作者：Eric Schwarz

当前这代游戏有些地方令我不是很满意。虽然我们已掌握某些题材的设计方式，且过去几年来游戏的完善程度及可玩性都更上一层楼，但我觉得这些游戏依然有所欠缺。如今我们似乎越来越难遇到富有灵魂的游戏作品。

我曾将此归咎于游戏行业及我自身品位发生变化，再来就是对早期游戏的怀旧之情。我童年时期钟情的游戏显然无法重出江湖，无论它们的核心设计理念多么强大。在读过Hugo Bille的《The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid》之后，我开始认真思考这些有关游戏灵魂的问题，我发现这些新生代游戏所缺乏的元素是：神秘感。

本文不属于我以往设计类文章会涉猎的内容——这更多是我个人对行业若干设计趋势及其给最终体验带来的综合影响所进行的思考。

男孩和洞穴

《塞尔达传说》呈现的是游戏中最形象但却又非常简单的场景：年轻的绿衫男孩置身布满树木的领域，远处有个显眼的洞穴。多年来，这个场景都给玩家带来无限的想象空间：想象洞穴和游戏世界会向四周无限延伸，呈现令人难以视而不见的诱惑性。众所周知，Shigeru Miyamoto是基于自己的少年直觉设计出《塞尔达传说》这款游戏，这直接体现在游戏的开场情境。

《赛尔达》简单且吸引眼球的初始画面

和多数NES时代的游戏一样，这个场景通过简单的设计带来玩家丰富的体验。这个简单的视觉设计给玩家设定明确的界限，呈现玩家的操作选择——上、左、右或进入洞穴。在进入洞穴前，玩家的初始位置附近会出现一块黑色区域，这旨在从视觉效果上将此同其他路线区分开来，这里存在隐性的重要意义——若你打算继续游戏，你多半会想要首先查看下这个地点。为防止玩家没有看到这一信息，游戏在初始画面上方设有容易击退的敌人，间接鼓励玩家查看此洞穴。

但除初始阶段的杰出设计外，游戏还包含其他遍布整个《塞尔达传说》体验的基础元素——发现、探索、冒险，更重要的是秘密元素。《塞尔达传说》主要基于玩家有望在新画面中看到新奇迹、秘密及宝藏的理念。这些内容的涉及范围从总是显而易见的库存内容及其起初闲置的插槽，到游戏被划分成的若干固定画面（游戏邦注：这些画面旨在暗示玩家游戏将会呈现更多内容）。无论是通过炸弹摧毁墙面，从而寻找隐藏道具，还是偶然发现新Heart Container，游戏总是会给予玩家特定奖励——只要玩家在游戏中获胜，他们就能够直接进入第二个地下城已进行重新配置的关卡模式。

值得期待的内容

呈现新内容的主要推动因素是，多年来游戏始终乐于逐步进行探索。虽然功能和游戏机制能够让玩家从中收获乐趣，但有望发现全新有趣内容的想法促使玩家在游戏丧失新鲜感后依然继续返回其中。我们喜欢的很多作品都存在具有重返价值的内容，这就是为何我会给予《辐射》和《Arcanum》这类游戏如此高评价的原因——它们不仅积极向新手玩家呈现杰出的游戏内容，还在玩法和故事元素上融入充足的内容和灵活性，促使游戏在5-10个回合后依然饶有趣味。

创新性（游戏邦注：无论是基于机制还是美学层面），都是维持用户粘性的首要推动因素。合理节奏和糟糕节奏的差别在于，我们的关注点不是放在“在哪个间隔向玩家呈现新内容比较合适？”，而是着眼于“我们能够融入什么具有期待价值的元素，以什么方式植入？”我们需要学会设置及向玩家透露即将呈现的内容，然后最终进行兑现，只有这样我们才能确保玩家会玩到最后，选择尝试更有难度的内容，或者切换至多人模式。

《半条命2》以恰到好处的节奏感向玩家呈现新情境和新机制

至今我依然对其节奏赞不绝口的一款游戏作品是《半条命2》。从表面上看，《半条命2》并不是非常复杂或有趣的游戏。我们很容易基于“这不过是款射击游戏的心理”来查看游戏的核心玩法。但毋庸置疑的是，Valve极力确保游戏的各个道具运用起来都富有趣味，能够在游戏世界中发挥一定的作用，令所有敌人都构成不同的挑战，确保每个谜题都会带来不同的障碍因素。虽然基本玩法就颇吸引眼球，但“门/加载画面/故事内容之后会发生什么？”促使《半条命2》变得如此趣味横生，即便发行10年依然令人回味无穷。

将《半条命2》同《孤岛危机2》之类的科幻设计游戏进行比较是个有趣的过程。虽然《孤岛危机2》极力向玩家呈现简单的战斗地点，但游戏持续融入复杂的角色和故事情节，在合理的间隙融入更新武器，游戏主要围绕富有生气的背景画面，且融入众多美丽的风景。射击本身就非常有趣，但同玩家进行战斗的敌人无非就是几个基本类型，游戏的boss战斗也没有什么特别之处，武器的错落方式也是司空见惯。就连Nanosuit——游戏最吸引人的元素，也是遵循玩法的发展路线。完成《孤岛危机2》的首个关卡后，我能够理解玩家终止游戏，出现“这就非常足够”的心理。

20分钟游戏

转投《使命召唤：现代战争2》或《战争机器》之类的现代游戏，它们相当于这代游戏的《光晕》或《半条命》，我未从中感受到神秘元素，在整个5-10小时的体验中我丝毫没有这种感觉。这些游戏并不缺乏内容，游戏所融入的内容既美妙，又精致，这些内容有经过反复的测试，旨在确保所有玩家都能够从中收获乐趣。但事与愿违的是，我鲜少在游戏中因憧憬新内容兴奋不已，虽然大家都说游戏的内容无可挑剔。为什么会这样？

众所周知，多数玩家都没有完整玩完这些游戏。根据游戏长度、游戏题材及目标市场的不同，游戏的完整体验比例大概介于15%-50%之间。虽然玩家希望游戏持续更久，各更新内容能够更加丰富，但数据显示，玩家对于探索这些内容并不怎么感兴趣，他们更感兴趣的是通过游戏长度判断游戏价值，以此证明自己的购买决策正确无误。开发者采取许多措施来阻止这种情况的出现，我不得不称赞他们中许多人坚持放弃低于标准水平的内容——可以说，要不是开发者有这种认识，多数游戏将会平均持续12-20小时，而其中其实只有3小时内容富有意义。

《使命召唤》各个关卡，甚至各个版本的特点都不够鲜明，难分彼此

遗憾的是，制作简短、密集内容的必要性令游戏很难融入任何神秘感。游戏通常不是以渐进方式引入游戏机制，而更常是在头20分钟就呈现所需呈现的所有内容。《使命召唤》、《战争机器》或《刺客信条》就是例子之一。就连《古墓丽影：地下世界》这类基于探索和冒险内容的游戏，或是《龙腾世纪II》之类的40多小时RPG游戏都犯下类似错误。虽然你可以持续体验游戏好几小时，但若无法在游戏中接触到新内容或者只是重复射击手持相同短枪的改装角色，那游戏还有什么意义。美学元素（游戏邦注：包括背景设置）和故事内容能够让单调的内容变得更易于被接受，但这些通常都是毫无意义的玩法，若故事支离破碎，那游戏就没有什么内容支撑玩家继续体验下去。

《光晕》以Bungie所谓的“30秒玩法”而著称，这是指玩家会在体验过程中反复接触到循环呈现的互动和玩法元素。我觉得有些开发者在运用这一策略方面有些过于呆板——《光晕》虽然在后面阶段存在关卡重复问题，但游戏有引入逐步新道具和新敌人类型，待到原始内容耗尽后，游戏就会将这些新内容重新分配至有趣的情境中。是否享受于先前的调皮女孩置身坦克之中的情境？现在试着冒着炮艇的枪火驾驶坦克。在《生化奇兵》中，要实现这一目标的方式是尝试在更短时间内完成骑马迷你游戏。坦白讲，我怀疑玩家没有玩完这些游戏的主要原因是游戏在指南关卡之后就毫无任何新元素。

有待探索的内容

很多人会替《使命的召唤》等游戏缺乏神秘感做出如下辩护：“游戏当然会缺乏神秘感，这是款仿真军事射击游戏！”虽然我不是有意要对某些设计师表示不敬，但这些都是牵强的借口，这好比在说：“我们的游戏缺乏趣味是因为它原本就不是着眼于趣味性目标而设计的。”在我看来，以这种态度对待游戏设计有些不妥。现实主义和真实背景不会妨碍神秘感和探索内容的形成，投资数百万美元制作5小时主题公园骑马游戏在我看来很不划算。

除去这些不说，在游戏设计中融入神秘感并不是已经消失的艺术。《The Elder Scrolls V：Skyrim》和《Risen》之类的开放世界游戏向玩家呈现有待探索的有趣内容，虽然这些内容不像有些游戏那般结构紧凑，但技能系统机制令游戏的进程不是通过“我的角色有多少成员？”来呈现，而是通过“我未来将获得什么新的选择？”Bethesda游戏的山脉情景和原始《塞尔达传说》的初始画面一样迷人

但游戏行业得提前采取措施确保神秘元素未来不会消失。AAAA游戏造价很高，且随着开发成本的日益提高，这类游戏的制作可行性越来越低。社交和手机游戏已逐步深入“核心”平台，但由于很多游戏都基于5分钟回合模式及以持续反馈机制为基础的反馈循环，我很怀疑这类游戏未来能否持久吸引玩家眼球。

总结

本文虽不是采用我所喜欢的分析风格，但我觉得自己的观点始终非常明确：若你的目标是制作一款有趣的持久性游戏，那么仅呈现美妙的有趣体验远远不够。神秘感是游戏设计的组成要素，随着开发预算及执行成本的日益提高，游戏越来越缺少这一元素，因为现在就连玩法基本元素都越来越难驾驭。

也许将《使命召唤》之类的主流游戏作为反例有些不妥——毕竟他们旨在吸引特定用户群体，完全打安全牌。这完全能够理解，但美工和设计师团队没有理由花一个月时间设计、铸造、建构及激活一个武器模型让它看起来和其他10个突击步枪没什么两样。这不仅不是运用资源的合理方式，而且还会降低游戏其他要素的效果，因为内容过多会令玩家无法领略游戏内容的最大资产——创新性的魅力。

我是否显得有些刻薄、怀旧？也许有一点。但我觉得游戏设计师完全能够通过集思广益想出“翻版AK-47”之外的点子。（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）

The Lost Value of Mystery

by Eric Schwarz

There’s been something eating away at me about the current generation’s games.  While we have come to largely master the designs of certain genres, and the last several years has brought us a base level of polish and playability that is unmatched in any other, there’s something about these games that I’m finding, for lack of a better word, lacking.  It just seems harder and harder to come across a game with some sort of soul to it.

For a while I chalked this up both to the changing games industry and my own changing tastes, plus nostalgia for earlier days.  It’s true that the games from my childhood that I love will never be made or remade again, no matter how strong their core designs may be.  After reading Hugo Bille’s fantastic article “The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid” about a month ago, those questions about the heart and soul of games began to flare up in me more distinctly, and now I think I’ve figured out what so many newer titles are missing: mystery.

This isn’t really one of my usual design-type articles – rather, it’s more a personal reflection on certain design trends, and their cumulative impact on the end play experience.  Continue at your own peril.

A Boy and a Cave

The Legend of Zelda opens with one of the most iconic, but also surprisingly simple scenes in just about all of gaming: a young, green-clad boy in a lightly wooded area, with a cave visible nearby.  For decades, this scene has captured the imaginations of players, and rightly so: the prospect of both the cave and the world stretching out in three other directions present a temptation too great to ignore.  Shigeru Miyamoto famously designed The Legend of Zelda around his own boyhood instincts, and this is reflected immediately in the opening scene.

This scene, like many NES-era games, does a lot with very little.  The simple visual design sets clear boundaries for the player that suggests the available options – up, left, right, or the cave.  In placing the cave, a block of pitch black, both nearest the player’s starting spot and differentiating it visually from the other paths, there is an implicit importance placed upon it – if you’re going to continue on, you might want to check this place out first (which, of course, is reflected in the near-legendary words of the old man inside, “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!”).  Just in case the player doesn’t quite get the message, the area beyond this starting screen is populated with easy enemies to subtly encourage the player to check out that cave.

But aside from the good design in this opening, there’s something more, something baser about it, something that permeates the entire Legend of Zelda experience – discovery, exploration, adventure, and, most importantly, mystery.  More than anything else, Zelda is driven by that tantalizing prospect of new wonders, secrets, and treasures to uncover on each new screen.  Everything from the always-visible inventory and its first-vacant slots, to the fixed screens the game world is divided up into, serve to give the player a hint that there’s something more to come.  And, whether it’s blowing up a wall with a bomb to find some hidden items, or stumbling across a new Heart Container, the game always rewards its players – right up to its second quest mode once the game has been won, complete with reconfigured dungeons.

Something to Look Forward To

This fundamental drive to uncover new things is one that gaming has been happy to exploit over the years.  While features and game mechanics are able to keep players entertained, it’s the prospect of finding something new and interesting that brings players back once the initial buzz has worn off.  Many of our favorite games are also the most replayable, and why I hold titles like Fallout and Arcanum in such high regard – they do their best to not only provide a great experience for first-time players, but offer enough content and flexibility in both gameplay and story to keep things fun and interesting even five or ten play-throughs later.

Novelty, either in mechanics or in aesthetics (including story) is perhaps the number one driving force in keeping players engaged.  The difference between good pacing and bad pacing appears when we are concerned not so much with “at what exact intervals is it appropriate to give the player new content?” as we are with “what can we give players to look forward to, and how?” Being able to both set up and telegraph upcoming content to players, and then deliver on it, is essential to making sure they play to the end, and choose to play again on a harder difficulty, or jump into the multiplayer mode.

One game that, to this day, still manages to wow me with its pacing, is Half-Life 2.  On the surface, Half-Life 2 is not an especially complicated or interesting game.  It’s very easy to approach its core gameplay with the “it’s just a shooter” mindset.  However, it’s clear that Valve went to great pains to ensure that every single weapon is fun to use and useful within the game world, that all enemies pose distinct challenges to overcome, and that each puzzle poses an original obstacle.  As fun as the basic gunplay is, it’s the “what’s behind this door?  past this loading screen?  after this story sequence?” that makes Half-Life 2 so fun and exciting to play through even nearly a decade after its release.

Comparing Half-Life 2 to a similar sci-fi shooter like Crysis 2 is interesting, to say the least.  Although Crysis 2 tries its best to give players neat locations to fight in, lots of wordy characters and plot events to take in on a frequent basis, and provides weapon upgrades at reasonable intervals, much of the game revolves around meticulously-animated set pieces and taking in beautiful vistas.  The shooting itself is fun enough, but the enemies you fight don’t really develop beyond the few basic types and the odd boss battle, and the weapons never stray beyond the ordinary.  Even the Nanosuit, the game’s biggest hook, is never developed over the course of gameplay.  After finishing the first level of Crysis 2, I’d forgive anyone for shutting the game off and saying “yep, that’s enough of that.”

The 20-Minute Game

When I hop into a modern game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or Gears of War, this generation’s equivalent of Halo or Half-Life, I am never struck with a feeling of mystery, not throughout the entire five or ten hours I spend with them.  These games are not lacking for content, and the content they do contain is often beautiful, exceptionally polished and play-tested to the point where just about anyone should be guaranteed entertainment.  Paradoxically, however, I am rarely if ever thrilled or delighted by the prospect of new content in these games, even though by all accounts they have a far higher standard of content.  Why is this?

It’s common knowledge that most players don’t finish their games.  Depending on the game length, the game genre, and the market, completion rates can range from 15% to 50% on average.  Even though players demand that games be longer and more expansive with each iteration, the data suggests that players are less interested in actually exploring that content and more interested in justifying their own purchasing habits by using game length to determine value.  Developers have done a lot to combat this, and I have to applaud many of them for having the discipline to get rid of sub-standard content – arguably, if it wasn’t for this knowledge, most games would still be 12-20 hours long on average, and only about three of those hours would really be any good.

Unfortunately, this need to produce shorter, denser games has also largely robbed them of any sense of mystery.  Rather than introducing game mechanics in a steady, metered fashion, it’s far more common to be shown everything a game has to offer within the first 20 minutes or so.  Call of Duty does this.  Gears of War does this.  Assassin’s Creed does this (at least, once you get past the very lengthy intro sequences).  Even games that rely on exploration and adventure, like Tomb Raider: Underworld, or 40+ hour RPGs, like Dragon Age II, have fallen victim to this.  While you can keep playing for hours and hours, what’s the point when you have nothing new to see or do except shoot the same old reskinned enemies from behind the same old pieces of cover with the same old assault rifles and shotguns (replace with “sword” as necessary)?  Aesthetics, including set pieces, and story, can help to make the monotony more bearable, but also tend to be vacant and empty of meaningful gameplay, and if the story breaks down, there is effectively nothing left to keep players playing.

Halo made itself famous on Bungie’s so-called “30 seconds of gameplay”, a loop of interactions and mechanics the player would be engaged in over and over again while playing the game.  I think some developers may have taken this sentiment a little too literally – Halo, despite its problems with repeating levels in the late-game, had the sense to introduce new weapons and enemy types one at a time, and then, after original content ran dry, to reappropriate them in interesting situations.  Enjoyed your romp in the tank earlier?  Now try driving it under fire from gunships.   In BioShock, the closest you’ll get to this is trying to complete the hacking minigame with a smaller time limit.  Frankly, I have to wonder if the only reason players aren’t finishing their games is because there’s nothing new to see after the tutorial level.

Over the Hillside

Many people will justify the lack of mystery in a game like Call of Duty by saying “well, of course there’s no mystery, it’s a realistic military shooter!”, and while I mean no disrespect to the developers, these are little more than rationalizations and excuses.  This effectively says “our game isn’t interesting because it isn’t designed to be interesting,” which, in my opinion, is not a good attitude to have if you’re making games.  Realism and real-world settings do not preclude mystery and discovery, and spending tens of millions of dollars creating five-hour theme park rides is just not efficient in my mind.

All that aside, fostering mystery in game design is not a lost art.  Open-world titles such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Risen give players something interesting to find over every hillside, and despite not being nearly as structured as some games, the mechanics of the skill systems ensure that progress is expressed not just in terms of “how many numbers does my guy have?” but “what new options have I just opened for myself?”  The mountainous vistas of Bethesda’s games are, in their own way, just as enthralling as the starting screen of the original Legend of Zelda.

The games industry is going to have to be proactive in ensuring that mystery doesn’t die out, however.  Triple-A games are expensive to produce, and generally becoming less viable every year as development costs continue to grow exponentially.  Social and mobile games already beginning to cut into the “core” platforms, but as so may of those titles are built around five-minute game sessions, and repetitive feedback loops based on frequent reward mechanisms, I have to wonder whether games will still continue to amaze and delight players on a long-term basis.

Closing Thoughts

This article has been a little meandering and personal, and not as analytic as I would have liked, but I think the point I’m making is clear all the same: it’s not enough to give players a beautiful, kinetic and entertaining experience if your goal is to make a game that is fun not just for a half-hour, but for five, or ten, or twenty or more hours.  Mystery is an integral component of game design, and as development budgets swell and the cost of implementing content skyrockets, I see less and less of it as even the basics of gameplay become more difficult to manage.

Maybe it’s unfair to pick on more mainstream games like Call of Duty – after all, they’re built to appeal to a particular audience and play it safe.  This is understandable, but it’s just no excuse for why a team of artists and designers should, say, work for a month creating, modeling, texturing, and animating a weapon model, if it looks and feels exactly like the ten other assault rifles in the game.  Not only is this a poor way to spend resources, but it actually lessens the impact of all other parts of the game, as the redundancy in content ensures the biggest asset of content – novelty – is lost on players.

Am I just being bitter, jaded, nostalgic and grim?  Perhaps, a little bit.  But I’d like to think that game developers can come up with more than “a different type of AK-47″ when brainstorming when brainstorming ways to keep their gameplay interesting.（Source：gamasutra）