游戏产业从未像现在这般具有互动性。不管是输入方式的新探索——从最初的动作控制到触觉反馈和虚拟现实的突破，还是游戏的创造和推广方式都深刻地表明了这一点。现在的玩家甚至可以扮演设计师，开发者，程序员以及美术人员等角色。就像《无尽空间》和《Miner Wars》等游戏便是受在线社区的影响而开发成型。Valve的《Source Filmmaker》让所有玩家变成动画导演，操纵自己的角色模型并阐述自己的故事。还有Gameglobe，其目标便是成为游戏界的YouTube，支持用户自己去创造各种内容。

这种创造性环境不断滋养着玩家去创造并分享数字媒体的强烈愿望，而在几年前这却是只有专业人士才能够涉及的领域。从某种意义上来看，用户友好型（如游戏中的各种工具）能够有效地激发游戏新手在短时间内沉浸于自己“制作”游戏的乐趣中。这些工具包括现有游戏中的强大且灵活的关卡编辑器，如Bethesda在《天际》中所使用的Creation Kit，或者是完整的游戏创造工具，如GameMaker，它们将复杂的元素隐藏在界面之下以吸引用户靠近游戏，同时也给用户提供进一步挖掘代码的机会。

经过了很长一段时间大多数游戏都发生了改变，随后也出现了新一代能够使用各种方法去塑造并分享属于自己游戏的玩家。“从某种程度看来，在过去20年间我们都处在一个‘间歇’环境下，即几乎所有内容都是不可控制或难以理解的，”Alex Evans（游戏邦注：《小小大星球》开发商Media Molecule联合创始人）说道。“早前人们总是带有一种‘修补匠’的思想，即认为任何事物都是机械的，就像汽车便是人们能够修补的东西。但是之后我们又经历了80年代和90年代，即所有内容都被微型化，而我们也不再能够碰触它们。”

learning_through_play(from edge-online)

Evans与他在Media Molecule的同事便是来自“Spectrum（游戏邦注：1982年由Sinclair公司生产的一款8位个人电脑）和Commodore（与苹果公司同时期的个人电脑公司）”的年代，那时候电脑的主要界面是一个程序设计环境。“那时候的程序设计是内置的，看起来很不真实，但是现在的我们却都很怀念它。”

这也是《小小大星球》的灵感来源，开发者便是采用这种技巧将这款游戏带向大众市场。他们将设计语言压缩成一套简单且吸引人的工具和小部件。鉴于物理性质，这些工具的使用并不灵活，但是尽管如此开发者还是一直鼓励玩家进行尝试，并表示那些掌握了这些技能的玩家将能够获得更大的帮助。“《小小大星球》的独特之处（以及其他据此衍生出的变体）在于我们使用了一些容易理解的方法包装游戏。但我们在此提供的只是一个数据点，你还可以采用更多不同的方法去使用这些工具。”

Evans希望我们“能够让下一代孩子获取可控制和定制化的内容”，而《小小大星球》证明这个愿望有可能成真。Evans说道：“《小小大星球》一个有趣的地方在于，一开始我认为这款游戏需要经历一段时间的发展过程——而它的用户规模却迅速蔓延。实际上在四五年前，第一款游戏在公测的24小时内，便有玩家制作出极出色的内容了。这种速度大大超过了我们的预期，玩家总是能够直接挖掘出游戏的潜能。在今天这种速度更是令人称惊。这就像是你设置了某些内容，‘你给他们一英寸，他们却创造出一英里’？在网络时代，你给予玩家一英寸，他们便能够在游戏发行后（甚至是发行前）的10秒内创造出1英里范围的内容，这也是我们之前从未遇到过的情况。”

今天仍旧有许多项目延续了“技术自由主义”的理念，即将更多的权利下放到用户手上让他们进行各种创造。硬件便是其一，如售价25美元的计算机Raspberry Pi。如此之低的价格门槛，就是为了让所有用户都能够接触这一设备。它基于Linux系统，甚至连外壳都没有，但是这一设备却能够帮助用户更好地理解什么是电脑——不管是从小板上的芯片还是运行程序来看。最终它也获得了巨大的成功：自从2月份开始接受订单以来，其创造者的目标是在第一年卖出1万台，但是现在他售出的数量却达到了50万台（面向学校，家长以及Spectrum时代的用户）——这真的是一个不可小觑的巨大市场。这一用户群体希望在我们的消费者电子产品越来越美观，越来越难以自定义调整的年代，他们仍可享有一些自主权。

除此之外便是软件了。现在的我们有了关卡编辑工具，也有Unity等3D游戏引擎。后者这种能够免费使用的工具（游戏邦注：但开发者需获得授权才能出售使用该工具制作的游戏），更是让一些复杂的游戏变得更容易接近——至少是从经济层面上看来。但是使用这些工具需要掌握哪些知识呢？Unity中的许多元素都能够在GUI上进行编辑，而不是显示C++的文本窗口；YouTube上有许多介绍Unity使用方法的视频；并且它的辅助社区还能够帮助更多新人进一步学习。

code-hero(from geekosystem.com)

还有就是《Code Hero》（游戏邦注：这款游戏在Kickstarter平台上成功展开大众融资活动，现在还处于测试阶段），玩家将在其游戏过程中学习JavaScript和UnityScript编程，从而去操纵游戏环境。例如玩家可以通过陈述‘转变位置’去抬高一座桥而进入某个新领域。当敌人发动攻击时玩家可以在“破坏”陈述中添加一个规则以攻击所有特定类型的对象，也就是玩家只需要打出一行字便能够清除每种类型的攻击者。这赋予“智能炸弹”全新的定义。

你将能在遍布于关卡中的教程屏幕上看到这些代码片段，你将能从中找到完成创造所需要的内容，但是关键还在于对编程灵活性的运用。例如，通过发出‘转换位置’命令去调整任何相关数值，从而才能移动目标对象。从某种意义上看来，这是一款完全关于利用与开发的游戏。

Primer Labs创始人Alex Peake表示，“我希望教孩子们如何使用Unity”。当2009年10月份Unity开始免费开放时（版本2.6），《Code Hero》便找到了自己的存在目的：“让玩家能够按照自己的想法去编译游戏代码。”的确，游戏以沙盒模式功能支持玩家自由地修改游戏关卡。因为你需要使用Unity去玩《Code Hero》，所以你便可以导出你的关卡对其持续进行改造。

与《小小大星球》一样，《Code Hero》也是使用自己的游戏语言去揭示其内在运作原理，并清楚地告诉玩家他们创建的内容会促成何种结果，同时还允许玩家使用试错法。20世纪80年代，Spectrum用户还只拥有一台简单的计算机以及难以控制的BASIC光标，但是今天他们面对的却是极端复杂的计算机，而《Code Hero》和《小小大星球》所提供的软件环境则能够让他们按照自己所熟悉的方式去玩游戏。

并不是说采用上述任何一种方法你便能够创造出一款完整的游戏。这些方法只是帮助我们更好地理解游戏界面内部的运转，学到了这些知识你便能够应用更多便宜的工具了，例如GameMaker，Valve的Hammer编辑器等等。《Code Hero》等游戏中存在的局限性并不是什么问题。“如果你追求的是特定的绘画风格，那么你是选择圆珠笔还是钢笔就很重要，但不管使用哪种笔你都有可能创造出非常美丽的画面，”Evans说道。“归根结底，这主要与人们获得想法，并坐下来去实践它的过程有关。虽然对他们来说选择哪类工具很重要，但是从大局来看却并非如此了。就拿《小小大星球》来说吧，我们提供给玩家的是圆珠笔，但是却有许多玩家毫无畏惧地选择了钢笔，这一点让我们非常骄傲。”（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）

How To Make A Game: learning through play

The game industry has never been more interactive. Not just in terms of the new frontiers of input methods – from motion controls to breakthroughs in haptic feedback and virtual reality – but the very means by which games are being created and distributed. More than ever, it’s players who are being empowered to become the designers, developers, programmers, artists, and so forth. Games such as Endless Space and Miner Wars are being shaped by online communities during their development. Valve’s Source Filmmaker invites us all to become machinima auteurs, manipulating its character models and telling our own stories with them. Then there’s Gameglobe, which is aiming to become the user-generated content equivalent of YouTube for games.

These creative environments are feeding a powerful desire among players to make and share digital media, which was the sole domain of experienced professionals a few years ago. User-friendly in every sense, such tools are honed to inspire absolute newcomers to get stuck into making games within minutes. Whether they’re powerful and flexible level editors for existing games, such as Bethesda’s Creation Kit for Skyrim, or full game creation tools like GameMaker, they tend to hide great swathes of the complexities of what’s really going on beneath their interfaces in a bid for user empowerment, but usually offer the chance to dig into the code, too.

After a long period in which most games were closed to picking apart and tweaking, then, a new generation of players is growing up with viable avenues  to create and share its own games. “

In a way, we’ve lived in a kind of 20-year lull where stuff was not really hackable or understandable,” says Alex Evans, co-founder of LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule.

“Preceding that, there was the concept of the tinkerer; everything was mechanical, cars were things you were allowed to tinker with – think of Dad in a garage. Then we went through this sort of ’80s and ’90s period where it was all miniaturisation and you can’t touch it.”

LBP players can share objects, aiding creation

Evans, along with his colleagues at Media Molecule, was of the Spectrum and Commodore generation (“Well, I was Spectrum, [Mark Healey] was Commodore”), in which the prime interface to the computer was a programming environment. “That generation where programming was built in and almost assumed, and we kind of missed that.”

That’s what inspired LittleBigPlanet, the series that’s done a huge amount to take the craft of making games to the mass market. It has compressed and condensed the language of design into a simple and inviting set of tools and widgets. Given physical properties, they are often awkward to use, but being so they encourage experimentation and can be powerful for those who engage with their technicalities. “What made LBP special, and there are others now that have done variants [of it]”, explains Evans, “is [we] packaged up the distribution with something accessible. But we’re just one data point, there’s this massive spectrum of ways you can give out the tools.”

Evans’ hope is that we “get to the point where kids in the next generation after us have this expectation of things to be hackable, customisable,” and LBP has proved that we may do so.

“One of the funny things about LBP,” says Evans, “is I expected it to be timid and take time to grow – and it has, virally, in terms of the number of people playing it. But actually, within 24 hours of the beta going out for the first game four or five years ago, it was almost instant that people were making great stuff with it. It was much more rapid than any of us had ever expected, where people just leapt on the potential of it. It’s so terrifyingly fast these days – that’s so exciting. You put something out there, and [you know the expression] ‘You give them an inch, they’ll take a mile’? Well, in the internet age, you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile within ten seconds of launch, or even before launch, and that is something

I’m not quite used to yet.”

Today, there are many other projects that are carrying on the same techno-liberal ethos, hoping to put the power to create in the people’s hands. On one end is hardware, with Raspberry Pi, the $25 computer, at its head. With its low price, it’s designed to be accessible to all (if you can stomach the waiting list). Ready to run Linux and supplied without even a casing, the device is also designed to help its users understand what a computer really is, from the chips on its tiny board to the programs that run on it. It’s turned out to be an enormous success: after opening up orders in February, its founders aimed to ship 10,000 units in its first year, but now expect to send 500,000 to schools, parents and – this is a large proportion of its market, we’ll wager – to aging members of that Spectrum generation. It’s a group hoping to get their hand in again as their consumer electronics get more and more beautiful, and harder and harder to hack.

On the other hand is software itself. There are the level-editing kits, and there are also the likes of 3D game engine Unity. The latter, by the nature of being free to use (though it requires a licence to sell the games built with it), has made making complex games accessible, at least financially. But what about the knowledge required to harness it? Well, many aspects of Unity are editable in a graphical user interface (GUI), rather than a text window for lines of C++; YouTube features many useful video introductions to using Unity; and its helpful community can coach newcomers.

Then there’s Code Hero, which is currently in beta following a successful Kickstarter campaign, has players shooting lines of Javascript and Unityscript to manipulate its environments. You can raise a bridge to access a new area, for instance, using the statement ‘transform.position’. When enemies attack, you can add a rule to ‘destroy’ statements that attacks all objects of a specific type, so you need only type one line to take out each type of attacker. It gives new meaning to ‘smart bomb’.

Code Hero raised $170,954 on Kickstarter in February

You’ll find these snippets of code at tutorial screens dotted around the levels, which give you the ammunition you need to complete them, but the real key is employing the flexibility of programming to, for instance, move any object around by tweaking values associated by that transform.position command. In a sense, it’s a game that’s all about exploits.

“I intend to teach kids how to use this,” Alex Peake, founder of developer Primer Labs, tells us. He explains that when Unity went free to use in October 2009 with version 2.6, Code Hero found its real purpose: “to give people the power to code the game they wish to see”. Indeed, the game features a sandbox mode that gives you free rein to modify the levels. And since you need Unity to play Code Hero, you can export your levels out to it to continue working on them.

Like LittleBigPlanet, Code Hero uses the language of games themselves to reveal their inner workings, showing players unambiguous links between their constructions and the results, and allowing for trial-and-error exploration. While in the 1980s Spectrum users had a simple computer but the inaccessible blink of the BASIC cursor, today they’re faced by the dizzying complexities of the computer, but Code Hero and LBP offer software environments that allow them to play with their workings.

Not that you would expect to make a full game in either, but that’s not really the point. They’re introductions to understanding a little more about what goes on under the surface of games, and there are almost innumerable cheap toolsets you can move up into with that knowledge, including GameMaker, Valve’s Hammer editor and many more. But the limits of the likes of Code Hero aren’t a problem. “It matters if you use a ballpoint pen or a fountain pen for the look of an image, but you can still do amazing stuff with both,” says Evans. “In the end it comes down to someone who’s got an idea and has sat [down] and made it. The tool matters to them, but it doesn’t matter in the bigger picture. Just talking about LBP, I’m so proud that there’s a bunch of people who wouldn’t have dared pick up a fountain pen, but we gave them a ballpoint.”(source:edge)