作者：Ernest Adams

最近我玩了一些早前的游戏，并发现，现代游戏与之比起来，除了技术上有了较大的进步，一些早前的设计问题仍然存在着。那些15或20年前的游戏中存在的功能不足以及设计欠缺的问题仍然广泛分布于现在的游戏中。（请点击此处阅读本系列2、3、4、5、6、7、8、9、10、11、12、13篇）

以下我将列出游戏中一些反复出现的糟糕功能设置问题。

无聊的迷宫设置

在早前的文本冒险游戏《Colossal Cave》中就有两个迷宫。一个描述为：“你在一个充满各种类似的曲折小道的迷宫中。”而另外一个则是“你在一个充满各种不同的曲折小道的迷宫中。”这就是典型的无聊且愚蠢的迷宫设置。因为《Colossal Cave》是第一款冒险类游戏，所以我们不可能对之要求过高。但是想想这是一款20年前的游戏，我们更没有理由直到现在还延续它的做法。有人跟我推荐了《凯兰迪亚传奇全集》这款前几年发行的游戏，虽然我也感受到了游戏的乐趣，但是当我再次遇到迷宫时，这些乐趣也就淡然无存了。

但是并非说迷宫就是无聊或愚蠢的代表。我们也能够设计出有趣的迷宫，即基于玩家的理解去排序迷宫中的布局。迷宫应该是具有吸引力，巧妙且有趣的存在。如果你的迷宫不能带给玩家乐趣，那么这就是一种糟糕的功能。

缺少地图的游戏

我非常缺乏方向感。特别是在电子游戏世界中，如果墙壁和地板都使用同样的纹理，那我更难分辨方向了。而在现实世界中，即使是办公大楼中的任何小隔间也拥有区别于其它隔间的标志，如地毯上的污点，某人座位上的卡通海报等。当我在玩《毁灭战士》时我感受到了很棒的游戏体验。但是我却不喜欢《Quake》这款游戏，因为它未能给玩家提供游戏地图。游戏没有理由取消地图，除非它的存在会影响玩家的前行速度，并且这么做便不能将真正的游戏设置展现在玩家眼前。

充满不协调或者破坏沉浸感的元素

有时候，冒险游戏会呈现给玩家一些不协调的问题或障碍。我认为这是设计师江郎才尽的表现，并且会因此让玩家对游戏感到失望。如果游戏将玩家引入一个奇幻世界，并且玩家在游戏中扮演的是英雄骑士的角色需要拯救出美丽的公主，但是游戏却未设置与英雄斗争的恶龙形象，这便会因此破坏游戏的沉浸感。而对于《Nine Men’s Morris》这款游戏，我认为如果它只是设置玩家打击恶棍会更加协调。

没有意义的超现实主义

许多游戏避开了一些幻想世界反而将玩家带入一个充满不安感的领域。让我跟你们说说什么才是艺术界真正的超现实主义：它不只是是一种随机性。真正的超现实主义将会并列一些看似本没有关系的物体或观点，并因此让人们意识到[人类的境况|上帝的本质|慈悲的意义等]。尽管一开始可能会显得荒谬，但是真正的超现实主义是具有潜在主题的。

我从来没看过哪一款电子游戏的超现实主义能够设置如此宏伟的目标。大多数游戏都只是在说“当你到达Doomsday Machine的控制室时，你会看到一个小丑站在那！很酷吧！”其实，超现实主义就像是一篇散文诗歌：很容易做，但是却很难做得好。一个构思拙劣的游戏内容不能将“这是超现实主义”作为借口。

要求使用极端横向思维解决谜题

这是一些晦涩的谜题。有时候设计师会觉得自己很有幽默感，甚至具有超现实性，但是往往只能说这是他门不成熟的表现。这是一种怠惰的智力问题设计，即提供一些答案很模糊或者不合理的问题。当然你可以添加一些荒谬的障碍以增加玩家们的游戏时间，但是这么做却不能真正提高游戏的乐趣。这才是问题的关键。

没有任何需要横向思维解决谜题

当你面对一扇被上锁的门时，很显然你的解决方法便是寻找钥匙，但是这却是非常无聊的任务，除非游戏能够提供一些其它开门的方法。但是多半只可能出现一个解决方法。

在文本冒险游戏中，这就像是“寻找正确行动”的问题——除非你能够找到满足游戏要求的方法，要不你就只能遭遇失败。游戏所要求的是什么？打破？撞击？粉碎？毁坏？重击？还是烧毁？很多游戏在今天都面临一个相同的问题，即你对游戏中的障碍物只有一种解决方法。如此游戏设置将会阻碍玩家的思考；让他们不得不尽力揣摩设计师的想法。

在现实世界中，面对一扇被上锁的门你会怎么做：

寻找钥匙

撬锁

强迫或说服拥有钥匙的人开锁

蛊惑门内的人开门（也许只是敲门即可）

砸门，烧门，割门，或者用硫酸溶解门等

绕行——通过窗户或者在墙上凿开一个洞

这些做法都取决于你的想象。

我知道对于你来说这可能是一种苛求。作为开发者，思考并执行一切玩家可能想到的方法确实很困难，并且也需要耗费巨大的成本。尽管如此，我们可以创造一些“可变的环境”——例如你的炮击和爆炸能够影响现实世界中的所有事物而不只你的敌人，所以我们也可以在游戏世界中添加一些可变体，以奖励那些使用横向思维的玩家。

要求使用无关紧要的知识去解决谜题

这是一种低级做法，就像是我不知道《Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band》（游戏邦注：披头士的热门专辑）中的第三首歌的名字，但是游戏却对我提出了这个要求，如此看来这只能说明游戏设置太过怪异了。

彼此相隔甚远但联系紧密的元素

这里我指的是任何能够影响远处游戏障碍的道具。《毁灭战士》在这方面做得并不好，但是最糟糕的例子还是《The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy》（Infocom旗下的一款文本冒险游戏）。在游戏中，如果玩家不能在一开始就接收垃圾邮件，他便不能在游戏最后获得胜利。这种糟糕的功能设置也是一种怠惰的谜题设计，它人为地延长了游戏时间，而不是让玩家凭借智慧取胜。

要求使用大量组合，但仅有一者是正确方案

在Infocom的另外一款冒险游戏《Infidel》中，玩家必须在特定顺序下完成4件事。在此可能组合的数目就是4（或者4的倍数，24等）。在这里不存在明确的顺序，你必须亲自进行尝试。这种怠惰的谜题设计不仅会浪费玩家的时间而且不具备多少娱乐价值。

琐碎而破坏整体感的游戏任务

换句话说，这就是所谓的角色扮演游戏体验。在我看来大多数角色扮演游戏都结合了商业模拟方式以及射击游戏的谜题挑战。在中世纪冒险游戏中我的目标是屠龙救公主，而不是花掉三分之二的时间与小贩讨价还价。我希望成为英雄，但是游戏却使我成为一个二手军火贩子。只能通过盗取死人身上的钱谋生，而这种做法让我觉得很不地道。

未预留足够的时间让玩家思考对策

大多数游戏加载内容时都要经过相当一段时间长度，如果仅为玩家提供短短数十秒时间思考对策，这绝非一个聪明或者具有挑战性的设置，它只会让玩家感到挫败。如果游戏未提供任何线索，那么这便是另一种浪费时间、让玩家盲目试错的方法。而如果游戏提供了一定的线索，也需要给予玩家一定的时间进行思考。任何军队都不会盲目地进入一片未经侦查的领域。所以你也不要期待玩家会这么做。如果你在游戏的一开始便为玩家设置了一些危机，那么你需要确保至少为他们提供一些安全的选项。

低能的敌人

我也很讨厌面对那些缓慢走向你并且对你的射击束手无策的愚蠢怪物。这是《毁灭战士》中所使用的技巧，也是迄今为止无数电子游戏所采用的方法。比起提供给玩家一种智能挑战，游戏更倾向于以“人海战术”挑战玩家。

所以让我们发挥想象力！为何不让一些胆小的怪物向你乱射然后逃跑，而后再伺机报复？或者让一些怪物在遮掩物间迅速进进出出？为何不让一个怪物在第一眼看到你时就逃跑了但随后会带来一些同盟——如果你能够在它的逃跑过程中抓住它，那么它就不能向同盟发出警报了。或者头一回一些怪物鬼鬼祟祟地逼近你？或者一些怪物向你发动直接进攻，但是却因为负伤而逃跑，而不是一战到底？也许我们可以提供一些怪物去诱惑玩家走出遮盖物，并发动同盟共同发起扫射。或者提供一些足够聪明且能够像人类一样可以执行任何任务的怪物。

这些都并不是什么新颖的理念，但我们很少在游戏中见到这些内容，也还是因为懒惰设计造成的，因为对于设计师来说设计愚蠢的怪物更加简单。所以，为了能够提供给玩家更多新的挑战，我们应该认真思考怪物的设计。

以下两点内容与其说是设计元素的瑕疵，更像是一些美观点上的问题。

糟糕的演技

不仅是电影里，电子游戏中糟糕的演技也会分散观众的注意力。它会影响玩家在游戏中感受到的幻觉状态。特别是当四周围绕着一些优秀演员时，糟糕的演员便会显得更加突兀，甚至会让玩家希望这些角色立刻死亡。因此影响了电子游戏中的大多数表演。

幸运的是，这些问题最终都会遭到自我“瓦解”。这个领域中的激烈竞争总是要求我们发展出一些新能力。就像是如果能够获得电视剧或者电影的演技提名，我们会非常高兴。但我们并不需要John Gielgud以及Katharine Hepburn（游戏邦注：这两者都是早期著名电影演员）这样逼真的表演，因为电脑游戏应该具有交互性。比起在电子游戏中添加糟糕的表演，还不如直接取消这种表演，这样做反而省钱省力。

整齐的爆炸场景

不管是哪张图片上的爆炸场景都是一团糟。所有的物品都被轰炸成一小块一小块的碎片，到处充满弹片，废屑和灰尘。我们几乎认不出任何物体的原貌了。那些被爆发的物品根本不可能整齐地裂成一个4，5边形的形状。

我想，为了让观众好受点，电视或电影中那些被轰炸而死的人都会较为平静且迅速死亡，而未直接呈现出最残忍的一面——但是我觉得根本不需要隐藏爆炸性所带来的惊骇效果。炸弹会摧毁一切事物，包括生命和建筑。所有的事物会因此灰飞烟灭。我们必须真实地呈现这种场景。

游戏邦注：原文发表于1998年3月13日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（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）

Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!

By Ernest Adams

Lately I have been playing a number of old games, and I’ve noticed something interesting in comparison with today’s games. The technology has changed enormously, of course. But some of the design mistakes we made in the past are still being made in modern games. The same irritating misfeatures and poorly-designed puzzles that appeared in games as early as fifteen or twenty years ago are still around.

Herewith a list of game misfeatures that I’m tired of seeing. This is a highly personal perspective and your opinion may differ, but to me, these are a sign of sloppy, or lazy, game design.

Boring and Stupid Mazes

The original text adventure, Colossal Cave, had two mazes. One was a series of rooms each of which was described thus: “You’re in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” The other was a series of rooms described as, “You’re in a twisting little maze of passages, all different” (or “You’re in a little twisty maze of passages, all different,” or “You’re in a maze of little twisting passages, all different,” etc.). These were the prototypical boring and stupid mazes. Colossal Cave was the first adventure game ever, though, so I cut it a little slack. But that was over twenty years ago; there’s no longer any excuse for doing that now. Somebody gave me a copy of The Legend of Kyrandia a few years back, and I played it with some pleasure – right up until I got to the maze.

Mazes don’t have to be boring and stupid. It’s possible to design entertaining mazes by ordering the rooms according to a pattern that the player can figure out. A maze should be attractive, clever, and above all, fun to solve. If a maze isn’t interesting or a pleasure to be in, then it’s a bad feature.

Games Without Maps

I have a notoriously poor sense of direction inside buildings, so maybe it’s just me. Still, in the video game world where all the walls and floors use the same textures, places look too much alike. In the real world, even the most rigid cubicle-hell office building has something to distinguish one area from another – a stain on the carpet, a cartoon posted outside someone’s cube. I played Doom and had a great time. I fired up the Quake demo, found out there was no map, and dumped it. I want a map. There’s no reason for withholding a map from me unless it’s just to slow me down, and that’s a poor substitute for providing real gameplay. Bad game designer! No Twinkie!

Incongruous or Fantasy-Killing Elements

Sometimes an adventure game will present you with a puzzle, or other obstacle, that is completely outside the fantasy you’re supposed to be having. In my opinion, that’s a case of the designer running out of ideas, and it’s disappointing to the player. If you’ve taken me away to a magical world where I’m a heroic knight on a glorious quest to rescue the fearsome princess, don’t make me sit and play Mastermind with the dragon. If I absolutely must play a game with him, it should be Nine Men’s Morris, but frankly, it would be more appropriate just to thrash the scoundrel soundly.

This leads quite naturally to my next complaint, which is…

Pointless Surrealism

A number of games have come out which eschew the standard SF/fantasy worlds and instead plunge the player into a twisted and disturbing realm of yadda yadda yadda. Let me tell you something about the capital-S Surrealism of the capital-A Art world: it’s not just randomness. Real Surrealism seeks to shock the mind into a new awareness of [ the human condition | the nature of God | the meaning of compassion | etc. ] through the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated objects and ideas – the key word being “seemingly.” Although appearing bizarre and perhaps even nonsensical at first, true Surrealism is informed by an underlying theme.

I haven’t seen any surrealism in computer games that could claim such noble goals. Most of it has looked to me like somebody said, “… and when you reach the control room of the Doomsday Machine, there’ll be a clown in there! Yeah! That’ll be cool!” Surrealism is like prose poetry: easy to do, but extremely hard to do well. “It’s surrealism” is not an adequate excuse for a poorly conceived vision in the first place.

Which takes me effortlessly to…

Puzzles Requiring Extreme Lateral Thinking

These are puzzles of the “use the lampshade with the bulldozer” variety. The designer may think he’s being funny or even surreal, but he’s really just being adolescently tiresome. It’s lazy puzzle design – making a puzzle difficult by making its solution obscure or irrational. You can add to the player’s play-time by creating ridiculous obstacles, but you’re not really adding to his or her enjoyment, and that’s supposed to be the point.

Puzzles Permitting No Lateral Thinking At All

You come to a locked door. The obvious solution is to find the key, but it’s also the most boring, so maybe the game provides some other way to get it open. But like as not, there’s only one solution, whatever it is.

In text-adventure terms, this was known as the “find the right verb” problem – you were dead in the water until you figured out exactly what verb the game was waiting for you to say. Break? Hit? Smash? Demolish? Pound? Incinerate? And a lot of games today have the same problem: an obstacle which can only be overcome in one way. The game doesn’t encourage the player to think; it demands that the player read the designer’s mind.

In the real world, think of all the things you can do with a locked door:

Find the key

Pick the lock

Force or persuade the person who has the key to open it

Trick someone on the other side into opening it (maybe just by knocking!)

Break the door down, burn it, cut it, dissolve it with acid, etc.

Circumvent it – go through a window instead, or cut a hole in the wall.

The list is limited only by your imagination.

OK, I know this is a tall order. As a developer, it’s difficult and expensive to think of all the ways that someone could try to get through a door and to implement them all. Still, now that we have the have the power to create “deformable environments” – that is, your gunshots and explosions actually affect everything in the real world and not just your enemies – it’s time to add a little variety to our worlds, to reward players who do some lateral thinking.

Puzzles Requiring Obscure Knowledge From Outside the Game

I owe this one to my friend, the genius puzzle-master Scott Kim (http://www.scottkim.com). I didn’t think of it until he read a draft of this column and pointed it out to me. This is a cheap trick, and even more irritating than inside jokes. No, I don’t know the name of the third track on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and if it’s vital that I know it for the game, then the game is just weird. (Trivia games like You Don’t Know Jack are of course excluded from this gripe – with them you know what you’re getting into.)

A Switch in One Room Opens a Door In Another Room A Mile Away

Nor does it have to be a door – I mean any item which affects a game obstacle a long way off. Doom was guilty of this a lot, but the worst example ever was in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an Infocom text adventure. In that game, if you didn’t pick up the junk mail at the very beginning of the game, it was unwinnable at the very end. This misfeature is profoundly and pointlessly irritating. With the exception of refineries and nuclear power plants, in most places in the world the knob for a door is – wonder of wonders – in the door. It’s another example of lazy puzzle design, making the problem difficult not by cleverness but artificially extending the time it takes to solve it.

Only One of [some large number] of Possible Combinations Is the Right One

More lazy puzzle design. At the end of Infidel, which was another Infocom adventure, you had to do four things in a certain sequence. The number of possible combinations is 4! (four factorial, or 24). There was no clue whatsoever as to the correct sequence; you just had to try them all. Yuck. Yet another time-waster with no enjoyment value.

Kill Monster/Take Sword/Sell Sword/Buy A Different Sword/Kill Another Monster

…or in other words, the canonical RPG experience. You may have heard John F. Kennedy’s joke that Washington D.C. is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm. Well, in my opinion most RPG’s combine the pulse-pounding excitement of a business simulation with the intellectual challenge of a shooter. I play games of medieval adventure and heroism to slay princesses and rescue dragons; I don’t play them to spend two-thirds of my time dickering with shopkeepers. I want to be a hero, but the game forces me to be an itinerant second-hand arms dealer. Earning money by robbing corpses doesn’t make me feel all that noble, either.

You Have 30 Seconds to Figure Out This Level Before You Die

With the length of time most games take to load their core modules, this isn’t clever or challenging; it’s just frustrating. If there’s a trick to the solution for which no clues are provided, then it’s just another annoying trial-and-error time-waster. If clues are provided, then you need a reasonable amount of time to think them over. The military doesn’t charge blindly into unreconnoitered territory – or if they do, they usually regret it. Expecting your player to do it is unreasonable. If you’re going to place your player in imminent danger from the very first second she sees the screen, then at least one out of every three of her possible choices should lead to safety.

Stupid Opponents

Another thing I’m tired of is stupid monsters who lumber towards you until you shoot them. This was the Doom technique, and that of a million video games since the dawn of time. Instead of providing you with an intelligent challenge, the game seeks to overwhelm you with sheer numbers. Yawn. Space Invaders may have been brilliant and addictive in its day, but it’s time to move on.

So let’s get imaginative! How about some cowardly monsters who take one potshot at you, then run away to fight another day? Or maybe some monsters who duck in and out of cover? How about one that runs off at the first sight of you and brings back half a dozen friends – if you can nail it on its way out, then it can’t raise the alarm. Or what about some who try to sneak around and come up behind you? Or who offer direct battle, but run away when they’re injured, rather than fighting idiotically to the death? Maybe we could have some monsters whose job is to lure you out of cover so their friends can shoot at you. (That was the role of the flying saucer in the original coin-op Battle Zone.) Or even – gasp! – some monsters who are smart enough to do all these things, like, say, people are! Zounds!

None of these ideas are new; it’s just that we don’t see them that often. Why? Laziness again. Dumb monsters are easy to program. Smart ones aren’t. And it’s easy to balance a game with dumb opponents. You just figure out the appropriate ratio of monsters to “health” powerups. To make the game harder, you change the ratio. But it’s boring. Let’s put a little thought into monster design, give our customers a new challenge.

Two other things I’m tired of – these are aesthetic rather than design elements, but I’ll throw ’em in for good measure.

Poor Acting

Bad acting is a distraction, no less in a computer game than in a movie theater. It breaks your suspension of disbelief. When a bad actor is surrounded by good actors, it’s especially noticeable, and you find yourself praying that their character will be killed off. And most of the acting in computer games is still pretty poor.

Fortunately, this is a problem that will probably take care of itself in the end. Competition will force us to develop some competence in this area. If we can manage to get up to the TV-movie-of-the-week level, I’ll be happy. John Gielgud and Katharine Hepburn’s talents would be wasted in a computer game, where the point is supposed to be interactivity anyway. It’s better to do without acting in a computer game than to include bad acting, and usually cheaper and easier as well.

Neat, Tidy Explosions

Look closely at a picture of a place where a bomb went off. It’s a mess. A real mess. Things are broken into pieces of all sizes, from chunks that are nearly the whole object, to shrapnel and slivers, down to dust. And they’re twisted, shredded, barely recognizable. Things that are blown up by a bomb don’t fall neatly apart into four or five little polygons – they’re blasted to smithereens.

I suppose for the sake of our stomachs we’ll have to preserve the TV and film fiction that people who die violently do so quickly and quietly rather than screaming and rolling around; but I don’t see any need to pretend that high explosives are less than apallingly destructive. Bombs ruin things – lives and buildings. They leave the places they’ve been shattered and unattractive. Let’s tell the truth about them.

Conclusion

Scott Kim tells me that I’m being a bit harsh by labeling some of these misfeatures as “lazy” puzzle design. He points out that puzzle design is hard work to begin with, and unless you’re quite familiar with the games of the past, it’s easy to make the same mistakes again without knowing it. In addition, a lot of people come into puzzle design from other fields like programming or art, and so don’t have much experience at it.

I’ll buy that. But now that you have this handy list, at least you needn’t make these mistakes, right? （source:designersnotebook）