作者：jeffinberlin

在Spielwiese，我们的每周测试小组是面向公众开放，所以不管是游戏测试者还是设计师，任何人都可以参加，我们也从中看到了各种各样的原型。有些新进设计师提出了一些具有创造性的新理念，并因此启发了我们的核心小组。通常情况下，“新进”设计师对游戏已经拥有了一些不同的看法，但是他们却不一定发现了自己的这种“创造性”。

所以我会建议这些设计师去“玩别人的游戏。我们的身边总是堆叠着各种类型的游戏。如果你并未拥有一个稳定的游戏小组去尝试这些游戏，那就上网去了解它们，或者观看视频评论去掌握这些游戏开发者所使用的方法。”

我所了解的许多游戏设计师都采用相类似的方法。但是也有一个较为突出的设计师持反对意见。

Reiner Knizia，作为游戏产业中最多产的游戏设计师之一，他不仅一次表明了自己从未玩过其他设计师的游戏的事实。显然，一大原因便是他自己便拥有许多可以进行测试的原型，并且他需要投入大量时间去推广自己的设计，所以没有多余时间去玩别人的游戏。从这方面来看是可以理解的。但是Knizia也表示这么做给自己带来了一个优势，就像他在采访中所说的：

“对我来说不了解其它游戏是一个很大的竞争优势。我知道，许多游戏设计师不能有效地克制自己而去玩别人的游戏。当然了，这是一种娱乐消遣。但是如此他们的任何行动便会遭到其他设计师的理念的影响。我相信，人类大脑的进化并不能完全控制游戏设计：设计师们需要在设计过程中做出大大小小的决策，明确如何处理或解决各种棘手的游戏情境。如今，人类的大脑已经进化到能够从经验中吸取教训。而在游戏设计中，这便意味着如果你知道其他设计师在面对相同情境所使用的解决方法，那么你的大脑便会自然地采纳这一方法。而如果我不知道任何解决方法，我的大脑便能够自由地创造属于自己的方法。”

我能理解他的想法，但是我却不能认同他的断言（即使这适用于他自己的工作中），我认为这种评价对于他的竞争者来说太过谦卑了。

受任何可能事物的启发和挑战

首先，观看并尝试其他设计师的游戏能够让我们明确各种可能性。如果工程师从未看过飞机起飞，他们又该如何创建火箭？而对于创新者来说，看看之前人们所做的是一种启发，而非限制。

此外，我不能想象禁止年轻的作者阅读别人的书籍，或者年轻的画家踏进博物馆或画廊会是何种情况。书籍能够启发新一代的作者，而博物馆能够带给新生艺术家更多灵感。

当然了，在游戏设计领域中玩别人的游戏将诱惑设计师去使用其它游戏中的机制，但是真正优秀的设计师总能将利用竞争者的理念当成一种挑战，并且会设立特有的原则去发挥自己的创造性。

顺便一提的是，创造性是一种相对的术语，它通常意味着“为现有的元素找到全新使用方法”—-特别是在桌面游戏设计中。

Lord of the Rings The Confrontation(from tcgplayer)

当然了，Knizia也曾使用过早前游戏的机制。因为他不再有时间去玩最新的游戏—-尽管早前的游戏机制有点过时了。例如他的《魔戒圣战：冲突》便很明显是建立在《西洋陆军棋》的基础上。而他的双人玩家游戏《Carcassone: The City》也是基于Klaus Jürgen-Wrede旗下著名的游戏品牌。《Blue Moon》是受到纸牌收集类游戏的启发，如《万智牌》。他在自己的网站上宣称，希望借由《Pickomino》创造出比《Yahtzee》更棒的游戏，同时他也提到想要更新《Monopoly》。

我个人很欣赏Knizia对于现有机制的创造性使用，我也相信很多人都希望看到更多的这种创造。就像有谁会不愿意看到他对于大热的“桥牌建造”机制的创新？

但是不幸的是，在过去几年里Knizia一直在从自己身上挖掘内容（而不是他人的作品中）。限制自己只能玩自己的游戏将不利于设计师的创造性发展。他向我们呈现出了基于自己大受欢迎的机制能够衍生出各种主题，但是我们却发现这种变量最多不会超过6种，就像他在1999年于《Lost Cities》中第一次使用的“纸牌提升次序或递减次序”。最近，当他宣称将推出一款以《霍比特人》为主题的“全新”纸牌游戏时，我们不用想也知道它便是2001年的《指环王》的新版再现。

Knizia最近所推出的内容证明了避免其他人的游戏并不是保持大脑自由的有效方法，也不利于推动创造性方法的诞生。

避免别人所做过的

Reiner Knizia在采访中曾说过：“我知道有许多人一直想尽办法希望在我拥有某一想法前‘窃取’它们。”

几年前当Knizia于某一大会上呈现出他的新游戏原型时，便有一名游戏测试者表示该原型与自己几年前所测试的一款游戏极为相似。这款游戏便是《Qwirkle》，而Knizia也意识到自己花了大量时间而创造出别人已经尝试过的内容（游戏邦住：并且后者即将获得“Spiel des Jahres”奖）。

为了不破坏自己的信用，他联系了《Qwirkle》的设计师Susan McKinley Ross，但是他却并未表示与Susan展开合作，而是将游戏当成是单独的设计进行销售。此外，《Big Five》还是在《Qwirkle》获得奖项的那年所发行。从他在某次访问中的回答我们可以清楚他的观点：在落实行动前他便想出了游戏理念，而《Qwirkle》只是其中一款“窃取”了该理念的游戏。

似乎，Knizia的游戏设计和销售策略非常适合他的创作。我并不喜欢在玩游戏时旁边有人指指点点，告诉我该如何玩。也没有其他设计师有权利告诉Knizia该如何运行他的业务。他已经拥有很棒的事业，在我眼中，他所创造的许多游戏（即使是10年以前）都堪称经典。

尽管如此，我并不同意他所说的避开其他设计师的游戏的观点，很显然他也并未完全做到这一点。此外，他后来的一些设计也缺少了其竞争者所具有的创造性，这是他需要注意的。

最后，我想说的是游戏设计归根到底就是一种纪律。设计师可以受到各种优秀事物的启发，不管是渗透于我们日常生活和历史中的主题和机制，还是前人的创造性。我们都需要灵感，但是真正优秀的设计师是那些能够专注于灵感，并略过简单的答案而在现有的创造性领域中寻找新方法的人。

（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）

Should Game Designers Play Other Designers’ Games?

By jeffinberlin

Because our weekly playtesting group at the Spielwiese is open to anyone to participate, either as a playtester or designer, we see all kinds of prototypes.  Some new designers bring fresh and innovative ideas that challenge and inspire our core group.  More often than not, however, the “new” designs are only slight variations of games that already exist.  And more often than not, the designers have no idea that their “inventions” have existed for some time.

My advice to every one of them: ”Play other people’s games.  Lots of them.  Look at the shelves around us piled high with over a thousand games of every kind, and tell me how many of these you have played.  And if you do not have regular gaming groups to try out many of them, read about them online or watch video reviews in order to get an idea of what has already been done.”

Most game designers I know have the same approach. There is one very prominent designer, however, who disagrees.

Reiner Knizia, one of the most prolific game designers in the business, has revealed more than once that he does not play other designer’s games.  And one reason, of course, is that with so many of his own prototypes to playtest and all the time needed to market his designs, he simply has no time left over for “regular” game nights.  That part is perfectly understandable.  However, Knizia goes further in claiming that this gives him an advantage, as quoted in this interview:

“Not knowing many other games is a big competitive advantage for me. Other game designers obviously cannot contain themselves and play many other games, claiming that this is important for market research. Of course it is mainly for entertainment! By doing so, they spoil themselves with other people’s ideas. I believe that the evolution of the human brain is not entirely geared towards game design: the design process requires a lot of decisions, small ones as well and big ones, how to handle and how to solve many of the tricky game situations. Now, the human brain has evolved to learn from experience. In game design this means that if you already know the solution another designer has applied to a similar feature, the brain irresistibly meanders towards this solution. As I do not know these solutions, my brain is free to develop my own innovative ideas…”

I understand where he is coming from, but I disagree with his assertions—even when it applies to his own work—and I find his comments more than a little condescending toward his competitors.

Inspired and Challenged by What is Possible

First of all, seeing and experiencing games from other designers gives us the opportunity to see what is possible. Would engineers have built rockets if they had not first seen airplanes take flight? For innovators, seeing what has been done before is inspiring, not limiting.

Furthermore, I cannot imagine advising young authors not to read anyone else’s books, or young painters not to ever set foot in a museum or gallery. Books inspire a new generation of writers, just as museums inspire a new generation of artists.

Certainly, the temptation exists in game design to re-use mechanisms from other games, but the best designers use the best work of their competitors as a challenge, and they have the discipline to innovate in their own work.

Innovation, by the way, is always a relative term, and it often means “finding new uses for existing elements”—especially in boardgame design.

And Knizia unsurprisingly borrows from earlier game mechanisms too.  Because he no longer has the time to play the latest games, however, these mechanisms are sometimes quite a bit older. Take his Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, for example, which clearly builds on the classic Stratego. And what about Carcassone: The City, his own 2-player variation on that popular brand innovated by Klaus Jürgen-Wrede?  Blue Moon was inspired by Collectible Card Games like Magic: The Gathering, and Fits is a clever boardgame adaptation of the PC hit Tetris. He claims in a lecture on his own website that Pickomino was his own attempt to make a “better Yahtzee,”  and in the same lecture, he speaks of wanting to update Monopoly as well.

I personally enjoy Knizia’s original takes on existing mechanisms, and I’m sure I would not be alone in welcoming more of that. Who would not want to see what he could do with the popular “deck-building” mechanism, for example?

Instead Knizia has unfortunately spent the last several years borrowing—not from others—but from himself. It seems that limiting one’s self to playing one’s own games can be just as detrimental to a designer’s creativity.  He’s proven that point with countless variations and re-themes of his most popular mechanisms. We’ve seen no less than six variations, for example, of his “cards in ascending or descending order” mechanism first introduced as Lost Cities in 1999. Most recently, when a “new” card game themed around The Hobbit was announced, it made no mention that it was really just a new version of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Card Game from 2001.

Knizia proves by his recent output that avoiding other people’s games is not necessarily the solution to keep the brain from “irresistibly meandering” towards an already-proven solution, rather than pushing for innovation.

Avoiding What Has Already Been Done

“I know that there are many people out there who are trying to ‘steal’ my ideas even before I have had them…” – Reiner Knizia in an interview with Opinionated Gamers.

When showing a new prototype at a convention a couple of years ago—so the story goes—Knizia was alerted by one of the playtesters to a game that had been on the market several years already and was almost identical to his prototype. The game was Qwirkle, and Knizia realized that he had been investing time developing a game that had already been invented—and was about to win the Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year) award.

To his credit, he communicated with Qwirkle designer Susan McKinley Ross, but it still seems odd to me that he did not offer to co-design a Qwirkle Card Game with her, and instead sold his prototype as a solo design. Furthermore, the game, Big Five, was released the same year that Qwirkle won its award. But then, this is understandable given the philosophy he put forth in the interview with Opinionated Gamers: he owns the ideas before he even has them, and Qwirkle was one of those that was “stolen.”

Knizia’s career strategy for designing and selling his games seems to be working for him, and that’s fine. I don’t like it when I’m playing a game, and others tell me how I should be playing.  And no other designer has any right to tell Knizia how he should conduct his business.  He’s had an amazing career, and many of his games from a decade ago will always be classics in my collection.

But I disagree with his stated philosophy to avoid researching other designers’ games, and it’s obvious that he does not always follow it himself. Furthermore, his own designs of late have lacked the innovation that his competitors have been producing, and they deserve his respect.

In the end, game design comes down to discipline.  One can be inspired by a great many things, whether they are the themes and mathematics that permeate our lives and collective history, or the creativity and innovation that has gone on before and is happening around us every day.  We all need inspiration, but the best designers are those who can focus that inspiration and push their minds beyond the easy answers to find innovation in an already-innovative field.(source:blogspot)