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论述猜测心理在游戏设计中的运用

发布时间:2012-05-14 18:01:45 Tags:,

作者:Jamie Madigan

假设有位富有的狂热者向你提供如下2个赌局选择,赌注是5美元:

选择1:随机从华尔街日报中选择一支股票。你猜它明天会上涨还是下跌。若猜中,你就得赢得5美元。

选择2:随机从华尔街日报中选择一支股票。你猜它昨天是上涨还是下跌。不能作弊偷看。若猜中,你就赢得5美元。

你偏好哪个选择?你知道二者都存在同样的胜出几率,是吧?若你属于Chip Heath & Amos Tversky 1991年发表于Journal of Risk And Uncertainty期刊的文章所述的67%受访者,那么你会选择第一个选项。原因和作者所述的“能力假说”有关。简而言之,他们表示,“我们倾向在觉得自己有见识或有能力的情况下进行打赌,而不是在自己显得无知的状态下。”

draw something from omgpop.com

draw something from omgpop.com

若你对具体情况一无所知,那么任何预测的结果(游戏邦注:无论正确,还是错误)都会被归于靠运气。若你是内行人士,你想要赢得的不仅是5美元,还有自尊和吹嘘权利。显然,若你输了,你的自尊会受伤害,但这只是出现在你输了的情况下。但无知也是个不利条件——盲目猜测,如果猜对也只是靠运气,而如果出错,只会突显你的无知。所以我们倾向就自己了解的东西进行打赌,尽量避开自己不了解的内容。

pick boxs  from gamasutra.com

pick boxs from gamasutra.com

我们当然倾向就自己了解的内容进行打赌。但这不是本文的主要话题,也不完全是上述股票赌局情境的所有情况。事实证明,当我们觉得某内容应该被认知,而我们即使对其并不了解的情况下,还要根据自己的专长进行打赌就会产生某些不理性行为。

也就是说,若某内容能够进行认知,例如股票昨天是否上涨,但此时我们对此并不了解,我们就会自动回避这一赌局。这是个习惯及偏好。不清楚能够被认知的情况会让我们觉得自己的能力低人一等,这是我们大脑用于判断糟糕风险的心理捷径。在另一试验中,一半受试者就骰子尚未摇出的结果进行猜测,而另一半受试者则就骰子已摇出的结果(但尚未公开)进行猜测。

基于骰子尚未摇出的结果进行打赌的受试者会比基于已摇出结果的受试者更满怀信心。他们更愿意在此下注。就如Heath & Tversky所述,“在预测中,只有未来结果能够判定你的输赢;而在事后猜测中,输赢能够立即分晓。”

这对电子游戏来说意味着什么?其一,我最近经常玩iOS游戏《Draw Something》。这个绘图游戏,游戏向玩家呈现几个难度递增的单词选择(游戏邦注:例如“盒子”,“机场”和“疯子”),然后你需要就此做出选择,用手指或尖笔在iPad或iPhone上将其绘出。另一位玩家会通过网络看到你的画作,而非具体单词,他们需要就此进行猜测。

madmen drawsomething from gamasutra.com

madmen drawsomething from gamasutra.com

但重点是,他们不止会看到最终完整绘画结果,他们还能够看到绘画过程记录。有时这会有些滑稽及令人尴尬,例如我绘制的是“pancakes”这类简单的单词,但这赋予游戏更多“现场感”,让你能够在画作尚未完成前就猜出单词。此外,由于我们倾向就未来事件,而非过去事件做出猜测,我觉得《Draw Something》的这一“在线回放”功能会让我们对猜测进展中的事件更满怀信心。虽然这其实已在过去发生。

此外,我觉得这一偏好能够引导开发者更合理地设计奖励或游戏销售道具。想象下玩家打开宝库,随机选择消灭地牢所带来的杰出或糟糕战利品。或是想象下,令人讨厌的NPC表示,“这两个箱子中,有一个放置了一个很棒的战利品。

一个酷毙了,一个糟透了。选择一个箱子。”多数玩家会偏好哪个,即便他们获得杰出战利品的几率是一样的?是第一种情形,因为这让玩家觉得他们是基于未知结果进行打赌,因此并不涉及上述倾向。

最后一个应用范例是,想想多人游戏《质量效应3》中的补给板条箱。这些是板条箱是必要道具,玩家可以用游戏货币或真实资金购买。

开启板条箱就像是玩老虎机,其中内容具有一定参数比例的随机性—–有时是弹药包,有时是没有用处的枪械升级,有时是解锁新角色类型,有时是获得异常强大的武器。

veteran pack from gamasutra.com

veteran pack from gamasutra.com

想想当你选择所要购买的板条箱时,确认按键显示这类内容:“通过随机的X、Y和Z加载此板条箱,然后进行购买”。这是否会让玩家产生这样的错觉:他们能够预先就板条箱的内容进行猜测,然后再确定是不是要进行多次购买?我觉得有这种效果。(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

Opinion: Draw something uncertain

by Jamie Madigan

Imagine that some wealthy lunatic comes to you with an offer to choose between the following gambles in order to win five bucks:

Option 1: A stock is selected at random from the Wall Street Journal. You guess whether it will go up or down tomorrow. If you’re right, you win $5.

Option 2: A stock is selected at random from the Wall Street Journal. You guess whether it went up or down yesterday. No peeking! If you’re right, you win $5.

Would you have a preference? You know they both offer equal chances of winning, right?

Well, if you were like 67 percent of subjects described in a 1991 paper by Chip Heath and Amos Tversky published in the Journal of Risk And Uncertainty you would pick Option 1. The reason has to do with what the authors call “the competence hypothesis.” In short, they say “people prefer to bet in a context where they consider themselves knowledgeable or competent than a in a context where they feel ignorant or uninformed.”

If you know nothing about a situation, the outcome of any predictions you make — right or wrong — can be attributed to dumb luck. But if you’re supposedly an expert, you stand not to gain $5, but also self-esteem and bragging rights. Sure, if you’re wrong your ego suffers, but that’s only if you’re wrong. Ignorance, on the other hand, is always a liability — blind guesses are just lucky if they turn out to be right and only serve to highlight your ignorance if you’re wrong. So people prefer to make bets on something they think they know about and hesitate to make them on something they’re ignorant about.

Right, I know. You’re out there saying “Well, duh!” so loud I can hear you all the way up here in my ivory tower. Of course people prefer to make bets about things they know more about. But that’s not quite the point of this article and not quite what was happening in the stock betting scenario described above. It turns out that this bias towards betting in line with our expertise can result in some irrational behavior when we realize that something is knowable even though we don’t know it.

In other words, if something is knowable, like whether or not a stock went up yesterday, but not known to us at the moment, we automatically shy away from that bet. It’s habit and a bias. Just not knowing something that we feel we could know triggers feelings of lowered competence, which our brains use as a mental shortcut for identifying bad risks. In another experiment, half the subjects bet on the outcome of a simple die roll before it was cast, and half bet on the outcome after it was cast (but before they could see it).

Those who were making bets prior to the roll were more confident of their predictions than those who were betting on an unknown roll that had already taken place. They were also more willing to bet money on the outcome (Wait, were these psychologists running a craps game under the guise of scientific research? Man, I bet they totally were.) Same thing. As Heath and Tversky say, “In prediction, only the future can prove you wrong; in postdiction, you could be wrong right now.”

So, what does this mean for video games? For one, I’ve been playing the iOS game Draw Something a lot lately. It’s a drawing game where you’re given a choice of words in ascending difficulty (e.g., “box,” “airport,” “Mad Men”) and then you have to pick one to draw on the iPad or iPhone using your finger or a stylus. The other player, though the magic of the internet, sees your drawing but not the word it’s based on — that they have to guess from your work.

The thing is, though, that they don’t just see the completed drawing. They see a recording of you going through the process of drawing it. Sometimes this is hilarious and embarrassing such as I screw up something simple like “pancakes” but generally it gives the game a much more “live” feeling and lets you guess at something before it’s done. Also, thanks to our bias towards betting on future events as opposed to past ones, I suspect that the “live replay” feature in Draw Something makes us more confident in our ability to guess a work in progress. Even though it’s technically already happened in the past.

What’s more, I think this bias informs ways that developers can design rewards or the sale of items in games. Imagine a player opening a treasure chest to randomly get either an awesome or lousy piece of loot as a reward for clearing a dungeon. Alternatively, imagine a smarmy NPC saying “I put a piece of phat loot in each of these two chests.

One is awesome, one sucks. Pick a chest.” Which would most players prefer, even though their chances of getting the good stuff are equal? The first, because it offers the illusion of betting on an outcome that hasn’t happened yet, and thus doesn’t trigger the bias described above.

As a final (slightly evil) example of how to hack this bias into a game system, consider the supply crates in multiplayer Mass Effect 3, for example. These are crates of essential goodies that players can purchase for either in-game funds or real-word currency.

Opening a crate is like spinning a slot machine in that the contents are random within certain parameters — sometimes they’re just ammo packs and an upgrade for a gun you never use, and sometimes they unlock new character classes and outfit you with ridiculously powerful weapons.

Think about if, when you select a crate for purchase, the confirmation button read something like “Load this crate with a random X, Y, and Z and purchase.” Would giving players the illusion of betting on the contents of that crate before they are determined result in more purchases? I think it probably would.(Source:gamasutra


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