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举例论述促使游戏富有沉浸性的7大要素

作者:Chris Allen

虽然我是公司CEO,但经常要扮演软件架构设计师、销售员、IT支持人员以及偶尔的洗碗工角色。我常扮演的另一角色是游戏设计师。游戏设计本身就是种艺术形式,包括能够凭直觉判断什么会富有趣味,也许更重要的是,把握什么会富有沉浸性。最近我已就游戏沉浸性发表许多看法,我觉得这是非常有趣的话题,而且是制作优质作品的核心。

那么什么赋予游戏沉浸性特性?现代电子、在线、手机和社交游戏存在什么不同之处?我总结出若干关键要素,同时分析若干包含这些元素的成功作品,旨在试着探索造就沉浸性游戏的模式。

定时

例子:《宝石迷阵闪电战》和《Word Play》

Bejewled Blitz from squidoo.com

Bejewled Blitz from squidoo.com

有说法认为定时就是一切,这点在游戏中再正确不过。《宝石迷阵闪电战》(1分钟游戏)通过运用定时元素令我反复体验其中内容。游戏的简单前提就是在1分钟内竭尽所能地获得高分。我脑中所想的是游戏非常短暂,因此带来这种情况:游戏已结束,而我的想法是“再试一次,只要再1分钟”。将此定时原则发挥到极致的另一作品是《Word Play》,这是款Boggle风格的iPhone文字游戏,也融入沉浸元素。快节奏加上来自其他玩家的竞争性只会令玩家产生继续体验的欲望。我和妻子非常着迷其中,最终选择将其从手机中删除,因为这已变成真正的问题。

社交反馈和竞争

例子:《德州扑克》、《Farmville》和《魔兽世界》

Texas Hold’m Poker from candywriter.com

Texas Hold’m Poker from candywriter.com

来自伙伴的竞争是促使玩家持续回访的主要因素。谁不想变成社交圈里的佼佼者,获得来自其他伙伴的反馈信息?电子游戏一开始就嵌入排行榜,名字能够出现在当地披萨店的1983 Atari《星战》游戏上,这份荣耀不容小视。在原版电影《电子世界争霸战》的Flynn游乐场里,Jeff Bridge的角色被观众包围,旨在查看他是否能够在最后关卡中胜出,这充分体现值得玩家反复体验的游戏作品所带来的社交影响。

现在我们拥有facebook、twitter及其他社交网络平台,其中我们能够分享生活中发生的点点滴滴。社交网络的一大突出衍生品是社交游戏。我不确定自己是否要深入探究为什么《黑手党战争》或《Farmville》之类的游戏能够富有沉浸性,但我觉得这些游戏的一大吸引之处在于能够同好友互动。

当然《魔兽世界》之类的MMORPG游戏通过运用社交元素令作品变得引人注目。Zynga及其他公司推出的Facebook游戏设定这样的机制:邀请好友参与其中能够提高自己在游戏中的能力。

此外,我们不应忽视Open Feint及其他社交整合SDK(游戏邦注:如Dimerocker)所取得的成就。Open Feint被许多iPhone游戏开发者植入自己的游戏,旨在确保玩家能够进行社交互动及同好友分享信息。Open Feint让开发者得以在游戏中添加排行榜、成就、挑战和其他社交元素,给玩家创造更具合作性的体验。Dimerocker在在线游戏中所起的作用与此相似,允许更简单的Facebook整合操作。这些软件包表现如此突出的原因在于来自伙伴的合作和竞争带来更富吸引力和沉浸性的体验。

重复性

例子:《俄罗斯方块》、《吃豆人》、《超级马里奥兄弟》、《Star Wars Trench Run》、《愤怒的小鸟》和《Falling Balls》

Tetris from appolo.com

Tetris from appolo.com

很多引人入胜的作品都通过缓和的重复内容吸引玩家眼球。重复性是各种成瘾模式的主题。人类大脑存在某种元素促使他们希望反复进行相同操作,很多富有沉浸性的游戏都突出的重复性特点。我不确定是否有人能够制作出比《俄罗斯方块》更具重复性和沉浸性的游戏。我觉得这和游戏的重复性有关,以至于玩家能够内化各种形状的移动和配合。其实排列组合各种俄罗斯方块的形状非常富有沉浸性,以致出现“俄罗斯方块效应”这样的术语,这其实就是:玩家玩过游戏后,持续在自己的外围视线和梦境中看到这些形状。

有些人错过游戏《Star Wars: Trench Run》的亮点。批评声集中于该游戏缺乏内容,或者用户觉得内容过于短暂。这款游戏的要点和《俄罗斯方块》相同,因为我们故意让游戏融入重复内容。因此,《Trench Run》存在众多沉迷者,包括我在内,若我们选择将其制作成基于持久故事的游戏,我觉得游戏应该无法获得此般关注。

当然有时简单是游戏设计的最佳选择,这通常意味着重复。我这里要举的例子是iPhone游戏《躲避降落球》。这款游戏1年内2次成为app store第一热门免费应用。这是款通过加速计来回移动,回避头上落下小球的简单游戏。此重复性及保持存活的简单欲望就是众多玩家在此欲罢不能的原因所在。

另一充分利用重复性的成功作品是《愤怒的小鸟》。各关卡缓慢地建立在下个关卡之上,游戏从始至终始终都采用相同基本机制(瞄准各目标物体,逐个射出小鸟)。

技能

例子:《Rock Band》、《街头争霸》和《真人快打》

Rock Band from amazon.com

Rock Band from amazon.com

有些游戏的主要目标只是掌握控制装置。Take Harmonix的热门作品《Rock Band》就是一个例子。独特用户界面、谜底破解同音乐契合,及游戏跟进屏幕流动视觉线索,所有这些元素都令游戏成为吸引眼球、玩家愿意反复体验的内容。体验越久,《Rock Band》玩家的技能就会越好,因此游戏就会变得更令人愉快。这变成持续存在的积极反馈循环。

另一将控制装置视作沉浸元素的游戏风格是战斗游戏。在经典游戏《真人快打》中,随着玩家发现越来越多按键/姿势组合,他们会得到更多满足感,这些操作组合反过来会让他们面临更多“FINISH HIM!”的毁灭性选择。

奖励

例子:《文明》和《Farmville》

Civilization from blogsdna.com

Civilization from blogsdna.com

获胜机率的设置要刚好能够促使玩家继续前进。Sid Meier在自己的热门作品《文明》中将此技巧发挥得淋漓尽致,他还曾公开讨论奖惩方程所蕴含的数学原理:

玩家觉得偶然在2-1的战斗中失败没什么大碍,但若是输掉20-10的比赛,就会遇到麻烦。所以我们进行相应调整,并询问:“现在你们是否感到高兴?”“有一点,但还有一点:在某2-1战斗中输掉,没关系。但随后又某在2-1战斗中又失败——为什么会出现这种情况?显然游戏打算消灭我!”所以我们得确保这种情况不会出现,让玩家感到高兴。

游戏分数在奖励玩家方面也扮演重要角色。有多少游戏,你进行体验的目的只是想要看看自己能否超越曾经的最高记录,或是他人的最高分数?

但那些没有真实分数的游戏呢?它们是否具有同样的沉浸性?是的!代表例子就是Facebook上的Zynga游戏《Farmville》。在《Farmville》中,游戏奖励就是农作物、建筑、动物及其他需要玩家逐步收集的配备。Zynga非常擅于逐步向玩家呈现奖励,用户需要持续参与游戏,获得进步。某《Farmville》沉迷者这样表示:

这款游戏非常具有沉浸性,因为投入越多,玩家就能够在农场中添加更多有趣元素。忽视游戏几天,所有操作就都变成徒劳。

探索

例子:《魔兽世界》和《塞尔达传说》

World of Warcraft from wowcataclysm.net

World of Warcraft from wowcataclysm.net

有些游戏充分利用发现和探索元素保持用户粘性。虽然社交互动是《魔兽世界》的一大亮点,但游戏吸引玩家的地方还体现在探索游戏世界。玩家无法获悉下个角落会出现什么,下步操作会产生什么结果。《魔兽世界》还利用众多其他元素吸引玩家眼球。我推荐大家观看Jane McGonigal关于“Gaming Can Make a Better World”的TED视频,视频里她深入分析《魔兽世界》,论述什么元素促使游戏富有吸引力,以及如何将这些元素运用到现实生活,将其变得更美好。

稍有偏差

例子:老虎机和《投分球台》

Slot Machines from slotmachines.org

Slot Machines from slotmachines.org

当然让玩家胜出,或者甚至是“几乎快胜出”特定次数的模式在游戏刚问世就已出现。博彩游戏一直以来都是这方面的高手。在赌场中胜算最低,但玩家却从不厌倦的游戏就是老虎机。那么除赌博欲望外,究竟什么促使老虎机如此富有沉浸性?似乎就是其“稍有偏差”机制,或者是玩家稍有偏差的表象令他们想要再试一次。

研究者发现,游戏设有30%的情况让玩家处在“稍有偏差”境地(游戏邦注:根据之前调查这是促使玩家持续回访的最佳比例)。

这些迷你奖励或“稍有偏差”情况也常出现在《魔兽世界》或《Farmville》之类的MMORPG游戏中。这样我们就不难想象《投分球台》会是什么样子,这款游戏依然处于app store榜单的首位。

总结

很多元素能够促使游戏富有沉浸性,游戏设计师应留心其中心理学原理差异,以及如何通过这些元素制作富有粘性的作品。但需指出的是,上述作品不是只有一个沉浸元素。我们需要仔细处理各类元素,方能让游戏变成轰动巨作,从而促使玩家变得欲罢不能。我要指出的另一点是,我不认为制作富有沉浸性的游戏是件邪恶的事,但我也不建议大家过度沉迷于游戏,让此变成一种社会问题。这些技巧可以让教育活动变得更富趣味和粘性,通过体验这些内容所获得的技能能够有很好用途。

游戏邦注:原文发布于2010年8月27日,文章涉及数据和信息以当时为准。(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

7 Key Ingredients for Designing Addictive Games

by Chris Allen

As we are a small company, we often wear many hats here at Infrared5. While I’m the CEO, I often play the role of Software Architect, Salesman, IT Support Person and even Dishwasher from time to time. Another role that I end up doing, or at least assisting in, is that of a Game Designer. Game Design is an art form unto itself, and involves the ability to know intuitively what’s going to be fun, and perhaps more important, figure out what’s addictive. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the addiction of games lately, as I find it a very interesting subject, and is at the core of making the best games possible for our customers.

So, with that, what gives a game an addictive quality? And in particular what’s different about modern video, online, mobile and social media games? I took a look at what I think are some of the key ingredients (timing, social feedback, repetition, skill, reward, exploration and the near miss) and some successful games that implement these to see if I could crack the formula for what makes an addictive game.

Timing

Examples: Bejewled Blitz, Word Play

There’s a saying that timing is everything, and nothing could be more true for games. Bejewled Blitz (1 min game) employs timing in a way that keeps me playing over and over again. The simple premise of the game is to get as high of a score as possible within one minute. The fact that it’s so short gets into my brain and goes something like this: the game ends, and I’m like “well, one more try, it’s only a minute more”.  The other game that applies this timing principal to great effect is Word Play, a Boggle style word game for the iPhone also has this type of addictive element. The fast paced game combined with competition from other players only fuels the desire to keep going. It was so addictive for my wife and me that we simply had to delete it off our phones because it was becoming a real problem.

Social Feedback and Competition

Examples: Texas Hold’m Poker, Farmville, World of Warcraft

Competition from your peers seems to be a driver that makes players come back for more and more. Who doesn’t want to the best in your social group, and to get feedback from their peers? From the beginning of video games, there’s been the leader-board, and the glory of having one’s initials on that 1983 Atari Star Wars game at the local pizza place is not something to take lightly. Flynn’s arcade in the original Tron movie where Jeff Bridge’s character is surrounded by onlookers seeing if he can beat the final level is a perfect example of the social impact in making a game worth playing over and over again.

Now a days we have facebook, twitter and other social media outlets where we can share updates on what’s going on in our lives. One of the most successful spin offs of the whole social media paradigm is social games. I’m not sure I need to go into what makes a game like Mafia Wars or Farmville addictive, but I think one of the chief appeals of these games is the interaction with your friends.

Of course MMORPGs like World of Warcraft use social aspects to make their games as compelling as possible. And Facebook games from Zynga and others make having your friends involved improve your ability in the game.

We should also talk about the success of Open Feint and other social integration SDKs like Dimerocker here as well. Open Feint is a platform that many game developers for the iPhone have incorporated into their games to enable social interaction and sharing with friends. Open Feint enables developers to add leaderboards, achievements, challenges and other social features to games they create a more collaborative experience for their players. Dimerocker does pretty much the same thing for online games, and allows for easier Facebook integration as well. The reason that these software packages do well is that collaboration and competition from peers adds a more compelling and addictive experience to any game.

Repetition

Examples: Tetris, Pac Man, Super Mario Brothers, Star Wars: Trench Run, Angry Birds, Falling Balls

A lot of really compelling games lure their users in with a soothing sense of repetition. Repetition is a theme that crosses all forms of addiction. There’s something in the human mind that makes people want to keep doing the same thing over and over again, and some of the most addictive games are extremely repetitive. I’m not sure it’s possible to make a game more repetitive and addictive than Tetris. What gets people hooked on Tetris? I think it has to do with the game being repetitive, and so much so that you internalize the movements and interlocking of shapes. In fact the lining up and fitting Tetris shapes is so addictive that the term the “Tetris Effect” has been dubbed, which is essentially the continuation of seeing those shapes in ones peripheral vision and in their dreams long after playing the game.

Some people missed the point of our game Star Wars: Trench Run that we developed here at Infrared5. The criticism circled around the lack of content, or people thinking it’s too short. The point of the game is much more like Tetris, in that we purposely chose to make it extremely repetitive. To that end, there are some serious Trench Run addicts out there, me included, and had we chosen to make it a long drawn out story based game, I don’t think it would have the same type of appeal.

Of course, sometimes simple is the best choice in game design, and that usually also means repetition. My case in point is the iPhone game Falling Balls by Infrared5’s Engineering Guru, Keith Peters. This game hit the number one free spot on the app store twice in one year. It’s a simple game of moving back and forth using the accelerometer, and avoiding balls that are coming from above. This repetition, and the simple desire to stay alive for as long as possible is all it takes for one not to be able to put this game down.

Another highly successful game that utilizes repetition to its advantage is Angry Birds. Each level builds slowly on the next, with the same basic mechanic throughout (flicking birds at objects one after the other).

Ting-Jui Chou and Chih-Chen Ting go into great detail of the science of repetition and gaming in their paper The Role of Flow Experience in Cyber-Game Addiction. There are various other studies on addiction and the role that repetition plays that aren’t game related that I also think are worth exploring simply for getting a better understanding of how the human mind works, and how this can be applied to game design.

Skill

Examples: Rock Band, Street Fighter, Mortal Combat

There are some games, where the overarching goal is simply to master the controls. Take Harmonix’s hit game Rock Band as an example. The unique user interface, the mashing of keys in time to music and the staying in sync with the flowing visual cues on the screen all combine to make this a compelling game that keeps people wanting to play it over and over again. As a player, your skill at Rock Band increases the more you play, and because of this, the more enjoyable the game becomes. It turns into a sort of self perpetuating positive feedback loop.

Another style of game that typically is focused on the controls as the element of addiction if the fighting game. Take the classic Mortal Combat for example. Players get immediate satisfaction as they discover more and more button/gesture combination that in turn give them more devastating moves to “FINISH HIM!”.

Reward

Examples: Civilization, Farmville

The odds of winning have to be weighted just right to keep players going. Sid Meier mastered this element in his hit game Civilization,  and has openly discussed some of the math involved with getting the reward to punishment equation just right:

Players felt they could lose a 2-to-1 battle every now and then. But they had a problem if they lost a 20-to-10 battle. (!) So we adjusted, and asked, “Now are you happy?” “Well kind of, but there’s one more thing: I had a 2-to-1 battle and lost, which was fine (we went over that). But right after that, I had another 2-to-1 battle and lost again—how can that be!? The computer’s out to get me, obviously!” So we made sure that occurrence wouldn’t happen, and the player was happy.

Here’s the full article on how Sid Meier got the most by weighing the odds just right in his game.

The score of a game also plays a big part in rewarding a player. How many games have you played, simply looking to see if you could beat your high score, or your friend’s high score?

But how about a game that doesn’t have real score per say? Can they be just as addictive? Absolutely! Case in point, Farmville, the number one Facebook game by Zynga. In Farmville the reward is your crops, buildings, animals and other accouterments that the game player collects over time. Zynga did an excellent job at crafting the game in a way that rewards are dribbled out over time, and that the user needs to engage in the game regularly in order to progress. One self proclaimed Farmville addict described it well when interviewed for this LA Times article:

The game is truly addictive, because the harder you work at it, the more exciting things (like houses and animals and seasonal decorations) players can add to their farms. Neglect the game for a few days, and all the work is for naught.

Exploration

Examples: World of Warcraft, Zelda

Certain games make great use of discovery and exploration to keep players engaged. While WoW (World of Warcraft) is also a great example of using social interaction to create the hook, it also really engages players in exploring the world. They never know what’s around the next corner, or what’s next. WOW does utilize many other aspects to keep people going as well. I highly recommend watching Jane McGonigal’s TED video on Gaming Can Make a Better World, as she goes into detail on WoW, what makes it so compelling to users and then takes these elements and extrapolates into how these can be applied in the real world to make it a better place.

The Near Miss

Examples: Slot Machines, Skeeball

Of course, having people win, or even “almost win” just the right amount is as old as games themselves, and we would be doing ourselves a disfavor if we didn’t discuss casino gaming, as they have been the masters of this for ages. With that, the one game at the casino that everyone knows has the worst odds, yet they can’t seem to get enough of is the slot machine. So, beyond the standard desire to gamble, what makes the slot machine so addictive? It seems it’s the “near win”, or the appearance that you got so close that you want to simply try it again.

Researchers have found that they program their games to tease players with near misses about 30% of the time–a number previous studies have found optimal for getting gamblers to keep coming back [ScienceNOW Daily News].

I highly recommend reading this article on slot machines from Discover Magazine for some scientific insight on the human brain’s reaction to the near miss. Obviously if you can get a game down to where you are giving your players near misses more often, then you will keep their brains into the game.

The same exact scenario of these little mini rewards, and or near misses is also prevalent in the MMORPGs like WOW or in Farmville. With this feature in mind, it’s little wonder that a game like Skeeball was and still is at the top of the app store charts.

Bringing It Together

In conclusion, there are various elements to making a game addictive, and game designers should be aware of the psychological nuances and how to use these to make a game as engaging as possible. To point out the very obvious though, not a single one of the games mentioned above had only one element of addiction. It takes a careful crafting of many of the key ingredients to get a game to be a huge hit that few people can resist putting down. One other thing that I would like to point out, is that I don’t think making a game addictive is evil, nor am I advocating getting people legitimately hooked to a point where it becomes a problem for the individual. These techniques can be used to make educational experiences more fun and engaging, and as Jane McGonigal shows in her work, video games and the skills attained by playing them can be put to really good uses.

I would love to hear your feedback as to what you think makes a game addictive. What have you employed in your games that have made it successful? What did you do wrong? If you have any tips you would like to share, we would love to hear about them!(Source:infrared5


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