作者：Leigh Alexander

我们该如何重新解释手机时代的AAA级讲故事技巧？作为北美电玩游戏开发公司Bungie和Wideload的创始人之一，Alex Seropian现在是Industrial Toys的创始人兼首席执行官。而John Scalzi则是从2005年开始撰写科幻小说，并且最近他所创作的《Redshirts》还登上了《纽约时报》畅销书榜。如今，这两个人正致力于为硬核玩家创造手机游戏，并且在他们的游戏中，故事阐述将扮演着非常重要的角色。

一起上大学的Scalzi和Seropian如今都拥有一种想法，即强大的故事内容能够丰富玩家的游戏体验，所以即使作为游戏设计师（而非专业作家），他们也总是将故事阐述作为优先考虑的内容。

Alex Seropian(from edge-online)

然而，游戏中的故事阐述却区别于其它媒体，即这些故事具有交互性而不只是让玩家观看而已，Scalzi说道：“我们希望玩家总是能够积极参与故事中发生的一切。”

许多未接触过游戏制作的人都以为游戏中的故事也就等同于过场动画，即一种线性讲故事方式。对于那些沉浸于游戏内容并希望深入了解某些信息的玩家来说，“自助式”知识数据库便非常有帮助，并且实战对话中还包含了与持续行动相关的一些交付信息。Seropian说道：“使用一些游戏逻辑能够让玩家感受到更加真实的游戏体。”

“神奇时刻”和难忘的场景总是在行动游戏中扮演着非常重要的角色。在《暴雨》中，角色被迫割下自己的手指这一场景总是能够引起玩家的极大兴趣，Seropian表示他总是能够在游戏中对自己做出的任何选择感到满足，尽管是不小心按错了按钮，他解释道：“我从未想过回到之前的内容再次游戏，因为这便是我的故事——而重新游戏只会破坏之前所发生的一切。”

开发者在手机领域所面临的一大挑战便是玩家的用户粘性周期总是较为短暂。Seropian解释道：“也许人们已经习惯于长时间玩游戏了，但是在社交平台上，所有游戏的呈现都非常直接且迅速，而玩家也需要快速采取行动，所以开发者只能在较短的时间内去提高玩家的用户粘性。”

如果只能利用玩家60秒的游戏时间，你该如何做才能将深层次的AAA级体验带到平台上？除此之外，玩家在玩手机游戏时总是有关掉音频的习惯，所以你最好在此舍弃对于音效的依赖。

市场上已经存在着许许多多游戏，并且许多游戏都属于免费游戏。而正是这一点引出了Seropian所说的“应用滥用”行为的出现：玩家总是会随意下载更多应用，并且匆匆尝试后便转向其它应用。

所以手机平台在提供游戏体验方面存在何种优势？首先，几乎人人都拥有一台手机，并且这些手机设备大多都能连网，这让开发者可以频繁地与玩家进行交流。Seropian强调道：“同样地，这些设备都带有一个商店，让我们可以借此将内容直接传达给玩家，在此我们可以感受到低于任何一个平台的用户交流障碍。”

Seropian认为，任何一款游戏都有可能成为“角色扮演游戏”——即根据某些受欢迎的内容包含了一些可靠的角色并且玩家将在游戏中随着时间的发展而不断发展。Scalzi还强调道这一理念将能够应用于任何一种故事中，即在基本的英雄旅程的起点，玩家不一定就已经扮演着英雄的身份，但是最终他们却一定会变成英雄。

这是在一个充满了竞争对手的领域创造出一款能够吸引玩家的游戏的做法，即创造出一个可靠但却不一定突出的角色。Scalzi还说道，问题就在于单是在游戏领域便存在了许多不同的标志性角色了。

John Scalzi(from flickriver)

“这里已经有战争英雄，重甲战士，超级英雄等各种各样的原型，所以每次当你尝试着设计一个角色或者将其带进你的创作中时，你不仅需要确保角色本身的乐趣，你还需要与现有的角色进行竞争，即你的玩家之前所接触过的角色（游戏邦注：他们可能将自己幻想成的任何一个对象）。”

所以设计师该如何做才能在短短的15秒钟内定义角色的个性？他们通过四行简短的对话陈述了角色所具有的特征以及角色与角色之间的关系。Scalzi说道：“我们需要尽早呈现出这些内容。也就是我们最好能在把玩家带进游戏环境时便立刻吸引他们的注意力。”

“D&D方法”便包括使用各种细节和规则去创造一个巨大的发达世界，并依此展开一场战役，就像《指环王》或《权利的游戏》那样。

而其它方法便是先创造一个故事，然后围绕着这一故事去创建世界，并尽量不超出故事范围。

Seropian表示，使用“全面的D&D”方法非常有意义。即当你开始询问自己一些关于创建宇宙的问题时，它将创建一个框架，解决内容表面所涉及的问题。

这同样也能够推动跨媒体生态系统的发展，特别是在支持书籍，视频和应用服务的手机市场中。如果你未能预先设计一个宇宙，到最后你便不得不聘请其它人帮你完成这些内容。

在当前的合作项目中，Seropian和Scalzi暂时撇开了游戏，而涉及一些“类似于书籍”的内容。但是此时要如何做才能将观众带进故事中？Seropian说道：“观众可不只是想凑凑热闹，他们希望能够真正参与其中。”

对于他来说这是对于章节游戏的“重新定义”，而在过去这种方法总是被比作电视节目模型，可以说是一种难以与游戏搭上边的方法。但是从总体来看，这两个人始终都对游戏创造过程充满热情，认为这是一个不断发展的空间，并能在循环迭代的同时吸引更多用户的注意。

Seropian说道：“我们发现任何一款游戏都不会只是一经推出便停滞不前——我们总是会继续去定义游戏，并添加更多新内容和功能，使用各种用户反馈信息去更新游戏。对于我来说这才是如今的章节游戏创造的真谛。”

比起使用论坛等社区工具，一开始便创造出所需要的工具并将其带进应用中才能真正鼓励玩家融入游戏过程中。Seropian说道：“手机是一个诞生于‘杀手应用’交流的平台，所以对于我们来说创建这些工具便是再自然不过的事了。”

（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）

Rich storytelling and ‘the new episodic’ in the mobile space

By Leigh Alexander

How do you re-interpret AAA storytelling techniques for the mobile age? Alex Seropian, formerly of Bungie and Wideload, is now the founder and CEO of Industrial Toys, and John Scalzi has been writing science fiction books since 2005, most recently authoring the New York Times bestseller Redshirts. The pair is now collaborating on mobile games for core audiences, and storytelling will play a significant role.

Scalzi and Seropian — who actually went to college together — now share values around the power of epic storytelling to enrich the lives of gamers, and see it as a priority for game designers even if they are not writers.

However, storytelling in games is, of course, a different proposition than it is in other media where the story is processed through observation versus interactivity: “Players inherently are active participants in what’s going on, and this is important,” says Scalzi.

Many people who don’t make games think the primary vehicle for storytelling in games is the cutscene, a linear form of storytelling. “Self-service” lore databases are good vehicles for players that are engaged and want to read, and combat dialogue involves the delivery of information related to the ongoing action. “Using a little bit of game logic is a cool way to make the experience feel like it’s the player’s own,” says Seropian.

In an action game, “magic moments” and memorable scenes can play strong roles. In Heavy Rain, the scene when the character is being goaded to sever his own finger was interesting to players, to where Seropian felt satisfied by his choice even when he pressed the wrong button by accident: “I never felt like I wanted to go back and replay it, because that was my story — to go back and re-do it would invalidate what had happened,” he explains.

The challenge in the mobile space is that players’ engagement cycles are much shorter. “People may sit and play for a long period of time, but the way people have been trained on these platforms… is that things are very immediate, things start instantly, you get to the action quickly, and you only have a few cycles to get that engagement,” Seropian explains.

How do you translate that AAA, deep experience to a platform when you can only be certain of getting about 60 seconds of someone’s time? Moreover, it’s common for people to play mobile games with the audio off, so it’s best to assume sound isn’t going to help.

Neither is the lush app selection — there are an overwhelming number of games available, many of them free. This fosters what Seropian calls “app promiscuity”: There’s no penalty for downloading a lot of apps and giving each one a quick try before moving on to the next.

So what are some of the strengths of mobile as a platform for rich play? First, everyone has a phone, and today’s devices are always online, giving the developer a constant avenue to communicate with the player. “Similarly, every one of these devices has a store, and has a way to deliver content directly to it, so the friction [of providing] an experience to a customer is the lowest on any platform,” Seropian notes.

In Seropian’s view, any game can be an “RPG,” from the perspective that engaging content contains relatable characters with which the player can grow with over time. Scalzi notes this concept applies to any sort of story, with the basic “hero’s journey” monomyth beginning with a character who doesn’t necessarily begin as heroic, but ends up that way.

This means one way to capture audiences in a crowded field can be to create a character that is relatable but nonetheless stands out. The problem is there are such a wide array of iconic characters existing just in gaming alone, says Scalzi.

“There are the war heroes, the mechs, the superheroes, any sorts of archetypes, and so every time you go to design a character or try to build that into what you’re doing, not only do you have to make that character interesting in his or her own right, but you’re also up against every single character that exists, that your players have played before — every single person they can imagine themselves to be.”

So how can you define personality in 15 seconds? The pair demonstrated how many traits you can glean about characters and the relationship they have by only four lines of short dialogue between two people. “We need to hit these things early and often,” says Scalzi. “You need to draw people in and immediately you give them context.”

The “D&D Method” of world-building involves creating a massive, developed world with a lot of detail and rules, and then running a campaign through it, a la Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.

The other option is to create the story first, and then build the world as such that it accommodates the story but not too much outside of it. Any game on a rail is an example of this, where the only physics of concern are the ones that apply specifically to the necessary moments in that experience.

There are benefits to going “full-on D&D,” says Seropian. When you start asking yourself questions about your universe, it builds a framework that answers a lot of the questions that surface about content.

It also helps with the cross-media ecosystem that naturally is more possible in the mobile market, which supports books, video, and apps that can tie in. Without a universe designed beforehand, you end up needing to recruit others to build out that content.

For their own current collaborative project, the pair is going beyond gaming to add in something that resembles “something like a book.” But how to include the audience in that narrative? “The audience’s expectation is not just to be taken along for the ride, but to be part of the ride,” says Seropian.

To him, this forms a “reinterpretation” of the meaning of episodic games, which used to be conceived as something analogous to the television programming model, an approach that didn’t broadly catch on for games. But as an overall idea, the pair remains interested in viewing the game-making process as an ongoing one that includes the customer in its iterative loop.

“We learn a lot when a game comes out and it doesn’t end there — we continue to refine, add content and features and update the game by using information we’re getting from the customer,” says Seropian. “To me that is really what episodic game-making is about, now.”

Better than community tools like forums, build tools into the app from the beginning to encourage the gamer to take part in the process. “Mobile is a platform that was born out of the ‘killer app’ of communication… so building those kind of tools, for us, was kind of a ‘duh’,” says Seropian.(source:GAMASUTRA)