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以Bartle模型解析《CastleVille》机制及其改进空间

发布时间:2012-04-16 12:04:33 Tags:,,,,,

作者:Steve Mallory

随着社交游戏作为一种强大且具有变革性的力量而不断发展时,越来越多主流以及硬核游戏开发者开始重视免费游戏所存在的巨大潜力。

同时,社交游戏开发者也开始意识到他们盈利方式存在着一些独特的问题,即他们不仅需要努力维持游戏质量,为玩家创造具有吸引力的游戏体验并保高度的玩家粘性,同时还需要时刻关注着玩家与市场疲态的发展。

对于社交游戏开发者来说一大解决方法便是在构思并开发社交游戏时使用“Bartle模型”。这一模型主要根据玩家在虚拟世界所追求的游戏体验而将其分为4种不同的类型,如果社交游戏能够巧妙利用这种模型便能够创造出更具有吸引力的游戏体验,确保游戏能够拥有更高的参与度并最终为开发创造更多收益。

让我们以Zynga的《CastleVille》进行分析——这款游戏利用Bartle模型中的分类,并将其融入虚拟世界的设计中,使社交游戏能够超越各种创造性限制,并在不牺牲盈利以及游戏吸引力的前提下创造出更紧凑的游戏玩法,最终推动每天上百万玩家前来体验游戏。

玩家类型(游戏邦注:也就是Bartle模型)主要是通过4个术语去定义多人虚拟世界中的玩家行为:

bartle player types(from flickr)

bartle player types(from flickr)

1.成就者:这类型玩家注重通过完成任务(不论是基于技术,战斗还是抢夺战利品)而获取经验值并提高自己角色的能力。并且根据不同游戏,这一玩家类型能够再次被细分为PvE(玩家对抗环境)以及PvP(玩家对抗玩家)。

2.社交家:这类型玩家是出于社交目的而玩游戏。包括在虚拟世界中的公会或者类似组织中与一些志同道合的玩家进行互动,并且他们与好友的这种互动不只存在于现实中,也能够体现在虚拟世界中。

3.探索者:这是指那些想要努力挖掘出虚拟世界各种内容的玩家。这些玩家总是希望能够“大胆地往前走”,不断寻找新的地点,资源,场景等。

4.杀手:这类型玩家总是希望遇到并毁灭对手。不论是在PvP还是PvE环境中,杀手都希望能够消灭敌人,找到最有效的方法去击败其他玩家。

需要注意的是,很少有玩家只具有其中一种特征,大多数玩家都是这四种行为特征的混合体。但是却总会突出一个主要特征,并且其它特征也将围绕着这一主要特征发挥自己的作用。就像主要具有杀手特征的玩家也拥有强烈的成就者和探索者特征,所以他们将利用自己所拥有的装备,资源以及经验去努力争取杀掉敌人或其他对手所需要的新装备或者能力。

Zyng最近推出的《CastleVille》包含了许多Zynga旗下游戏的共同特征,另外其开发团队在之前开发过许多硬核主流游戏,所以它在游戏机制中也体现了这4种模型的特点。

从Zynga之前的游戏来看,我们可以发现它们都非常重视成就者这一特征——即推动玩家通过制作/建造/扩展去获得经验值。基本的升级系统设置了一个获取内容的上限,并提供了让玩家加速进程以突破这些限制的付费选项。不过我们很容易理解这种做法,因毕竟游戏和玩家都面临紧凑的时间限制。

不过这并不是说成就者就只停留在这种程度了。限制创造物品可得的原料,给玩家提供一些实在利益的游戏成就系统,就是可激发成就者深入游戏的两种方式。

《CastleVille》通过增加玩家在游戏中的代理关系以降低游戏对探索者的准入门槛,而在《CityVille》等一些较为苛刻的游戏中,玩家如果不依赖于盈利方式或者其他玩家的帮忙便很难完成同样的任务。

但是如何做才能更好地满足这些探索者呢?游戏目前仅提供有限的空间,而玩家要访问这些空间,需要一定的经验值,以及参与直接的社交和盈利过程才能探索到新的可玩场景。为他们提供独特而有趣的探索、观察及开发场景,可以丰富探索者的游戏体验。

有一个方法就是移除经验值上限(或者其他上限,例如《CastleVille》中的城堡规模)以及游戏世界中基于叙事或进程的NPC。从而让玩家自主选择是否投入时间或金钱,并根据自己的节奏在游戏世界中前行。

castleville-npc(from rackcdn)

castleville-npc(from rackcdn)

以《CastleVille》为例子,玩家若要探索和解琐一些新的游戏区域,他们就必须:

1.让自己的“城堡”达到一定规模,这取决于与特定“城堡”对象相关的数值,而这部分则与玩家的经验值有关。

2.拥有一定数量的货币

3.拥有一定数量已在制造厂中改良的探索水晶,所以玩家必须投入时间和金钱去升级制造厂。

玩家可以通过打败敌人而获得随机掉落的探索水晶,或者通过在Facebook上发布请求信息而从好友手中收到水晶作为礼物。

所以对于每个探索任务,我们需要解决三大问题。其中一个是盈利问题,即玩家可以购买更多水晶或其他加速物品去建造制造厂。再者便是关于建造玩法。玩家可以在游戏世界中利用有限的内容建造自己想要的东西。

为了解决这些问题,我们需要将探索理念与更富约束性的城堡建筑系统结合起来考虑。玩家只能够在距离现有城堡的一定范围内建造某些道具(或收割农作物),虽然他们还可以自由行动,但是却只能在特定范围内去改造这个游戏世界。

《CastleVille》通过添加玩家与Gloom及其仆从的冲突而构建了杀手模型的基本游戏玩法。当玩家收获了一些道具或者与城堡发生某些交互式行为时,游戏中便会随机出现一些Gloom仆从。这些仆从将对玩家的角色产生间接威胁;它们将阻碍玩家获得城堡道具,并损耗他们的能量,但是却不会危及玩家的生命安全。

尽管这种设置不如常规的MMO杀手模型那般富有深度,但是游戏中也存在一些潜在的冲突,并且玩家如果想要打败Gloom Mob便必须努力制造并获取更多工具,而如果玩家不能有效驱逐这些Mob,其城堡的产值便会受到影响。还有一些更好的方法能够促使这些冲突内容吸引更多玩家。最直接的方法便是在每个特定地点引入有所侧重的随机生成敌人概率,或者将游戏分解为一个网格模式,让玩家在每一次挑战时都能够进入一个新的区域。

如何设置这种基于mob外观及类型的敌人生成概率,要取决于以下个因素:

1.距离城堡的远近(就像探索者模型)

2.方块中的完善城堡数量

3.方块中的完善城堡类型

这些mob也将根据以下要素进行限制:

1.生成的mob总数

2.玩家等级

3.生成的mob类型

当游戏添加了更多冲突时,开发者可根据mob出现的频率而适当调整经验奖励曲线,此时会为杀手添加具有吸引力的激励内容,并为探索者创造出某种紧张感。

而关于社交者,从表面看来它是社交游戏的基石,但是《CastleVille》中却并不具有真正意义上的社交性。尽管玩家能够与好友的成功进行互动,提供援助,促进生产等,但是这些行为却都是异步发生的,可以说游戏中的最大社交性只体现在Facebook涂鸦墙所发送的各种垃圾信息以及玩家之间所进行的赠与与接受关系。所以现在的问题是:为何不能在社交游戏中进行同步的社交互动?

这是社交游戏中存在的一个非常现实的问题,并且从平均游戏时间来看,就更好理解了。大多数社交游戏玩家都不会投入太长时间(最多2至10分钟)玩游戏——特别是目标用户,即女性玩家和儿童玩家更不会将大把时间投入游戏中。

但是事实上,看起来这种论据其实没有多大的说服力,提到异步游戏玩法强化赠予者与接受者的关系时更是如此。对于较大的玩家基础,简单的配对系统将能够确保你快速找到其他玩家。《CastleVille》拥有来自全球2700万的玩家,而如果有五分之一的这些玩家同时游戏的话,游戏中将存在540万同步玩家。

如果加上一些MMO玩家非常熟悉的系统和游戏玩法,如物品交易,公会(或者例如《CastleVille》中的“Royal Alliances”),团体任务等,如此便能够有效地打破单纯的异步“社交”玩法的局限性,创造出一种即时,同步的社交游戏并推动玩家能够与好友一起游戏或加入社区与其他玩家进行互动,并允许玩家扩展好友基础而不再局限于有限的好友列表。

采纳Bartle玩家类型理念并将其应用到游戏中,社交游戏开发者便能够有效地摆脱平台自身的局限性。这是一种贯穿始终的系统性改变——也就是开发者在设计阶段就必须考虑到这一问题,并将其真正融入游戏系统和内容设计中;并且比起彻底改变游戏机制,不断完善它们并迎合那些希望看到不同游戏特性的玩家的需要,才能真正确保现有社交游戏玩家市场的有序发展。

通过利用这些模型,社交游戏将不仅仅是更贴近硬核玩家,同时也将进一步吸引更广泛的群体,让他们更持久地玩游戏并提高其在游戏中的消费意愿。

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

Social Gaming and the Bartle Archetypes

by Steve Mallory

With the advent and explosive growth of Social Gaming as a powerful and transitive force on gaming, more and more mainstream and core game developers see the potential for free-to-play gaming.

Simultaneously, Social Game Developers are starting to understand and realize that their adherence to explicit monetary concerns present their own unique problems with maintaining quality, creating compelling experiences for the consumer, keeping a high level of player participation momentum while worrying about both player and market fatigue.

One such answer for social developers is to embrace the concept of the Bartle Archetypes when conceiving and developing Social Games.  These archetypes, loosely describing four types of players in virtual worlds based on the experiences they seek to attain, while inadvertently embraced by Social Games, can help create more compelling and focused experiences while, simultaneously, ensuring a high level of participation and monetization.

Using CastleVille by Zynga as a starting point, a game that touches lightly on each of the Bartle archeytpes, we can see that by truly embracing this well known cornerstone of virtual world design, social gaming can transcend the creative limitations we’ve seen and create more rounded and coherent gameplay experiences without sacrificing the monetization and simple appeal that has led millions to play these games on a daily basis.

The Player Types (aka Bartle Archetypes, named for the man who accuratey quantified them, Dr. Richard Bartle, in turn based on his review of player behavior in MUDs) are four terms describing generalized behavior in a Multi-user virtual space.  For those that don’t know, these archetypes are – and keep in mind that these definitions are my approximation:

1.Achiever:  This is the player who completes quests to earn experience points and maximize his avatars capabilities, whether through crafting, combat, or loot.  This can further be diversified, as the game allows, into PvE and PvP subsets.

2.Socializer:  This is the player who participates in the game for the social aspects.  Whether in a guild or similar organization with other like-minded players whose only source of contact is the virtual world to friends who meet not only in real life, but also congregate virtually.

3.Explorer:  This is the player who wants to see everything that the virtual world has to offer.  These players want “to boldly go”, finding new locations, resources, vistas, easter eggs.

4.Killer:  This is the player who wants to encounter and destroy opponents.  Whether in a PvP or PvE environment, the Killer wants to take down enemies, discover the most efficient means to do so as well as potentially embrace the challenge of dealing with and killing other Players.

It is also worth noting that few players are purely one of these archetypes.  Rather, they tend to be a mix of the four.  Often, one is dominant, with the other aspects feeding into that dominant trait.  A Killer dominant player, for example, might have a strong mix of Achiever and Explorer to ensure they have the gear, resources, and experience to acquire new gear or abilities needed to kill the tougher mobs or other players.

Zynga, the dominant force in Social Gaming, has recently released CastleVille.  While containing many of the traits that are common to other Zynga developed games, it’s inception and development was clearly done by a game development team with far more experience in more Core-focused, mainstream, pre-Social gaming because of its at least token attempt to encounter and engage the four Archetypes.

Zynga games already and inherently have a strong push in the Achiever Archetype – players are driven to craft/build/expand and earn experience points.  The basic leveling system exerts a swhich provided a basic cap to gate the content and provide monetization options for acceleration to and through these gates.  However, much of this is simplified and understandibly so, given the compressed consumption times that the game and its players are placed under.

However, that doesn’t mean that the Achievers can’t be embraced to an even greater degree.  Things like limited availability recipes for crafting, an achievement system per title (particularly intriguing given Zynga’s creation of a unique delivery network) that provides tangible benefits to the player are just two ways that Achievers and their personal drives can be embraced, accentuated, and used to bring them even deeper into the game.

CastleVille went a step further by increasing player agency in the world by lowering the gate requirements for explorers, something that players of more stringent games like CityVille were prevented from doing easily without a reliance on either heavy monetization or fellow players.

But how can Explorers be better served?  Right now, there is a finite amount of space and access to that space is both part of the experience point gate as well as integrated into a straightforward social and monetization process tied to a specific widget used for revealing new playable spaces.  Explorers get the most benefit of their game experience by providing unique and interesting locations to find, view, and exploit.

One way to do this is to remove the Experience Point Cap (or psuedo-cap, ala Castle size in CastleVille) and remove Narrative or Progression-based NPCs from the game world.  This would allow players, should they take the time and/or spend the money, the ability to unlock and expand and view the game world at their own pace.

Using CastleVille as the example, to explore and unlock new gameplay areas, players must:

1.Have their Castle be a certain size, based on the sum of numeric values attached to specific ‘Castle’ objects whose availability is, in turn, partially derived by your experience level

2.Have a certain amount of coin

3.Have a certain amount of Exploration Crystals that have been modified in a crafting building, requiring the player to both sink time and money to raise the building and sink the time needed to actually expand.

Exploration crystals can be acquired by defeating enemies as a drop, posting a request on facebook in general or specifically to your friends, or receive them as gifts from friends.

So, there are three hurdles that must be overcome, per exploration request.  Why?  Part of it, assuredly, is the monetization aspect – you can purchase more crystals or other accelerators to build the crafting building.  Part of it is the build gameplay.  The player can build anything they want, within the constraints of content, in the game world as soon as its unlocked.

To get around this, the notion of exploration needs to be tied into a more restrictive or proscribed building system for the Castle.  Players can only build items (or harvest goods) within a set distance from their existing castle – they can run around all they want, but they can only modify the game world in a limited manner.

CastleVille added the basics to the Killer Archetype by adding conflict in the form of the Gloom and its Minions.  When harvesting materials or other interactions in your castle, there is a random chance for the spawning of a Gloom minion.  These minions are an indirect threat to the player avatar.  They prevent interaction with your Castle items, and are an energy sink, but otherwise do not harm the player.

While not nearly as deep as the usual MMO Killer archetype, there is still the potential of conflict, the crafting and acquisition of gear for use against the Gloom Mobs, and the tension of reduced Castle output if the player does not banish the Mobs. There are better ways of engaging players with conflict.  The most straightforward is to induce a random weighted chance to spawn based on appearance in a specific location or, as the world is already broken up into a grid, every time the player enters a new square.

This weighted chance, to determine both appearance and type of mob, would be based on things like:

1.Distance from Castle (see Explorer Archetype)

2.Number of Castle Improvements in the square

3.Types of Castle Improvements in the square

These mobs would also need to be limited based on:

1.Total number of mob spawned

2.Player Level

3.Type of mob spawned

Adding more Conflict would adjust the experience reward curve depending on how high a chance the mobs ultimately appear, but it also adds a greater incentive to move through the game world for Killers and provides a level of tension for Explorers as well.

In terms of Socializers, which is obstensibly the cornerstone of social gaming, CastleVille has very little real socialization.  While players can interact with their friends castles, granting aid, boosting production, and the link, it is all asynchronously achieved and the largest social interaction is the ubiquotous facebook wall spam pronouncing major events and the like, as well as a small amount of incentivization for both the giver and reciever of aid.  Which begs the question:  Why can’t social games by synchronously social?

This is a very real issue with Social Games – and it is, understandably, up against some very real concerns, starting with the average play time.  Most social gamers participate in a Social Game in compressed chunks – 2-10 minutes tops – as the target audience, Women with Children, don’t necessarily have the time to dedicate to a more serious amount of time to play.

This seems like a hollow argument, particularly since the asynchronous gameplay is encouraged with benefits to both the aid giver and receiver.  With a large enough player base, a simple matchmaking system could ensure you’d find someone who is playing in their Castle.  If the numbers are right, and there is a worldwide facebook player base of 27 million CastleVille players, and if 1/5th of those people are playing simultaneously, that would be 5.4 million potential synchronous players.

With the addition of systems and gameplay aspects already well known to MMO players, such as item trading, guilds (or, in the case of the CastleVille vernacular, Royal Alliances perhaps?), or Joint/Group Quests, there is a greater potential for breaking the limitation of purely asynchronous ‘social’ play and open up real-time, synchronous, truly social play and ensure that those people who want to play with their friends and in a greater community have the ability to do so and expand their game friends based on play, not limited exclusively to their friend list.

By embracing the Bartle Archetypes in the concept and implementation of their games, Social Game developers have the chance to break out of the self-imposed limitations of their platform.  These changes are systemic from inception – they must be addressed and considered during the design phase given their expansive and powerful implications to system and content design – but offer the chance to not only keep the existing social gamer market by not instituting a revolutionary change to mechanics, but by evolving them and catering to players who look for very specific qualities in their play.

By fully embracing these archetypes, Social Gaming can become more than simply more relevant amongst Core gamers, but can cater to a much wider audience who will play the game longer, and thus, increase the window when these gamers can and will spend money on the title.(source:GAMASUTRA)


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