作者：Przemyslaw Szczepaniak

我们中的大多数人至少都玩过几次手机游戏，并且注意到了这与我们在PC，电视，主机或掌上游戏机上玩游戏的体验有所不同。我们经常会在一个特殊情境或场所体验手机游戏乐趣，或者说我们是受到特殊行为的推动。手机游戏拥有各种优势和劣势，并因此将带给我们一些很棒或者糟糕的游戏体验。在过去几年里，手机游戏已经变成了一种大受欢迎的活动了。还有人声称手机游戏将会取代掌机游戏。根据IDC，在2013年，玩家在手机游戏（包括智能手机和平板电脑）上的消费将超过掌机游戏。这一点非常有趣，因为手机设备并不是真正的游戏主机，但却演变成为了大受欢迎的游戏设备。为什么我们会如此沉迷于这种体形娇小的娱乐设备呢，它甚至未拥有便利的按键和控制器。

元素

让我们分析至关手机游戏沉浸式的一些元素，并将其与主机，PC等游戏设备进行比较。

屏幕大小

4英寸的手机屏幕并不能取代52英寸液晶显示屏所带来的游戏体验。我们并不能从这种小小的手机屏幕上感受到深度的游戏世界。有人对《星噬》这款游戏进行了研究。以下是从T. Lavender和D. Gromala对于手机游戏沉浸式的研究中摘录的内容：

osmos(from 148apps)

“该研究将比较3种不同大小的平台（包括两种便携式设备）的沉浸式，以此探索沉浸式与屏幕大小的关系，并挖掘沉浸式手机游戏的潜力。之所以会选中《星噬》这款游戏是因为这需要玩家的关注，并有利于沉浸式体验的表现。《星噬》也拥有其它沉浸式特征，包括挑战和各种任务，具有一致性的游戏世界以及较高的视觉和音频质量。除此之外，这还是一款很容易学习的游戏，并且能够出现在不同规格的平台上，如台式电脑（Mac OS X和Microsoft Windows），平板电脑（iPad）以及智能手机（iPhone/iPod Touch，Android）。不同版本的游戏规则都一样，从而让跨平台比较变得更加有效。”

这一研究假设了屏幕大小会对游戏沉浸式带来积极影响，也就是“比起iPad和iPhone版本，iMac版本的《星噬》会带给玩家更高的沉浸式体验。”显然更大的屏幕能够赋予玩家更深层次且更棒的游戏“感”，但这仍然不能回答为什么手机游戏如此受欢迎。下一个元素也与这一研究相关。

玩游戏的舒适度

手机设备不具有控制器（游戏邦注：包括特殊的按键，操纵杆，让人舒适的键盘以及鼠标）。出品，qwerty键盘以及几个功能按键便能运行，或者我们也能够轻敲或滑动游戏，但这却不可能像鼠标那么精确。让我们再次回到对于《星噬》的研究。有个人的想法很有趣：“在较小的平台上，玩家将使用手指去操纵角色，而鼠标则在iMac中扮演媒介。因此，任何沉浸式的区别可以由触觉元素所决定，而非屏幕大小。”不管屏幕多大，我们更希望能在游戏中“碰触”对象，并真正感受到自己在控制它们，我也相信这是我们为何如此沉迷于手机游戏的一大原因。

另外一个元素便是我们想要游戏的方式。我们之所以会沉浸于手机游戏中，是因为我们可以随时随地玩这类游戏，只要自己感觉舒适便可。在很多情况下，当我们躺在床上不愿意打开PC或主机时，我们便会更乐意使用智能手机或平板电脑去玩游戏。

游戏的长度

我们必须承认，手机设备并不适合大型MMO游戏，策略游戏或FPS。因为如果只是花费几个小时的时间我们便不能感受到这类游戏的魅力。我们经常在手机上玩一些休闲且快速的游戏，但如果游戏较为复杂，我们便会缩短游戏时间，并在之后再次尝试。所以基本上来看，这里的沉浸式是受到较短的游戏长度所推动，即赋予了手机游戏在不同情境下的优势，特别是当我们不想花很长时间去对抗地牢中的boss时。

音频

手机游戏中的音频体验总是不如PC或主机上那般出色。音频将能创造出一种特殊的氛围（如恐怖的声音，令人毛骨悚然的音乐等等），进一步维系玩家与游戏世界之间的关系，并感受到游戏的深度（特别是基于环绕系统）。在单声道扬声器中，我们并不能获得这种体验，反而只能听到点击，提示以及特殊行动等声音，当然也有音乐，但是却只有在带上耳机后才会感觉好点。举个例子来说吧，HTML5手机游戏便仍带有声音问题。但是以我个人来讲，我更喜欢安静地玩手机游戏，不管它是基于何种技术。尽管缺少声音深度，并且人们也仍希望听到有趣的提示，以及美妙的音乐，但是我觉得我们不能像面对较大的主机游戏那样强调这点。

结论

说实话，当我们开始玩一款手机游戏时，我们并不会去寻找PC或电视等大屏幕所给予的体验。我们会因为一些不同的元素而沉浸其中，并寻找完全不同的游戏感。而因为我们可以在床上（游戏邦注：甚至可以边看电视边玩游戏），凳子上，甚至在帐篷里等玩游戏，而不受电缆的束缚，所以我们会觉得这种游戏方式非常自在。这种沉浸式也源于我们愿意花时间去玩游戏的方式。如果我们并不是真的想要长时间坐着并敲打键盘，我们便可以拿起智能手机而短时间地挑战一款休闲手机游戏。因为手机游戏很简单且够便宜（相对PC或主机游戏而言），所以我们更乐意去购买它们。我相信这些元素便是这种小型设备能够取得成功的主要原因。虽然它们并不是真正的主机，但却拥有绝对的优势能够帮助许多游戏爱好者解决一些困扰的问题。

（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）

Immersion in mobile gaming – what affects it?

by Przemyslaw Szczepaniak

Most of us played mobile games at least a couple times in our lives, and we noticed how different this experience is from playing a game on a PC, TV, console, or even on a handheld device. We usually start mobile fun in specific conditions or places, or we are motivated to do that by specific behaviors. Mobile games have many advantages and disadvantages to give us better or worse gaming experience. In the past few years, mobile gaming became a very popular activity. It is also claimed that mobile gaming is set to overtake handheld gaming. According to IDC, gamers will spend more money on mobile games (smartphone, tablets) in 2013 than on handheld games. This is very interesting because mobile devices aren’t the actual gaming consoles, but they have become very popular gaming devices. Why are we immersed by pocket sized entertainment which doesn’t even have convenient buttons or controllers?

Factors

Let’s analyze a couple factors which can be crucial for immersion in mobile gaming, and let’s compare that to other gaming devices, such as consoles, PC’s, etc.

Screen size

The 4 inch mobile screen size can’t replace the experience of gaming with a 52 inch LCD. It is just impossible to feel the depth of the game world. What is interesting is that research has been done with example games called Osmos. Here is an excerpt from a study over immersion of mobile games by T. Lavender, and D. Gromala:

“The proposed study will compare immersion across three different sized platforms (including two portable devices) to explore the relationship between immersion and screen size for video games and the potential for immersive mobile video games… Osmos was chosen because of this need for the player to focus, which is conducive to immersion. Osmos has other immersive characteristics, including challenging and varied tasks, a consistent game world, and visual and audio quality. It was also chosen because the game is easy to learn, and is available on different sized platforms, such as desktop computers (Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows), tablets (iPad) and smartphones (iPhone/iPod Touch, Android). The rules of the game are identical for the different versions, making cross-platform comparisons more valid.”

The hypothesis coming from this study expects that screen size has a positive effect on immersion, and “immersion scores will be higher for players of the iMac version of Osmos than for the players of the iPad and iPhone versions”. It seems to be obvious that a bigger screen gives us more depth and a better “feel” of the game, but it still doesn’t answer the question of why mobile devices are so popular for gaming. The next factor is also connected with this study.

Comfort of gameplay

Mobile devices don’t have controllers (special buttons, joysticks, comfortable keyboard, mouse). A touch screen, qwerty keyboard, an a couple function buttons can work, and it can work for tapping and sliding games, but it will never be as accurate as a mouse. Let’s go back to the study over the Osmos game. One consideration can be interesting: “On the smaller platforms, the player manipulates the organism with their fingers, while a mouse is used as an intermediary on the iMac. It is possible, therefore, that any difference between immersion could be in part explained by these haptic considerations, and not by screen size.” No matter how big the screen is, we would prefer to “touch” the objects in a game and have a feel of control over them, and I believe these may be reasons why we immerse so much into mobile games.

Another factor is the way we like to play. I already mentioned that in my previous blog entry. It comes out that we immerse into mobile game much more, because we can play them anywhere and anytime, wherever we feel comfortable to play. In many cases lying in bed and not being forced to prepare PC or consoles for gaming, make us much more eager to play a game on a smartphone or tablet.

Length of gameplay

Let’s face it, mobile devices aren’t best for huge MMO’s, Strategies, or FPS. They just aren’t good enough for spending more than a couple hours on one session. We usually play casual, quick games, but if the game is more complex, we we play a short session and come back to it later. So basically, immersion here is motivated by not very engaging length  which gives mobile games an advantage in different situations, when we don’t really want to make a long raid to the dungeon bosses.

Audio

The audio experience in mobile games is not as good as the one on PC’s or standalone consoles. It may create a specific atmosphere (horror sounds, spooky or dungeon music, etc), and it helps gamer to be more linked with the game world and feel it’s thickness (especially with surround systems). On a single mono speaker we will not experience this features, we can only hear some clicks, notifications and specific actions sounds, of course there is also music, but only with earphones we can make it slightly better. For example, HTML5 mobile games still have issues with sounds. Personally in many cases, I prefer to play mobile games in silence, no matter what technology it was made with. Despite lack of sound depth, we still like to hear funny notifications, entertaining music, but I believe we don’t really put as much attention to it as in standalone, bigger games.

Conclusions

IMHO, when we start a mobile gaming session we don’t really look for experiences which we can find on the huge screens of our PC’s or TV’s. We are immersed by totally different factors, and we are looking for different feel of the gameplay. We feel comfortable playing this way, because we can do that in our bed (even when the TV is on), on a bench, or even in a tent and no cables limit us. The immersion comes also from the way we want to spend our time with a game. If we don’t really want to sit for long hours over the keyboard, we just take a smartphone and start a short session with a casual mobile game. Mobile games make us eager to buy them, because it is easier and cheaper to obtain the next product, and it is much cheaper than a game for a PC or console. I believe those factors brought success for pocket sized devices. They aren’t the actual consoles, but with a few advantages they became e an ultimate solution for many games lovers.(source:gamasutra)