作者：Leigh Alexander

在Naughty Dog工作室的Rich Lemarchand看来，把握人类注意力运作模式是创造优质游戏体验的关键。他表示，“我渴望获得人类思维的相关知识。”

Lemarchand个人特别不喜欢“沉浸”（immersion）、“沉浸感”（immersive）之类词汇，以及“吸引人”（engaging）、“粘性”（engagement）之类的关联词汇。

“我们在谈论什么带来杰出的游戏作品时常常谈及这类词汇，但我们是否真的理解它们的含义？”关于这类问题的分析在Lemarchand GDC 2012座无虚席的演讲中占据重要篇幅。

Rich lemarchand from interactive.usc.edu

Katie Salen和Eric Zimmerman的“Rules of Play”奠定了“沉浸性谬论”理念的基础，“沉浸性理论”坚称游戏的乐趣主要源自于让玩家相信自己真正融入到虚拟的世界中。Lemarchand同意两位设计师的观点，他称这种观念是“错误”的。

他表示，“同电影主角形成高度认同感说明我们很容易陷入幻想情境。”Naughty Dog投入大量时间学习其他媒介，旨在寻找创造幻觉状态的新方式。

但Lemarchand一直都不认同促使用户沉浸于其他时空的理念，他质疑让玩家相信自己变成他人的创造目标。若玩家真的觉得自己是《Uncharted》中的Nathan Drake，总是处在危险建筑的边缘，受炮火支配，那么谁还会想要寻找乐趣？

Lemarchand以电影《不眠之夜》和《遁入虚无》举例称，有时沉浸感的确能够通过巧妙方式改变我们的身份，这颇值得我们参考。但这对电子游戏来说并非最具建设性的方式，更不会是最核心的方式。

Stout Games《晚餐约会》、SWERY《致命预感》之类的游戏，或是《故事中的故事》之类的游戏清楚说明，玩家和主角之间的关系无法简单呈现一一对应模式。虽然Lemarchand强调自己并不想要深究语义学概念，但他依然觉得在有关如何将游戏变得更优秀的话题中，“沉浸性”容易令人产生误解。

“引起注意”或“吸引眼球”之类的目标比“创造沉浸性”本身更为恰当。“警惕”理念（游戏邦注：这对警卫或空中交通管制之类的职业来说非常重要）在游戏玩法中必不可少。但保持警惕很难，玩家很容易产生厌倦感：

Lemarchand表示，“在集中关注某事物15分钟后，如果新的关联信息感官效果非常微弱，很容易就会被我们忽略。”和拖沓乏味的内容一样，玩家也很容易厌倦有趣的操作任务。若我们持续专注于同件事情一段时间，很容易就会开始分心，变得紧张烦躁。

我们具备两种不同形式的专注：一种依赖于定向反射——视野范围内的重大变化，巨大声响，或突然的移动，或简单的创新；另一种是执行性注意，空间环境会影响玩家的注意力方向。

第二种类型对用户替代关系来说非常重要——主流游戏通常没有充分把握这一情况：玩家在空间环境中的关注内容是他们自我表达的体现之一。

吸引注意力的元素主要有3类：美学元素能够有效捕获玩家的注意力，但无法持续很久。玩家会被角色故事或社交叙述所吸引，但注意投入程度很低。第3个元素当然就是玩法机制。

Lemarchand表示，若设计得当，“玩法就像我们的‘心灵假荆芥’。”稳固的机制能够让电子游戏获得更持久的玩家注意（游戏邦注：超过其他媒介）。

Lemarchand表示，游戏通常认定玩家只有纯粹的反应性，若设计师能够尽量摆脱这类假设，那么玩法将更能够吸引玩家的眼球。动态机制能够给玩家带来情感反应，推荐大家阅读Robin Hunicke、Marc LeBlanc和Robert Zubeck的“MDA Workshop”，学习如何将游戏玩法形象化。

Lemarchand总结表示，“若能够简单记住‘优秀电子游戏是通过结合这3类元素吸引我们的眼球’，那我们就清楚把握沉浸性和粘性的真正含义。”

他表示，“这种理念让我们能够摆脱主观意识猜测，从功能和艺术角度自由评估可行和不可行元素。”

Lemarchand的好友Robin Hunicke也倾向通过注意力引导玩家。她甚至还自己创造出一个词组——“注意力设计”。这点在工作室即将问世的作品《Journey》中一览无遗，游戏以恰当方式将玩家焦点转移至预期目标，通过温和视觉变化呈现玩家的操作目标。

Lemarchand强调，注意力设计和其他工具一样，需按规定执行。他表示，“我并没有要走抽象派路线，或者基于大脑心理学进行解释。”

但在Lemarchand看来，相比简单着眼于现实主义概念，追求模糊的“沉浸性”概念，正确把握和落实注意力心理学能够带来更优秀的游戏开发成果。（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）

GDC 2012: Forget ‘immersion’ — player attention is what matters, says Lemarchand

by Leigh Alexander

Understanding how human attention works is essential to the core of a good game experience, believes Naughty Dog’s Rich Lemarchand. “I’m hungry for knowledge about the human mind,” he says.

In particular, Lemarchand feels a personal dislike for words like “immersion” and “immersive”, and their relatives “engaging” and “engagement.”

“We use these words all the time when we’re talking about what makes games great, but do we really understand what they mean?” Analysis of this issue played a major part in Lemarchand’s well-attended presentation at GDC 2012′s game design track.

Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s Rules of Play established the concept of the prevalent “immersive fallacy” idea that claims that the pleasure in gaming comes from making the player believe he or she is actually sensorily involved in an imaginary world. Lemarchand agrees with the pair’s assertion that this idea is a “mistake,” he says.

“Certainly the level of identification that we have with the protagonists in the movie would suggest that we get caught up in fantasies quite readily,” he says. And Naughty Dog spends plenty of time studying other media in the quest for new ways to create the suspension of disbelief.

But the idea of enveloping people in some other place and time has never sat well with Lemarchand, who questions the goal of making players believe they’re someone else. Who would want to be entertained if they genuinely believed they were Uncharted Nathan Drake, always on the precipice of dangerous structures and at the mercy of gunfire?

It’s true that sometimes sensory inundation can change our identity in interesting ways that are worthy of exploration, says Lemarchand, citing examples like the Sleep No More theatrical installation in New York or the film Enter the Void. But it may not always be the most constructive avenue for video games, and it’s certainly not the primary one.

Games like Stout Games’ Dinner Date or SWERY’s Deadly Premonition, or games from Tale of Tales, reveal that the relationship between a player and the lead character is not so easily parsed as direct one-to-one representation. Although Lemarchand stresses he doesn’t want to quibble about semantics, he still feels that in the context of discussions of how games can become better, “immersion” is a bit misleading.

Goals like “getting attention” or “holding attention” are, to him, more apt and interesting than the concept of “creating immersion” per se. And the idea of “vigilance” – essential to jobs like lifeguarding and air traffic control – is essential to gameplay. But vigilance is tough, and players can get fatigued:

“After the first fifteen minutes of playing close attention to something, we become much more likely to miss new, relevant information if the sensory footprint of that information is small,” says Lemarchand. Players can become as readily fatigued of interesting, stimulating tasks as they can of protracted, boring ones, and anyone will begin to become distracted, stressed and irritable after a while of focusing on the same thing for too long.

We have two different kinds of attention: The first relies on the orienting reflex – when a big change in the field of vision, sudden loud sounds or sudden motion or simple novelty, and executive attention, where the environment prompts choices from players on where to direct his or her attention to within an environment.

This second type is essential to player agency – and mainstream games don’t take enough advantage of the fact that what players choose to pay attention to in the environment is part of how they express themselves.

And there are three major categories of attention-grabbing elements: Aesthetics are excellent at garnering attention immediately, but poor at holding them on the long term. Players can become compelled by character stories and social narratives over a duration, but the depth of engagement with the attention span is only moderate. A third element that can be leveraged to earn player attention is, of course, gameplay systems.

When well designed, “gameplay is like mental catnip to us,” Lemarchand says. Strong systems allow video games to sustain player attention longer than any other media.

Too often, says Lemarchand, games assume the player is merely reactive, and gameplay can be more enriching for players if designers made this presumption less. Dynamics yield emotional responses for players, recommending the MDA Workshop paper by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubeck as essential, simple reading on how to visualize gameplay.

“We can cut through the confusion about what immersion and engagement might mean, simply by saying ‘good video games get and hold our attention, using a mix of the elements in these three categories,” Lemarchand concludes.

“This kind of framework cuts us loose from subjective ideological evaluations… and leaves us free to evaluate what does and doesn’t work, both functionally or artistically,” he says.

Lemarchand’s friend Robin Hunicke of Thatgamecompany also enjoys using attention to subtly guide the player. She’s even coined a term for it, he says: “Attentional design.” It’s evident in the opening sequence of the studio’s upcoming Journey, which communicates the player’s goal through a gentle visual change that shifts the player’s focus onto the intended objective in just the right way.

Lemarchand highlights that attentional design is just like any tool and should be applied prescriptively. “I’m not trying to be reductive, [or] … to explain things away with brain psychology,” he stresses.

But better understanding and implementation of the psychology of attention, in Lemarchand’s view, will be a far more fruitful pursuit for game development than simply focusing on concepts of realism in pursuit of the vague idea of “immersion.”（Source： gamasutra）