作者：Ethan Levy

本文选自与Michael John的一次谈话。Michael John是EA的高级创意总监。在漫长的游戏设计师职业生涯里，他参与制作了许多大作，如《Spyro the Dragon》系列、《Daxter》和《God of War: Chains of Olympus》等。

Famousaspect（以下简称F）：首先，什么是游戏设计？

Michael John（以下简称M）：什么是游戏设计……你昨天晚上就问我了，所以我有一个晚上的时间考虑，不过我因此一整个晚上都在想这个问题，是福又是祸啊。现在，我的答案是，设计是一个名词，也是一个动词，而名词和动词的含意是不一样的。

所以，当设计作为名词时，我认为游戏设计描述的是一种艺术形式。如果说游戏是在玩家手上获得生命的一种艺术形式，那么游戏设计就是一个盛放艺术的容器。

当设计作为动词时，我认为意义其实更加宽泛。所以，设计游戏这一活动涉及多个学科，比如技术、美术、机械等。

所以，游戏设计的过程需要各种学科出身的人参与。当我进入EA时，我遇到一件非常不可思议的事，首席创意总监Rich Hilleman（雇用我的人，我在他手下做事四年）让我开一门游戏设计的课，我非常认真地考试这个任务。

所以我开始问我自己同样的问题：什么是游戏设计？

我觉得我知道游戏是什么，但我不知道设计是什么。所以我读了很多文章、买了很多书、参加了很多关于设计的大会。

F：图像设计、工业设计……

M：是的，通过不同人的不同角度回答这个问题。我开始迷上家具设计、工业设计和建筑设计。所有这些设计都意味着一件事：创造一个物品，在它与人的交互活动中传达它的意义。

一个可以独立存在并且具有意义的东西，我们就叫它艺术。一个必须与人产生交互作用的、必须被设计的东西，则不一定是艺术，并且通常不是艺术。也许设计得不好，或者甚至故意设计。所以，在你开始研究设计、观察周围的时候，你会意识到一个有趣的现象：基本上不是由上帝直接创造的一切东西，都是被设计出来的。

F：在你的游戏设计课堂上，你讨论了什么话题或传授了什么技能？

M：我得说，我做的事不止是那些吧，我还试图理解和教授如何引导创意过程。除了游戏，我还探讨了合作和创意。

结果，我们在合作和创意上花了更多时间，因为那才我们不足的地方，对吧？人们总是发现自己失败的主要原因是创意过程被什么东西破坏了。创意过程的挑战之一是，难度是指数上升的。

一个人时可能可以保持创意，且不会遇到太多困难，但愿吧。当有两个人时，三个人时，就到一个难度飞跃的点了。接着，当15到20个人时，又到一个飞跃点了。再到40个人时，又到另一个飞跃点了。当处于这些飞跃点时，要发挥创意是极其困难的，然而又是必须的。

所以你要怎么构建体系、过程，怎么让领导者和制作者各司其职？这是EA这样的大公司面临的挑战。因为他们在大部分时候都面临着更大的困难。

F：当你授课时，你可能从来不写游戏设计文档。你可能只是鼓励人们分享想法。

M：是的，主要是分享两种东西：想法和过程。我越来越相信，有创意的人，如果想要制作那种规模的东西，那么你的美工刀、笔刷，无论什么工具，都是过程。如果你允许其他人参与这个过程，那么你就是把工具给他。

F：我觉得，有时候在开发项目时，我发现与几乎其他一切工作相比，通过管理bug表我可以做出更多设计。

M：是的。管理bug是一个好例子。在开发周期的末尾，谁控制了bug表，谁就管理bug。在我开发的任何游戏中，我总是会管理bug表，成为bug的唯一仲裁者。

作为首席设计师，这是很奇怪的事——你居然把制作人凉在一边了。但是，我还是会经常说“不，我抱歉，你现在不能做这个。我现在要做这个。”

顺便一提，在那个方面，我确实犯了一些惊世骇俗的错误。

F：能不能举个你犯错的例子？

M：有那么一件记忆犹新的事。在开发《Spyro the Dragon 2》时，索尼刚做出第一个具有模拟摇杆功能的游戏控制杆。任天堂比索尼领先一步，已经做出有两个模拟摇杆的控制器。

我们知道，在Nintendo 64上玩《马里奥》时，一个模拟摇杆可以朝各个角度旋转，那比键盘操作高级多了。我懂了。

所以，索尼很久之后才开始做这种原型，而我们已经过成测试了，几乎进入QA阶段。然后，索尼发布这种控制器，说我们打算与你的游戏同时投放市场。

所以，我们很气愤。马上有一名程序员做了一些不同的算法，使玩家可以用模拟杆控制Spyro的活动。还是有些了不起的，虽然不到惊天地泣鬼神的程度。可以说，大部分人会用这种方式玩游戏。我们感觉不错。特别是考虑到我们执行它所花的时间并不长。

接着，我们的故障表就出来了。索尼的QA人员也在关注这种新控制器。有一名QA测试员说：“我认为如果它是右杆控制器，那还是不错的。”——因为我们忽略了右杆控制器，而选择“双杆控制器，因为这正是索尼胜过任天堂的地方。任天堂有一，我们就要有二。”

那名QA测试员说：“我认为如果右杆控制器可以旋转和倾斜镜头，那就好了。”我认为他太自以为是了。因为我们知道如何让镜头左转和右转，也就是按下控制器上的L1和R1键。

因为管理bug的人是我，所以我给那个测试员一个非常粗鲁的回答：“感谢你的提议。不过我们不会记得它的。”

F：这是对bug的常见回应，是吧？很多时候，你不得不这么做。

M：是的。然后游戏就那么发布了。责任基本上落在我头上，因为现在所有使用轴心式摄像机的游戏都可以旋转和倾斜了，而且是通过带右模拟杆的控制器来实现的。所以，下一款游戏我们当然也那么做了。

当你是导致失败的人时，你就是失败的。有时候，必须按时交付游戏。所以我为自己感到骄傲的一个点是，我从来没有错过截止日期。但是，只要你成为那个不合作的失败者，失败就是你导致的。

F：从外行人的角度看，当你认为设计师的典型工具是文档、表格和原型时，为什么设计师还那么强调过程？

M：我想到我在更早之前的一次谈话中说到，不存在什么有趣的游戏设计文档。为什么？因为游戏设计文档不可能涵盖让游戏有趣的东西。

对于少数游戏，比如剧情导向的游戏如《质量效应3》，我也许可以从它的游戏设计文档中读出一些有趣的东西，但那是极少数的例外，大多数游戏不是这样的。

F：在《战争机器3》中，你是一个带枪的家伙，你躲避、出现、射击。

M：基本上就是那样……

F：这个跟立即乐趣无关。

M：是的，确实。所以如果我们说的是真的，那么什么是设计？设计其产是最终产品。所以那意味着你自己和真正的设计之间存在一个缺口。无论如何，你要填补那个缺口。

填补缺口的方式，除非你是自己一个人工作，否则你需要别人的帮助。而且是大量帮助。

所以你得思考如何吸引那些人来帮助你。没有别人的帮助，你甚至不知道自己能达哪里。所以不只是沿着线填补缺口，还是确定那条线的方向到底是什么。因为你不和道。你不可能确定。我也不知道自己要前往哪里。但是，我知道我什么时候会看到我的目标。

在没有告诉别人你想做什么的情况下，怎么让别人为你做事？那是相当困难的。所以你必须给他们一个可以信任的过程。

F：我从那场对话中得出的结论是，游戏设计师是技术的实践者，而首席设计师是激励他们的人。

M：是的，相当于建筑工程师之于建筑工人。

F：所以许多人，在他们的职业生涯中，他们被要求从建筑工人转型为建筑工程师，也许能胜任，也许不能；毕竟有些人就是擅长手把手执行，而对表格或剧情创作没有兴趣。

所以，我想问的是，游戏设计师的角色是什么？创意设计师呢？

M：好吧，我也培养了很多游戏设计师，只是途径没有那么正式。

我认为成为一个优秀的创意总监是极难的，如果你不是首先至少是一名优秀的游戏设计师的话。以运动行为作类比，偶尔会有某些教练不是自己的那个领域的优秀选手。但当是极其罕见的。

当然，优秀的教练也很少是最尖端的选手，他们通常是训练得很多，但未必突出的好选手。我甚至认为会不会有什么超级选手同时也是超级教练。可惜这种事几乎不存在。

F：确实。不过我很容易就想到Ozzie Guillén ，他带领芝加哥白袜队参加世界职业棒球大赛，但我知道他是在他成为教练之前，因为我在芝加哥时看过他比赛。

M：他从来没有……

F：他是个明星，但不是一个红遍全国的巨星。

M：如果你过去没有从事过那一行，你很难理解如何培养那一行的人才。而能成为教练的人，部分是因为相当热衷于自己的行业，即使自己未必是超级巨星。

但是，具有某方面突出才能的人同时也是优秀的领导者，也确实罕见。优秀的领导者不一定是那一领域的顶尖人才。

所以，“罕见的那一拨人”是哪些人？现在，许多人发现自己在执行方面已经没有发展空间了。他们厌烦了，失望了，各种因素刺激他们去做不同的事，于是他们就开始扮演领导者的角色了。

领导者需要的是一套不同的技能。我很乐意承认，设计师不一定是杰出的领导者。不过，我认为设计领导者应该是优秀的设计师。

我想那些不是优秀设计师的设计领导应该会遇到很多困难。确实，我见过的。

F：不是优秀设计师的设计领导容易遇到什么困难呢？

M：例如，我会说“我不要听你说的，除非你说话的每一个句子都以这个短语开头‘玩家玩得好吗？’那太傻了。但我会说，我不想听你的游戏设计想法，除非你说的每个句子都以‘玩家’这个词开头。这种要求可以改变你的表达方式。

什么事都先说玩家，一开始时会让人觉得很烦。但之后你会明白，那正是我们的职责所在。我们要做的东西是玩家要玩的。所以，我当然说什么话都要以“玩家”开头。过一阵子就习惯了，不过真正把这个理念融入内心，是要花上几年时间的。总之，我的信仰就是玩家，只有玩家。（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 Michael John

by Famousaspect

The following are excerpts from a conversation with Michael John, Senior Creative Director at Electronic Arts, where he works to build and grow a community of strong, passionate game designers and creative directors. MJ’s long career as a game designer includes hits like the Spyro the Dragon series, Daxter and God of War: Chains of Olympus.

To start with, what is game design?

Michael John: Right, what is game design… you asked me that question yesterday, so I got to think about it overnight, which is a blessing and a curse. So, here’s the funny thing. Design is a noun and a verb. And I think that in noun and verb they mean different things.

So, in a noun form, you say game design. I think what that is a description of the art form. If what games are as an art form is something that comes to life in the hands of a user, which is certainly true, then the game design is sort of the capsule in which that art sits.

But then as a verb, I think it’s much broader, actually. So the act of designing a game encompasses the fact that a game is so cross-disciplinary. And that involves technology, it involves artwork, and it involves mechanics.

So all of those people are involved in this process of game design. One of the things that I became fascinated with, and this really began in an intellectual way when I came to EA, where (Chief

Creative Director) Rich Hilleman -who is the guy who hired me here and who I’ve worked for the whole four years I’ve been at EA – asked me to teach a course in game design, which was a task that I took really seriously. So I actually began by asking myself exactly this question: what is game design?

And I felt like I knew the answer to what a game was and I felt like I didn’t know the answer to what design was. So I did a bunch of reading and bought a bunch of books and went to a conferences and stuff on design.

Graphic design, industrial design…

Michael John: Yeah, by people who look at it from a different point of view. I became fascinated with furniture design, with industrial design, with architecture, which is a form of design. And all of those are defined by one thing, which is that, it’s the creation of an object that takes its meaning from the way in which it is interacted with.

An object that can stand on its own and have meaning, we will call art. An object that must be interacted with, must be designed. And may or may not be art. And usually isn’t art. And may or may not be well designed, or even intentionally designed. So, one of the interesting things is, when you start studying this, you start looking around, and you realize that, basically everything that isn’t made by God, directly, like a tree, is designed.

In the class you put together on game design, what were some of the topics you addressed or skills you taught?

Michael John: I would say that, what I ended up with more than anything else was, trying to understand and then teach how to lead the creative process. And actually I would say that goes well beyond the games to anything else that is collaborative and creative.

That’s what we ended up focusing our time on because that’s where the deficit was, right? Where people were finding themselves failing seemed to be mostly because something was breaking the creative process. One of the challenging parts of the creative process is, it scales exponentially in difficulty.

So one person could be creative and they really don’t have a lot of conflict, hopefully. And then two people and then three people. And then there are these sort of quantum points, where it jumps.

So, at about 15 to 20 people, there’s a quantum point that jumps up. At about 40 people, there’s another quantum point that jumps up. To where being creative in those environments becomes extremely difficult, and yet required.

So how do you build structures, processes, and leaders and creators that can all function in those settings? This is the challenge that a place like EA has. Because they’re at the very high end of that difficulty curve most of the time.

And, when you’re up there, you might never write a game design doc. You might only inspire people to have a shared vision.

That’s right. So it’s about two things: it’s about shared vision and about process. And I’ve come to believe that creative people, if you’re going to create something on that scale, your putty knife, paintbrush, whatever, is the process. And if you allow someone else to manipulate the process, you’re handing them the paintbrush.

I feel like, at a certain point in my projects, I recognized that I could do more design by controlling the bug list than by almost anything else.

Michael John: Yes. And the bug list is a great example. Late in the development cycle, whoever controls the bug list really drives the bus. I’ve always, in any game that I have shipped, at a
certain point I take over the bug list and demand to be sole arbiter of the bug list.

Which feels strange, you know, being supposedly the lead designer. You’ve got the producer sitting right over here. But, “No, I’m sorry, you don’t get to do this now. I get to do this now.”

And I’ve made some terrible, by the way, egregious errors in that space.

Can you tell me about one of those errors?

Michael John: I have one that in my little world is famous. On Spyro the Dragon 2, Sony had just created the first joystick that had analog sticks on it. So Nintendo had one before but this was the first one that Sony had, and it had two analog sticks on it.

We kind of knew what one analog stick was supposed to work like, because we could play Mario on the Nintendo 64. So, okay, it’s analog, you can rotate it in a wide variety of directions. That’s
superior to a digital. I get it. Cool.

So they bring this prototype in quite late. We were already past our beta, almost into the QA process. Then Sony shows up with this controller, says we’re going to put this on the market at the same time as your game.

So we’re like “oh shit, okay”. Right away, one of the programmers does some different math and you can make Spyro run around using the analog stick. It was somewhat superior. It wasn’t super awesome superior, but it was somewhat superior. Good enough probably to say that most people would play it that way. We felt good about it. Especially considering the amount of time we had to implement this.

And then, our bug list came in and the QA people at Sony were also looking at the new controller. And one QA tester says, “I think it would be kind of cool if actually the right stick,” – because we just ignored the right stick, we’re like “Dual Shock, this is just Sony trying to one-up Nintendo. Nintendo had one, we’ll make two.”

“I think it’d be cool,” he said, “if the right stick actually rotated and tilted the camera.” I thought that’s typical QA fucker thinks he’s got all the good ideas. Because we knew how to rotate the camera which is you do the yaw of the camera left and right on the L1 and R1 buttons on the controller.

So I sent a very rude comment back, because I had control of the bug list, back to this QA tester, saying, “thank you for your input. We will be ignoring this.”

Which is a pretty common response to bugs, right? You have to do a lot of those.

Michael John: Yes.  The game shipped like that. Which the blame for that has to rest entirely on my shoulders, because now every game that uses a camera that can be pivoted, can be yawed and pitched, uses the right analog stick on the controller to do that. For the next game, of course, we did that.

When you make yourself the single point of failure like that… you become the single point for failure. It’s necessary to do sometimes, to get a game out in time. So one of the things I pride myself on is I’ve never shipped a game late. But, as soon as you become that non-collaborative single point of failure, you invite failure.

Why is process such a powerful tool for designers, when, from an outside perspective, you think of the typical tools of the designer as documents, spreadsheets, prototypes.

Michael John: Let’s go back to something I said [in an earlier conversation], which is that there is no such thing as an interesting game design document. What’s the reason for that? It’s because a game design document cannot possibly encompass what makes the game cool.

It may, in some certain genres: if it’s a very narrative-driven genre, I can probably read the game design document for Mass Effect 3 and find that entertaining. But that is such an outlier compared to most games that are created.

Gears of War 3. You are a dude. You have a gun. You duck. You pop up. You shoot.

You shout the word “balls” and that’s basically all there is…

It doesn’t capture the moment-to-moment joy.

Michael John: It doesn’t capture the moment, yeah. So if that’s true, then what is the design? Well the design is actually the final product. So that means that you’ve got this hole between what you could define yourself, and what the actual design is. And somehow that hole has to be filled in.

And the way the hole is filled, unless you work by yourself is you’re going to need some help. You’re going to need probably a lot of help to fill that hole.

So you have to figure out how to engage those folks to get you from here to there. And you can’t even define what “there” is without the help. So it’s not just them filling in points along a line. It’s defining what the vector of that line actually is. Because you don’t know. You cannot define it. It is like Heisenberg’s uncertainty design principle. I just hope I can get there. I don’t know where I’m headed.  But, I’ll know it when I see it.

How do you engage help of those individuals without being able to tell them what you want to do? That’s hard. So what you’ll have to do is give them a process that they can believe in.

Something I’m taking away from the conversation is a game designer is a practitioner of a skill. And a design leader is someone who motivates people.

Michael John: Yeah, it’s craftsman versus architecture in some ways.

And so a lot of people, as their career progresses, they’re asked to move from skill craftsman to skilled architect, and that may or may not work and there may be people that are skilled architects that actually aren’t interested in the spreadsheets or really don’t care about defining the story.

So, what I was going to ask is, what is the role of the game designer? What is the role of a creative director?

Michael John: Okay, so I’ve also trained a lot of game designers, it’s just been a lot less formal.

I think it’s exceptionally difficult to be a good creative director, if you have not been at least a decent game designer. So there’s really nice clean analogy to sports. There’s occasionally a coach who didn’t play. But those are incredibly rare.

Now the good coach is also rarely the superstar player. They’re usually the decent player who played a lot, but didn’t necessarily stand out. I’m trying to even think of one that was a superstar that turned into being a great coach. They just don’t exist.

Right. Whereas like I can easily go, well, Ozzie Guillén took the White Sox to the World Series, but I only know him before he was a coach because I lived in Chicago and saw him play.

Michael John: He was never. . .

He was a star, but not quite a national superstar.

Michael John: So I really think it maps. It’s very hard to understand what’s going on if you weren’t part of it at one point. And part of it in a way that you were quite dedicated to it. Even if you weren’t necessarily the superstar.

But, yes, that being said, the people who have that superset of skills that allow you to be a leader are also rare. And are not necessarily the ones who are superstars.

So, who are those people? Now the good news is a lot of them self-select because they recognize their limits in the space of actually doing the craft. They get bored, they get disappointed, there’s a variety of things that become motivators to move on to something different and then go to the leadership space.

They are different skill sets and I’m happy to consider the idea of a designer who would not make a good leader. I am unhappy to consider the design leader who is not a good designer.

And I think those people end up in trouble. I really do. I’ve seen it.

What do you think is the trap that a person who’s a design leader who hasn’t been a strong designer falls into easily?

Michael John: So there’s a design mode of thinking that’s important. One of the things when I train designers is I’ll train them in certain uses of language.

So for instance, I will say “I’m not going to hear what you say, until every sentence you say begins with the phrase, ‘The player’ Okay?” And that’s a silly thing, but if I say, I’m not going to listen to your game design idea until you tell me every sentence begins with the words, “the player,” it changes the way you communicate.

The player will first jump in, it’s annoying for a while. And then you realize, well, that’s what we’re doing here. We’re creating something that players are going to do. So, of course, I have to start everything with “the player.” And it takes a while. It takes sometimes years to really feel that. Like, what I believe is never right. It’s all about the player.(source:famousaspect)