作者：Axel Cholewa

没人想要阅读

Alexander Jordan在之前的文章中谈到了如何引导玩家掌握一个可选择的游戏机制，而他所遭遇的情况是：在游戏的第一个关卡中他引进了基础机制。并在第二个关卡又引进了一个新的机制，但是有些玩家却不愿意去学习这些机制。因为Jordan是位资源有限的独立游戏开发者，所以他只能通过文本解释游戏机制。而许多玩家却从来都不愿意去阅读文本——不论是在菜单还是加载屏幕上。

bored boy reading(from sabigames.com)

原因很简单：人们并不想阅读。为什么？如果你想要做某事，你并不会希望通过阅读与之相关的内容，而是会真正去落实行动。

除非当他们真正想要阅读

先说说我自己的经历吧。我是某“学校实验室”中的一名物理学者。学校实验室是指学校中的班级能够在此进行一整天物理实验的实验室。对于学生来说这是让他们脱离呆板的公式而进行切身体验的学习机会。

为了让学生们能够独立进行实验——不给予任何秘诀或帮助，我们提供了实验室手册。在手册中他们能够找到许多有关实验的基本描述，并能在大量的空白处记录下自己觉得重要的内容。

我们的实验室书籍中函盖了真空（10至12年），放射性（15/16年）电动力学以及量子物理学（17/18年）等内容——但是我却发现学生们经常略过这些最基本的内容。我们并没有用长达数页的篇幅进行描述，只是通过几行像“将盖革计算器置于放射源前2厘米处”这样的文字进行说明。事实上我们几乎都是通过图像（而非文本）去呈现各种内容。但是尽管在图像中只有“2厘米”这般简单的文本，许多学生也不愿意去阅读。所以我们必须清楚学生们来到这里只是想要学习放射性原理，而根本不会在乎任何原理描述。

问题并不在于他们还只是青少年，而是他们根本不愿意拿起书本，甚至不愿意看向好友的Facebook状态。如果他们能拿起书本，他们便会想要阅读。所以关键点便在于是否拿起了书本。而如果他们打开了Facebook并来到好友的状态中，他们便会愿意进一步浏览。所以当他们来到了实验室，他们唯一想做的也就只有做实验了（好吧，至少某些人是这样的）。不管年龄，即使是10岁的儿童也会这么想的。

就像家长想要为孩子报实验班，但却不愿意浏览我们的网页；老师（游戏邦注：为了教授相关主题）想要接受有关放射性的专业课程，但却无视我们所派发的相关资料。老师只想教课，家长则只想向相关人员进行咨询。他们都不想在此阅读任何内容。

按照他们想做的去做吧

所以：玩家也只是想要在游戏中玩游戏。如果你想要教授玩家如何游戏，那就让他们在游戏中进行学习！当然了，这说起来简单做起来难。这也是为何会出现那么多糟糕教程的主要原因——我们很难设计出一份真正优秀的游戏教程。许多工作室也不愿意为此投入更多时间。不管怎样，基于文本进行教授并不是一种好方法，除非你的目的是教授玩家如何阅读。这只能是开发者走投无路的最后一招。也就是如果你不知道如何避开文本教程并且即将超过游戏截止期限，你便只能使用这一方法了。这时候你便需要写下与新机制相关的内容，告诉玩家使用X能够带来意想不到的效果，而不是让他们亲自体验这种意想到的效果。

永远不要停止对于教程的探索。懒惰并不是一个好借口，即使是在教程中。你需要更加认真地思考如何摆脱文本并教授玩家更好地体验游戏，并在你找到真正合适的方法后才放弃文本。这是一个真正有价值的过程。因为此后将会有越来越多玩家开始玩你的游戏，并且是按照你“预期”的方法去玩游戏。甚至他们还会在自己的Facebook状态更新中提到你的游戏，而那些阅读了这些内容的好友们便会开始对游戏感兴趣。所以也还存在着一些真心想要阅读的玩家。（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）

Players don’t want to read

by Axel Cholewa

Nobody wants to read…

Jordan’s situation was the following: in the first level of his game he introduced the basic mechanic. In the second level a new one was introduced, but some players just never made the effort of learning that mechanic. Because his resources as an indie developer are limited the only way to introduce his mechanic was using text. And some players never read that text, neither in menus, in loading screens etc.

The reason for that is simple: People don’t want to read. Why? Well, if you want to do something you don’t want to read about it. You just want to do it.

… except when they want to read

A little bit about myself. I am a physicist working in a “school lab”. School labs are laboratories where school classes can do physics experiments for a day. It is an excellent opportunity for students to learn that physics is not only about formulas, but about reality.

In order for the students to be able to do the experiments themselves – without handing them a recipe, without hand holding – we give them lab books. There they find basic descriptions of the experiments and lots of free space to write things down which they deem important.

In all our labs – we cover the topics vacuum (10-12 years), radioactivity (15/16 years）, electrodynamics and quantum physics (both 17/18 years) – I observed that the students very often do not read the most basic of requirements. It’s not that they have to read many pages, just a few lines saying things like “put the Geiger counter 2cm in front of the radioactive source”. Actually there’s no text saying that, it’s in a picture. But even though the only text in that picture is “2cm” there are a lot of students who just don’t read it. It is important to understand that the students do want to learn about radioactivity. But they don’t want to read about it in any which way.

The problem is not that they are adolescents. The problem is that they didn’t pick up a book, or looked at their best friends’ facebook status. If they do pick up a book, they want to read. That’s the point of picking up a book. And if they opened facebook and checked their buddy’s status, they want to read that status. But if they are sitting in a laboratory, they want to do experiments (well, at least some of them). And it doesn’t matter how old they are, in that regard ten year olds are the same as 18 year olds.

And they are the same as parents who want to register their kids for a class and simply don’t properly read our webpage. Or as teachers who have to take a special course on radioactivity in order to teach the subject but don’t read our hand outs. Those teachers want to teach, and the parents want to talk somebody and ask if there’s a spot left in our lab for their kid. They do not want read about it.

Let them eat cake

You can probably guess where I’m going: Players want to play. If you want to teach players, make them play! This, of course, is easier said than done. That’s why there are so many bad tutorials, because designing a good one is a difficult task. And studios most often do not take the time. Using text for teaching players anything is always a bad idea, except you want to teach them to read. It should always be a last resort. If you have absolutely no idea how to avoid tutorial text and you’d miss a deadline if you didn’t finish right now, then go ahead. Write about the new mechanic. Tell people that holding X does something amazing instead of letting them experience the amazement.

Only never ever stop working on a tutorial because you want to stop thinking about it! Lazyness is never an excuse, and even less so in tutorials. Think hard on how to teach the players what they need to enjoy your game without text, and only stop when you found a way. It will be worth it. More players will play your game, and they’ll play it in the way you “intended”. Maybe they’ll write about your game in their facebook status, and maybe someone will even read about it. Someone who actually wants to read.(source：GAMASUTRA）