作者：Joey Gibbs

因为这是发布于网络上的文章而并非正式学术论文，所以我将使用第一人称来阐述，通过哲学方式来呈现某些严肃的理论：

想象下，你是上帝。

先按照我说的做，我们等等还会回到有关游戏的话题探讨中。

当然，不一定非把自己想象成上帝，想象成无所不知的人即可。你见证了事物的起始和完结。你不仅能够做所有事情，还能够创造所有的新事物。思考是你唯一需要做的事情。对你来说，所有事物都是极其简单的。全知全觉，有着无穷的力量。

现在，想象下你就是你自己。

你之前身为上帝所拥有的大部分力量都已经失去。你只是个凡人，你的寿命有限，你的身体有缺陷，你的意识范围有限。与上帝万能的力量相比，你现在相当弱小。

但是，这种力量有限所产生的并非都是糟糕的结果！所有的事物都带有限制条件，各种情况限制我们做想做和想完成的事情。多少人曾经希望，我们成为超人，拥有飞行的能力。拥有此等能力，我们便可以直冲云端，像我们羡慕的小鸟那样。这样，我们便产生了愿望，那就是飞行。而许多真实存在的条件限制了这个愿望的实现，比如万有引力和笨拙的类猿身体等。简单地说，我们有了个问题：在如此多阻碍和限制的情况下，我们要如何从地面到达天空？

那么，我们是如何解决问题的呢？简单地说，你确定了目前所处的地方，确定了想去的地方，确定了阻碍你实现目标的限制因素，然后确定了你可以使用的资源。接下来，你要做的就是找到系统的方法，利用你拥有的资源打破限制。

问题开始时很简单：我要如何将那些蚂蚁从又大又坚硬的蚁丘中取出呢？让我们看看周围，有些石头，还有些树叶。等等，真棒，这里有根木棍！我只需要将它伸进这些小洞里面就可以取到蚂蚁了。随后，人们开始使用木棍来完成其他不同的任务，然后开始将石头绑在木棍上，由此不断产生出各种各样的想法。我们制造飞机的过程与此相同，但势必要经历更多次的实验和尝试。

关键在于，人类从诞生之日起便受到不同问题的困扰。我们认识和解决问题的能力是我们成为地球主宰的重要原因。数千年以来，我们一直都在解决问题，于是自然发生了如下令人惊叹的事情：

在某些情况下，我们只是单纯为了获得乐趣而解决问题。

Jesse Schell在他所著书籍《The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses》中表示，玩游戏只是一种带着娱乐态度解决问题的活动。我还从未听说过这种说法，但确实是对的。

如果你认真思考就会发现其中的意义，你解决的问题越多，你就变得熟练，这样你就变得越擅长解决新的问题。那么，数千年以前，难道就不会有人忽然喜欢上这种解决问题的感觉吗？可能出现过以下对话；

poke anthill(from lanny-yap.blogspot.com)

“我打赌我能够用这根木棍，比你更快从蚁丘中取出蚂蚁。”

“闭嘴。如果我不饿的话为什么要去挖掘蚂蚁呢？”

所以，就可能出现并非因为饥饿而挖掘蚂蚁的穴居人。为什么他们愿意在不需要干活的时候干活呢？很简单，他们要做的就是练习，为了将来能够更好地适应环境。某些穴居人可能因此而成为氏族中比其他人更擅长捕捉蚂蚁的人。

当时的生活就是解决问题和竞争。那些优秀的竞争者和能够更好解决问题的人有更高的生存及繁衍能力。

今天，我们显然并未像穴居人那样对食用蚂蚁感兴趣，但是顽皮的精神依然存在。如果你觉得很难理解的话，看看职业足球赛就明白了：为什么会有那么多人在草地上拼抢一个人造橡胶球呢？因为这很有趣。

我觉得这便是游戏的本质及其存在的原因，我们并非无所不能的人，我们只是普通的人类，世间许多事物会阻碍我们获得想要的东西。为了同这些限制条件对抗，我们逐渐乐衷于练习解决问题的过程。我们练习的越多，我们就能够越好地解决现实生活问题。

最后举个例子，以《质量效应》系列游戏中的问题为例：

目标——愉快地生存下去。

限制条件——许多星际飞船想要猎杀Milky Way上的所有生命。

解决方案——现在还不确定，这就是《质量效应3》将要关注的主题

游戏邦注：本文发稿于2011年7月23日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（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）

Solving Problems Just For Fun

Joey Gibbs

Sorry for the mild delay true believers! Although it IS 343 o’clock by the count on my HP, so I guess it’s as good as any time to write about more game design theory. Last week I made a distinction between “interactivity” and “agency” within the confines of a game system. This week I’m going to talk a little bit about games – how I define them in the context of my thesis and how they affect player agency.

Since this is the internet and not a formal academic paper, I have the liberty to not only speak in the first person but also to set the stage for some serious theory with a philosophical exercise:

Imagine that you are god.

Seriously, bear with me. This will be coming back to games. Eventually.

Not the god, necessarily, but some like omniscient, omnipotent being that exists always and everywhere. You’ve been around since the beginning of things and, in all likelihood, will continue to be until the end. Think about what it’s like to have the general potency of your favorite deity: You know everything. Not only can you do everything, but you can create new everything. Any action you take is the work of less than a thought. For you, things simply are, or they are not. Total consciousness, absolute power.

Now imagine that you are you.

The vast majority of the power that you enjoyed as a god is gone. Instead of always and everywhere you are here and now. You’re limited by the brevity of your existence, the frailty of your body, and the confines of your own conscious mind. Compared to all that god-like power, just being you kinda sucks.

But hey, it’s not all bad! All of use are burdened with constraints, things that limit us from doing what we want, from accomplishing what we want. How many of us have wished that we were superheroes, gifted with the power of flight? Soaring through the heavens under our own power, much like the birds that we’ve come to envy? In this example, we have a desire – flight – and a collection of very real constraints – gravity, clunky simian bodies, etc. In short, we have a problem: How do we get from point A (the ground) to point B (flight) with that big wall of constraints in the way?

Well, how do you go about solving a problem? Greatly simplified, you define where you are, you define where you want to be, you define the constraints working against you, and then you define the resources that you have available to you. After that it’s just a matter of figuring out a way to play the system, to use what you have to work around the constraints.

It started simple: How do I get those tasty ants out of that big, rocky anthill? Well, let’s see here… Got a few rocks… some leaves! Wait, no… OH YEAH! A STICK! Then I just poke it into those tiny little holes and… OM NOMS. All it took was one of us to figure out the whole anthill/stick thing and soon everyone was doing it. Then people started using sticks for different tasks, then tying rocks to sticks, and – well, you get the idea. We came up with airplanes in much the same way, although admittedly there was significantly more trial and error.

The point is that us human beings have been beset with problems since the get-go. Our ability to recognize problems and to solve them is one of the things that has helped us become the dominant species on the planet. We solved problems for thousands of years until something really awesome happened:

At some point, we started solving problems just for fun.

Jesse Schell argues in his “The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses” that games are just problem solving activities undertaken with a playful attitude. A less academic statement I have never heard, but boy is that true.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it – the more problems you solve, the more practice you get, and the more practice you get the better you become at solving new problems. Wouldn’t it make sense if the people who suddenly liked solving problems became better adapted to their environments all those thousands of years ago? It probably went something like this:

“Yo Urg, I bet I can dig ants out of that anthill with this stick faster than you can.”

“Shut up Trogg. Why would I want to dig for ants when I’m not hungry?”

Trogg probably drove his fellow neanderthals insane trying to get them to dig for ants past the point that no one was hungry. Why do work when no work is required? Simple: We’re talking about practice. Trogg was probably way better at gathering ants than everyone else in the clan.

But that’s what life was like back then. Problem solving and competition. The ones that were particularly good competitors and particularly good problems solvers had a higher chance of surviving to reproduce, and the rest is history.

Today we’re obviously not vying for ants (not usually, anyway), but the ludic spirit remains. If you need proof, just look at pro football: Why kill yourself trying to drag a little balloon of synthetic rubber 100 yards through a forest of slavering maniacs with gland problems? Because it’s fun.

And I think that’s really what and why games are: We’re not omniscient and omnipotent – we’re just puny humans with a lot of things that keep us from getting what we want. To combat those constraints, we’ve learned to enjoy practicing solving problems. The more we practicing we do, the better we get at solving real life problems.

As a final example, take the big problem in the Mass Effect series:

Goal – live happily ever after.

Constraint – fleet of interstellar bug machines intent on harvesting all life in the Milky Way.

Solution – not sure yet, but I’ll figure it out next March. Or, you know… whenever ME3 comes out.

POINT BEING…

The galaxy isn’t at risk of invasion by Reapers from the dark spaces beyond the stars. I mean, probably not. But if it ever is, EA and Bioware have made sure that all the nerds on earth will be ready.

That’s enough for this week, I think. Next time I’ll start talking about how constraints are built into games as game mechanics. (Source: Gamasutra)