作者：Altug Isigan

在众多互动游戏中，一个有关叙事设计的问题浮出水面：人们一遍遍地重复相同的繁琐内容，最终只看到不同的结局或是从中获悉隐藏于故事中的不同观点。虽然互动游戏设计师似乎对给玩家创造惊奇充满热情，但是他们忘记，玩家会变得越来越不耐烦，原因在于他们反复体验相同的内容，而最终看到的只是略微发生变动的故事内容，这促使他们开始好奇，自己是否能够通过更轻松简短的方式来呈现故事内容。

对许多游戏研究者和设计师来说，出现这种令人烦恼情况说明互动内容和故事没有得到很好的融合。但是，我认为，真正的原因在于游戏玩法或故事叙述设计不佳。虽然许多视频游戏让我们一遍遍重复系列操作过程，但它们显然也在努力解决这个问题。有个设计技巧颇值得参考，那就是合理利用存储点。在这种情况下，存储点不再只是游戏的设计技巧，而是变成故事叙述技巧，因为它能够控制游戏的节奏。存储点是实现高效重复内容的方式，令游戏内容变得更简洁。保存设置在此的作用是，它将我们带回故事的某个时刻，此时重复系列故事内容变得富有意义。

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虽然许多互动游戏让我们从头开始体验，从而获得不同的结局，这意味着我们需要经历所有“已经解决”的系列事件，方能最终看到不同的结局，但是有许多视频游戏并没有给我们设置这类障碍。游戏的设计并没有让我们直接回到系列事件的开始，而是让我们从最近尚未解决的节点继续下去。游戏没有要求我们一定要经历那些已知晓的故事内容。这无疑是对基本故事呈现技巧的更恰当运用，因为首先玩家无需被迫接收她已经知晓的信息，从呈现技巧的角度来看，这些她已知晓的信息已无法再令她感到惊讶。其次，因为玩家可以从某结果尚未呈现的节点继续下去，因此悬念、紧张、预期及渴望胜利等强烈情感依然存在。若互动游戏设计师能够意识到这点，那他们的作品就能够更富有娱乐性。

或许这里的问题在于，自行创造故事类型书籍中的风格模式并未以精炼的方式转化至互动媒介中。毕竟，在自行创造故事类型的书籍中，玩家不会被迫阅读她们已知晓的系列内容。他们可以根据自己的需要阅读相关内容，只重新阅读那些遗忘的线索。在这种情况下，重复属于自发性的。但当出现媒介领域的特性时，若我们未曾考虑让玩家跳过系列事件，或向她提供跳过事件的保存点，那就会出现要求玩家再次经历已知晓的系列事件的情况。或许互动游戏设计师仅仅是过度着迷于数字化技术的“丰富性”，进而忘记吸引设计师挖掘媒介潜质的内容并不一定会得到玩家的认可。“为用户着想”是个很复杂的规则，要求我们站在玩家的角度来考虑故事每个时刻的新鲜感。

关于导致互动游戏设计师让玩家体验那些已对他们失去吸引力的系列事件的原因，我能够想到的有以下两个：

1、让玩家每次都能够体验“完整故事”的想法：因为存在这种想法，所以只要故事稍有变动，设计师就觉得自己有义务让玩家完整体验整个故事，这样游戏才能在适当背景下呈现这类微小变动。但是这对玩家来说，这往往意味着他必须体验大量了然无趣的系列事件，而目的只是从中收获一个小小的惊喜，这显得得不偿失。这会促使玩家感受此微小调整的欲望发生动摇。用不同的结局来丰富故事内容是一回事，用无趣的重复内容来惩罚玩家则是另一回事，二者没有必然的联系。

2、对玩家叙事理解技能的误解：设计师误解玩家的理解能力，玩家是睿智的，他们的思维很活跃，他们不只是在操作按键或做出决策时才进行思考。故事构建是个活跃的过程，玩家在整个游戏过程都在进行此活动（游戏邦注：这不是个玩过游戏之后才有的活动），所以玩家对事件和逻辑的认知总是很敏锐。在游戏中做决定，需要玩家对故事的当前情况、过去事件及未来发展计划有清晰的认识。因此，让玩家通过经历已玩过的系列事件来获得不同结局对他们来说毫无意义。这么做只会让玩家觉得，我们觉得他们的叙事理解力不足，我们认为他们很愚蠢，无法记住已经呈现过的内容。

同时，被强迫经历已知晓的系列事件还存在另一风险：在已顺利解决的系列事件中操作失败。这对游戏来说是致命的，因为我们希望游戏尽快发展至真正的故事关键节点，但现在我们却被卡在之前已成功操作的地方。在这种情况下，玩家会认为游戏的设计非常糟糕。游戏不仅忽略玩家的故事理解能力，还忽略玩家已为游戏所付出的努力。

我觉得，互动游戏设计师可以学习融入分支故事的电影，简化故事且提高对玩家能力的信任。看看《双面情人》和《吸烟/不吸烟》，我们可以看到这些电影的剧作者并没有强迫观众观看那些他们已掌握的信息。他们相信玩家有能力记住已发生过的故事，且以真正引人入胜的内容来奖励他们的睿智。这一点值得学习。（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）

A Save Point for Interactive Fiction

Altug Isigan

In many IF’s a problem in narrative design shows up: People need to go through the same long sequences over and over again only to witness a different ending or to be informed about a different perspective that was hidden in the story. While IF designers seem to be enthusiastic about the surprises that they’ve created for their players, they seem to neglect the increasing degree of annoyance that accompanies the player’s experience as she is being sent through the same things over and over again, only to find out about little tweaks in the story that make them wonder whether these couldn’t have presented to them in a less painful and shorter way.

For many game researchers and designer this annoying situation is a proof that interaction and story do not get well along. But I consider this to be rather a matter of bad gameplay/storytelling design. While many video games seem to send us through an actual sequence over and over again, it is evident that they spare us from having to play through sequences that we have already considered as “done”. One design technique in achieving this, is the clever use of save points. In that sense, a save point is not only a game design technique, but a technique of storytelling, because it is a way to control pacing. Save points are a means for effective repetition, and for brevity. The point about the save here is that it puts us back into the story at a moment in which the repetition of the sequence is motivated, that is, the act is still unresolved, therefore possessing an objective and uncertainty in regard to whether the objective can be achieved.

While many IF’s ask us to start all over to arrive at a different ending, which means we play through already “solved” sequences only for a different ending, many video games do not put such burden on us. The design doesn’t throw us back straight to the beginning of the sequence (let alone the game), but allows us to continue from the latest unresolved spot. We are not forced to go through to what we already know. This is definitely a healthier use of basic exposure techniques, because first, the player is spared from receiving information that she already possesses, or from tricks of exposure that she is now aware of and do not surprise her anymore. And second, since the player can continue from a point in which the outcome is yet undecided; suspense, tension, anticipation, and hunger for success remain to be acute feelings. A lot of IF’s may have been much more enjoyable if they would have had applied methods that recognize what a player has been already through (hence, has already articulated as a mental image of story), so that a smart network of links between story chunks spares her from redundant re-play of former sequences.

Maybe the problem here is that the style in create-your-own-story type of books has been translated into the interactive medium in a too unrefined way. After all, in a create-your-own-story type of book, a player is not forced to read sequences that she already knows. She can wander trough the sequences as she likes and only re-reads some of them if she really needs her memory to be aided. The repetition in here is always motivated. But when media-specific qualities such as linking come into the mix, we see that it results into forced re-play if we do not consider to allow the player to skip sequences, or provide her with save points that spare her to go back to points in the story that she considers as solved. Maybe IF designers are simply too fascinated by the “richness” of the digital technology they have at their disposal so as to forget that a designers fascination about using certain possibilities of the medium does not necessarily evoke the same kind of fascination in the player when they are confronted with these possibilies. “Consider your audience” is a very complex rule, one that requires us to consider the freshness of every moment in a story from a player’s perspective.

I can identify at least two reason that cause IF designers to put players through sequences that have become uninteresting to them:

1) The idea to provide the player with a “whole story”, each time she plays: The idea here is that even if only a minor thing has been changed in the story, the designer feels obligued to put the player through the whole thing, so that the minor change is being provided within its context. But often for a player this means that he must go through hugely uninteresting sequences for just a little surprise. The novity isn’t worth the hassle. The motivation behind being sent through so much stuff that has been already covered for just one minor change becomes unclear for the player. A mantra to stick with here is “art doesn’t know noise”. It’s one thing to enrich content with different endings, it’s another thing to punish a player with uninteresting replay for such different endings.

2) A misjudging of players narrative comprehension skills: Putting it in a blunt way, players are treated as if they possess the memory of a fish. But that is a wrong perception of players. Players are smart, players are mentally active, they do not only think at the moment they can push a button, or when they’re making a decision. Storybuilding is an active process, something that the player does as he is at play (and not only as a post-play activity), so a player’s awareness about events and their chrono-logical order is always sharp. How could it be otherwise?: Making decisions in-game always requires a strong awareness about the actual situation in the story, the events of the past, and to what they may lead to in the future. Hence sending the player through already played sequences just for a different ending, makes no sense to them. Still doing this to them may simply means we treat them as if they’re incapable of narrative comprehension, and that we perceive them being so stupid as to not being able to memorize stuff that they’ve already been put through.

By the way, being forced to go through what we already know, bears another risk of frustration: To fail during a forced replay of a sequence that we had already solved. This is a killer, because all that we want is to arrive as soon as possible at the node that we consider to be the actual problem, but now we’re being held up by what we want to be considered as having been successful in. In such cases the design starts to feel overwhelmingly stupid and anempathetic. The game does not only ignore the player’s capacity of understanding a story, but it also ignores the work that the player put into the game as she built herself that very mental image of the story.

I think IF designers may learn a few lessons about brevity and trust into the audience’s capacity from movies with branching stories. Thinking of examples like Sliding Doors or Smoking/No Smoking, we see that the scriptwriters in these films do not force the audience to watch scenes whose information they have already digested, and whose narration tricks they have already enjoyed. They trust in their audience’s capacity to take on things from a certain point in the story and reward them for their smartness with actual intriguing content. There is a lesson to be learned from this. (Source: Gamasutra)