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分析独立游戏开发的简化主义及其重要性

发布时间:2013-07-19 14:53:17 Tags:,,,,

作者:Nandrew

当你坐下开始撰写一本书时,你需要牢记的一大重要内容便是塑造你的表达:如果你能够用一个简短的句子去传达其他作者需要一段文字才能阐述的内容,这便说明你具有写作天分。

同样的,出色的新闻内容也是关于简短的表达:专注于要点以及对于该要点的整理,从而完整地为读者呈现出一篇简洁但却信息量足的新闻。这里的重点在于新闻简讯的清晰性以及你所使用的每个单词都必须具有意义。

这是任何资深的作家,建筑师,音乐家以及其它产业中的专家都会给出的建议,即在提到优化工作时强调极简主义的重要性。“这真的有存在必要吗?”这样的问题甚至延伸到了编程领域—-既需要正确执行,也需要有效完成。

当然了,这回避了一个现实问题:这一建议是否也延伸到了模糊的游戏设计领域?极简主义是否是优秀游戏设计师的标志?如果是的话,我们该如何划分界限?

挑战的形成

法国作家兼飞行员Antoine de Saint Exupéry曾经说过:

设计师是在发现无所删除时,而不是无所添加时才知道自己创造出了完美的结果。

他并不是针对于游戏设计而言,这是值得我们思考的有趣内容。额外处理是否会破坏游戏设计?除了添加新元素,我们的工作是否还包含删除一些无效的元素?或者这是否是难以标记的替代混合内容?

独立开发者

也许你会认为这些陈述较为肤浅,但这却是符合逻辑的,特别是关于独立开发者应该想办法精简游戏项目的过程。“添加这或那”的理念不能出现在团队规模,预算和开发时间极其有限的情况下,并且他们应该瞄准的是开发一款简单且具有实验性的游戏,而不是《魔兽世界》的续集。独立开发项目必须保持较小规模,并且只有最重要的设计理念能够添加到游戏中。

即便如此,关于设计极简主义理念,独立游戏开发者还有一些广泛的观点。有些人支持该想法,但也有些人认为这对一款优秀的游戏来说并不重要。

而大家对于极简主义达成的共识则是,用户界面和信息系统是必要的。不管系统本身多复杂,我们都应该选择最重要的信息呈献给用户。因此,只设置一个生命框通过颜色改变去显示状态总比同时设置生命框和状态信息好。

但是当提到系统本身时,我们该做什么?

简单性的例子

super mario bros(from devmag)

super mario bros(from devmag)

让我们着眼于《超级玛丽兄弟》,通过四种类型的砖块—-真是优雅的设计。

这是Anna Anthropy(也叫做auntie pixelante)对于Saint Exupéry的引用的回应。

Anthropy是一个博主,游戏开发者以及游戏理论专家,对平台游戏设计具有浓厚的兴趣,特别是关于《超级玛丽兄弟》和《火星纪念杯》这些经典的游戏。她的游戏与分析都非常强调简单性与优雅:《When Pigs Fly》便是这一原理的完美化身。

《超级玛丽兄弟》的游戏玩法便是源自极简主义规则。

Anthropy说过:

当代游戏设计是杂乱的牺牲者。因为游戏产业是受热门度的驱使(高预算游戏只有卖出更多才能赚回本),游戏的设计目的是面向所有人的所有内容。不幸的是,最终展现在我们眼前的却是各种基于不同方向的功能,甚至将游戏理念变得面目全非——它们将本来只需1个小时的游戏理念扩展成8个小时的内容。

Adam Saltsman相信“核心还原论”。他在项目中所执行的第一步便是尽可能将游戏归结为一个简单的理念。“当你拥有这一原子,这一不可分割的内容,你便能找到一些简单或明显的方法进行扩展,而不附加全新机制。而如果你在整个过程中进行了简化,那么你便能够轻松看到哪些其它类型的游戏选择更适合。”

Gamasutra上的博主Gabriel Lievano也在提倡一个类似的观点,并参考一个非常引人瞩目的系列,即他相信在某一时刻可能会遭遇设计膨胀。

关于这类型设计(极简主义)的一个例子我们可以着眼于席德·梅尔的《文明》系列,即从《文明4》向《文件革命》的转变。过去的《文明》系列常常会在每次迭代时添加更多功能和内容,在《文明4》中,尽管你面对的是同一款游戏,但是你却能够管理宗教,财政,政策,外部关系,各种资源,文化,污染,技术等等。而问题在于:这些所有的功能是否真的与玩家的体验有关系?《文明革命》便能解答这一问题。《文明4》与《文明革命》之间的不同非常明显:这就像是重新绕回最初的文明但却保留了续集的最有趣的环节与图像。

另外一个要点便是优秀的游戏总是能够很容易作总结。Paul Taylor指出,通常这是对于设计本身而言(Anthropy再次提及了《超级玛丽兄弟》这一例子,即基本的理念便是“借着冲力跳跃”),但这也是市场潜力的指示器。关于游戏体验单句描述的能力便是紧凑的游戏设计的良好指示器。

Jonatan Soderstrom便是快速游戏原型的提倡者,他反对“完美游戏设计”理念,但却认可极简主义的合理性。他说道:“对于一款完美游戏来说,大量的内容和多样性都不重要。我认为比起延长游戏体验,集中体验会更有趣。”

依靠教程

来自南非工作室QCF(游戏邦注:创造了《SpaceHack》)的Danny Day认为Saint Exupery的陈述对于自己的游戏设计观点具有很重要的影响。但是他却不能接受Anthropy的立场。

当我们着眼于元级时,优化过的设计自然能够体现出优雅和简单性,但是游戏本身却并不是关于优雅或简单。简单的游戏并不会多吸引人,因为面对这样的游戏玩家便不会想要创造并改变心理模式或管理期望值,从而导致游戏变得无趣。

Day相信,玩游戏是在一个复杂的系统中发现自身的优雅和简单性的过程。他强调了教程的例子:果断遵循Saint Exupery的建议将导致玩家完全离开游戏,并且在很多情况下我们并不可能做到这点。但是在不删除玩家所需的必要信息的同时,优化教程则非常有帮助。“作为设计师,我们应该删除那些可能迷惑或混淆玩家的内容,让他们可以无缝地与游戏进行互动。只有投入大量的工作才能创造出一个容易理解的教程系统。”我们必须尽可能地删除玩家的压力。

Anthropy也提到了教程,但是是关于经典街机游戏的内容:在这样的环境下,设计师通常都不会提供足够的教程(游戏邦注:或者只是用几秒钟的时间去解释核心理念),而在这种情况下,简单的前提便非常必要。

开发者Tyler Glaiel便列举了一个关于游戏复杂性制约着玩家体验的例子——他在自己的Flash游戏《Blockslide 2》中直接感受到不必要的复杂性的危险。

紧跟着最初游戏《Blockslide》的成功,Glaiel在这一特殊的项目中解释了自己的设计原理。“我更倾向于‘更大就是更好’的理念,所以我创造了各种疯狂的建筑类型并毫无限制地添加到游戏中。大多数人都不会愿意看完一篇长教程。大多数人都将教程当成是整体游戏的组成部分。人们并不会因为内容的数量而感到压迫,但是却会受到与事物互动的非直觉性方式的影响。”

Glaiel也将这一问题带到了自己的下一个项目《Closure》中,并进一步限制他添加到游戏中的内容。所以最终这一项目取得了更大的成功。

事情的另一方面

“当你考虑的是飞机和书籍时,我认为这会更有意义。”

这是Tarn Adams对于删减的游戏设计理念的回应。作为最错综复杂的一款独立游戏《矮人要塞》的创造者之一,他对于这一问题的观点也很重要。

他说道:“我想我能理解该理念的意义,这当然也适用于特定情境中,甚至是在游戏设计中,但是我也经常看到许多开发者将其用于推动简单但却愚蠢的思维,从而破坏了电子游戏的创造性,并且当提到游戏时,我更倾向于消极的思考。”

dwarf fortress(from devmag)

dwarf fortress(from devmag)

多平台开发者Luke Arntson回想起自己曾致力于面向Action All Stars的承包项目《Pitching Ace》中。游戏最初包含了一个相对复杂的方案(游戏邦注:即利用鼠标划定一个更准确的投射方向),但是在收到来自测试者的最初反馈后,为了易用性,游戏简化了该系统。但是Arntson认为该举动是错误的。

因为即使出现了新的控制反感,我们的游戏却变得越来越糟糕。而同时间所创造的另外一款游戏便包含了像古老的机器等击球内容,并带给了玩家很大的乐趣。所以为什么我们的游戏会遭遇失败但是其它承包游戏却会取得成功呢?答案便是我们的设计太过简单了。

“游戏开发就像是捏着一块粘土一样,每周都会有人到来并带走一块不同大小的组块,直到你最终创造出三个小小的泥球。”

具有独立游戏开发和主流产业经验的开发者Chris Cornell是从更加实际的视角去看待这一观点。在附加功能等同于额外资源(也就是钱)的世界中,人们通常更加希望修改设计缺陷而不是完全删除他们。他引用了基于Leapster游戏系统的《Leapfrog》。

他最初致力于的游戏阶段便是使用自上而下的设计视角:最先创造出艺术资源,锁定一些功能并减少部分功能以满足工作流程的需求。但是这最终结果却不是很好,设计范式也为了匹配更灵活的添加处理而发生了改变。

虽然致力于该工作5年多时间,但我仍然相信我们只有在第2年时创造的游戏才是最棒的,那时候的我们是基于一个较奇怪的计划和时间表,并设置了坚实的原型基础从头开始创造,而不是面对大量理念并在之后不断削减。

在强化了这一点后我们再次切换回更受限的过程中,游戏也再次遭遇了消极的对待,尽管那时候的开发团队已经拥有更多有关平台的经验了。

结论

对于简化设计理念,我们总是很难做出任何总结,并且面对那些采取各种方法去应对这一理念的开发者们的反馈,我们也不可能获得任何特殊的原理或规则。

虽然我们可以遵循着所谓的简化主义,但似乎这也是个不可小觑的陷阱:该理念从表面上看来很可靠,但是当我们开始执行这一路线时却需要考虑许多其它元素,并且那些看起来很棒的设计习惯却也有可能反过来摧毁你的项目(如果使用不合理的话)。

因此,我们最好能够谨慎地考虑每个游戏面,并同时尊重两种观点—-在必要的情况下且不过分强调理念的基础上,你可以删除一些无用的功能。有时候玩家也喜欢复杂性所提供的挑战,而如果所谓的复杂性能够与适当的简单化相吻合,我们便有可能创造出一款超级优秀的游戏。

你可以从本文的内容中汲取适合自己的理念,并留意平衡的重要性。就像开发者Paul Eres所说的:“我不相信所谓的‘范例’(游戏设计中),我认为它们是对于现有内容的不必要简化。就像告诉人们某些内容是如何运作的简单规则,但事实上他们所知道的一切内容都已经是经过简化了。”

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

Minimised game design for indies

By Nandrew

When you sit down to write a book, one of the most important things to bear in mind is the shaping and formation of your expression: if you can elegantly express in a single sentence what a lesser writer would need a paragraph to evoke, then you’ve got yourself a talent for writing.

Good journalism, similarly, is all about the brevity of your expression: a focus on the points that matter — and the arrangement of said points — to create a concise and informative read for your audience without leaving anything out. The importance of this is clearest in news briefs and other environments where every individual word that you place needs to hold significance.

This advice has been thoroughly rammed into the veteran noggins of writers, architects, musicians and countless other disciplines which respect minimalisation when it comes to polishing work. The question of “Does that really need to be there?” even extends to the field of programming, where a job not only needs to be performed correctly, but efficiently as well.

This, of course, begs the question: does such advice extend to the nebulous realm of game design? Is minimalism the mark of a good game designer? If so, where do we draw the line?

The challenge posed

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, a French writer and aviator, once stated the following:

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

He wasn’t talking about game design specifically (the gent was a bit before our time), but it’s interesting food for thought. Does the additive process harm good game design? Does our job consist of actively cutting away weaker elements, rather than just adding new ones? Or is it an alternative concoction that can’t be so easily labelled?

The indie slant

This statement may come across as somewhat myopic, but it seems logical that indies in particular would have to think about keeping elaboration to a minimum over the course of a game project. The idea of “adding this and that” won’t fly in a situation where the team’s size, budget and dev time is limited, and one would sooner see a simple, experimental game taking flight than any kind of successor to World of Warcraft. An indie’s project needs to be smaller, and only the most important design ideas will survive in the torrid landscape of “cool things to add to the game”.

That said, there’s still a wide base of views held by independent game developers regarding design minimalism. Some support the notion, others hold that it isn’t necessary for a good game at all.

Common consensus holds that minimalism in terms of user interfaces and information systems is a must. No matter what the complexity of the system itself may be, the most important information needs to be selected and put on display for the user. Thus, having a health bar that changes colour with status effects would be superior to having both a health bar and a status message next to it (further elaboration of this concept over here).

But when it comes to that system itself — the rules which the UI, for example, would draw from — what do we do?

A case for simplicity

Look at all that super mario bros. accomplishes with about four types of blocks … that’s elegant design.

This is how Anna Anthropy (aka. auntie pixelante) responds to Saint Exupéry’s quote.

Anthropy is a blogger, game developer and game theory expert who has a particular interest in the design of platform games, particularly with old-school classics such as Super Mario Bros. and Monuments of Mars. Her games, like her analyses, pride themselves on simplicity and elegance: When Pigs Fly is a pretty accurate embodiment of this philosophy.

Mario Bros. is a classic example of gameplay that stems from a minimised rule set.

Says Anthropy:

Contemporary game design is a victim of clutter. Because the games industry is hit-driven (big budget games need to sell huge amounts just to recoup their costs), games are designed to be everything to everyone. unfortunately, the result is a game full of features which all tug in different directions, and which stretch the idea of the game thin beyond recognition … they stretch an hour’s worth of ideas over eighty hours of filler.

Adam Saltsman believes in “hardcore reductionism”. The first step in his projects is to boil a game down to as simple a concept as possible. “Once you have this atom, this indivisible thing, frequently there are simple or obvious ways to expand it honestly and faithfully without attaching whole new mechanics to the thing. If you’ve boiled it all the way down, it’s usually pretty easy to see what sorts of other gameplay options will be a good fit.”

Saltsman has a rather interesting — and controversial – Gamasutra blog post that touches on this concept.

Gamasutra blogger Gabriel Lievano advocates a similar point of view, and actually makes reference to a very high-profile series which he believes suffered from design bloat at one point.

An example of this type of design [minimisation] can be watched in Sid Meier’s Civilization change from Civilization IV to Civilization Revolution. Civilization games used to evolve adding more and more functionality and content in each iteration … in Civilization IV you had the same game but you could manage religion, finances, politics, external relationships, a huge variety of resources, culture, pollution, technology and a lot more … the question: is all this functionality really relevant for the player’s experience? And the answer was Civilization Revolution. The difference between Civ IV and Civ Revolution is enormous: it’s like rewinding to the first civilization but keeping the most fun parts from its sequels and the cool graphics.

Another point made is that a good game should always be easily summarised. Often this is for the sake of design itself (Anthropy once again refers to the case of Super Mario Bros, where the basic idea is “jump with momentum”), but it’s also a good indicator of marketing potential, as pointed out by Paul Taylor. The ability to craft a single-sentence description of your game experience is a good indicator of a tight design, and by extension a tight game.

Jonatan “cactus” S?derstr?m, a rapid game prototyping advocate, is averse to the concept of a “perfect game design”, but he does acknowledge the elegance of simplicity. “Neither a large amount of content nor variety are vital to a perfect game,” he says, “and I think that experiencing something interesting in concentrated form can sometimes be better than having it diluted or prolonged.”

The point made by tutorials

Danny Day, one of the names behind South African studio QCF (SpaceHack) , feels that Saint Exupéry’s statement is an important influence on his game design views. He doesn’t adopt quite the same stance as Anthropy, however.

The elegance and seeming simplicity of a polished design is obvious when seen at the meta level, but games themselves aren’t actually about elegance or simplicity. A simple game wouldn’t be very engaging because players wouldn’t have to create and revise mental models or manage expectations, it would feel empty and senseless to play.

Day believes, instead, that playing a game is the process of finding one’s own elegance and simplicity in a complex system. He highlights the example of tutorials: following Saint Exupéry’s advice dogmatically would result in their removal from a game entirely, and in a lot of situations this simply cannot be done. But polishing and minimising that tutorial as much as possible without robbing a player of vital information is something golden. “As designers we should care about taking things away that obscure or confuse the player and make their interaction with the game seamless and empowering. An easily absorbed tutorial system is hours and hours of work.” Player burden needs to be removed as much as possible: with a complex system, this becomes more difficult — but not impossible — for a prudent designer.

Anthropy also mentions tutorials, but with respect to classic arcade games: in an environment like that, the designer often doesn’t have the luxury of a tutorial at all (or has only a few seconds to explain core concepts to players), and in instances like these a simple premise is an absolute must.

One example of game complexity stifling the player’s experience is offered by Tyler Glaiel, a developer who learned first-hand the dangers associated with unnecessary complexity through the problems he had with one of his Flash games, Blockslide 2.

Following the success of the original Blockslide, Glaiel explains his design philosophy on this particular project. “I was in the mindset that ‘bigger was better’, so I invented all sorts of crazy block types to add into the game with no sort of restraint. Most people didn’t finish the long tutorial. Most people thought the tutorial was the whole game, considering it very well should have been … people were overwhelmed not necessarily by the amount of stuff, but by the unintuitive ways [in which] things interacted.”

Glaiel took this problem into consideration with his next project, Closure, exercising more restraint on what he added to the game. The venture was far more successful.

The other side of the coin

“When you consider planes and books, I think it makes more sense.”

This is the response that Tarn Adams offers to the idea of subtractive game design. Being the name behind Dwarf Fortress, which happens to be one of the most miraculously intricate indie games around, his opinion on the matter is arguably quite important.

I think I understand the spirit of the quote,” he adds, “and it surely applies to certain situations even in game design, but I’ve seen it quite often used to try to force keep-it-simple-stupid thinking that squashes video game innovation and I tend to think of it rather negatively when it comes to games.

Dwarf Fortress, a convincing counterbalance to minimised games.

Luke Arntson , a multi-platform developer, recalls his work on a contract project for Action All Stars called Pitching Ace. The game initially involved a rather complicated pitching scheme (relying on the mouse to draw an accurate path for a better throw), but after initial feedback from playtesters, the system was reduced and simplified for accessibility. He believes that this move was a mistake.

So the new control scheme was in place … but our game was getting bad vibes from the higher ups. Another game was being made at the same time that involved batter pinball like those old machines, and it was actually pretty fun. So why was our game failing and the other contracted game doing so well? The truth is our design was too simple.

“[The game's development] felt like working with a piece of clay, where every week someone would come by and take away a different sized chunk, until all you could make were three small clay balls.

Chris Cornell, a developer with experience in both the indie and mainstream industries, looks at the matter from a more pragmatic viewpoint. In a world where additional features usually equate to additional resources (namely money), there’s a very strong call to fix design flaws rather than removing them entirely. He cites his work with Leapfrog on their Leapster game system.

The initial round of games that he worked on was handled from a top-down design perspective: art resources were generated first, a lot of features were locked and others had to be reduced to meet workflow demands. This did not end well, and the design paradigm was changed to allow for a more flexible, additive process.

Over 5 years of working there, the round I still believe we produced the best games was during the 2nd year, where by a quirk of planning and schedules, we had a solid base of prototypes to start from and grow, rather than a large document full of ideas that we trimmed down.

Switching back to the more restricted process afterwards reinforced this point, as the games once again suffered from a poor reception — even though the team had, by then, a lot more experience with the platform.

In conclusion

It’s difficult to state anything conclusive about the idea of minimal design, and considering the feedback from developers who have taken a variety of approaches on the matter, it would be naive to suggest that any particular philosophy or paradigm is unambiguously “the one to go with”.

Advocates of minimisation have a good point to go with, but it seems to be a rather romantic trap to stumble into: the idea sounds solid on the surface, but there’s a lot of other factors to consider when going down this route and what seems to be a good design habit may in fact harm your project if taken too far.

It seems best, therefore, that each aspect of a game should be considered intelligently and with due respect for both points of view — a capacity to “kill your darlings” and cut features when necessary without pushing your philosophy too far and stripping your game of something that makes it special. Sometimes players enjoy the challenge that complexity offers, and if said complexity could be married with the correct amount of minimisation it is likely that we’d all be producing superior games.

Draw your own opinion from what you’ve read here, and remain mindful of the importance of balance. As developer Paul Eres puts it: “I distrust the idea of ‘paradigms’ [in game design] — I think they’re unnecessarily gross simplifications of what’s really going on. Like simple rules for people to use to believe they think they know how something works, when all they know is some simplification.”

More things to look at

The TIGSource community has an excellent set of responses to Saint Exupéry’s quote and provide some wonderful insights regarding the matter. The thread includes a lot of information that wasn’t sourced for the final piece, and comes strongly recommended as additional reading on the subject.

If you’re looking for an interesting advocate of minimalism, have a look at Gabriel Lievano’s two-part design series over here and here.

There is also a well-circulated design article by Anna Anthropy dealing with the level design in Super Mario Bros. Her blog contains many other entries which make for a good read about minimalism and other important points for interested developers.

There’s also an interesting post on minimalism as more than an aesthetic over at omgphatloots. It mainly discusses design in general, but links this concept elegantly to game creation.(source:devmag)


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