以“升级”的技能。如果我们不断做某件事情,最终就会做得更好并获得“升级”。如果你频繁演奏吉他或者经常烹饪,你的技能就会得到提升。在这些方面,生活有时就像是游戏。

games vs life(from ionoi.it)

games vs life(from ionoi.it)

游戏并不像生活

但是,游戏只是对生活的简化,不含有许多让游戏显得真实的关键层面。虽然某些游戏成功的营造了与生活相一致的感觉,而且这种感觉强烈到足够让我们相信,感觉游戏角色是有生命的实体,但是依然无法呈现出现实生活中事物的复杂性。

事件的必然性

游戏为我们提供了自由,自由地逃避现实生活,以另一种方式生活在游戏世界中。每款游戏都能够提供不同的自由。比如,移动的自由和动作选择的自由。有些游戏让玩家觉得可以选择自己的命运或者选择将成为怎样的人(游戏邦注:比如《神鬼寓言》)。有时它们甚至会让你影响某些关键事件,让你尽量去改变游戏的结局(游戏邦注:比如实验性游戏《Façade》)。

在现实生活中,单个人几乎不可能拯救世界。事实上,很少人能够完全掌控自己的生活,更不用说我们所居住的这个世界了。有些人将其称为命运或者天数。无论我们做了什么,最终都只会达到命中注定的那个点。现在,我不认为我们对生活中的东西没有控制权,我相信我们可以通过选择和行动来创造自己的命运。但是,创造命运所需的东西不只是我们的决定和行动,还有许多外在的影响因素。我们的行为受文化、情感、信仰、教育、性格、恐惧、过往经验以及我们所处的环境驱动。影响因素还包括与其他人的互动,而这些人也都会受到同样的影响。所有这些影响因素使得生活相当复杂,很难甚至不可能追踪事件发生的所有前因后果。

让我们来举个例子。你有个好友在某项可能改变生活的决定上犹豫不决,假设这个决定是辞职重返校园。这个想法他考虑了很长一段时间,但是仍然难以做出决定。你认为做出这个决定对他有好处,因而你尝试去说服他。你可以和他谈论这种做法能够产生的诸多优势,尝试让他接受这个充满挑战和风险的选择,为他提供从自己生活中提炼出的各种建议。虽然你们之间的谈话有可能对他产生巨大的影响力,指引他做出某种选择,但是可能性更大的是,你告诉他的所有事情都是他已经听说过或者考虑过的,因而这番话对他的决定产生的影响很小。选择权仍然在他自己手上,还存在许多可以影响他的决定的因素,而且其中许多因素的影响力比你们之间的谈话要大得多。

但是,我们可以通过行动来给其他人和环境留下深刻的印象。简单地说,我们的行动对世界产生的影响要比说话或思考要大得多。

Video-Games-vs-Real-Life(from likecool.com)

Video-Games-vs-Real-Life(from likecool.com)

游戏就像生活?

那么,游戏中所呈现出来的是什么状况呢?让我们看看《Façade》这款游戏。尽管游戏有很强的艺术性而且玩家有可能对情况的结局造成影响,但是恐怕依然不能如实地反映生活。你扮演的是一对关系紧张的夫妻邀请来的好友,你与他们交谈并尝试对他们产生影响,可能导致二人关系破裂或者和好。在他们相互争吵之时,能否倾听你的言论都是个问题,更不用说让你提出意见。在现实生活中,可能发生的情况是你会尝试与他们交谈,让他们意识到自己的错误,但是他们会认为你的建议有碍于自己的认知过程。你的意见有可能产生影响,但是这种影响只停留在表面上并会被迅速遗忘,因为争吵中双方强烈的情感完全会将其掩盖。《Façade》确实是款强大的游戏,但是它只是为了实现某个目标而将人类间的关系简化了。

虽然游戏是简单化的生活,但是为了让玩家从游戏中享受快乐或者使游戏得以构建起来,这种简单化却是必要的。我们如何能够在保留某些角色心理真实性的前提下简化人类间的互动呢?毫无疑问,我正在讨论的是游戏的互动层面,并非固定的叙事或者过场动画。

影响游戏世界

正如我们之前已经看到的那样,某个人的观点和看法对其他人的选择的影响微乎其微,除非前者是某个领域的专家。在未来的对话机制方面,我们已经看到了一种可能的发展趋势。如果角色让玩家提出意见,玩家给予了自己的意见(游戏邦注:比如通过从多个答案中做出选择的方式),角色会根据他对玩家的看法来做出响应。如果玩家在问题所属领域并不受人关注,那么他的答案可能只有些许影响甚至完全没有影响,角色可能不会考虑玩家的意见,做出自己的选择。

这种方法有效吗?是否会显得有趣?这取决于执行方式和互动所处的环境。但是这仍然是游戏向玩家推荐做出某种行动的强大工具。问题和可能得出的答案确实指向玩家。选择的每个答案都应该对应某种行动,使得玩家需要考虑到游戏剩余部分可能发生的事情,而不只是这次对话而已(游戏邦注:这使得互动成为贯穿游戏的机制)。因而,并非玩家去影响游戏中的角色,游戏角色反倒有机会影响玩家。

因为有着不同的行动过程,这会给我们带来第二个和影响他人的最强大的方式:通过我们的行动,通过我们的范例。一旦玩家得到线索知道自己可以做什么,他就会开始在世界中展开行动。他的行动影响了角色,而角色决定了玩家能够做什么事情。正是这种行动能够影响到其他角色在游戏中的行为。如果你恐吓游戏中的某个角色,他就很有可能仿效你的做法,开始恐吓其他比自己更弱小的角色。难道这不是现实生活中发生的事情吗?如果你做的事情绝大多数是好事,展现出仁慈和宽宏大量的一面,人们会很快将你视为伟人。如果他们认为你是个伟人,那么他们便更有可能倾听你的意见并且以你为榜样。但是,需要注意的是,坏行为的传播通常比好行为要快得多。好行为能够产生更大的影响力,但是相比坏行为而言需要更多的时间才能传出口碑。

我原本想列举某些有关命运和游戏的想法,但是这样做可能会使得文章篇幅过长,再将其归纳成一个想法较为困难。我想说的是,生活是很复杂的,要想成功地理解,我们必须创建心智模型,也就是审视复杂互动系统的简单方法。游戏是现实生活的模型,也是个帮助我们理解生活的强大工具,但是如果想要让我们从中获得的理解能够发挥作用,那么游戏本身需要准确地反映生活。

游戏邦注:本文发稿于2009年3月18日,所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Games are not like real life – human psychology in games

Kevin

While it is often true that life feels like a game, it occured to me that games are far from being like real life. Is it possible or even desirable to have games that reflect life as it really is?

Life is like a game

In life, we often follow rules. There are rules of “acceptable behavior” when we eat with other people, ride the bus, walk down the street, work, go to school, attend a funeral, etc.. There is also laws to follow for the good functionning of society and for security (like when we drive a car for example). There is rewards and punishment that comes with most set of rules. Be it encouragments from a peer, a beautiful smile from the cute girl to who we have given our seat in the bus, a punch in the face from her boyfriend if we take advantage of the situation or a speed ticket because we were in a haste on the driveway.

Also, in life we have skills that can be “upgraded”. If we keep doing something, we eventually get better at it and “level-up”. If you play the guitar a lot or cook often, your skill improves and new habilities open up. In these ways, life often feels like a game.

Games are not like life

However, games are but a mere simplification of life and miss several key aspects of it to really feel “alive”. While some games successfully create a feeling of coherence strong enough for us to believe in them and feel like the characters have a life of their own, it will never even get close to the actual complexity of things as they are in real life.

The inevitability of events

Games grant us freedom. Freedom to escape from real life and live as someone (or something) else. Every game gives a different kind of freedom. It can be, for example, freedom in movement or in choice of action. Some games give you a basic feeling of choosing your own fate or choosing who you become (like Fable). Sometimes they even let you influence key events and let you try to change the finality of the game (like the experimental “Façade” for example).

In real life, a single human being seldom save the world. In fact, we seldom have full control over our own life, let alone over the world we live in. Some people call it fate or destiny. No matter what we do, we end up to a predefined point of our life. Now I don’t believe we have no control whatsoever on our life, I believe we forge our own fate by our choices and actions. But it’s not our judgement and actions alone that forge it. There is a multitude of external influences that makes us what we are. We are driven by our culture, by our emotions, our faiths, education, personnality, traumatism, phobias, past experiences and our environment, etc.. We are also driven by our interactions with other people, who are all themselves driven by their own influences and living their own lifes. All these influences make life incredibly complex and it’s difficult or even impossible to track which cause created what effect.

Let’s make up an example. One of your friend hesitate to take a life changing decision, say quit his job and go back to school. He thought about it a long time but he still can’t decide. You think it would be a good thing for him so you try to convince him. You can talk with him about the several advantages, try to comfort him in this challenging and risky choice and give him some advice taken from your own life. While it is possible that you will have a strong influence on him and direct him toward one particular choice, what is more likely is that everything you say to him he will have already heard or thought of and will bear but little effect on his decision (unless he has you in very high regard). The choice is still up to him and there is several other factors that influence his choices, a lot of them having way more effect than a short conversation with you.

However, where we can make the best impressions on others and on our environment is through our actions. Words are cheap and weights little but giving the example bears a lot of weight on those who surround us. In short, we shape the world through what we do a lot more than through what we say or think.

Games like life?

So how is this represented in games? Let’s look at Façade. While it is a strong piece of art and explores with some success the possibility of influencing the outcome of a situation, I’m afraid it does not reflect life as it really his. You are a friend invited by this couple that have problems in their relation and you talk to them and try to influence them to either break-up or try harder. It’s a real wonder they even listen to you, not withstanding ask your opinion, while they argue together. What would probably happen in real life is that you could try to talk to them and make them realize their mistakes but they will be far too enclosed in their feelings and beliefs for your opinion to make it’s way in their cognitive process. Your opinion CAN have an effect but it will mostly stay on the surface and be forgotten quickly as the stronger emotions and patterns push it back out. Façade is a strong game but it over simplifies human relations in order to achieve a particular goal.

However games ARE a simplification of life, and simplification is necessary in order to make games playable, enjoyable or just buildable. How could we simplify human interactions and still keep some feeling of authenticity in the psychology of the characters? It goes without saying that I’m talking about interactive portions of games, not fixed narrations or cut-scenes.

Influencing the game world

As we have seen, a person’s opinion and arguments often bear little weight in another’s choice and beliefs unless he is highly regarded as an expert or reference in a particular field of knowledge. We already have a lead on possible dialogs’ mechanics. If a character asks the player his opinion and the player gives it (through multiple choices of answers for example), the reaction of the character should reflect his view of the player. If the player is not highly regarded in the subject of the question, his answer will bear little or no effect and the character will probably make the same choice no matter what the player say.

Is it useful? Is it fun? It depends how it is implemented and what surrounds this single interaction. But it’s still a powerful tool for the game to suggest actions to the player. The question and the possible answers are actually targeted at the player. Every choice of answer should suggest a particular course of action and allow the player to think about different possibilities linked to the rest of the game, not just to this single conversation (which make it an integrated mechanic). Thus, it is not the player that influence the game’s character, but the game character that has a chance of influencing the player, even if it can feel like the opposite to the player (which is good, because it empowers him).

Since different course of actions are suggested, this brings us to the second and strongest way of influencing other people: through our actions, through our example. Once the player has hints about what he can do, he can set out and act in the world. His actions shape his character and the character shape what the player can do. It the actions that should influence the other characters’ behavior in the game. If you bully one character in the game, there is good chance that he will resent it and start bullying another inferior character. Isn’t it what happens in real life? If you mostly do good deeds around you and show humanity and magnanimity, people will quickly start regarding you as a great man (or woman). If they regard you as a great man, they might be more enclined to listen to your opinion and follow your example. However, be aware that bad behaviors often spread more quickly than good behaviors do and vile characters might be inclined to take advantage of the righteousness of another character. “Good” behaviors can have a very strong influence but takes more time to spread in the environment than bad behaviors do.

Ok, I firstly intended to display some thoughts about fate and games but this could easily become the subject of a master degree and it’s hard to conclude with a single thought. What I do want to say is that life is a complex thing and that to successfully understand it we have to create mental models of it, which are simplified ways of looking at complex systems of interactions. Games are models of real life or of aspects of real life and a powerful tool to help us understand it, but it must reflect it accurately if our understanding is to useful. (Source: Game and Men)


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