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

Ray Mazza谈对“何为游戏设计”的理解

发布时间:2013-08-14 10:56:15 Tags:,,,

作者:Ethan Levy

本文摘自与Ray Mazza的一次谈话。Ray Mazza是Playfish公司的首席游戏设计师,代表作包括《模拟人生2》、《模拟人生3》、《模拟人生社交版》以及该系列的所有拓展包。

FamousAspect(以下简称F):首先,什么是游戏设计?

Ray Mazza(以下简称R):什么是游戏设计?就是想出什么是乐趣。就是理解乐趣的概念,然后把它转化为有意思的体验。我认为这就是游戏设计。还有很多不同的说法。

the sims social(from raymazza.com)

the sims social(from raymazza.com)

F:在你的职业生涯中,有那么一段时期,你确定了一些你认为有趣的东西,无论是交互作用还是机制;然后你想,“如果X有趣,那么我心里就明白。”最后你把X变成游戏,看看它是成功还是失败?

R:呃,是个好问题。我的回答是“是”。设计师一直在寻找乐趣,所以通常必须反复设计许多次,直到找到乐趣。我举个例子吧。有那么一段时间,我们正在制作《模拟人生3》的多个原型。我认为有趣的原型之一是组合东西,也就是做一些有关基因的游戏结构,让玩家自己组合东西再看结果。

那时,我使用的是抽象的形状,程序性图形。我把那些放在画布,发现不是那么有趣。因为没有任何玩法。它至多是一种令人讨厌的、计算机科学的“这是一个有趣的东西”的方法。但你心里认为有趣的东西不一定做出来也是有趣的。

那时我还是一个菜鸟设计师。我还在学习乐趣很大程度上是关于反馈、你给玩家反馈的方式、使你碰到的所有东西都让你产生满足感。那正是当时我不足的地方。

F:游戏设计师在团队中的角色是什么?我们谈论的游戏设计是,作为乐趣的学者,把乐趣变成现实。游戏设计师的工作是什么?

R:理解乐趣及其含义,使用所有乐趣的元素来制作吸引人的体验。但不同设计师有不同的目标。

有些设计师希望叙述故事或传达信息。有些设计师更倾向于用游戏如《Carmen Sandiego》或<Number Cruncher》教育玩家。有些设计师只想制作使人上瘾、欲罢不能的机制。如Spry Fox的《Triple Town》一类的游戏。当然还有其他很多类型的游戏也是这样的。

我认为,作为游戏设计师,必须明确你的目标是什么,然后朝着目标努力。这并不意味着你不能做其他许多事,但这个目标应该主导你的设计。

F:你自己属于哪一类设计师呢?

R:(大笑)我把自己归类为体验设计师。我的游戏设计过程是从思考“我想为玩家提供什么体验,如何实现?”开始的,然后围绕这个问题展开设计,而不是另取其他角度。如果我想设计一款关于X的游戏,那么我设计出来的游戏就要让玩家觉得像X或者让他们按玩X的方式玩我的游戏。

我的设计思路就是故事与机制设计相给合。

F:作为游戏设计师,你遇到的最大挑战是什么?

R:老实说,是找时间玩游戏。有时候玩游戏其实让我觉得像工作。游戏设计的一部分工作是让你自己了解其他的兴趣领域。因为游戏设计师要利用许多不同的学科:建筑学、政治、数学、社会学、心理学,等等。

学习这些东西是很有用的。多年以前,我开始写作,决定写一本小说。所以我花了很多时间,写作对我的游戏设计是有用的,因为我可以写出更好的文本和创作出更好的故事。

但在我学习写作的时候,我是不玩游戏的。或者说,我不能像其他人那样玩那么多游戏。我身边一直围绕着玩游戏的朋友们,他们谈论最近在玩的游戏、LOL比赛、《荒野大镖客》和其他新发布的游戏。

我的书架上积压着许多我必须玩的游戏。对我来说真是艰难的挑战,因为我觉得我没有像游戏设计师那样工作。

F:设计师要玩的游戏太多了……

R:很棘手,因为你觉得你必须玩这些游戏。你应该想玩游戏。而且我确实想玩。一个弥补的方法是,我玩很多游戏,但每次只玩很短的时间。我通常一款游戏我只玩一个回合。我就是感受一下。如果不是好游戏,我就永远不会再玩它了。60美元就这样没了。

F:这对我来说也是很熟悉的事。以《变形金刚:塞伯坦的战争》为例。这款游戏的评价很高,听说很有趣。我喜欢变形金钢,于是玩了一个小时。然后我就知道我在这款游戏中学不到什么对我的工作是必须的东西。

作为专业游戏设计师必须知道的关于变形金钢的知识,我就是在这个小时里学到的,我不需要再玩9个小时。

R:多少是破坏体验了,对吧?我玩过《天际》,那是一款可能让人玩很久的游戏,也是少数我不只是感觉一下的游戏之一,我玩了25个小时。我认为我没学到什么其他东西。玩它也许只是浪费了我本可以用来做其他事的时间。但《天际》就是一款好游戏啊!

然后我告诉我自己:“好吧,也许再多玩一下可以让我对它更难以忘怀,我从它当中获得的灵感比在其他游戏中更多一些。”

F:我可以想象,阅读IGN和GameSpot、购买大量游戏、总是关注最热新游戏的玩家可能没有料到《模拟人生》的设计师是这样工作的。

我见过许多设计师也是像你一样,比如《死亡空间》的设计师们。

R:我不认为我们就是玩家们想象中的样子。我认为一般玩家会认为我们的工作日复一日就是那样。

但我们确实要从许多这些硬核游戏中汲取灵感。再说《模拟人生3》,老实说,我们借鉴了许多《魔兽世界》的东西,比如升级系统、技能系统等。我们还创造了一个“情绪点”的概念,其实就是状态。这些设定可以让你随时了解你的角色。

我们没有照搬那个系统。我们按《模拟人生》的需要调整了它。我们的玩家很喜欢它,因为可以看到什么在影响他们的角色以及为什么、如何影响。

所以,我们就这样的人。

F:再回到我们的谈话的开头,如果你确定某些东西是有趣的,只要你根据玩家的需要调整它,玩家们就会觉得它有趣。

R:是的。是个好做法。

F:当你自己不是主要受众时,你觉得制作那种游戏会有什么挑战?

R:事实上,我喜欢《模拟人生》。在我参与开发这款游戏以前,我就已经是《模拟人生》的资深玩家了。我对它的喜爱仅次于《暗黑2》。我在《模拟人生》中花了N个小时。但我仍然不是主要受众,即使我喜欢它。因为我不属于核心玩家群体。

所以,困难就是真正理解核心受众的期待是什么,而不是根据我自己的要求设计游戏。因为我可以设计出我自己觉得非常棒的《模拟人生》,但那并不表示这个系列的百万玩家也会喜欢它。

为了理解核心受众的需求,我们花了很多时间逛论坛。我们有一个非常好的《模拟人生》玩家社区,他们都很喜欢表达自己的想法。真是慷慨的人们。主要是通过他们了解他们的游戏方式。玩家的类型是很多种的,比如成就者、经营者、建筑师、故事家,等等。

the sims 3(from joystiq.com)

the sims 3(from joystiq.com)

关于社区和玩家期待以及如何调整你的观点,这里有一件非常有趣的事。

有一个《模拟人生》的拓展包——《深夜》,是关于城市夜生活的拓展包。当我们在论坛上寻找建议时,我们发现最热门的一条建议是“我们希望我们的角色的胸部再丰满一点。”

因为这就是最大的趋势,所以你要好好考虑它。在《模拟人生3》时,你已经控制角色的许多特点了:头发颜色、体重、眼珠颜色、面容特征等。当然还有服装。但我们不允许你调整角色的胸部大小。

看到这条建议,我们意识到许多玩家都希望能实现这一点。所以,这成了一个必须认真考试的东西。但我们很犹豫,因为我们知道这是一个敏感的问题了。我们不想因为这款游戏把女性角色的胸部变大,而让别人认为我们的游戏在刻意体现女性特征。

但是,随着我们更加深入地分析这个倾向,我们发现了另一个有意思的分支——女性玩家也提出同样的要求。因为她们希望塑造自己,而胸部是身体的一个典型特征。

最后,我们意识到应该满足他们的要求,这样他们才能塑造想要的虚拟角色。所以我们就满足他们了。玩家也很高兴。这是件冒险的事,但正是他们想要的。

F:所以,反思你遇到的这个敏感话题,你的玩家说的东西其实比“我们想要大胸”更微妙。因为他们真正的意思是“我们想要更有表现力的身体类型,这样我们才能在游戏中塑造自己。”

R:确实。当你已经给他们那么多角色的自定义选项时,却不允许“大胸”,那才是让人难以接受的。某些游戏只允许玩家选择基本面容加上胸部大小,这才是对女性的“物化”。

F:《模拟人生3》大概开发了多久?

R:我们在2004年9月发布了《模拟人生2》,启动《模似人生3》项目是在2005年初,发布是在2009年6月,也就是说开发了4年多。

F:所以,对于这么一个开发了多年、大投入、大团队的项目,很多时候是在削减设计。有多少设计是没有放进游戏中的?又有多少是放进游戏中又因为玩家反馈而被削减掉的?

R:真是好问题。我们大概削减了70%的初始设计。

然后我们又重制游戏,到了生产阶段,我们对游戏有了更好的理解,大概又削减了50%。在项目接近完工时,因为有些东西不符合计划或不太有趣,所以又削减了5%到10%吧。

所以,我们削减了不少内容。部分是因为我们的目标太高了,像我们对许多项目的期望一样。如果我们保持原来的程度,我们可能现在还在做基础的东西。在成为资深设计师的过程中,我学习到的重要一课就是,必须开始得简单;否则你一开始就会浪费大量时间。

头脑风暴是个好开头。但之后要缩小范围,留下核心和最有趣的想法,而不是照单全收。因为在开发过程中,你必然会添加更多东西进来——削减掉一些东西才能为更适合处于开发后期的游戏的新东西腾出空间。

F:所以,四年后,再看最终成果,大概只保留了最初想法的10%。但是,那是最精华的10%。

R:是的。但我得强调一下,那是因为我们当是还是新人,对项目规模把握得不好——不是时间或资源不够。《模拟人生3》其实比《模拟人生2》大很多,因为它有无缝连接的街区、更丰富的技能、更华丽的房子和更多的角色自定义选项,等等。

然而,设计师永远无法摆脱的就是,我们往往有非常多的想法,但其中99.99%是永远不会见天日的。这是比较困难的地方,既是诅咒又是福音。因为你虽然有大量好创意,但同时知道这些好想法只能存在于头脑中,除非我们有了某种神奇的工具能把它们变成现实。真是令人沮丧。

F:是的,当你说90%的东西被削减掉了,就是说只有10%的东西是一致通过的。所以10%不等于存在于脑海中的大量想法,后者也许是前者的10倍之多。

R:是啊。你必须做出游戏,而且是在确定的预算范围内。你必须在许多限制条件下工作。否则你的工作就完了,因为你做不出游戏。

但是有时候当你看到论坛上有人说:“我希望游戏中有这个设定。”,你会想到“我早就设计出来了!”我们只是为了控制规模罢了。

F:有点像维基百科啊(笑)。

R:然后你会想,也许应该在设计中加入那个东西而不是其他东西。但这个说不准。最终,一切都为下一次积累教训,你要在限定的时间内做出最好的游戏。我的最终目标是让玩家开心。如果他们开心了,那我也就开心了。(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

“What is Game Design” with Ray Mazza

by FamousAspect

The following are excerpts from a conversation with Ray Mazza, Lead Designer Worldwide for Playfish.  Ray’s titles include The Sims 2, The Sims 3, The Sims Social, and a whole host of Sims expansion packs.

To start with, what is game design?

Ray Mazza: What is game design? It’s figuring out what is fun. It’s trying to understand the concept of fun and then turning that into a meaningful experience. I think that’s what game design
is. There are many different ways to do that.

Has there been a time in your career where you’ve identified something that you know to be fun, whether it’s an interaction or a mechanic. You think, “X is fun, I know it in my heart.” And then you tried to turn it into a game and watched it sputter, just die on the canvas?

Ray Mazza: Oh, jeez. That’s a good question. I feel like the answer is “yes.” It happens to designers all the time, and it’s why you often need to iterate on designs many times until they’re
fun. I’ll try and think of an example… there was a time when we were doing a lot of prototypes for The Sims 3. One of the things that I thought was fun was combining things genetically, making
some game structures that have genetics, and then letting the player see what they like about them and having them combine those things and see results.

I was using abstract shapes at the time, procedural shapes. And, the way I put that on the canvas, it was not fun. Because I didn’t have any gameplay around it. It was more of a geeky, computer science-y “this is a fun thing” approach. But what you think of as fun in your mind isn’t necessarily fun on the canvas.

That was when I was a fresh designer. I was in the midst of learning that a lot of fun is about feedback, the way you give feedback to players, making everything you touch very satisfying. And that was some of what I lacked back then.

What is the role of a game designer on a team? We talked about how game design is about being almost a scholar of fun, trying to bring fun to life. What does a game designer do?

Ray Mazza: It is understanding fun and what fun means, and to use all those elements of fun to make compelling experiences. But every designer tends to have different goals.

Some designers want to tell a story or communicate a message. Other designers are more about educating their players, with games like Carmen Sandiego or Number Cruncher.

Some designers just want to make a compelling mechanic that is addictive and you can’t stop touching it. That’s more of Spry Fox’s Triple Town sort of game. There are plenty of paths.

I think, as a designer, you have to figure out what your goal is and work towards that. It doesn’t mean you can’t do many of those things. But that will drive the way you approach design.

What sort of designer are you?

Ray Mazza: [laughs]. I categorize myself as an experience designer, which is approaching it from like, “What experience do I want a player to have? How do I want them to feel?” And then designing around that, rather than approaching it from the other angle, where I want to design a game about “x.” So I want to design a game that makes a player feel like “x” or makes them play in such a way.

It’s a combination of storytelling and mechanic-centric design.

What is the biggest challenge you face as a game designer?

Ray Mazza: So, honestly, it’s finding the time to play games. Sometimes that actually feels like work. Boo-hoo, I know, right? But part of game design is immersing yourself in other areas of
interest. Because game designers can draw on so many different disciplines: architecture, politics, mathematics, sociology, phsychology, etc.

It helps to go and learn these things. A number of years ago, I got into writing and decided I wanted to write a novel. So I spent a lot of time on that and that helps me in game design, because I
can write text a lot better and craft more compelling stories.

But all the time I was learning about writing, I wasn’t playing games. Or I wasn’t able to play as many games as other people. And I’m constantly surrounded by friends who are talking about all
these games they’re playing, and all these LoL matches they’re having. Playing Red Dead Redemption and every other new game that comes out.

I have a long backlog of games I need to play sitting on my shelf. That for me is really challenging because I feel like I’m not doing my job as a game designer.

And there’s just this avalanche of hundred-hour experiences…

Ray Mazza: It’s rough, because you feel like you need to go and play these games. It shouldn’t feel like that. You should want to play. And I do want to play them. One way of helping make up for that is I play a lot of games, but for a very short amount of time. Often I will spend only one session playing a game. I’ll sit down, I’ll play it, get the feel for it. And if it’s not an
awesome game, I will probably never play it again. And that’s $60 bucks right there.

That’s pretty familiar to me, too. A good example is I picked up Transformers: War for Cybertron. Strong reviews, sounds like fun. I love Transformers. Played for an hour. And I know that there’s nothing else in this game that I’ll necessarily learn for my craft.

Like, everything I need to know about Transformers as a professional game designer, I’ve learned in this hour and I don’t need to see the other nine hours.

Ray Mazza: That partly ruins the experience, right? I was playing Skyrim and that’s one of those games that can suck you in for a long time. It’s one of those games that I’ve played for more
than a sitting and, 25 hours in, I don’t think I’m going to learn anything else. And playing it is probably wasting my time that I could spend doing something else. But it’s such a good game!

And then I tell myself, “Well, maybe the experience of playing it more will make it even more memorable and I’ll be able to use that inspiration a little more strongly in other games.”

I would imagine that the typical gamer who reads IGN and GameSpot, buys a bunch of games and is always on the hottest releases, might not expect the pedigree of designers in Sims.

I know from meeting a couple of you that the same type of game designers that work on Dead Space work on The Sims.

Ray Mazza: I don’t think we are who they think we are. I feel like the typical gamer thinks we’re just doing a day job.

But we do take inspirations from a lot of these hardcore games. Back on The Sims 3, we took a lot of inspiration from World of Warcraft, honestly. It shows up in a lot of the progression systems, like skills. We also have this concept called moodlets, which are really just buffs. They let you see how your Sim is feeling at any point in time.

We didn’t copy that system. We made it applicable to the Sims and our players actually love it; being able to see what’s affecting their Sims and why and how they’re feeling.

So, we are those guys.

So, to bring it back all the way to the start of the conversation, if you identify something that’s fun, it’s probably fun for everyone, so long as you adapt it to their needs.

Ray Mazza: Yes. That’s a good way of putting it.

What are the challenges you face making a game for which you’re not the primary audience?

Ray Mazza: Well, the thing is, I love The Sims. Before I started working here, I probably played The Sims for a really long time. Right next to Diablo 2. Many, many, many hours sunk into the The Sims. But I’m still not the primary audience, even though I love it. Because I’m not in the core demographic.

So the difficulty is really understanding what they’re looking for and not just designing a game for myself. Because I could design an awesome Sims game for myself that wouldn’t necessarily appeal to the millions of players that love the franchise.

To help us do that, we spend a lot of time on forums. We have a great Sims community and they love to tell us their thoughts. Very generously. And it’s about understanding the ways they play. And,

there’s a split in different types of players. Achievers, doll-housers, builders, storytellers.

Here’s an interesting thing that happened, regarding the community and what players are looking for and how you need to adapt your views.

On one of the Sims expansion packs – Late Night, which was a city, nightlife, sexy expansion pack – there was a point on that project when we were looking at the forums and one of the hottest
trending threads was, “we want our Sims to have bigger boobs.”

And when it’s one of the hottest trending threads, you want to give it consideration. At that time in The Sims 3, you had control over a lot of the aspects of your Sim: hair color, body weight,
eye color, different facial features. All the clothing. But we didn’t give you control over their chest size.

And, looking into this thread, we saw that many tens of thousands of people had requested this. And it had hundreds of thousands of views. So that became something to seriously consider. But we were hesitant, because we knew that there was a lot of sensitivity around this sort of issue. We didn’t want to be viewed as a game that lets people objectify women by giving them big chests.

But, as we explored the thread more and more, we found that there was an interesting divide where, it was the females that were requesting this. Because they just wanted to make themselves, and they use that as a defining characteristic of their bodies.

In the end, we realized that it’s control players should have so they could create the Sims they want to create. So we ended up giving that to them. And they love it. It was a risky thing, but it’s what they wanted.

So, once you actually look past the sensationalism of the topic, what your players were saying was more nuanced than “We want bigger boobs.” It was “We want more expressive body types, so we can create ourselves in the game.”

Ray Mazza: Exactly. And when you give them so many ways to customize their characters already, but you’re holding that back, it’s almost oppressive. As opposed to other games, where they only let you choose your basic look plus your boob size. That’s more objectification.

How long of a project was the The Sims 3, roughly?

Ray Mazza:  We launched The Sims 2 in September, 2004, and started working on The Sims 3 in early 2005. Then we launched The Sims 3 in June, 2009. So it was in development just over 4 years.

So, on a big, multi-year, expansive, big team project like that, a lot of the process of design can be about cutting. How much design do you think was done that never made its way into the game? Or made its way into the game and then got cut due to user feedback?

How big is the piece of marble that you’re carving away at?

Ray Mazza: That’s a really good question. In the first scoping process, from all the designs that we had written and all the designs that we had planned to write, we probably cut 70% of that away.

And then we did another iteration later on, once we were in production and had a better understanding of our velocity, and probably cut another 50%. And then, closer to the end of the project, when some things weren’t going as planned or just not turning out to be fun, then it’s maybe another 5 to 10%.

So you end up cutting a lot. Part of that, though, is because our sights were too high, like they tend to be with a lot of projects. If we’d kept the original scope, we’d still be working on the
base game right now. One of the things I’ve learned becoming a seasoned designer is that you need to start simple. Otherwise you’re going to be wasting a lot of time upfront.

It’s good to do expansive brainstorms. But to then go and scope right from there down to the core and the most interesting ideas, rather than planning to do it all. Because you will inevitably add more as you go, anyway – some of the cuts later on are to make room for new features that suddenly make sense as the rest of your game falls into place.

So, four years, all the resources in the world. End game is maybe 10% of what you imagined in the beginning. But it’s the best 10%.

Ray Mazza: Yeah. But I’ll stress that it’s because we were fresh designers without a feel for scope – not a lack of time or resources. The Sims 3 was actually a much larger game than The Sims 2,
with a seamless neighborhood, richer skills, incredible house and Sim customization, and so on.

Yet one thing that designers can never get away from is that we tend to have thousands of ideas and 99.99% of them will never see the light of day. That’s the hard part. It’s a curse and a
blessing. Because you need a huge pool of ideas to pull from, but knowing that there are all these cool things that could exist if only we had some kind of magical tool that would just instantiate
them. That’s frustrating.

Yeah, when you say something like 90% of the scope gets cut. That was just the agreed-upon scope. So that’s not even the pool of ideas that exist, which was probably ten times larger than the

agreed-upon scope.

Ray Mazza: Yeah. You need to get the game out there and it has to be a certain budget.You need to work within a lot of restrictions. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a job because you’d never release the game.

But then sometimes you see stuff on forums that are like, “Well, I wish the game did this.” And you’re like, “I had that in a design!” But we scoped it.

It’s somewhere on a wiki somewhere [laughs].

Ray Mazza: And then you think, maybe I should’ve included that instead of some other part of the design. But you never know. In the end, everything is a lesson for next time, and you try to make the best game you can with the time that you have. Ultimately, the goal is to make your players happy. If they’re happy, then I’m happy too.(source:famousaspect)


上一篇:

下一篇: