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创造优秀电子游戏的10大指南和原则

发布时间:2012-05-29 16:06:56 Tags:,,,

作者:John Ferrara

你是一名经验丰富的游戏设计师,已经创造了许多吸引人的用户体验。而这也将成为你创造出更多更棒用户体验的优势。你喜欢创造以参观历史公园为主题的iPhone游戏,面向Facebook设计与政治竞选相关的游戏,或者将独立的Flash游戏作为教育网站上的一种教授工具等。你甚至总是能够勾勒出游戏的大致理念。你也许正在公司内部为自己的项目筹集资金,或者你也有可能亲自为游戏做宣传而吸引发行商的注意。你将会把自己的游戏理念记录下来,围绕着这一想法进行开发,并快速推动游戏的最终发行。

这是一个很棒的领域领域,强大的目标和野心述说着一个又一个成功故事。而与此同时这里也潜伏着许多风险,你必须尽快克服它们才能幸存下来。游戏开发是一个既耗费时间又耗费资源的工作。如果你在开发中途发现自己最初的理念并不能创造出真正优秀的游戏体验,你将难以在此做出巨大的方向改变。

所以在开始之前,你需要先树立一个正确的方向,并以此明确任何可能会出现的问题,从而扩大你的成功机遇。尽管我们不能够以此简化创造一款有趣的游戏所面临的挑战,但是我在此所列出的10大指南将能够帮助你突破阻碍设计的重重障碍。

1.首先必须明确游戏就是游戏

显然这点听起来再普通不过了,但是开发者们却很容易忽视它;而忽视它也就意味着毁灭一个用心良苦的游戏设计。你可以基于教育或劝说目的进行游戏设计,但是如果你让这些现实目标超越了游戏玩法,你便会失去成功的机会。你首先需要明确的一点是,游戏必须具有乐趣。

在Schwab MoneyWise(美国嘉信理财集团旗下的一个理财建议和资源网站)的“这是你的生活”游戏拥有一个神圣的使命:说服人们为了退休之后的生活以及其它长远目标而存钱。与最早的桌面游戏《游戏人生》一样,“这是你的生活”也基于模拟人生而提供给“玩家”关于花钱或存钱等多种选择。而最终玩家也将获得字母分数以作为自己的成绩。

it's your life(from netmagazine)

it's your life(from netmagazine)

(在schwab的“这是你的生活”游戏的每个步骤中,玩家可以很明显地看出哪个选择能够引导自己取得成功。)

但是问题就出在比起创造真正的游戏体验,设计师更希望借此硬性灌输给玩家更多信息。如果玩家想要赢得游戏,那么他们就需要在每个步骤中尽力省钱。如果玩家想要获得A+,这一最高分数,他就需要:

*不上大学

*一直啃老

*不要结婚

*不生小孩

*绝不旅游或度假

*一直工作到65岁之后

*带着大笔的金钱孤独终老而没有任何继承者

我想设计师们肯定知道玩家想要玩一些对自己的现实生活有帮助的内容,但是他们却不断地让玩家只是通过存钱而获得胜利。将人们应该怎么做与获得奖励的行为区别开来只会破坏开发者想要传达的内在信息。尽管“这是你的生活”被包装成了一款游戏,但是它所提供的体验却与游戏全然不同。

2.游戏测试

我想所有人都知道测试是用户界面设计中必不可少的一环,但是我必须强调的是在游戏设计中测试具有更加强大的重要性。尽管每位用户体验设计师都知道不断地进行“测试,测试,测试”,但是我们仍然有必要在此申明尽早且频繁进行测试的必要性。

在游戏开发中测试之所以如此重要是因为大多数电子游戏都具有高度多元化的体验。游戏中的事件无时无刻不在变化着,而玩家所做出的每个决策也会引导出各种不同的结果。大多数游戏中都会设置一些随机元素,如此相同的玩家便不会经历两次相同的体验。而多人游戏中更是具有更多不可预测性。如此便导致设计师不能直接控制游戏玩法,而只能控制游戏所呈现出的潜在系统。未真正目睹游戏的运转,你便不可能有效地预测它的发展。来自Valve Software的实验心理学家Mike Ambinder从科学角度概括了这一点:“每个游戏设计都是一种假设,而游戏中的每个实例便是一种试验。”

所以你最好在设计游戏的过程中尽可能抓住任何测试机会。请求你的同事,亲人或好友帮助你测试游戏,并且你需要在旁边观察他们如何游戏。同时你也需要亲自体验游戏!并足够客观地做出评述。问测试者:是否喜欢玩这款游戏?在游戏结束后是否还想要再一次进行尝试?是否对游戏感到失望?游戏是否无聊?是否因为游戏太难而不知所措?

3.游戏不再只是面向儿童

比起成人,年轻人拥有更多休闲时间,并且大多数人在小时候都会花大把时间去玩游戏。所以我们总会自然地将游戏与儿童联系在一起。而电子游戏总被当成年轻人的游戏也不是没有道理:有91%年龄在17岁以下的青少年明确地表示自己是游戏玩家,并且他们会极大影响家庭购买游戏的决策。大多数游戏的营销都是面向于儿童玩家,并且很多游戏也突出了一些迎合儿童喜好的形象,如皮卡丘或马里奥。儿童与电子游戏之间存在切实联系,也难怪设计师会特别创造出针对于儿童的游戏。

而由于拥有许多选择,儿童玩家也因此成了极有辨别能力的用户。大型跨媒体市场营销活动只能够将你的高预算游戏推向一个已经十分拥紧的市场,这时候你便会发现如果只是吸引年轻玩家的注意便是一件非常具有挑战性的任务。儿童总是会为了提高自己在好友间的社交地位而选择较为出名的游戏。因为这些游戏对于时间都有一定程度的要求,所以你就必须提供给玩家其它具有吸引力的价值以吸引他们愿意投入更多时间去玩游戏。儿童玩家也是严肃地对待着每一款游戏,所以你千万不要认为这些小孩子只是因为游戏而玩游戏。

除此之外我们还必须清楚儿童只是人类中玩电子游戏的少数群体。就像我之前所提到的,18岁以上的用户在总体玩家中所占比例达82%,并且有29%的玩家年龄在50岁以上。成人更容易接受非主流游戏,并且他们也拥有更多可支配收入用于购买游戏内容。

但是这也不是意味着儿童并不属于游戏玩家的一份子。但是如果你明确地将儿童作为游戏的目标玩家,你便同时失去了大多数成人玩家。所以你最好能够考虑将游戏面向成人玩家,并且尽可能地拓宽游戏所适合的年龄层范围。

gamers in the US(from netmagazine)

18岁以下的玩家所占比例很少(from netmagazine)

4.避免无聊的行动

《使命召唤:现代战争3》是一款令人叹为观止的动作类游戏。玩家需要在十几个小时的游戏期间带着一定的资源并遭遇各种敌人,同时还将与人工智能(AI)所操纵的队友们进行互动,在公平的环境下与对手在不同地点进行抗战。所有的这些内容都是通过一个复杂且吸引人的故事情节体现出来。这款出色的游戏是庞大的开发团队(游戏邦注:包括多名设计师,美工,工程师等)历时多年且投入巨额成本才最终创造出来的。所以任何人都不可能轻易创造出第二款《使命召唤》。

我们总是很难让玩家维持长时间的的兴奋感。如果你决定创造一款小规模动作类游戏,你便会发现自己被限制在一些非常简单且短暂的场景中,就像是街机时代的游戏。赛车,扔球,射击宇宙飞船等等,这些类型的游戏体验只会让玩家快速感到厌倦。特别是比起今天人们所面对的那些复杂动作类游戏,这些内容显得更加乏味。

首先你需要考虑什么是游戏的内在乐趣。你将会发现游戏中的许多创造性机遇都是让玩家做出多种有趣的选择而不是做出一些无趣的反应。例如纸牌游戏《Hearts》便是关于各种选择。我应该将哪三张牌传给我的对手?我应该出高牌还是低牌?我是应该直接打出红心还是等比人先这么做?如果我再次出梅花,是否有人会继续出黑桃皇后?我是应该想办法逃开还是自我摧毁?基于每个玩家手上所获得的纸牌以及其他玩家所采取的行动,他们也将作出不同的选择。尽管《Hearts》需要较长的游戏时间,它却可以在不带任何刺激性关卡的基础上留住玩家的注意力。

除此之外你也可以让玩家在游戏中发挥自己的想象力。《黑帮战争》这款拥有数百万月活跃用户的Facebook游戏虽然提到了街头犯罪,但是却未真正在游戏中表现出来。如果想要进行银行抢劫,玩家只需要在菜单中的犯罪活动中选择“银行抢劫”便可。而游戏便会立刻回应你成功完成了任务。比起提供即时行动和3D图像,玩家可以自己决定执行哪些任务,如何投资自己的收益,以及培养哪些个人属性等。可以说游戏一点都未限制玩家的想象力。

playing cards(from netmagazine)

playing cards(from netmagazine)

(《Hearts》通过呈现给玩家多种有趣的选择而带给他们乐趣。)

mafia wars(from netmagazine)

mafia wars(from netmagazine)

(《黑帮战争》让玩家通过自己的想象去勾画那些堕落的犯罪。)

5.让游戏能够适应玩家的生活方式

思考在现实环境下玩家会如何玩游戏。在开始设计游戏前问自己以下问题:

*你的玩家是哪些人?

*玩家必须投入多少时间于游戏中,而他们自己又真正愿意投入多少时间?

*玩家是否需要在游戏期间中止游戏并在之后继续游戏?

*玩家是如何进入游戏?

*玩家会在何处玩游戏?

*哪种硬件,软件和互联网接入方式更适合玩家?

找出这些问题的答案你便能够更好地设置游戏期间的各种需求,玩家访问游戏的方式以及玩家对电脑和设备的技术需求。然后通过游戏测试以明确你的设置是否合理。

举个例子来说吧,美国计算机厂商优利系统开发了一系列在线游戏,并让公司的销售团队将其作为假日问候发送给用户们。最终用户们将通过电子邮件收到一个链接,并以此打开一封包含销售人员个人讯息的在线假日卡片。这张卡片将带他们进入游戏中,与此同时旁边的空白处还将呈现出优利的logo。

Unisys mini-golf game(from netmagazine)

Unisys mini-golf game(from netmagazine)

(优利的迷你高尔夫球游戏便是为了帮助玩家从一天的工作中快速缓解心情。)

因为收到这些邮件的玩家都是成人,并且大多都是在工作时间,他们不可能投入大多时间于游戏中,所以你最好将游戏时间压缩在5分钟内。因为很多玩家会在标准的隔间办公室中访问游戏,也就是他们一般会关闭电脑的扬声器以避免干扰到其它同事,如此你便可以忽略掉游戏中的音效体验。

这与《潜龙谍影:爱国者之枪》这类型的游戏设计形成了巨大的反差。《潜龙谍影》是一款家庭式掌机游戏,包含了各种过场动画(即游戏玩法中穿插的游戏内部电影),这些动画甚至会持续1个半小时并且会在游戏过程中随时出现。像这类型游戏便需要玩家做出真正的承诺,并且它们也只适合于那些拥有大量休闲时间的玩家。

潜龙谍影4(from netmagazine)

潜龙谍影4(from netmagazine)

(《潜龙谍影》中的独立过场动画可能持续1个半小时的时间。)

《FarmVille》便巧妙地在游戏中融入了玩家的生活方式。玩家每次游戏只要投入几分钟时间,在游戏过程中种植各种庄稼,并且能够比现实中更快速地获得收获。就像树莓只需要种植后2个小时便能够收割,所以对于那些一天中能够多次登录游戏的玩家来说,这便非常适合他们。而对于8个小时后才能够收割的南瓜来说,玩家便能够在工作前种植而工作后收割。像洋蓟等庄稼因为需要花费4天的生长时间,便非常适合那些只能

偶尔登录游戏的玩家。而玩家也需要在此做出一定的承诺,绝不长时间放任自己的植物不管,否则将会导致庄稼的枯萎以及玩家金币的损失。游戏中交错的庄稼生长率允许玩家可以基于自己的生活选择适合自己的植物进行种植。

Farmville crops(from netmagazine)

Farmville crops(from netmagazine)

(《FarmVille》中交错的庄稼收割时间让玩家能够明确哪些游戏玩法更适应于自己的日常生活。)

6.创造有意义的体验

玩家不得不投入时间,注意力以及问题解决能力去应对游戏所丢给他们的各种挑战。所以为了回报玩家的这种付出,开发者便必须想办法让玩家能够在游戏结束后深切感受到游戏体验是有意义的。

为了提供给玩家有意义的游戏体验,游戏就必须让玩家拥有操纵游戏结果的感觉。如果玩家赢得了游戏,是否就能证明他们拥有强大的技能或智慧?许多游戏包含了各种随机元素,让玩家难以掌控游戏的发展。虽然这些随机元素能够通过创造出一些不一样的乐趣,但是如果开发者想要创造出一款有意义的游戏,至少需要让玩家能够掌控自己成功或失败的几率。

纸牌游戏《Killer Bunnies》便是一个经典的例子,即玩家在游戏中的胜负完全取决于他们从桥牌中随机挑选的纸牌。最终拥有匹配“magic carrot”纸牌的玩家便是最终赢家。玩家并不能决定自己能够选中哪张牌,这完全是种随机的选择。但是在游戏中玩家却能够控制他们所持有的匹配牌。玩家将在游戏过程中为了获得“carrot”纸牌而竞争,而精明的玩家便会在游戏结束前尽可能地获取更多“carrot”纸牌。尽管玩家不能在游戏中获得胜利,但是他们仍能够在此表现出对于游戏策略的精通,对于各种风险的忍耐力以及理解其他对手的能力。一旦玩家知道了如何掌控自己的成功几率,他们便能够迅速获得成功——而这便是一种有意义的游戏体验。

killer bunnies(from netmagazine)

killer bunnies(from netmagazine)

( 在《Killer Bunnies》中玩家通过获得“carrot”纸牌而控制游戏结果,即以此提高了他们抓取随机“magic carrot”纸牌的可能性。)

7.切忌欺骗

因为在游戏领域中,电子游戏规则只能落实于计算机电路的黑盒中,所以设计师们便会希望通过欺骗玩家而走捷径。例如在系统中提供给玩家更多信息和控制便能够更容易创造出游戏挑战。在电子游戏中,计算机和玩家所具有的能力是不平衡的,玩家不可能挑战计算机。所以千万不要试图欺骗他们。欺骗是一种糟糕的设计选择:首先,人们知道真正发生了什么;其次,欺骗是游戏中的一种“犯罪”,玩家会本能地抵抗这种游戏。

假设你正在设计一款二十一点扑克牌游戏,玩家需要在此与计算化的交易员进行对抗。作为设计师,你需要撰写一个脚本以控制交易员的行动。你希望这名交易员具有一定的挑战难度,但是却不是没有打败他的可能性。创造挑战的一个简单方法便是在脚本中绘制出下一张出现的纸牌。然后你需要对交易员的行动进行编程,即让他挑选出一张胜负不定的纸牌,并设置其随机性为每三次能够挑选出一张胜利纸牌。这一策略通过一种简单的方法能够让玩家改变难度,并基于更加复杂的设置让交易员能够每五次抽到四张胜利纸牌(也就是在较为简单的设置下他每三次抽牌只能抽到一次胜利纸牌)。而因为所有纸牌都是正面朝下,所以玩家也看不出自己是否被“骗”了。

但是在玩了几次游戏后玩家便会看出原理。即交易员将会做出一些看似不合理的举动,如突然获得20点或者抽到一大王牌。此时的桥牌不再如之前那般随机,因为在之前的几轮中已经显露了某些牌,并且在玩家抽走了这些好牌后其它牌也将慢慢显露出来。在几轮游戏后,游戏的这种固定模式将慢慢浮现出来。尽管玩家并不能在计算机执行“欺骗”的过程中拆穿它,但是游戏却很难再继续隐瞒这种模式了。当玩家最终意识到游戏的欺骗时,他们便会果断地退出并关闭游戏。

cheating(from netmagazine)

cheating(from netmagazine)

(如果计算机始终利用这种模式获取胜利,玩家便会最终意识到这种欺骗。)

解决这一问题的一大方法便是构建一个基于规则的简单AI。千万不要被构建AI这一理念所吓到,这只是一种再平常不过的计算机程序。如此,你便需要编写一行代码让交易员打出16点并获得17点。你需要清楚的是,计算机与玩家一样也需要受到相同规则的约束。让任何一个环节能够基于人们所设想的那样运转。如果你呈现出一个正在洗牌的桥牌,你需要随机挑选一整个序列的纸牌,并将其原封不动地放置在一个阵列中。不要让你的AI知道接下来会出现哪张牌,或者玩家手上握着什么牌。切记不要滥用你作为游戏设计师所具有的内在优势。

8.略过游戏指南

说服人们游戏具有可玩性的最佳方法便是让他们直接进入游戏中进行尝试。你可以从人们打开游戏的决定中看出他们对游戏感兴趣,而不要认为他们只是想要了解如何玩游戏。而在每一款游戏前设置一些书面指示只能说是为玩家进入游戏竖起一道障碍罢了。并且游戏指示也将会成为你的绊脚石,即它只是在为游戏界面中非传统且非直觉性的选择作辩护。最后,玩家总是很难理解这些指示。每一款游戏界面总是会出现一些新的词汇或新的控制序列,而设计师便很难在动态游戏玩法之外罗列出这些内容。

所以教会玩家如何玩游戏的最佳方法便是让他们亲自进入游戏进行体验。教程便是我们最熟悉的一种方式,并且尽可能确保指示的极简和即时性。先问自己“玩家在刚开始游戏时所需要掌握的最少信息是什么?”然后便提供给他们这些信息(不多也不少)。游戏也是一种学习过程。如果玩家真心对你的游戏感兴趣,他们便会通过自己玩游戏而进一步了解游戏。

instruction(from netmagazine)

instruction(from netmagazine)

(在Bri lance的游戏《Kanyu》通过步进式指示将玩家直接带进了他们的游戏故事。)

同时我们还必须记住,如果游戏需要一些复杂繁琐的指示,我们便应该提高警惕,因为有可能我们的游戏过于复杂化了,而此时我们便需要适当地简化游戏。

9.确保游戏中的一切都具有意义

玩家需要理解游戏中的各种发展,以此才能感觉到自己真正在控制着游戏。而作为用户体验设计师你就更需要重视这一点,因为从根本上来看这都是关于游戏玩法的直觉性内容。在游戏设计中,如果你想创造出能够让玩家真正理解的体验,你就需要先搞清楚设计师和玩家对于游戏的理解。

你必须让玩家能够在输掉游戏时清楚地意识到原因。如果玩家不清楚自己为何会失败,他们便不能够在今后的游戏中想办法避开相同的问题。而如果玩家反复陷入同一个点,他们便会认为自己遭到游戏的不公正惩罚。

同样地,当玩家赢得游戏时,你也必须告诉他们为什么。如果玩家不知道自己为何获胜,他们便很难再次感受到这种胜利。而如此没有意义的胜利也只会贬低了游戏体验的价值,让玩家一开始便认为游戏没有规范的标准。

任何结果都带有相对应的原因。所以当游戏中发生了任何情况时,玩家都希望知道为什么。“Foldit(游戏邦注:在线蛋白质折迭游戏)”便是一种非常有趣的游戏机制,甚至能够解决现实生活中的问题。我们总是很难在游戏中察觉到因果关系的。盘绕蛋白质的侧链能够创造出一种矛盾,但是基于相同的方法盘绕相同的对象却能够帮你赢得分数。而想办法找出这两种行动带来不同的结果的原因还真的让人非常郁闷。

游戏中的目标设置也必须足够明确。玩家需要了解自己的努力方向是什么。明确的目标能够让游戏体验更有结构性并且更有意义。因为如此玩家才能制定自己的游戏策略,并且才有理由融入游戏中进行挑战。所以游戏必须从一开始并贯穿游戏每一时刻将完整的目标呈献在玩家面前。

除此之外玩家还必须清楚自己到底能够执行哪些行动。游戏可以随时通过视觉或听觉提示告知玩家他们能够做些什么。作为20世纪80年代大受欢迎的一种游戏类型,一些冒险游戏总是因为缺乏基本的直观性而遭遇失败——因为这些游戏总是强迫着玩家猜测各种神秘的行动。如果游戏提供给玩家蓝色的钥匙,他们便知道该拿这把钥匙去打开其中的蓝色之门;而如果游戏让玩家使用运动缚带作为弹弓去攻击守卫(就像《宇宙传奇II》中所要求的那样),他们便会陷入疑惑中。

10.让玩家能够轻松地再次尝试游戏

当你完成了游戏机制的基本架构时,你便会期待着玩家能够从开始阶段顺利地前进到游戏最后。你当然也能够将游戏当成一个连续的故事,拥有开头,过程与结尾。但是如此你便很有可能忽略玩家是如何在现实世界中体验这些游戏。所以你必须反复回到游戏中,对游戏进行多次的迭代测试。

任何游戏都必须让玩家能够在失败后快速回到游戏中再次挑战。那些斥资数百万美元的大型商业游戏经常会犯的一个错误便是在玩家失败与再次尝试过程间设置了一个冗长的加载屏幕。延长玩家第二次,第三次甚至是第二十次重新开始游戏的时间将会大大消磨了他们的耐心。《时空幻镜》以及《波斯王子:时之刃》便有效地解决了这一问题,即让玩家能够快速回到他们之前所遭遇失败的位置上。

同时我们还需要从玩家所需要投入于游戏中的工作量进行思考。如果玩家在失败后必须回到游戏最初位置再次开始游戏,他们便会很容易认为游戏没有重玩价值。所以游戏必须让玩家具有保存自己游戏进展的选择权。

考虑是否在玩家完成游戏后并再一次尝试时给予他们奖励。一些较为常见的方法包括:

*简单的性能标准,如关于强度测试的评定等级。

*玩家在整个游戏过程中所获得的收集品和成就,并统计这些数值。

*分数追踪和在线排行榜单。

*定期发行更新内容。

*授予连续游戏的玩家新功能和特权。

如果玩家愿意再次玩游戏,那就表示他们欣赏你的游戏设计。所以追踪玩家重玩游戏的次数也是衡量你的游戏是否成功的最佳标准。

扬长避短

虽然这10大指南将帮助你迈上游戏开发之路,但是当你真正开始开发游戏时,你的前方还存在许多不可预知的挑战,而你需要做的便是学会冷静地应对这些挑战。我的最后一点建议便是努力做到扬长避短。如果你曾经设计过传统的用户界面,你一定要好好利用从中学到的各种技能。不论是塑造框架,用户测试,快速创造原型,创造故事板还是制作程序图标等核心技能都能够帮助你更好地进行游戏设计,并解决各种粗糙的修补程序。当你混淆了某些游戏设计问题时,切记一定要相信自己的本能,并自问如果自己不是在设计一款游戏将如何处理相同的问题。通常情况下,你的本能总能够引导你朝正确的方向迈进。(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

10 tips for building a better game

By John Ferrara

This is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of Playful Design: Creating Game Experiences in Everyday Interfaces, published by Rosenfeld Media.

“Okay,” you say, “I’m ready.”

You’re a seasoned designer with a long history of creating compelling user experiences. You see the advantages that games can offer to UX design. You like (maybe even love) the idea of building an iPhone game to serve as a tour of a historic park, a social media game for Facebook to organise a political campaign, or a freestanding Flash game to teach basic physics on an educational website. You even have a rough concept of what that game might be like. You may be in a position to get funding for the project within your company or to pitch the idea to a receptive client. You want to start putting your ideas down on paper, get development under way, and speed toward launch.

That’s an awesome place to be. Vision and ambition are written into the opening lines of all success stories. But there are some risks to jumping in too quickly. Game development is very time-consuming and resource- intensive. It can be difficult to make a significant change in direction if you discover midway through development that some of your initial ideas aren’t translating into the great gameplay experience you had in mind.

So before getting started and running with it, you need a primer to point you in the right direction, to steer you clear of the most common mistakes, and to maximise your chances of success. This is the chapter for you. Though the challenges of building an enjoyable game shouldn’t be oversimplified, the 10 general guidelines I present here will at least help you refine your ideas and break through some of the common barrie that could otherwise hold back your design.

1. Games need to be games first

This point may sound too obvious, but it can be very easy to miss. And missing it is often the undoing of a well-intentioned design. You can design games to teach and persuade (as discussed later), but if such real-world objectives supersede meaningful gameplay, they will undermine your chances for success. First and foremost, a game needs to be enjoyed.

The Schwab MoneyWise It’s Your Life game has a noble mission: to convince people to save more money for retirement and other long-term objectives. Much like the original Game of Life board game, It’s Your Life presents players with a number of choices between spending or saving money over the course of a simulated lifetime (Figure 5.1). At the end, players get a letter grade to represent how well they did.

Figure 5.1 At each step in schwab’s It’s Your Life game, it’s pretty obvious which choice will lead to a winning outcome

The problem is that the game’s designers were much more interested in hammering home their message than creating an actual game experience. If you want to win the game, then the right choice each step of the way is to save your money and not spend any of it. Ever. On anything. That means you can earn an A+, the highest possible score, if you:

Skip college

Never move out of your parents’ house

Never get married

Never have children

Never travel or take any vacations

Work indefinitely past age 65

Die alone with lots of money and no one to leave it to

I’m sure the designers reasoned that people playing through the scenarios would elect to do valuable things with their lives, but they set up the game so that doing nothing with your life while saving vigorously is a sure way to win. Separating what people should do from what gets rewarded destroys the intended message. Even though It’s Your Life is packaged as a game, it isn’t committed to being experienced as a game.

2. Playtest, playtest, playtest

As much as we all know that testing is absolutely, completely indispensable in user interface design, I must stress (grammar be damned) that it is even more absolutely, completely indispensable when you’re designing a game. Even though every UX designer’s mantra is “test, test, test,” it’s still worth saying that you really must not neglect to playtest your game early and often.

The reason testing is so important in game development is that most video games are highly dynamic experiences. The flow of events changes from moment to moment, and each decision the player makes leads to a multiplicity of outcomes. Most games are also programmed with an element of randomness, so the same player never has quite the same experience twice. Multiplayer games throw even more unpredictability into the mix. As a result, the designer doesn’t directly control the actual gameplay, but instead controls only the underlying system in which the play unfolds. Without actually seeing the game in action, you cannot reliably anticipate how it will work. Mike Ambinder, an experimental psychologist at game developer Valve Software, puts it in scientific terms: “Every game design is a hypothesis, and every instance of play is an experiment.”

So, aren’t you fortunate to have a background in testing user experiences! Exploit it at every opportunity when designing your game. Grab your coworkers, your family, your friends – anyone who’s willing – sit them down with your game, and watch them as they play it. Don’t forget to play it yourself too! Be harshly critical. Do you enjoy playing it? When it’s over, do you feel like playing it again? Is it frustrating? Is it boring? Is it too hard to figure out what to do? I’ll go into more detail about game-specific testing methods in Chapter 8, but it’s important that you be prepared to put your game under the microscope again and again, and to adapt the design to make it more enjoyable.

3. Games don’t have to be for kids

Young people have much more leisure time than grown-ups, and many of us remember spending long periods of our childhood playing games. So it’s natural for us to associate games with kids.

Video games in particular tend to have a juvenile image, and that’s not without reason: 91 per cent of kids under age 17 identify themselves as gamers, and they often have a lot of influence over which games a household purchases. Large segments of games are marketed toward children, and many of these games feature kid-friendly mascots like Pikachu or Mario. The link between childhood and video games is very real, so it’s not surprising that designers often decide to create games specifically intended to appeal to children.

But with a large market catering to them, kids also have the latitude to be very discerning consumers. Enormously sophisticated cross-media marketing campaigns pushing big-budget titles already crowd one another out, so you’ll find that just getting a young game consumer’s attention is a tremendous challenge. Kids often select a popular title specifically because they feel it will raise their social status among their friends. Because these games can be very demanding of their time, your idea must offer a pretty compelling value proposition for them to sacrifice minutes or hours that could otherwise be spent with their pastime of choice. Kids take games seriously, and you can’t assume that they’ll play your game just because it’s a game.

We also know that kids are only the minority of people who play video games. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, 82 per cent of gamers are over age 18, and 29 per cent are 50 or older (Figure 5.2). 3 Grown-ups can also be more receptive to playing games outside of the mainstream, and they have more disposable income to spend on games (if you plan to sell it to consumers).

This is not to say that kids couldn’t make up a portion of your game’s audience. But if your game is clearly intended for young children, as announced in breathless starbursts reading “Hey kids!” and “Super cool!” you will turn off the larger segment of gamers. So consider targeting your game to an older age group while keeping it accessible to a broad range of ages.

Figure 5. 2 Kids under 18 represent the smallest minority of game players

4. Action can be boring

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is an amazing action game. It unfolds over dozens of hours, during which you encounter waves of enemies exquisitely balanced against the resources available to you, interact with teammates controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, and fight through varied locations that provide no unfair advantage to either you or your targets.

And it’s all wrapped up in an engaging and complex story line. Call of Duty also took years to make and a team comprising dozens of designers, artists, and engineers at a cost of many millions of dollars. You’re probably not making Call of Duty.

It’s very difficult to sustain adrenaline-pumping excitement for very long. If you do choose to make an action-based game on a small scale, you’ll find that you’re limited to very simple and short-lived scenarios that resemble games of the arcade era. Racing a car. Throwing a basketball. Shooting a spaceship. Taken on their own, these types of experiences tend to grow tiresome quickly. In comparison to the enormously sophisticated action games that people have access to today, they’re just plain dull.

Consider what makes a game intrinsically interesting. You’ll find a lot of creative opportunity in games that make the player think through interesting choices instead of executing twitch responses. The card game Hearts, for example, is all about choices (Figure 5.3). Which three cards should I pass to my opponent? Should I play a high card or a low card? Should I break hearts, or hold off to see if someone else does it first? If I play clubs one more time, will someone else stick me with the queen of spades? Should I try to shoot the moon, or will that prove self-destructive? Each choice is reevaluated from one trick to the next, depending on the changing conditions of your hand and on new information about what other players have already done. Even though Hearts can be a fairly long game, it can hold players’ interest without any laser blasters or lava levels.

You can also invite players to apply their imaginations to the game. Mafia Wars, a Facebook game with more than 3.5 million monthly active players,4 merely alludes to street crime while showing none of it (Figure 5.4). To pull off a bank heist, you just select “Bank Heist” from a menu of criminal activity. The game immediately responds with a message that you completed the job successfully. In place of real-time action and 3D graphics, players are offered choices about which jobs to take, how to invest their earnings, and which personal attributes to develop. There’s no limit to what can be achieved in a player’s imagination.

Figure 5.3 Hearts creates excitement by presenting players with lots of interesting choices

Figure 5.4 Mafia Wars leaves the depraved criminality to the player’s imagination

5. Fit the game into the player’s lifestyle

Think about the real-life contexts in which people will play the game. Start the design process by asking:

Who are your players?

How much time do your players have to give to the game, and how much of that time would they actually be willing to give?

Will your players need to take a break from the game and continue it later?

How will your players access the game?

Where will your players be when they’re playing the game?

What kind of hardware, software, and Internet access will be available to your players?

The answers to these questions can help you set requirements for the duration of play, the way the game will be accessed, and the technical requirements of players’ computers and devices.

Use playtesting to figure out whether your estimates are working out.

For example, Unisys developed a series of online games for the company’s sales team to send to customers as holiday greetings. Customers would receive a link by e-mail to an online holiday card with a personal message from the salesperson. The card would then open out into the game, branded with the Unisys logo (Figure 5.5).

Figure 5.5 The Unisys mini-golf game was designed to be a quick, unintrusive diversion from the workday

Because the players were adults receiving these e-mails at work, the games couldn’t require a significant investment of time to reach the end, so all of them were designed to last less than five minutes. And because many players would be accessing the game while sitting in standard office cubicles, where they typically would have their computer speakers turned off to avoid irritating coworkers in their shared space, the limited sounds in the games were not essential to the experience.

Contrast that design with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, a home console game containing cutscenes (in-game movies during which gameplay is suspended) that can run as long as an hour and a half and can come at any time during play (Figure 5.6). Games like this ask for a real commitment from their players, and they are appropriate only for audiences with abundant leisure time.

Figure 5.6 Individual cutscenes in Metal Gear Solid 4 could run an hour and a half

FarmVille cleverly makes itself adaptable to the player’s lifestyle. Players need to dedicate only a few minutes to it at a time, during which they can plant seeds for crops that take different amounts of real-world time to harvest. Raspberries take just two hours, so they’re useful when the player can check in several times in a single day. Eight-hour pumpkins fit in well just before and after a workday. Crops like artichokes take four days to harvest – better for players who can check in only now and then. The player is asked for some commitment, as fully grown crops that are left unharvested for too long wither and cost the player gold coins. But the staggered growth rates allow the time commitment to be on the player’s own terms (Figure 5.7).

Figure 5.7 The staggered harvest times for crops in FarmVille allows players to decide how much gameplay they can fit into their lives

6. Create meaningful experience

Players have to apply their time, their concentration, and their problem-solving abilities to the challenges your game throws at them. There should be a point to these efforts, a payoff for their investment. When the game ends, players should come away feeling that the experience was meaningful.

For the game to be a meaningful experience, players need to have a sense of control over the outcome. If players win or lose, does that prove anything about their skill, knowledge, or cleverness? Or does it all just come down to a coin flip? Many games involve some element of randomness, putting parts of the experience beyond the player’s control. A random element adds interest to the game by putting the outcome in doubt. But a meaningful game at least gives players a hand in tipping the odds in their own favor.

A great example is the card game Killer Bunnies, in which success is ultimately determined by a card picked randomly from a deck (Figure 5.8). The player who holds the match for that card (the “magic carrot”) is declared the winner. No player has any control over which card is picked; it’s a completely random selection. But the gameplay does give players some control over which matching cards they hold. Players compete for carrot cards over the course of the game, and shrewd players will work to hold the greatest number of them before the game is over.

Even for the players who don’t win, the game says a lot about their mastery of the strategy, tolerance for risk, and skill at reading other people. Players come away from the game knowing that they had control over their chances of success, which makes the experience meaningful.

Figure 5.8 Players exercise control over the outcome of Killer Bunnies by acquiring carrot cards, increasing the probability that they’ll capture the randomly selected magic carrot

7. Don’t cheat

Because video game rules are enforced inside the black box of the computer’s circuitry, there’s a particular temptation for designers to take shortcuts by letting the game cheat. Giving the system more information or control than the player has, for example, can be a simple way to build challenge into a game. Power in a video game is unbalanced between the computer and the player, and the player has no way of challenging the computer or holding it to account. Don’t be tempted to cheat. It’s a bad design choice because, first, people will be able to tell what’s happening (oh yes, they will); second, cheating is a serious offence in games, and players have an instinctive revulsion to it.

Suppose you’re designing a blackjack game that matches a player against a computerised dealer. As a designer, you need to write a script to control the dealer’s actions. You want the dealer to be a little hard to beat but not impossible. One easy way to create challenge would be to let the script choose which card from the deck is drawn next. You then program the dealer to pick a card that will either win or lose, and put in a randomising function so that two out of every three times it picks a winning card. This strategy also creates an easy way to allow players to change the difficulty, so that on a harder setting the dealer will pick a winning card four out of every five times, while on an easier setting it wins just one out of every three. Since the deck of cards displays facedown on-screen, how would anyone even know that you’re cheating?

After playing the game a few times, you’ll see how (Figure 5.9). The dealer will do seemingly irrational things, such as hitting on 20 and magically drawing an ace. The deck will not seem random, because certain cards will tend to show up early and others will show up only after those preferred cards have been drawn. After several playthroughs, these patterns will become painfully obvious. Although the player can’t catch the computer in the act of cheating, these telltale artifacts are hard to cover up. When players realise that a game is cheating, they’ll make the ultimate winning move by turning it off.

Figure 5.9 If the computer’s wins consistently look like this, players will come to recognize a pattern of cheating even though they have no way to prove it

A better approach is to build a simple, rules-based AI. Don’t be too intimidated by the idea of building an AI; ultimately it’s just a computer program like any other. In this case, all you need is a line of code that tells the dealer to hit on 16 and stand on 17. The important thing is that the computer is subject to the same rules as the player. Make things work the way they look like they should work. If you show a deck being shuffled, randomly pick the full sequence of cards and put it into an array that can’t be changed. Don’t let the AI know what card is coming up next, or what cards are in the player’s hand. Don’t abuse the inherent advantage you have as the game designer.

8. Skip the manual

The best way to convince people a game is worth playing is to let them jump in and try it out for themselves. You can take people’s decision to open a game as the clearest possible signal that they’re in the mood to play, not to sit and read about how to play. Relying on written instructions presented at the beginning of every new game only creates a barrier to entry at the very time you want to be most accommodating of players. Instructions can also become a crutch, used to justify unconventional and unintuitive choices in the interface. Finally, game instructions can be very difficult to follow. Each game interface introduces a new vocabulary and a new set of controls. These things can be difficult to picture abstractly outside the dynamics of gameplay.

So the best place to teach people how to play a game is right there, inside the game itself. Tutorials have become one of the most familiar patterns in games. Minimalist, just-in-time instructions are even better (Figure 5.10). Ask yourself, “What’s the smallest amount of information the player needs to make the first move?” Then provide nothing more than that; you can get to the second move when the time comes. Play is learning. If people are interested in the game, they’ll be motivated to fill in the blanks themselves by playing it.

Figure 5.10 In Bri lance’s game Kanyu, step-by-step instructions about how to play are cleverly incorporated directly into the game’s story

And keep in mind that if your game needs robust instructions for people to play it, this may be a warning sign in and of itself. Your game may be too complex, and some simplification may be in order.

9. Make the game make sense

Players need to understand why things happen in the game to feel that they’re in control of it. Your skills as a UX designer will be very valuable here, because this point is fundamentally about the intuitiveness of the gameplay. In game design, building a sensible experience relies on some key understandings between the designer and the player.

When players lose, it should be clear why they lost. If it’s not, then players won’t be able to get better at the game by avoiding the same mistake in the future. If this happens repeatedly, players will begin to feel that they’re being unfairly punished.

When players win, it should be clear why they won. If not, then it’ll be hard to replicate the victory. A win that doesn’t make sense can also cheapen the experience, leaving players feeling that the game’s standards weren’t that rigorous in the first place.

Every effect should have a clear cause. When something happens, players should be able to understand why it happened. Foldit, discussed in Chapter 1, is a wonderful example of game mechanics applied to a real-world problem. The relationship between cause and effect, however, is often unclear in the game. Twisting a protein’s side chain can create a conflict, but twisting a similar one in a similar way can earn you points. Trying to figure out why these actions have different results can be tremendously frustrating.

The object of the game should be clear. Players need to know what they’re working toward. A clear goal gives structure and meaning to the experience. It allows players to formulate strategies and gives them a reason to engage with the game. From the start and throughout every moment of play, players should be aware of their ultimate objective.

Players should always know what actions are available. At every moment, visible or aural cues should be provided to let players know what they can do. Adventure games, a popular genre in the 1980s, were plagued by failures of basic intuitiveness, because they often forced players to guess at what arcane actions might be available. Using a blue key to open a blue door makes sense to most people; using your athletic supporter as a slingshot to knock out a guard (as was required in Space Quest II) really doesn’t.

10. Make it easy to try again

When you’re down in the weeds constructing your game’s mechanics, it’s easy to focus on the ideal case in which players play straight through from beginning to end. It makes sense to author a game as a continuous narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But thinking of your game in those terms also risks losing sight of how it will actually be experienced in the real world. Remember to step back and think about the game as a discontinuous and iterative experience.

When a player loses, it should be easy to cycle back into the game and try again, instantly and effortlessly. Even large commercial games with multimillion-dollar development budgets make the common mistake of forcing a lengthy loading screen into that anxious space between a loss and a second attempt. Stretching that space of time to the second, third, or twentieth go-round inevitably tries the player’s patience. Games such as Braid and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time have taken a clever route around this problem, allowing players to rewind time to a safe point before the losing moment.

Think, too, about the amount of work the game asks players to invest in it, and whether players would be frustrated if they lost and had to start all over again. This alone could be enough to make some players decide it’s not worth returning to the game. Consider giving players the option to save their progress.

Think about giving players incentives to play the game again after they’ve completed it. Some common ways of doing this include:

Simple performance yardsticks, such as the ratings on a carnival strength test

Collectables and achievements earned throughout the game, and a tally of how many the player has managed to obtain

Score tracking and online leaderboards Periodic releases of fresh content

New features and privileges that become available only on successive playthrough

When people replay a game, they’re signaling a personal appreciation for its design. Tracking the number of times people replay is one of the best general measures of your game’s success.

Play to your strengths

These 10 guidelines will help you get started, but plenty of challenges lie ahead as you set about designing and developing your game, and you’ll need to learn how to manage them as they come up. One last piece of advice is to play to your strengths. If you have a background in the design of conventional user interfaces, by all means use the skills and techniques that arise from it. Wireframing, user testing, rapid prototyping, storyboarding, flow diagramming, and other core skills all translate well to game design and can help you pull through the inevitable rough patches. When a game design issue has you confounded, trust your instincts and ask how you would handle a similar problem if you weren’t designing a game. More often than not, you’ll find that you can point yourself in the right direction.(source:netmagazine


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