游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

同孩子一起玩能够帮助我们创造出更棒的游戏

发布时间:2012-11-24 11:16:33 Tags:,,,,

作者:Kyle Kulyk

在从中介业向游戏产业转变的过程中,我遇到了一件很有趣的事。有人跟我说,当你变成父母时,一切都将发生改变。当朋友在跟我描述这种感受时脸上总是会出现若有所思的神情,就好似在阐述着一则神话故事。

那时的我还不能理解这种感受。

直到几年后,当我也有了自己的孩子时,我终于理解了为什么他们不能明确地陈述出这种感受(只能说一切都发生了改变),因为这实在妙不可言。就像现在的我也只想微笑地跟别人说“终有一天你也能拥有这种感受。”

在未拥有自己的小孩前,每次面对别人的小孩只会让我感到尴尬与不舒服。我根本不知道如何与各种年龄层的小孩相处或交流。

而现在在面对自己的小孩时,我便完全忘记了之前的别扭感,可以说是孩子们重新打开了我们对于“乐趣”的看法。我希望这一理念能够有效地启发开发者进行游戏创造。

当20岁或30岁的我们在玩电子游戏时,其实已经失去了孩童时期对于游戏乐趣的那种渴望。这时候的电子游戏对于我来说便是一种角色扮演,或彼此竞争,而如果你在三年前问我为什么觉得电子游戏有趣时,我可能还会结合某些元素进行描述,但是随着时间的流逝,我似乎也已经遗忘了这些元素。也许不是遗忘,只是忽视了。

尽管角色扮演和竞争性是游戏能够长久吸引玩家的主要元素,但是我认为我们更应该搞清楚电子游戏的乐趣到底在哪里。陪伴着孩子成长与游戏则能帮助我记起孩童时期玩电子游戏的动机以及是什么因素让我再次回到游戏中。这是一种学习过程,并且当你最终掌握了一款具有挑战性的游戏时,你便会产生满满的成就感。

婴儿总是喜欢各种模型。没有什么比起脸和模型更能吸引他们的注意力。随着年龄的增长,他们对于模型的喜好更是只增不减。我们总是会发现周围存在着各种模型,甚至是某些表面看不出来是模型的物体。当看到云的形状时,我们便会在脑中筛选各种能够与之相对应的字母或数字。

当我儿子在玩木制拼图时,他会先打乱所有模块,创造出一种杂乱的局面后开始想办法恢复它。在察觉到这种方式不再具有挑战性或发觉游戏不再具有乐趣前,他都会一直使用这种方法。随后他将会移向下一种挑战,这便是他一整天除了睡觉和用餐的全部消遣。

我认为主要有2种元素引导着我们回到一款优秀的电子游戏:模式识别元素和挑战。当我开始玩电子游戏时,我是以孩童的心态去享受游戏,而现在我们所面对的游戏都具有自己的模式识别元素,以及不断提升难度的关卡。

只有当我完全精通游戏,也就是游戏变得不再有挑战性或者游戏的难度让我越发沮丧,甚至完全感受不到乐趣时,我才会停止游戏。这与初学走路的孩童心态是一样的;当任务非常困难时他们会觉得很有趣,但是但任务趋于简单化,这种乐趣也就会逐渐消失。

Space Ace(from console-arcade)

Space Ace(from console-arcade)

我记得在童年时期,我曾经花费了大量时间在玩《Space Ace》(比起其它街机游戏)。《Space Ace》是基于《屠龙者》的卡通类光盘游戏。屏幕上将出现一系列事件,而各种视觉线索则标志着玩家的移动,并且随着游戏的发展游戏也将变得更具挑战性。

在接受策略引导前精通这类型游戏需要玩家采取试错法,或拥有良好的记忆力和大把的时间。在获得胜利前我真的非常喜欢这款游戏。但是在我摸清楚游戏模式后,我便会转向了下一款游戏,并偶尔进入游戏感受其他孩子的钦佩。

不管是需要投入时间的街机打斗类游戏还是涉及策略的在线射击游戏,一旦你精通了游戏,它便只是关于某种识别模式的游戏,并且你可以使用这种模式去定义游戏规则。而我们团队在开发第一款游戏时便未能有效地做到这一点。

尽管游戏中每个关卡都是独特的,但是游戏挑战以及获胜模式却过于死板。在测试中,我们的玩家虽然喜欢游戏,但是我们却不清楚“他们对游戏的喜爱会持续多久?”

这是我们为了吸引更广泛的用户所做出的选择,但是我却认为这一选择不会给予我们太大的帮助。但是当我们意识到这一点并使用各种不同的方法去更新游戏时,机会之窗已经悄然关闭了。我希望通过提及这一点去鼓励其他开发者从不同的角度看待自己的产品。

与2岁半的小孩一起玩游戏也能帮助我重新思考游戏的控制机制。我的儿子总是会拿起控制器对我说“爸爸,这是Sack-boy(游戏邦注:《小小大星球》里面的麻布仔)吗?”但是现在,PlayStation 3控制器和《小小大星球》都已经逐渐离他远去了。当我与他一起玩《愤怒的小鸟》时,他总是能在几秒钟内便击中绿猪,并深深陷入游戏乐趣中。

digitchase(from gamasutra)

digitchase(from gamasutra)

这与在PlayStation Vita上玩“Digit Chase”是一样效果,即用户需要按顺序在屏幕上敲打数字。触屏输入具有明显的直觉性,甚至是孩子们也能快速领悟这种设置,但是手机游戏开发者却总是试图在这类型游戏中添加控制器。

我并不是说现代游戏控制器有什么不对,而是我认为控制器必须具有直观性。也不是说必须让孩童觉得控制器有多简单,而是能够确保基本控制足够直接明了。这是通过开发第一款游戏以及观看我的儿子玩游戏时所吸取的经验教训。因为设置了各种控制游戏的方法并不等于你可以随意添加各种内容。而做到这一点真的一点都不困难。

多亏了与儿子一起游戏,我能再次找回最初的游戏动机,并真正理解游戏的乐趣。这并不是关于简化游戏本身,而是识别其真正的内在,我们之所以不断地探索各种模式并寻求挑战便是因为这是帮助我们学习的主要方式。

这并不是关于创造控制那么简单,如果你能站在从未玩过游戏的用户立场上进行设想,并思考在游戏变得更具挑战前你的控制是否会让玩家感到疑惑,或者他们是否能够自在地使用这一控制方式等都将为你的游戏创造带来巨大的帮助。

玩家总是很容易忽视那些构成现代游戏的最基本的游戏机制,特别是资深玩家。而与孩子们一起游戏则能帮助我意识到这一点,所以我希望能够继续与他们一起游戏,并从中学到更多对我的创作有帮助的内容。

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

Opinion: Playing with my kids helps me make better games

By Kyle Kulyk

A funny thing happened to me smack in the middle of my transition from the brokerage industry to the games industry. People tell you how everything changes when you become a parent. Friends of mine tried to explain the feeling, their eyes taking on a bit of a faraway look as if they were describing an unnatural love of unicorns or some sort of mythical being while I smiled and said “Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”

I often joked that agents would slip into parents’ houses at night and pump them full of endorphins while they slept because it was the only way to describe the wonder I saw in those faces at the arrival of those little, pooping, screaming, sleep deprivation units. “Everything changes,” they’d tell me and I’d nod without a shred of comprehension.

Then after years of difficulties, it finally happened to my wife and I, and I got it. I understood why so many I knew couldn’t really put the experience into words aside from the fact that everything changes and that it’s wonderful. I don’t even bother to describe the experience to people without children now, other than to offer a genuine smile and say “Hopefully, you’ll understand one day.”

I was never around children from the time I left home until nearly 20 years later when I had kids of my own. When I was faced with other people’s children, I often found the experience awkward and a bit uncomfortable. I had no idea how to relate to kids of any age or how to interact with them.

Now with children of my own I can hardly remember a time where I didn’t know how to play with children, and in return my kids have opened my eyes to why we find certain things “fun.” I hope I can describe this idea in a way that could prove useful to aspiring developers.

Playing video games in my twenties and thirties, I think I lost some of the understanding of why I found games fun to play when I was a kid. Video games to me were about roleplaying or they were about competition, and if you had asked me why video games were fun even three years ago, I probably would have described some combination of those two factors, but over the years I’d forgotten something. Perhaps not forgotten so much as overlooked.

While roleplay and competition can be factors in why games are appealing long term I think what makes video games fun is much more fundamental to the way we learn. Watching my children grow and play has helped me remember what drew me to video games as a child and what still keeps me coming back now. It has to do with learning and the feeling of accomplishment when you finally master a challenging game.

From a very early age, babies love patterns. Nothing quite locks an infant’s gaze like faces and patterns. As they get older, it doesn’t stop. We find patterns all around us all the time even when confronted with something that doesn’t seemingly have a pattern. We see shapes in clouds and we instantly look for some sort of familiar arrangement in a jumble of letters or numbers.

I watched my son stare at a wooden puzzle, then progress to dumping the pieces and creating chaos only to then restore order. He would continue to play in this manner until eventually it’s no longer challenging to solve that particular puzzle and suddenly that toy is forgotten for good (or until his little sister picks up a piece). He moves onto the next challenge, and that’s his day with the exception of naps and meal time.

To me, right there I see two fundamental pieces of what keeps us coming back to a good video game. One factor is some sort of pattern recognition mechanic and the other is a challenge. When I started looking at the video games I enjoyed as a kid and that I enjoyed now, they all have, at their core, some sort of pattern recognition element, and they all had increasing levels of difficulty.

I’d play until I either mastered the game and it became too easy or until the difficulty became such that I grew frustrated and no longer found the experience entertaining. I see the same behaviors in the way my toddler plays. It’s fun unless the task is too difficult, and it’s fun until the task becomes too easy.

When I was a kid, I remember spending quite a bit of time on Space Ace, among others games at my local arcade. Space Ace was a cartoon, laser disk-based game along the lines of Dragon Slayer. A series of events would play out on the screen, and a visual cue would signal the move to make, with the timing becoming more challenging as the game progressed.

Mastering a game like this in a time before strategy guides and the internet took trial and error, a good memory, and a pocketful of quarters. I loved that game. That was, until I beat it. Shortly after I memorized the patterns, I moved onto the next game, only occasionally popping in a quarter to feel important when throngs of kids who would gather when they’d see “that kid who can beat Space Ace” start a new game.

Whether it’s timing involved in arcade fighting games or if it’s strategy in an on-line shooter, when you break it down, video games are all about recognizing patterns and using them within the confines of the game’s rules. It’s an understanding of game development that in retrospect I feel I poorly implemented in the first game my team released in our efforts to appeal to a wider audience.

Each level of the game was unique, but the challenge of the game, the pattern required to win, didn’t vary enough. Looking back at the testing, our players enjoyed the game, but the question we didn’t ask was “for how long will they enjoy it?”

It’s a choice we made in the interest of appealing to a broader base, but I think this choice didn’t do us any favors. By the time we realized this and updated the title with different ways to play, our window of opportunity had already closed. It’s something that seems so basic a notion in hindsight, but hopefully by bringing this up I can encourage other new developers to take a look at their product differently.

Playing games with a two-and-a-half year old also helped me rethink control schemes as well. My son loves to pick up a controller and ask “Sack-boy, Daddy?,” but a Playstation 3 controller and LittleBigPlanet is a bit beyond him currently. However, I sat him down with Angry Birds – Star Wars, and within seconds he was flinging birds at piggies and loving it.

The same goes playing “Digit Chase” on the Playstation Vita, a quick demo that has users tapping numbers on the screen in sequence. There’s something undeniably intuitive about touch screen input as illustrated by how quickly children take to them, but often mobile developers try to shoehorn controller type controls into their mobile games.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with modern game controllers, but controls needs to be intuitive. That doesn’t mean they have to be toddler approved simple, I just think the basic controls should be straightforward. This was a lesson we learned developing our first game and reaffirmed by watching my son play. Just because you have a variety of ways to control your game doesn’t mean you should just throw everything in because you can. It’s tempting to do. I know because I did it.

I can thank the time I spend playing with my little guy for bringing me back to the basics and helping understand why we find games fun. It’s not about simplifying the games themselves, but it’s recognizing that under everything, we’re always searching for patterns and looking to challenge ourselves, because that’s how we learn.

It’s not about making controls dead simple, but it couldn’t hurt to imagine a scenario where your game is being played by a gamer who’s never gamed before. Will your controls confuse or will they help the player become comfortable before becoming challenging?

It’s easy to lose focus on basic gameplay mechanics underneath everything else that makes up modern gaming, especially for experienced gamers. Watching children play and learn helped me realize this, and I look forward to gaming with both my kids for years to come, and I look forward to what they have to teach me.(source:gamasutra)


上一篇:

下一篇: