作者：Zoya Street

问题：

gamesbrief所探讨的一个游戏设计原则就是，不能让玩家输掉游戏，这方面的典型包括《Backbreaker》和《宝石迷阵闪电战》。这也是Twitter和网络上关于“从失败中汲取教训是玩游戏的一个重要组成部分”这一话题中最受争议，评论最多的内容。你将如何适应这一原则，失败究竟是好事还是坏事，你认为免费增值游戏对失败的最佳管理措施是什么？

回答：

Stuart Dredge（The Guardian记者）

从一个玩家角度来讲，如果我知道自己为什么会输，也知道下次该如何避免失败，这就不算什么问题。但如果事实并非如此，那么这种失败就很让人受挫，并且会让游戏迅速丧失吸引力。

也就是说，每款游戏都应该含有一个适合我这种蹩脚玩家的模式（即比简单模式更容易的模式），这应该成为一个行业标准。

Teut Weidemann（育碧在线专家）

失败要取决于不同游戏和游戏类型。在过去两年中，行业出现了一种非失败型游戏潮流，即友善对待玩家（这在MMO游戏中称为“carebear”）。

但这与这个潮流相反的趋势早已出现，全如DayZ拥有永远死亡模式，Xcom也有永远死亡战士。这种趋势回归的原因很简单，因为它还是很受玩家欢迎。

Tadhg Kelly（What Games Are顾问）

我认为Nicholas应该彻底抛弃这个原则。

毫无疑问，许多人都会认为，由玩家造成的失败是游戏中的一个重要组成部分，否则就游戏就会变得毫无意义。游戏中的失败有多种形式，小到无法及时收割庄稼，大到陷入永远死亡状态。

对失败的恐惧感（从游戏开发者角度来看）是导致玩家离开游戏的原因。如果玩家经历太多消极或挫败感，那么他们可能就无法最大化地精通游戏技能。他们也就不会再玩游戏了。在免费增值游戏领域，这意味着他们会一去不返。但我建议笃信这一原理的开发者参照一下赌博行业的做法，并重新审视自己的设计理念。

问题的关键在于这里的失败是由“玩家引起的”。在赌博和体育领域，胜利的吸引力通常是由“只差一点点”的心态而激发出来的，例如差一点就可以抽到好牌，差一点就可以击到球。这是一种只要再准确一点，或者差一点点运气就能获胜的（错觉）心理。也就是说，游戏可以对玩家形成挑战，并让他们失败，但这种失败不可太随意或难以捉摸。在此一定要避免出现不公平的失败现象。

我认为不但免费增值游戏是如此，其他类型的游戏也不例外。

Oscar Clark（Applifier倡导者）

我同意Tadhg的说法，我们应该果断抛弃这个原则。

我认为这个原则起源于大家对数据的误解。

传统硬核游戏通常会以错失战利品，延迟重新开始的时间（游戏邦注：通常是让玩家重玩游戏的时候重复之前的操作）甚至是转变成永久死亡模式来惩罚玩家。

如果把这些技巧运用到休闲或F2P游戏中，我们就会看到游戏流失大批玩家。玩家并非因失败而离开，而是因为我们对他们惩罚过甚，但却没有提供足够的吸引力。游戏应设置富有意义的风险和奖励，而如果失败的代价太大了，玩家就会选择离开。

我质疑失败机率是激发玩家体验游戏的一个重要动机，但认为游戏可以采用多种失败形式，并通过游戏生命周期进行升级。无论如何，我们都不应该在游戏过程中过分惩罚玩家，并且应该尽快将他们召回游戏，这样才能激励他们继续解开谜题。

不过我并不是很确定该不该参照赌博机制，我们确实应该让玩家根据自己的过失大小来决定惩罚的严重程度。对我来说，这方面的典型就是《CSR Racing》。我玩了一段时间后发现自己不会太在意比赛，我不再将游戏视为一个赛车游戏，而是把宝押在挑战难度上，以便最大化自己每一回合的收益。

在此我用了“押注”来打比方，但这里并不是指赌博意义上的押注。我认为自己是在玩游戏过程中努力适应可预测的情形，以及自己所犯下的失误。这增加了游戏的可玩性，但有趣的是我也因此不再为游戏花钱了。

Mark Sorrell（Hide & Seek开发者）

我当然认为失败并无不妥，也同意这是一个糟糕的原则。失败感完全取决于失败过程，《愤怒的小鸟》当中也有失败，而这种失败却是可以接受的。

我最近正在玩《迈阿密热线》，它同休闲游戏差距甚大，涉及许多杀戮、死亡元素。每一次我都会比前一次有所进步。

游戏具有学习元素，你会从失败中汲取经验教训。移除了失败元素也等于是删减了一些“游戏”元素。失败从某些角度来看不无好处——例如经验值逐渐上升，从而让玩家更轻松地应对一些挑战。

但奇怪的是，我却排斥硬核游戏中的失败感。当我玩《蝙蝠侠》游戏时并死亡时，我总会很抓狂。要知道我在游戏中就是蝙蝠侠，蝙蝠侠是英雄，不应该这么容易挂掉，詹姆斯邦德也不例外。在这些情况下，我不喜欢失败，因为我是蝙蝠侠，我当然希望自己能赢，不想失败或死亡。失败当然也可以很酷，但却很有风险，因为这并不是我追求的目标。

Andy Payne（Mastertronic创始人）

我不认同这个原则。

如果要调整这个原则，我想我们必须明确为何玩家会失败。即使游戏可以向玩家展示事后分析结果，也该让玩家事先就知道一些情况。

所以要通过升级技能和经验水平来调整这一原则（玩家游戏时间越久，就越需要这些技能和经验）。

失败并非坏事，它是学习过程中的一部分，持续成功或者所有人都会赢则是很荒唐和恶劣的情况。

对我来说，免费增值游戏的关键是确保玩家拥有玩游戏的理由。例如，对竞争型玩家而言，成就感和向好友炫耀就是主要的游戏动力。那么这类免费增值游戏就应该为玩家提供这种条件。另外平衡感也很重要，不只在游戏中如此，在生活中也不例外。

Stuart Dredge（The Guardian记者）

失败也是一个叙事时刻（例如在《无尽之剑》刚开始时玩家被杀死的时候），这可以用于塑造故事，标注你的游戏进程，而不只是让你抓狂。

我喜欢这种理念“你的第一场战斗总是失败并死亡，而这正是故事的开端……”

Rob Fahey

行业中似乎对失败是游戏玩家的重要组成部分这一点达成了共识，但开发者需注意失败元素的用法，以及失败对玩家的惩罚。

简而言之，失败应该是一个更大“循环”中的一个环节，它应该是一个持续过程（游戏邦注：例如进步、学习或前进过程）中的一部分，而不仅仅是让玩家碰壁。应该明确，如果玩家失败了，他们究竟是受到挫败感或遭遇惩罚，还是自己思考“没事，下次我就知道该怎么做了，我已经汲取教训，我想再试一次”？

我认为免费增值游戏在对待玩家失败这一点上应该比传统游戏更为谨慎。《暗黑之魂》或《Ninja Gaiden》之类会经常让玩家经常失败（这是一个比较缓慢而曲折的学习过程）的游戏，不会为此受到太大影响，因为玩家已经付费买下游戏。铁杆硬核游戏玩家会为拥护这种游戏，但我们却不知道究竟有多少人因为几次碰壁而最终将游戏束之高阁，转向其他更轻松的娱乐内容。如果是在免费增值游戏领域，发生这种情况则必然会流失用户。

也许可以采用一种更有意义的规则——如果玩家失败了，必须让他们觉得这种结果是公平的，让他们觉得自己有所收获，学到了一些经验或获得一些东西。

Martin Darby（Remode首席运营官）

我的看法是如果游戏没有失败，那就不能叫游戏了。至于游戏如何呈现/执行失败则是另一个问题。事实上，我认为无论是哪种题材、主题的游戏，失败都是其独特体验的主要元素。例如多数AAA游戏似乎都有一条不成文的规矩，单人模式战役时间为10-15小时，而我每次完成这种战役时可能要花30小时以上的时间，因为有半数时间我都是在重复自己死亡时未完成的事情。《生化危机5》就是一个典型。但在《宝石迷阵》这类游戏中，你也仍然会遭遇失败，但这种失败来去自如。它对玩家的奖励多于惩罚，玩家可以重返游戏并快速忘掉上一次的经历。萝卜青菜各有所爱，但这两种游戏都有失败元素，因此都属于游戏。

Andrew Smith（Spilt Milk Studio开发者）

我的看法就是，游戏不可让玩家产生自己不能赢的感觉，或者说，游戏不能让玩家感觉自己必定失败，又或者，游戏不能让玩家觉得这种失败并不公平，游戏不能让玩家需要反复尝试才能获得成功。（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）

[Gamesbriefers] Failure is definitely an option

Zoya Street

Tweet  Question:

One of the GAMESbrief design rules is that players must not fail, using examples such as Backbreaker and Bejewelled Blitz. It has also been one of the more controversial, with comments via Twitter and the web saying that learning from failure is an important part of playing games. How would you adapt the rule, is failure good or bad, and what is your recommended best practice for managing failure in a free-to-play game?

Answers:

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

Speaking as a player really: failure where I know why I failed, and (think) I know how not to fail next time isn’t a problem at all. When that’s not the case, it’s just frustration, and kills a game very quickly.

That said, every game should come with a ‘Dad Mode’ for lapsed gamers like me, which is easier than easy mode. This needs to become an industry standard.

Teut Weidemann Online Specialist at Ubisoft

Failure depends on the game and genre. In the past couple of years there has been the trend of no-failure games: being nice to the user, or ‘carebear’ as they call it in MMOs.

But the anti-trend has startetd already: DayZ has perma-death, and XCom has perma-death soldiers. It’s coming back. And you know what? People love it!

Tadhg Kelly Consultant at What Games Are

I think this is a rule that you should dump entirely, Nicholas.

As many others will no doubt say, player-caused failure is an important part of games because without it a game feels purposeless. It comes in many forms, from the mild frustration of failing to collect your crops in a timely fashion to large-scale failures like permanent death.

The fear of failure (from a game maker’s perspective) is that it drives users away. If they experience too much negativity or frustration then they have probably reached their maximum mastery in the game. So they won’t play any more, and – in f2p circles – this means they won’t pay any more. I would advise anyone who has convinced themselves of this particular rationale take one look at the gambling industry and revise that assessment.

The key is “player-caused”. In gambling and sports the attraction of winning is often fuelled by the perception of the near-miss, the poker hand that could have been played better, the ball that could have been struck better. It’s the (sometimes illusory) sense that things could have been improved with only a tweak or a better move or a bit of luck. This means it’s good to challenge the player and have them fail, but not to arbitrarily or obliquely fail. The perception of unfair failure is the real enemy.

I see no difference in f2p games versus any other in this respect.

Oscar Clark Evangelist at Applifier

I agree with Tadhg… This rule needs to be dropped into a pit of no return.

I believe it comes from a misunderstanding of the data.

Traditional Hardcore games have a tendency to punish players for failure with a loss of loot, delay to restart (often at the beginning forcing you to repeat actions) or worse still some variation on Perma-Death.

When these techniques are applied cold to a casual or F2P game we see a huge drop out of players. Not because there is a failure, but because we punished the players more that they were engaged with the game. Risk and reward have to be meaningful and if the failure is too taxing, players will churn.

I argue that the possibility of failure is an important motivation in play but that it can take many forms and be graduated throughout the lifecycle of the game. However, we should not overly punish players in the process and should get them back into play as quickly as possible so that they can engage with solving that playing puzzle caught them out.

Although I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable that gambling is the best analogy, we do need to put the responsibility for the degree of punishment into the hands of the player themselves. For me the example of CSR Racing comes to mind. After a period of play I realised that I no longer particularly cared about the races themselves, indeed I stopped seeing that game as a racing game. Instead I was choosing to ‘bet’ my fuel against the difficulty of the available challenges in order to maximise my revenue from each tank full.

I know I used the term bet, but this isn’t meant in the gambling sense. I think a better view is that I am playing game theory seeking to adapt to predictable circumstances and where my failures were of my own making. This made the game all the more worthwhile playing (although interestingly that also meant I had stopped paying).

Mark Sorrell Developer at Hide & Seek

I’d definitely on the side of failure being fine, and agree this is a bad rule. Failure’s feelings depend entirely on how it’s done. Angry Birds absolutely has failure and that seems to have done ok.

I’m currently playing Hotline Miami, and while it’s a million miles from casual, it’s as much about death as it is about killing, and all the better for it. Every time better. And look at Skate’s bails for making failure fun. Ha ha, my man is all mashed up! Ha ha!

Games are about learning and you learn from your failures. Removing failure is also removing some ‘game’. Failing can be of benefit in other ways – XP gradually creeping up to make the challenge easier for example. Ahh hell, Oscar and Tadhg have nailed this already.

Oddly, it’s more in the hardcore arena that I object to failure. When I play a Batman game, and I die, I am always annoyed. I’m Batman, goddamn it, Batman doesn’t die. Likewise James Bond etc. In these cases, I dislike failure, as I’m the goddamn Batman. I want to succeed for sure, and my skill, my coolness, should be the barometer I measure myself against. Not failure or death. Fail to be cool, that’s what should be at risk, not my objectives.

Andy Payne Founder of Mastertronic

This rule is not one I agree with.

In terms of adapting the rule, I always think it should be clear why you have failed. Even a post mortem style rerun can help. But players must be allowed to fail all be it early doors in a game it is nice to get a gentle lead in!

So adapt the rule by allowing there to be a graded skill and experience level that is needed which just gets more demanding the more you play.

Failure is not bad. It is all part of the learning process, indeed continual success or a scenario where everyone wins all the time is just rubbish and thus bad.

I a free to play game, the key for me is ensuring that players have a reason to play. Achievements and bragging to friends drive the primeval need in all of us competitive types. This F2P games should ensure that they allow this. Balance is essential not just in games but in life.

Stuart Dredge Journalist at The Guardian

Oh, also, failure as a narrative moment – e.g. the bit right at the start of Infinity Blade where the big fella kills you (and again every time he does it) – something used to build the story and mark your progress, rather than frustrate you

I like the idea of that though: ‘Your first fight, you’ll ALWAYS lose and die. And this is what sets up the narrative…’

Rob Fahey

There seems to be an interesting consensus emerging that failure is an important part of gameplay (in any form of game, F2P or otherwise), but that developers need to be very careful about how failure is used, and how players who fail are treated.

In short, failure must be part of a larger “loop”; it must feel like part of an ongoing process (of improvement, of learning, of moving forward in some way) rather than simply hitting a brick wall. If I fail in some way, do I end up feeling frustrated and punished; or do I think, “okay, I know what to do next time, I’ve learned something and I want to try again”?

I think F2P games do need to be more careful about how they treat failure than traditional games. A game like Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden, which force you to fail often (as part of a learning process, but a slow, often tortuous one), can get away with it because the player has already paid up. Dedicated “core” gamers sing their praises, but we’ll never know how many people hit a few brick walls and end up dumping the game on the “I’ll get around to it some day” pile in favour of more pliable pleasures. With an F2P game, if that happens, you’ve just lost your customer.

Perhaps, then, there’s a more nuanced version of this rule that makes more sense – if I fail, it must feel fair, and I must feel like I’ve achieved something anyway, whether that’s learning something or gaining something (I’m thinking of old shmups like Radiant Silvergun where you accumulated XP and improved your weapons each time you played, so dying still gave you a sense of progress).

Martin Darby COO at Remode

My opinion is that a game is not really a game unless you can fail. However how that is presented & implemented is a completely separate issue. In fact I think you could go as far as to call it one of the core pillars of what differentiates game experiences irrespective of genre, theme etc. For example in most AAA games there seems to be an unwritten rule that a solid single player campaign is 10-15 hours, however whenever I play one to completion I probably sink more like 30 as I spend half the time re-doing bits where I died! Resident Evil 5 was a classic example. However in something like Bejewelled you still have failure but it’s easy come easy go. More carrot, less stick: the failure isn’t reinforced in the same way and the player gets back into a new experience that makes them forget the previous one faster. The reality is that some people are going to prefer one and some people are going to prefer the other but both have failure and therefore both are games.

This probably touches on a very interesting wider point to do with how you could cognitively profile game players in certain market segments, but saying players shouldn’t be able to fail is way too broad brush.

Andrew Smith Developer at Spilt Milk Studio

I’m ill, so this is going to be short:

Players must never feel like they cannot succeed.

And/Or

Players must never feel like failure is unavoidable.

And/Or

Failure should always feel fair.

And/Or

Success should never feel more than one try (or one play?) away.（source：gamesbrief）