作者：Rus McLaughlin

我是个求胜心切的家伙。当我启动新款迷幻非射击游戏《Dyad》时，我希望获得类似于《2001: A Space Odyssey》最后20分钟的体验，而非类似《迷幻太空》前20分钟的内容。与此相反，我获得快速正面强化：我在《Dyad》排行榜的名次。

leaderbords dyad from venturebeat.comom

每隔3分钟，《Dyad》就会告知我目前所处位置。一般来说，我总是位于400名中间。这听起来非常不错。我比地球上60亿人口更擅长于玩《Dyad》。

事实上，我从来不关心排行榜。

这源自于某人曾自豪地将R-U-S输入各追踪高分的街机机身中，谈及某个即便是最简单的独立作品也将其视作特殊功能的重点元素。我同意，排行榜不会经常具有误导性，不是特别无聊，并不是在多数时候毫无用处。

就《Dyad》而言，这是个问题。游戏属于这样的类型：重玩价值取决于强迫症玩家想要打败自己的高分记录。我觉得不像是重玩价值，而更像是重复操作。你受邀反复体验相同关卡，追逐代表完美的通用符号：星星。3星是用户成就的最高极限，但我等待游戏能够给予第4颗星奖励。但由于这些关卡通常缺乏随机性和不可预见性，因此多人模式变得非常吸引人，我无需等很长时间。

坦白讲，我并不认同这一观点。我战胜你的关卡，但根据你的模糊标准，你不认为我的表现够突出？也许你应该设计得更合理些。

leaderboards angry birds from venturebeat.comom

那么你觉得那些多人排行榜如何？依然是毫无意义。

我完全赞成自我完善。我不在乎在射击游戏的多人玩法中死去100次，若我在过程中能够强化功能。失败能够带来重要经验。失败能够产生刺激作用。但对多数人来说，这已不再是排行榜的功能。没有人打算超越排名6万38803的玩家，我们将目光着眼于榜首，而这对数玩家来说简直是机会渺茫。获得6万38803排名至少具有现实可能性，但作为生活目标，这缺乏一定诗意。

除体验游戏预览版，挫败众多游戏评论者外，挤进榜首位置还需要什么具体操作？若你是像Kim Dotcom那样的富有孩子气大人，能够持续投入整天时间积累《使命召唤：现代战争3》中的15万杀人数，达到第1位置，对于游戏来说将很有帮助。

Dotcom甚至还发表专业拍摄视频，在YouTube上记录自己的前进过程，但当局以运行非法下载网站Megaupload的名义逮捕他之后，他的排名就开始下滑。

leaderboards COD from venturebeat.comom

不是所有人都可以将自己的生活单纯锁定在玩一款电子游戏。技能在此不是考虑因素——这是个时间问题。所以排行榜并非主要展示精英中的精英，而只是告诉我们，这些人除了玩游戏以外几乎无所事事。

我不排斥排行榜机制。我想说的是，让有正常工作的玩家丧失参与竞争的机会不是明智之举。或者说，排名不可偏离纯粹的技能参数；要让运动排名根据各场竞赛的表现评分，而不是所进行的竞赛数量。

有些游戏根据他们的技能/死亡比率给玩家排名，在我看来这更有意义。《战地风云3》设有K/D比率、胜败情况、每分钟杀人数、爆头百分比、复仇队友死亡数及专业任务（游戏邦注：如每分钟最多队友治愈数）排行榜。在此我可能处于落后地位：总分基于持续行为而非积累分数。我还关注锁定我好友圈的榜单，因为陌生人在《Trials: Evolution》中将我化为灰烬对我来说无关紧要，但若是我的好友挑战我的分数，这就是场战争。

但就是有用户将此变成个人活动，并且乐此不疲。他们追求简单、无趣的数据，庆祝自己打败了榜单上的1000万名用户。待到他们回到现实，才会发现追求排行榜名次，完全就是浪费时间（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）

Leaderboards are worthless

Rus McLaughlin

Hey, I’m a fairly competitive guy. And when I cranked up the new psychedelic not-a-shooter Dyad, I only wanted something closer to the last 20 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey than the first 20 minutes of the famously awful Space Giraffe. Instead, I got rapid-fire positive reinforcement: my rankings on the Dyad leaderboards.

Every three minutes or so, Dyad told me exactly where I stood. Generally speaking, I fall somewhere in the mid-400s. That sure sounds cool. I’m better at Dyad than roughly 6 billion humans on this planet.

Except…I don’t care. In fact, I’ve never cared about leaderboards. Ever.

This comes from a guy who once proudly entered R-U-S into every arcade cabinet that tracked top scores, talking about a bullet point that even the most bare-bones indie releases tout as a special feature. And I’d agree, were leaderboards not frequently misguided, spectacularly lazy, and mostly useless.

In Dyad’s case, that’s a bit of a problem. It falls into in the genre of games where replayability hinges on an obsessive-compulsive gamer wanting to beat his own best score. That strikes me less as replayability and more as repetition. You’re invited to run the exact same level over and over and over again, chasing that universal symbol of perfection: the star. Three stars seems to be the upper threshold of human achievement, though I keep waiting for the game that’s willing to award a fourth for total world domination. But since these levels often lack the randomness and unpredictability that makes multiplayer so compelling, I won’t wait long.

Honestly, I’ve never bought into that thinking. I beat your level, but you don’t think I beat it well enough based on your nebulous criteria? Maybe you should’ve designed it better.

So how about those multiplayer leaderboards? Nope. Still pointless.

Hey, I’m all for self-improvement. I don’t mind dying a few hundred (or thousand) times in a shooter’s multiplayer if I’m building up skills in the process. Failure teaches important lessons. Failure motivates. But for the vast majority, that’s not what a leaderboard does anymore. Nobody sets out to overtake the 638,803rd-ranked player…we set our sights on the top slot or nothing, and that’s just not even a vague possibility for most. Hitting 638,803rd place at least exists in the realm of possibility, but as a life-goal, it lacks a certain poetry.

So, outside of playing a game pre-release and trouncing a bunch of game reviewers (which I did once) what’s it take to actually make it to the top of the heap? Well, it helps if you’re a super-rich manchild like Kim Dotcom, who could devote entire days, day after day, to amassing the over-150,000 kills in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 he needed to be #1.

Dotcom even posted a professionally shot video heroically documenting his rise on YouTube shortly before authorities arrested him for running the illegal download site Megaupload. His ranking’s slipped since.

Not everybody can just shut down their life to play one video game. Skill doesn’t even factor into it anymore — this is a time issue. So rather than ranking the best of the best, the vast majority of leaderboards mainly show us that some people out there really have nothing better to do.

Look, I’m not opposed to the idea of leaderboards. I’m just saying it does no good to put them so far out of reach of people with jobs. Or, for that matter, to skew the list so far away from purely skill-based metrics; sports rankings score individuals on game-by-game performance, not number of games played.

Some games rank players based on their kill/death ratios, and that certainly makes more sense to me. Battlefield 3 has leaderboards for K/D ratios, win/loss, kills per minute, headshot percentage, avenging teammate deaths, and even specialist tasks like most teammate heals per minute. I can get behind that…an aggregate that recognizes consistent behavior instead of cumulative scores. I also pay attention to boards that zero in on my friend lists, because it doesn’t matter to me if some nobody totally dusts me in Trials: Evolution, but if one of my buddies challenges my score, it’s war.

The fact that I know that person makes it personal and therefore involving…two things most leaderboards can’t match and don’t understand. They go for plain, dull numbers, and congratulate themselves for dumping 10 million people onto the list. Pass. Until they come back down to Earth, leaderboards are a waste of time. Too big. Too meaningless. Too bad.（Source：venturebeat）