引言

本系列文章主要是围绕着如何通过理解游戏体验的心理元素而为玩家创造出更强大且更有意义的游戏体验展开。但是如果我们不能将这种理解整合到自己当前的设计方法学中，一切都将只是徒劳。所以我将在本系列文章的最后一部分阐述如何使用这些新的理念去扩展我们的游戏设计理念，并解决一些复杂的问题，如暴力或者在互动媒体中使用故事而引起的问题等。虽然基于荣格的看法，这些理念只代表一定的可能性，但是对于我来说它们却极其重要并且拥有广阔的拓展空间。这种方法所蕴含的一大重要理念是关于游戏类型，并且是暗指那些与主要游戏设计元素不同的内容，实际上类型是我们需要考虑的次要元素，但是其中却涵盖着更广泛的理念框架。（请点击此处阅读本系列第1、2、3部分）

幻想和类型

自古以来，开发者便将游戏分割为各种不同的类型，如平台游戏，RPG以及第一人称射击游戏等等。尽管这些术语能够帮助我们更好地区分游戏，但是频繁地使用却使人们错误地将它们当成游戏设计中的主要元素。这便造成了一种约束，即很多设计师发现很难越过这些局限的分类而寻求到其它更加有趣的内容。缺少广泛的描写术语将强迫设计师只能深入研究RPG或第一人称射击游戏，而如果有人愿意延伸这些分类并创造出不同类型的新游戏，这便会是一种飞跃式创造。

fantasy(from picturesdepot.com)

而关于想象空间的理念则能够帮助我们克服这一问题，即通过将游戏类型置于一个更广泛的理念框架中去挣脱所有约束。基于这种新构想，主要框架便是最基本的幻想，是开发者希望通过代码形式表现出来的内心世界或想象空间。开发者可以通过探索幻想世界并寻找特别的技巧设备和结构去传达这些内容。这些设备可以包括显示技术，如三维地图或第一人称视角；不同类型的控制技术，如即时战略游戏中常会使用的指点机制，以及包含于多种游戏对象中的其它复杂结构和关系。如此看来，构成游戏的不同元素和设备便是用于传达想象空间的特殊语言。

因为有些设备能够有效地传达特殊的幻想，所以开发者便会反复地去使用它们（而未多加思考），并最终将其融合于自己所想要传达的理念中，创造出不同类型的理念。我认为这是一个值得思考的问题，如此我们才能去分析大量的游戏并研究如何将这些常见的设备整合在一起而创造出一个特殊的幻想世界或游戏体验。而这种分析将能够衍生出更多不同的建造模块和关系，并帮助我们创造出各种特殊的游戏主题。

很多开发者因为过多地关注于这些次要设备并忽视了他们想要传达的幻想而出错。当然了，区分这两大因素本身就非常困难，因为游戏设计师的幻想世界中总是会包含这些结构元素。主要诀窍便是留意与这些元素相关联的感觉，并掌握幻想世界中的主要图像，感觉和主题，最终找到或创造出最佳构造技巧去传达这些内容。

故事问题

故事问题，也就是关于在互动游戏中整合线性故事情节是游戏设计领域中一大棘手的问题。尽管在这个领域也不乏各种技巧，但是却没有一种技巧能够有效地解决这一难题；这一问题还是关于如何创造一个真正具有动态性的故事，创造一个游戏主题和图像一致但是不同玩家的行动却导致不同（且难以预见的）结果的虚拟世界。

为了解决这一问题，我们需要采取一种不同的游戏设计方法，即设计师设定游戏主题，并创造出游戏世界，然后玩家便可以在此探索并体验他们所期望的主题。看似这是一个难以实现的目标，就像是一个清醒梦或Holodeck（游戏邦注：科幻电影里的全景操作平台）一样的存在，但是我却认为我们至少可以先奠定理论基础，并在不久的将来逐步实现它。

为了创造这种开放性故事世界，我们就需要想办法去定义我们的游戏对象和系统，推动它们创造出有意义的故事变化和激动人心的紧张感。我们需要在游戏的基础层面上将故事理论嵌进代码本身。就像我们可以将一个对象嵌入我们的游戏的物理环境中并观察它对于各种不同力量的反应一样，同时我们还需要确保这些游戏对象服从于故事力量。

在上个世纪80年代，著名的计算机科学家Brenda Laurel提出一个理念，即创造一个深受亚里士多德（在《论诗》中所阐述到的）的戏剧“规则”所影响的互动世界。在这个假设性的虚拟世界中，每一个行动和事件都将受到这些基本规则的影响，并且它们也将塑造出一款完整的游戏（Rheingold，1991）。那时候，专家系统总是被当成是创造这类型游戏的最佳方法，但是创造出专家系统以及亚里士多德的规则法却不是件易事。

然而，比起系统化亚里士多德的理念，我更倾向于基于荣格的心理学创造系统。作为一种动态系统，基于荣格理念的系统能够有效地适应于游戏的运行方式，并且也出现了可供我们使用的（基于荣格理念的）数学模型（Sulis，1998）。这是一种非常有帮助的模型，因为它能够帮助我们处理“多形态集合体”。不管你相不相信，我们已经在精神病治疗法以及模化传递系统中使用了这一模型。关于模仿和宣泄的戏剧规则是荣格模型中的一个子集，并且是以自我，复体以及潜意识之间的关系体现出来。实际上，这种系统也只是一种简单的梦想模拟器。

在这一系统中，自我等同于玩家的观点，潜意识等同于游戏世界，而复体则结合了玩家角色及其目标。所以游戏世界将变成一个动态且分层的原型系统，而其中所带有的副体将明确这些原型是如何出现并如何作用于玩家身上。我们将能够通过游戏世界中的每个对象与不同原型间的关系去定义它们，并且根据它们各自的复体判断其使用性和外观。玩家在游戏中的前进便是一种“个性化过程”，经历并整合“复体”将能够创造出玩家的身份，而最终确保游戏世界，故事情节和玩家角色的改变能够保持前后一致。

这是一些非常复杂的理念，我将更加深入地去研究它们。但是不管怎样，我认为只要将荣格的心理学作为互动世界的基础便能够帮助我们最终创造出真正优秀的游戏设计。

暴力

暴力是电子游戏中不可避免且具有煽动性的一大对象。在游戏产业兴起的早期，很多人都对游戏中的暴力属性表示担忧和质疑，但是这种担忧却未影响这一对象在该领域的发展。可以说，在游戏产业中很难创造出非暴力的游戏，或者说非暴力游戏很难博得年轻男性玩家的喜欢。无可厚非的是，那些对于暴力的反对论调都是源自于反对者自身的无知以及对于游戏体验的误解；但开发者这一方却未能提出具有说服力的观点。关于这一问题的科学研究还未获得任何决定性结果。

如果游戏产业想要击败那些反对暴力人士，它就需要先正视这个问题。它必须明确游戏能够引起的反应范围，并规划出一种有序的方法去描述带有心理责任感的暴力内容。

虽然这个问题非常复杂，但是荣格的游戏设计理论能够帮助我们有效地解决它。首先，我们知道游戏（以及音乐）与其说是行为的原因（除了对于非常年幼的对象而言），倒不如说是一种催化剂，或者说是对于现有感觉的有意识或潜意识反映。我们能够到游戏世界中去证实这种特殊的幻想，但是游戏却不可能是一种根本原因。其次，荣格理论告诉我们创造非暴力游戏是行不通的。玩家根本不会愿意玩那些不能反映其心理情境的游戏。那些倾向于暴力幻想的玩家总是会被这暴力主题的游戏所吸引。

所以设计师该如何基于心理责任感创造暴力游戏？他们需要创造出一款整合阴影的游戏，并带领玩家经历从对立和愤怒转向整合并理解的过程。我们可以通过故事情节或游戏机制去表现这些内容。我设计的一款RPG游戏便通过创造两个对立面的主角（游戏邦注：即一个善良一个邪恶）去传达这种过程。在某些时刻，游戏场景将会发生转变，而这时候玩家将会受到邪恶的角色的控制。玩家将带着邪恶角色的视角继续进行游戏，并且他必须做出一些会伤害善良角色和整个世界的决定。最终游戏将慢慢融合这两个角色，并转变他们，而玩家也将同时带着这两个特质继续上路。在一款基于故事的游戏中描述阴影的整合并不困难，并且这种方法也能够适度地应用于其它类型游戏身上。

结论

我在本篇文章中主要讨论了幻想，这个被很多人认为是逃避主义的对象。我真心希望能够向人们证实幻想其实是一种实际且重要的逃避主义。富有创造性的幻想景象能够帮助我们逃离或克服自身的缺陷；充满魔力的幻想能够引导我们走出世俗且乏味的生活。只有我们真正理解了幻想，我们才知道它不仅能够帮助我们指明方向，明确危险，同时也能够进一步丰富我们的生活。

这便是本系列文章的最后一部分内容，尽管如此我们却还未完成对于无限的游戏世界以及想象空间的探索。荣格心理学并不是帮助我们研究这些问题的唯一方法。在某些方面看来，游戏设计其实是一种具有创造性的形而上学行为。所以当我们在创造游戏时必须明确定义这是怎么样的游戏世界以及玩家将被置于这个世界的哪里等。我真心认为，不管是世界，社会还是个人心态中的哪一种理论都能够用于探索我们的游戏。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2004年10月25日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（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）

Games and the Imagination Part IV

Introduction

The main theme of this series of articles has been how, by understanding the psychology of the gaming experience, we can create more powerful and meaningful experiences for players. But none of this understanding is of any use if we do not integrate it with our current design methodology. This, the final part of Games and the Imagination looks at some of the ways that we can use these new ideas to extend our games design concepts and to address difficult issues such as violence and the problems of using narrative in an interactive medium. These ideas represent only a few of the possibilities given by the Jungian approach, but in my view they are some of the most important and wide ranging. One of the most revolutionary ideas implied by this approach concerns genre, and implies that far from being the primary elements of games design, genres are in fact secondary and are encompassed by a much wider framework of ideas.

Fantasy and Genre

From time immemorial developers have divided games into distinct genres, such as the platform game, the RPG and the first-person-shooter. Although these terms are useful as a shorthand way of talking about games, their repeated use has lead them to be regarded as the primary elements of game design. This has created a very restrictive situation where many designers find it hard to see anything outside this limiting typology. The lack of wider descriptive terms forces a designer to see everything in terms of RPG or first-person-shooter, and to regard any widening of this language or the creation of a new genre as the result of some intuitive leap of genius.

But the concept of the imagination space gives us a way of overcoming this situation, a way of transcending the limits of genre by placing it within a much wider framework of ideas. In this new formulation, the primary framework is the underlying fantasy, the inner world or imagination space that the developer wishes to express in code. The developer does this by exploring the fantasy and finding particular technical devices and structures that can express it. Such devices include display techniques such as the isometric map or first person view, different types of control technique such as the point and click mechanism commonly used in the RTS and other complex structures and relationships involving multiple game objects. From this perspective, the different elements and devices that make up a game are a kind of language that is used to express an imagination space.

Certain devices work well at expressing particular fantasies, so they get used again and again often unreflectively, eventually becoming fused with the ideas they attempt to express, creating the idea of distinct genres. It would be a worthwhile undertaking, I think, to analyse a large number of games and explore how these common devices work together to evoke a particular fantasy or experience. Such an analysis would yield a large number of different building blocks and relationships that could be used independently of any particular theme.

Many developers make the mistake of focusing on these secondary devices rather than on the fantasy that they want to express. Separating the two is often very difficult, as a game designer’s fantasy may contain elements of these structures. The trick is to notice the feelings associated with them, to take the primary images, feelings and themes of a fantasy and find or create the best constructional techniques to express them.

The Problem of Narrative*

The problem of narrative, of integrating a linear storyline within an interactive game is widely acknowledged as one of the most intractable problems in the field of games design. Although many techniques exist and will attract developers and gamers for a long time to come, none of them solve the Hard Problem; the problem of creating a truly dynamic narrative, of creating virtual worlds where although the themes and imagery in the world remain consistent, the actions of different players lead to utterly different and utterly credible outcomes.

To solve this problem, we need a way of designing a game where the designer sets the theme, the world-space where the game takes place, and the player can then explore and experience whatever permutations of that theme he or she desires. This seems an impossible goal, and more akin to the lucid dream or Holodeck, but I believe that we can at least lay the theoretical ground work that could make this advance possible in the future.

To create this open-ended story world we need to find a way of defining our game objects and systems so that they produce meaningful narrative changes and promote dramatic tension. We need to embed a theory of narrative into the code itself at a very low level. Just as we can drop an object into one of our game physics environments and see it react to different forces, we need to be able to create game objects that are subject to narrative forces.

In the nineteen-eighties, the well known computer scientist Brenda Laurel put forward the idea of creating an interactive world that was shaped by the “rules” of drama as described by Aristotle in his Poetics. Every action and event in this hypothetical virtual world would be affected by these underlying rules, with the whole game being shaped by them as it progressed (Rheingold, 1991). At the time, expert systems were perceived as the best way of creating such a game, but creating the expert system and quantifying Aristotle’s rules in a suitable way would prove very difficult.

Rather than attempt to systematise the ideas of Aristotle, I propose a system based on Jung’s model of the psyche. As a dynamic system it already fits in naturally with the way games work, and mathematical models based on Jung’s ideas already exist and could be utilised (Sulis, 1998). These models are useful because of the way they can handle “polymorphic sets”. They have been used in psychiatry, and believe it or not, in modelling convective systems. The rules of drama, of mimesis and catharsis exist as a subset of Jung’s model, in the form of the relations between the ego, the complexes, and the unconscious. Such a system would be, in effect, a simple dream simulator.

In this system, the ego would be equivalent to the player perspective (See Dare, 2001 for an explanation of this term), the unconscious would be equivalent to the game world, and the complexes would determine both the player’s character and goals. The game world would be built as a dynamic, hierarchical system of archetypes, with the complexes determining how those archetypes appear and act towards the player. Every object or being in the game world would be defined by its relationship to the various archetypes, and its use and appearance to the player would be determined by his complexes. The player’s path through the game would be a kind of “individuation process”, working through and integrating the “complexes” that make up the player’s identity, with the game world, the storyline and the player character changing coherently as a result.

These ideas are highly complex and I am still in the process of researching them, but I think that using Jung’s model of the psyche as the basis of an interactive world could one day prove to be an important development in games design.

On Violence

Violence is an unavoidable and inflammatory subject in video games. Since the earliest days of the industry there have been concerns about the violent nature of many games, concerns which unfortunately have never been satisfactorily allayed by the industry’s major figures. There is a feeling in the industry that it is hard to design non violent games, harder still to sell them to a predominantly young male audience. Admittedly, many of the arguments against violence in games stem from ignorance and from a misunderstanding of the gaming experience; but on the other hand, most of the arguments from the developers side have an evasive quality that does little to convince. The scientific research done on the subject has been inconclusive.

If the industry is to defeat the arguments levelled against it, it must face up to this issue. It must come to understand the range of reactions that a game can evoke and formulate a coherent way of depicting violence with psychological responsibility.

These are difficult issues, but the Jungian approach to games design can help us a great deal. Firstly, it tells us that games (and music for that matter) are not so much causes of behaviour (except perhaps in the very young) as they are catalysts, or mirrors for feelings that already exist, either consciously or unconsciously. A person may come to a game to validate a particular fantasy, but the game is unlikely to be a root cause. Secondly, it tells us that simply forcing people to make non-violent games will not work. A gamer will have no interest in a game if it does not in some way reflect his or her psychological situation. A gamer with a propensity towards violent fantasy will be attracted to games that mirror those concerns.

So how can designers create violent games with psychological responsibility? The answer is by creating games that depict the integration of the shadow, by taking the gamer on a journey from opposition and anger, to integration and understanding. This can be done through the storyline or through the game mechanics. One RPG design I created attempted this by having two main characters, one good and one evil. At certain points the scene would change and the player would be in control of the evil character. The story would then continue from his point of view, and the player would be forced into comprehending and undertaking decisions that would have a detrimental effect on the main, good character and the world at large. The game would gradually lead these two characters together, transforming them both, and the player would be taken along with them. Although it is easier to depict the integration of the shadow with story based games, it can be done in almost any game with a little thought.

Conclusion

Throughout this series I have discussed fantasy, a subject derided by many as irrelevant escapism. I hope I have proved in some small way that fantasy is in fact, relevant escapism. It is through the images of imaginative fantasy that we escape and overcome our limitations. By their enchantment our fantasies lead us away from the mundane, unquestioned life. They point out directions, signal dangers, and have the power to enrich our lives if we but learn to watch and understand them.

We have reached the end of this series of articles, but we certainly haven’t finished exploring the limitless world of games and the imagination. The Jungian approach described here is not the only way we can explore this issue. In some respects, game design is an act of creative metaphysics; in making our games we are defining what a world is, and what place the player has in it. It seems to me that every theory of the world, of society and of mind could be used to explore our games. Each question answered, each puzzle solved leads to yet more questions, more mysteries and more ideas. Every section of this series could be expanded to create a series of its own, and in the future I hope to release more articles exploring these ideas in greater detail. But until then, I only hope that these articles have been as interesting and enjoyable to read as they were for me to write.(source:gamedev.net)