作者：Adam Saltsman

在上周的IndieCade大会上，Jon Blow用词语“计谋”来描述我们在玩家和游戏之间、玩家和谜题之间、玩家和系统之间以及玩家和体验之间添加的内容。植入这种计谋是否算是一种有意行为并不像它们的存在那样重要，事实上它们其实是个显著的障碍，不管游戏是否已向玩家展示了最有趣的内容。

昨晚，我体验了某些iOS游戏。这些游戏要么是苹果官方推荐的“本周游戏”，要么是获得商业成功的游戏，包括《Forever Drive》、《无尽之剑》和《Jetpack Joyride》。

我还体验了两款较小的游戏，它们是《Async Corp》和《Super Crossfire HD》。《Super Crossfire》是款简单的街机游戏（游戏邦注：移植自备受推崇的XBLIG同名游戏），将过去数年某些竞技射击游戏创新添加到有着精妙机制的《Space Invaders》游戏原型中。《Async Corp》是款奇妙且很棒的小解谜游戏，现在这款游戏的场景仍然在我的脑中徘徊，稍后我会具体介绍。实际上，《Bumpy Road》对于我要提出的观点来说格外重要。

我想要提出3个独特的观点，在下文中我会详细说明。第一个是开发商需要对某些我称为“目录效应”的东西有更多的认识和重视。第二个是应用内置付费功能（以下简称IAP）以某种深远的方式违背了神圣不可侵犯的玩法循环。滥用目录和设置IAP功能，以及同时采用这两项措施的游戏是蓄意以最糟糕的方式来构建其设计，以期从玩家处敲诈金钱，这是种不道德而且不能为人所接受的设计行径。最后，在手机主屏幕上呈现其他产品广告的游戏，尤其是那些使用iOS通知功能的游戏，虽然比之前的两种方式“罪过”更轻一点，但是仍然包藏着同样贪婪的动机。

jetpack-joyride-items(from jetpack-joyride.com)

目录效应

我原本将其称为“口袋妖怪效应”，但是这样做或许会涉及侵权。除此之外，这会让事情变得更加复杂。或许我应当使用某个神经系统科学或心理学术语来表述这种现象，但是我目前还不知道用哪个术语比较恰当。不管怎样，目录效应指的是游戏内置道具或功能的目录对玩家产生的微妙心理学效应。这通常会起到微妙的推动作用，促使玩家“完成”目录上的所有内容。这或许也可以被称为“成就效应”，但是这么称呼也会让事情变得复杂。我觉得游戏之外的目录会产生同样的效应，会给玩家产生获得每件道具的压力。

现在是时候承认这种效应不仅存在，而且多数情况下并不会让玩家感到高兴，甚至有些玩家可能并未意识到自己已陷入这种效应中。我经常认识到这一点，这种效应让我极为反感。在Simon Flesser的极富有吸引力的游戏《Bumpy Road》中，玩家可以从主角以往的生活中发现或拾取照片。我个人认为，与获得这些照片紧密相连的更多是玩游戏的时间而不是玩家的技能或对游戏的理解。公平地说，玩家的技能和理解确实能够让玩家在此类游戏中的旅行更加简单，但是这种关系仍然很不明显。当我打开相册菜单，看看我发现的照片所揭开的故事时，我发现玩过5到10分钟后我只获得了1到2张照片，而需要去发现的照片似乎还有上百张。通过脑中的数学运算，我发现自己根本没有那么多的时间花在这款游戏上。

我最近还玩过某些有着趣味成就或目录的iOS游戏。Shaun Inman的《The Last Rocket》中共有4个成就，让玩家以某种新奇的方式来体验游戏。Zach Gage的《Bit Pilot》更关注的是玩家的技能，其中的每个成就所需的时间都不超过2分钟，但是需要玩家足够灵活且注意力集中。到目前为止，获得某些《Bit Pilot》成就的玩家还不到10人！在这两款游戏中，游戏本身有着自己独立的内容，目录的存在只是引导玩家对游戏系统产生新的理解。这些游戏都在以负责任和道德的方式在游戏中使用目录。

神圣的循环

这是个古老的游戏想法，通常被认为是Johan Huizinga提出的，他是《Homo Ludens》的作者。神圣循环的想法是，我们居住的不完美且充满随机性的现实世界与游戏中构想的完美世界之间存在界限。神圣循环便是区分现实世界和虚拟世界的分界线。

在游戏中融入IAP似乎残忍地违反了神圣循环，这使我们的现实世界和金钱的侵入影响到我们在游戏中的行为。对我而言，这同扑克游戏中的下注和决定在测试版中“解锁”游戏的完全版本有很大的不同。这些“游戏”或许会让许多玩家感到快乐，但是会对发展上千年的游戏玩法产生深远的影响。

二者联合的恶行

当你将上述这些东西结合起来，就获得了类似《无尽之剑》和《Forever Drive》那样的“游戏”。这种不断重复的玩法会产生数分钟甚至一整个小时的吸引力，但是我们过后就会发现那些就是游戏的全部内容。从本质上来说，系统本身并没有足够的深度来鼓励玩家做进一步的探索，所以就创造出外部的系统（游戏邦注：即目录）来暗地里推动玩家前行。这本身就是种不好的设计，但是此类游戏却不断推动这种设计的普及。

这些游戏中的目录故意设计成需要大量“刷任务”或等待才能够升级。我们要么一遍遍地进行同样的战斗，要么不断地跑着同样的赛道，直到我们赚到足够的钱买下目录上的下款道具，游戏的设计丝毫不考虑玩家技能的提升。如果这些游戏不靠目录就获得了成功，那或许还有可供发掘的设计优点。但是这些游戏有意设计成不仅玩家需要目录来获得成功，而且事实上成功完成目录的进程极为缓慢而且令人厌烦。

也就是说，当玩家踏入游戏时，游戏就像是黑手党的教父，向你提供某个你无法回绝的交易：你很繁忙，你有孩子，你有工作；如果你偷偷给我金钱，那么我会帮助你更快的升级，可能明天就可以获得目录下个部分的内容。这是种最糟糕的敲诈方式，这是对我们时间的勒索，而时间是决定人类生活的惟一资源（游戏邦注：作者认为故意采用这种设计方式的开发者应当为自己的产品感到羞耻）。

不道德的干扰行为

《Jetpack Joyride》尽管也犯有目录效应的“罪行”，但是却避开了上述的联合恶行，主要通过出售完全不必要的装饰性道具和提供游戏时间、内置货币奖励的合理平衡这两种方式。我最初对《Jetpack Joyride》的看法是，游戏并非很邪恶，虽然他们不负责任地使用了目录（游戏邦注：游戏中有数百件道具，平均价格为5000美元，而作者首次玩游戏时只净赚了300美元）。但是当我决定开始体验手机上另一款游戏时，发现手机主界面的游戏图标上有个小型通知标志，这让我很反感。

出于好奇，我打开游戏，但是并没有看到我保存的屏幕上有任何通知。我感到更为好奇，所以我跳出到主菜单屏幕上，发现角落上有个小标签。这时我觉得相对会满意些，但是仍然觉得好奇，因此我打开标签，发现这是个其他公司所开发游戏的广告。这是种全新的计谋，其同样贪婪的目的忽视了对玩家的尊重。

我看到的这些现象会时刻提醒我自己，当我们构建游戏时，无论是否出于商业目的，游戏中的此类伎俩都应该被舍弃。如果你的游戏不是优先考虑到玩家及其体验，那么你就不是在创建游戏。你开发的就是微型零售商店，抑或可以称为贪婪机器。但这根本不能算作是游戏，我不希望自己的硬件上有这类东西。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Contrivance and Extortion: In-App Purchases & Microtransactions

Adam Saltsman

At IndieCade last week, Jon Blow (Braid, The Witness) used the term “contrivance” to describe all the bullshit we put between players and the game; between players and the puzzle; between players and the system; between players and the experience. Whether the contrivance is intentional or not is not as important as its mere existence, the fact that it is a significant obstacle, whether the part of the game that is the most interesting is exposed as much as possible to the player.

Last night I got caught up on some recent and not-so-recent iOS games that I’d been meaning to check. These games were all official Apple “Game of the Week” or otherwise pretty hefty critical and commercial successes: Forever Drive, Infinity Blade, and Jetpack Joyride.

I also checked out two smaller titles: Async Corp and Super Crossfire HD. Super Crossfire is a really solid and simple arcade game (ported from the highly respected XBLIG title of the same name) that takes some of the arena shooter innovations from the last few years and puts them into a Space Invaders game with a cool “warping” mechanic. Async Corp (pointed out to me by Simon Flesser of Ilo Milo and Bumpy Road) is a strange and wonderful little puzzle game that I am still rolling around in my head, and may write more about later. Actually, Bumpy Road is rather important to the points I am about to make…

I want to make three distinct points, which I will elaborate on below. The first is that developers need to be more cognizant and responsible about something I’m calling the Checklist Effect. The second is that In-App Purchases violate the sacred circle of play in a profound way. Games that do both of these things, that abuse checklists and include In-App Purchases, are deliberately contriving their designs in the worst way in order to extort money from players, which is unethical and unacceptable design practice. Finally, games that intrude on my phone’s home screen with advertisements for other products, using the iOS notification badges especially, though less contrived, are contrived for the same greedy reason.

The Checklist Effect

I was originally going to call this the Pokemon Effect, but probably that would be illegal or something. And besides, it complicates things a bit. This probably also has an actual neuroscience or psychology term that I should be using, but I haven’t worked out what that would be yet. Regardless, the Checklist Effect is that subtle and slight psychological effect that seeing a big checklist of in-game items or abilities has on players. It is usually a subtle push, a barely detectable need to “accomplish” everything on the list. This could just as well be called the Achievements Effect probably, but that complicates things too. Checklists outside of games can have a similar effect I think – a slight pressure to check off each item, to be done; mischief managed.

It is time to acknowledge both that this effect exists, and also that most of the time this is a manipulative and unpleasant thing to do to players, all the more so because they may not realize it is even happening. I frequently do realize it, and it is a big turnoff for me. In Simon Flesser’s ridiculously charming game Bumpy Road, players can discover or pick up polaroids or photographs from the main characters’ past life. As far as I can tell getting these pictures is tied more to time spent playing or distance traveled, more than skill or understanding. To be fair, play skill and understanding do make distances easier to travel in games like this… but the relationship still stands. When I opened up the photo album menu feature, to check out the story unfolding in the photographs I’d recovered, I found that after playing for 5 or 10 minutes I had collected only 1 or 2 of what seemed to be a hundred or more photos! Some quick mental math reminded me that I don’t have that many hours to spend on something that isn’t inherently deep and engaging.

On the flipside, I have played some iOS games recently that had really interesting achievements or checklists. Shaun Inman’s The Last Rocket, with a total of four achievements, asks the player to play the game in a new, weird way for each item. Zach Gage’s Bit Pilot makes absurd and wonderful demands of player’s skill: no single achievement takes more than a minute or two to earn, but requires incredible dexterity and focus. Some of Bit Pilot’s achievements are limited to fewer than 10 players so far! In both of these cases, the games themselves stand on their own, and the checklists exist only as bait to lead players to a new epiphany or new understand of the game system. These are responsible and ethical uses of checklists in games.

The Sacred Circle

This is an old idea about games and play, usually credited to Johan Huizinga, the oft-quoted author of Homo Ludens. The idea of the sacred circle is that it is the boundary between the imperfect, consequence-laden, quantum and random real world we all inhabit, and the perfect, impossible and imaginary world of games and play. The sacred circle is the line that divides the real world from the ancient, powerful and beneficial world of play.

The integration of in-app purchases feels like a brutal violation of the sacred circle; it is allowing the real world, and my real money, to intrude on and influence my performance. To me, this is different than a poker buy-in, and different from deciding to “unlock” the full version of a game from inside a demo. These processes are in some fundamental way external from the game itself, from the actual state of play. These “games” may be a pleasurable activity for many but this seems like a profound corruption of millennia of play.

Together, a Maelstrom of Suck

When you put these things together, you get “games” like Infinity Blade and Forever Drive. The moment to moment play is engaging for a few minutes or even an hour, but then we have seen pretty much all there is to see. The systems themselves are not deep enough to merit or encourage further exploration for their own sake (intrinsically), so an extrinsic system (a checklist) is created to subtly (and not so subtly) nudge the player forward, well beyond when the player has completely explored the system, puzzles or overall aesthetic experience. That in and of itself is bad design, but games like this push it even further.

The checklists in these games have been very deliberately designed to require a certain amount of grinding or waiting to advance. We either have to fight the same fight over and over, or race the same tracks over and over, until we can afford the next item on the checklist, which will enable us, largely irrespective of our own skills as a player, to proceed. If it was possible to succeed in these games without the checklist, that would be one thing. But these games are very deliberately designed to ensure that not only do you need the checklist to succeed, but in fact successfully completing the checklist is prohibitively slow and/or annoying to do.

That’s when they step in, like a mafia godfather, and offer you a deal you can’t refuse: you’re a busy guy, you have kids, you have a job; if you slip me a little cash under the table, I’ll help you level up a little faster, maybe get through that next part of the checklist by tomorrow. This is extortion in the worst way; this is extortion of the time we have left until we die, the sole resource of consequence for human life. Developers who deliberately engage in this kind of design should be ashamed of their creations.

Unethical Intrusion

Jetpack Joyride, though guilty of the checklist effect, largely sidesteps the aforementioned Maelstrom of Suck by primarily selling totally unnecessary cosmetic items, and providing (to many) a reasonable balance of play-time and in-game currency rewards. My beef with Jetpack Joyride is not that it is genuinely evil, despite their irresponsible use of checklists (hundreds of items with an average price of $5000, when my first play of the game netted me a mere $300). My beef came when I decided to try out the next game on my phone only to notice a little notification badge had appeared on the game’s icon on my home screen.

Intrigued, I opened the game, but couldn’t find the notification on the screen I resumed from. Intrigued further, I skipped back to the main menu screen and found it on a little tab up in the corner. Feeling relatively satisfied and still curious, I opened the tab… and discovered an ad for a game made by some other company. This is a whole other kind of contrivance but motivated by the same greed and lack of respect for players.

Let’s all remind ourselves, as we build games, commercially and otherwise, that contrivances are bullshit. If your game is not first and foremost about the player and the experience, then you are not building games. You are building micro-retail stores, maybe, or greed engines, or something. I don’t know. But it’s not a game, and I don’t want it on my hardware. (Source: Gamasutra)