作者：Steve Peterson

本文中，元老游戏设计师将谈论自己在设计过程中所扮演的角色。

Zynga迅速发展成重要的游戏公司，在短短几年内公司员工就扩大至上千人。这一发展多半都来自传统游戏之外的市场，传统游戏主要瞄准年轻男性群体，着眼于各种动作、较色扮演及策略游戏。有人曾批评Zynga基于参数数据设计内容，抄袭游戏设计构思，没有涉猎传统游戏领域的主要游戏类型。这些观点有违该公司实况：多年来，Zynga陆续引进经验丰富的游戏设计师，持续创造和完善工作室的游戏设计。

Bob Bates from en.wikipedia.org

其中一位有经验的设计师是Bob Bates，他1980年开始担任Infocom的互动小说设计师，随后同他人联合创建Legend Entertainment，创造出《Timequest》和《Eric the Unready》之类的作品。他编写、设计及制作了39款以上的游戏作品，共赢得60多个业内奖项，同时还参与PC（《Unreal 2》）及掌机平台（《蜘蛛侠3》）热门作品的制作。他曾两次担任IGDA主席，获得IGDA“终身成就奖”奖项，是IGDA 2010年的年度风云人物，Bob于2010年加入Zynga。担任公司外部工作室的创意总监。

Bates表示“这个头衔容易让人误解。Zynga之外的工作室是指隶属Zynga旗下，但不是位于旧金山总部的工作室。所以这更像是‘边远工作室’。”从本质来说，这意味着Bates扮演着流动设计师的角色，需要处理Zynga各不同工作室的设计问题。Bates表示，“这是份很棒的工作，因为我能够参与至游戏开发的各个阶段。当某人想出杰出构思，希望说服Zynga投入制作时，我是他们需要解释的对象之一。我们有专门负责处理新构思的团队。随后当项目获得认可，开始投入制作时，我是决定项目开发进程的人员之一。”

“最困难的部分在于我需要涉猎社交游戏的各个方面。”

在Bates看来，最有趣的部分在于设计末尾阶段，这里他能够着手“实际的工作”。Bates表示，“在制作《Empires & Allies》时，我需要经常到洛杉矶去。大家在游戏初始看到的文字，都是由我撰写的。在我看来，这是最棒的事情，因为这才是实际的工作内容。在制作《黑手党战争II》时，我只是负责编写其中的些许代码。所以这可以说是一项很棒的工作。”

zynga from gamesindustry.biz

在其职位中，Bates扮演剧本医生和设计医生双重角色。Bates表示，“我要协助他们清除制作过程中的障碍元素。这就是我的顾问角色；离开Legend后，我担任了7年的咨询顾问，二者感觉很像。”Bates负责查看开发过程中的游戏设计成果。Bates表示，“从概念到设计，再到前制作阶段和制作阶段，每个步骤都有标准程序，各个过程我都有参与其中。这让我接触到各种不同内容，这也是我钟情顾问角色的一个原因所在，现在亦是如此。我从未进行重复的工作；游戏始终处在各个不同阶段，属于各种不同类型，丝毫也不会令人觉得乏味。”

对Bates来说，转投截然不同的玩法风格绝非易事。他表示，“对我来说，最困难的部分在于需要涉猎社交游戏的方方面面。我们是颇为注重游戏参数的开发公司，想尽办法在游戏设计中充分利用这些参数数据是项有趣的挑战。”基于参数进行游戏设计是否会有损玩法设计？或者如Brian Reynolds所述，设计师只是将参数当做另一工具？

在Bates看来，参数是完善设计内容的有效工具，他列举如下例子。他表示，“在《Empires & Allies》初始有个呈现小岛被入侵的简短过场动画（游戏邦注：约是30-35秒）。对休闲游戏玩家来说，30-35秒的等待是个漫长过程。在休闲游戏世界，这就像是在问：‘你觉得怎么样？’我觉得这是个不错的主意。”

“所以在Zynga，我们会进行测试。他们向某些玩家显示此影片，在某些玩家中跳过这一过场动画，然后对这些玩家进行追踪。我们是否会立即丧失这些玩家？玩家的粘性是变高，还是降低？事实证明，他们其实变得更富粘性。所以当我们启动《Empires & Allies》，就会看到这个过场动画。这说明，我们可以在游戏初始投入些许时间，将内容变得更富粘性，通过系列点击和游戏时刻吸引玩家眼球，更重要的是，激发他们的情感共鸣。这就是个参数引导设计的典型范例。”

“关于发展潜质及游戏社交性定义的把握，我们依然处在探索阶段。”

被问及Zynga工作环境及其工作方式时，Bates的回复非常有趣。他表示“Zynga鲜为人知的优点是，我们的价值标准高挂在墙上，最顶部的是‘成为CEO’。这延伸至整个Zynga文化。就我来说，我在公司着手的各项工作都是因为我和上司说：‘我觉得自己可以在此发挥一定作用。’他回答说：‘好的’。‘我觉得自己可以在某款游戏中充分发挥作用……’他每次都会给出正面回复。在某些情况下，他会说：‘我正希望你开口呢。’”

Bates强调表示，他依然处在学习过程中，部分是因为整个社交游戏领域依然处在初级阶段。他表示，“这是个很棒的教育过程。其丰富程度让人有些招架不住。社交游戏业务是个截然不同的领域；它极富趣味性，依然处在初级阶段。”

Bates认为社交元素尚存在很大的发展空间。“社交游戏的不同之处在于社交元素。关于发展潜质及游戏社交性定义的把握，我们依然处在探索阶段。目前我们已实现病毒式传播，但真正的社交性（游戏邦注：让你觉得自己是真正在和好友玩游戏，而不是我在此体验，他在那体验）依然有待我们进一步挖掘。真正意义的共同体验是行业面临的真正挑战所在，我希望自己能够处在应对这一挑战的角色中。我觉得自己所掌握的知识尚存在不足；我还在学习这一领域。探索实现这些目标的方式将是个非常有趣的过程。”（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）

Bob Bates: Being at Zynga “Like drinking from a firehose”

By Steve Peterson

The veteran game designer offers insights on his role in the design process

Zynga has become a major game company very quickly, growing to thousands of employees in only a few years. Most of this growth has come from outside of the traditional market for games, which was predominantly young, male, and focused on various kinds of action, roleplaying, and strategy. Zynga’s been criticized for being metrics-driven, for copying game designs, and for not creating the types of games that the classic game industry was built upon. Those opinions don’t fit well with the reality that for several years Zynga has been bringing in experienced game designers to create and refine Zynga game designs.

One of those experienced designers is Bob Bates, who started as a designer of interactive fiction for Infocom back in the 1980s, and later co-founded Legend Entertainment to make games such as Timequest and Eric the Unready. He’s written, designed, produced or overseen more than 39 games that have won more than 60 industry awards, and worked on #1 titles for the PC (Unreal 2) and for consoles (Spider-Man 3). He’s been past chair of the IGDA twice, has won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IGDA, and was IGDA Person of the Year in 2010. Bob was hired by Zynga in 2010 as Chief Creative Officer for external studios.

“It’s a somewhat misleading title,” Bates admits. “External studios, to Zynga, means studios that Zynga owns that are not in San Francisco. So it’s more like ‘remote studios.’” Essentially, it means Bates functions as a roving game designer, working with various Zynga studios in different places on their design issues. “It’s really cool because I’m there at all stages,” says Bates. “When somebody has an idea for a game and wants to pitch it as something that Zynga should do, I’m one of the people they run it by. There’s a group of us that look at new ideas. Then as projects become greenlit and start to go through the process, I’m one of the people who says if you’re ready to move from this step to that step.”

“The most difficult part is just simply trying to wrap my head around everything that goes into a social game.”

The most interesting part for Bates is being in the design process at the end, when he can do “real work” as he puts it. “On Empires & Allies, I went to Los Angeles quite a bit for that game,” says Bates. “All the words that you read in the early part of that game – at least when it launched; they change all the time – when it launched, all the words that you read in that game were words that I wrote. Which is to me, the coolest thing ever, because that’s actual work. And on Mafia Wars II, I actually got to write just a little bit of code. So it’s the best job ever.”

In his role, Bates functions as a script doctor and as a design doctor. “I try to help them clear out the obstacles that are in their way,” Bates notes. “Which is what I did as a consultant; after I left Legend I was a consultant for 7 years, and this feels a lot like that.” Bates is involved with looking at game designs through the development process. “When they go from concept to design to pre-production to production, at each step there’s a formal process, and I’m part of that process,” Bates says. “It gives me a tremendous variety of stuff, and that’s one of the things I loved about consulting and it’s still true here. I’m never doing the same thing; games are all in different stages, they’re all in different genres, and it’s not dull.”

It hasn’t been easy for Bates to make the shift into a completely different style of game play. “The most difficult part is just simply trying to wrap my head around everything that goes into a social game,” he notes. “We’re a pretty metrics-driven company, and finding ways to use those metrics to your advantage in a game design is an interesting general challenge.” Could metrics be driving design to the detriment of game play? Or are designers simply using metrics as another tool, as Brian Reynolds observed?

Bates believes that metrics are a useful tool to improve designs, and he offers the following example. “At the beginning of Empires & Allies, there was a short – about 30, 35 second – little cut scene that showed the island being invaded. In the world of casual games, to have the player not be able to play the game for 30-35 seconds, that’s a long time. In the world of casual games, that’s like ‘What are you thinking?’ I thought it was probably a good idea to do this,” he says.

“So being Zynga, we tested it. They showed that movie to a bunch of players, and didn’t show it to a bunch of other players, and then tracked those players over time. Did we lose them right away? Were the people who stayed more engaged or less engaged? It turned out they were in fact more engaged. So now when you start Empires & Allies, everybody sees that movie. That says to me you can spend some time at the beginning of a game engaging, take a few of your precious clicks and moments to work on engaging the players and engaging their emotions in particular. That’s an example of where metrics inform the design.”

“We’re still in the infancy of understanding what’s possible and what it really means for a game to be social.”

Asked about the work environment at Zynga and how he operates in it, Bates has an interesting response. “The great thing about Zynga that people don’t get,” he notes, “is our values are up on the wall, and the top one, which I take really, really seriously, is ‘Be the CEO.’ That pervades the entire Zynga culture. For me in particular, all the things that I have done at Zynga have been because I said to my boss ‘I think I can help out there,’ and he said ‘Okay.’ ‘I think that game could use a lot more of me… what’s the best use of Bob?’ In every case, he said ‘okay’, and in some cases he said ‘I was hoping you would ask.’”

Bates emphasizes that he’s still learning, partly because the whole field of social gaming is so new. “It’s an amazing education,” he says. “It has been like drinking from a firehose. This social gaming business is so radically different than anything we’ve ever known; it’s been really interesting. And it really is just the beginning.”

Bates feels that the social element has a tremendous amount of evolution ahead of it. “The thing that makes this different from everything we’ve done before really is the social element. We’re still in the infancy of understanding what’s possible and what it really means for a game to be social. Right now we’re viral, but true social, where you feel like you’re actually playing with your friends, not ‘I’m playing here, he’s playing there’ is still ahead. The sense of actually playing together, that’s a real challenge, and I’d like to be in a position where I can attack that challenge. I don’t feel like I know enough yet to pull that off; I’m still learning the space. Finding ways to do those kinds of things would be very, very cool.”（Source：gamesindustry）