作者：Jordan Georgiev

目标？

保持游戏的玩家基础。

解决方法

内容！要有大量内容。创造大量手工内容是许多游戏，尤其是MMO中的普遍元素。成百上千的任务，大量故事，少量分支——通常一家游戏公司投入大量资金用于制作丰富的任务，其目标就是让玩家尽量体验多数任务，而不趴是沿着一些方向探索，并快速跳过大量任务。

如果你有足够的资源聘请一些文案和程序员、美术人员，创造大量的内容不失为一种好主意，但对于独立开发者来说就未必了。

填充内容或等待。这是多见于社交游戏的一个致命趋势。它们不是创造真正的玩法，而是致力于创造少量玩法，以及大量时间等待机制来稀释玩法，并将其扩散到多数游戏时间中。

这是一种糟糕的设计。如果你将自己视为一名游戏设计师，就不要在游戏中植入这种元素。虽然也有一些例外情况，但多数时候这只是一种懒惰设计。

难度变化。这是增长加游戏总体时间的一种简单方法——命名用同样的敌人或障碍，但让它们更难以对付。通常最好 令其呈现双向的等比例变化——不但要让困难加倍，在必要的时刻还要令其削弱。如果使用得当，这可能会成为一种强大的解决方法。其中一个典型就是 《求生之路》，游戏中的AI Director会监测玩家的情况，以便让他们遭遇适度的敌人。

难度变化是目前独立游戏中最常用的一种技巧，也是经常被滥用的技巧之一。它是一种强化玩法的绝佳途径，但如果执行不当或被滥用时，也同样是破坏游戏的好手。

程序生成内容。这 是为游戏世界填充内容的一种经济的好手段。它可以单独使用，或者与其他方法结合使用。如果使用正确，可以极大提升游戏体验。如果使用不当，则可能会惹恼玩 家。这方面的典型例子是《暗黑破坏神》中的Elite黑帮系统。偶尔出现的精英群体打破了单调的弱势敌人生成过程，与怪物的不同结合也极大丰富了游戏玩 法。

diablo(from maclife.com)

程序生成内容是一个绝佳的低成本选项，如果执行合理可以同即兴玩法/手工内容相结合，以创造极具粘性和低成本解决方案，这地我们独立开发者来说是一个理想选择。

即兴玩法。它是目前游戏为玩家提供更多玩法的好方式——给予玩家工具让他们自己动手创造。当然，这也是目前最大的设计挑战和最难测试的方法。常见于竞争型游戏——增加更多人，尤其是相互对抗的游戏，几乎就可以促成新玩法。这方面的典型例子是《英雄联盟》的元游戏玩法。《Minecraft》就我看来就是一款有关即兴玩法的游戏和添加了更多即兴玩法的模组（游戏邦注：极少有人会为了获胜而玩《Minecraft》）。我们看到许多人在其中创造科学、艺术、建筑模型，或者创造了各式任务和目标。

minecraft-town(from mmogames)

创造即兴玩法可能很困难，但它却是游戏设计师最有用的工具。解放玩家的双手，让他们自己使用游戏机制去尝试和探索新玩法，这对他们来说是极好的途径，对独立开发者来说也是个低成本的解决方案。

重玩性。通过即兴玩法、难度变化以及程序生成内容，我们可以实现重玩性——让玩家多次重玩困难的关卡，甚至是整款游戏，并喜欢上该游戏。这方面的典型例子是《暗黑之魂》——其多变的玩法以及通过难度变化而增加的重玩性配合得天衣无缝，又增加新挑战并令玩家探索游戏的更多内容，并寻找应对更困难玩法的新途径。

重玩性很棒，虽然实现这一目标颇费功能，最终也还是会发现它值得一试。制作好游戏是一回事，但制作出可以让人多次重玩的游戏又是另一回事。

总结，让玩家持续被游戏所吸引需要下一番功能，但其用意都是为了让游戏体验更厜一筹。让游戏表现出众的方法不乏其数，能否实现这一目标或许将影响到用户玩游戏的时间长短。（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）

Keeping the players engaged

by Jordan Georgiev

The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra’s game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.

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The Goal?

Keeping the player base engaged with the game.

The Solutions!

Content! A lot of it. Creating a massive amount of handcrafted content is something common in many games, especially MMOs. Thousands of quests, tons of narrative, little branching – usually when a company pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for the production of a rich quest line, the goal is to get the player through most of the quests possible, instead of just branching in some direction and skipping a ton of quests in a split second.

Creating a lot of content may be a good idea if you have the resources to hire a couple of writers and a bunch of programmers and artists to create it for you, but as that isn’t the case with indies it is not the best option.

Filler content or waiting. A disastrous trend, mostly seen in social games. Instead of creating actual gameplay a lot of games seem to focus on creating very little gameplay and a lot of time wasting mechanics to water it down and span it over the most time with the least annoyed users possible.

This is simply bad design. If you deem yourself a game designer, don’t ever implement such thing in your games. There are a few exceptions to this, but in most of the cases it just shows lazy design.

Difficulty scaling. A simple way to increase the total playtime of your game – use the same enemies and/or obstacles, but make them more difficult to pass by. Usually it’s best to make it a two directional scaling – not only making things stronger, but weakening them if needed. This may be very solution, but also very a powerful one if used sparingly. A great example is Left 4 Dead and its “AI Director” which monitors the players conditions and faces them with appropriate waves of enemies.

Difficulty scaling is by far the most used techniques in indie games, and it is the one thing that usually gets overused. It is a great way to enhance the gameplay, but also a great way to ruin it if not implemented correctly or overused.

Procedural content generation. A good and economic way of filling your world with content. It could be used by itself or in conjunction with any other method. If used correctly it could greatly enhance your game. If used poorly on the other hand it will eventually annoy and irritate the player. An awesome example of this is the Elite mob system in Diablo. The occasional group of elites breaks up the monotonous process of eradicating or hordes of weak enemies and the different combinations of monster affixes provide a great variation to the gameplay.

Procedural content is a great option – it is a low cost solution, and if properly implemented could be combined with emergent gameplay and/or handcrafted content to create engaging and low cost solutions, perfect for us indies.

Emergent gameplay. By far the best means of providing more gameplay – giving the player the tools to craft his own. Of course by far the biggest design challenge and the hardest one to test. Common in competitive games – adding more people together, especially against each other and it is almost guaranteed for new gameplay to emerge. A great example of this is the whole League of Legends meta gameplay – things like counter-picking, jungling, different builds, lane setups, counterpicks and plenty of more emerged from the original game. Minecraft as I see it is a game about emergent gameplay and mods adding more emergent gameplay – very few people play Minecraft with the goal of winning the game. Instead we see people creating science, art, prototyping actual buildings, or creating all kinds of quests and goals in the game.

Creating emergent gameplay may be hard, but is the most useful tool a game designer could have. Freeing the players to experiment and discover new ways to use the game mechanics at their advantage is both great for them and a low cost solution for us indies.

Replayability. Be through emergency, difficulty scaling and/or procedural content we could achieve replayability – getting the player to replay different levels or even the whole game multiple times and actually enjoying it. A good example could be seen in Darksouls – because of the already variant gameplay adding replayability through difficulty scaling works wonderfully well, adding new challenge and getting the players to explore even more of the game and look for new ways of dealing with the harder gameplay.

Replayability is great and while achieving it may take some time, in the end it will be all worthwhile. Creating a good game is one thing, but creating a good game which could be replayed a couple of times is another.

Final thoughts.

Keeping the player engaged in a game longer may require some work, but it is all for the better. The variety of ways of doing that is great and achieving it may make the difference between that other game you checked out for fifteen minutes and that awesome one that you’ve spent several weekends on.（source：gamasutra）