作者：Lisa Poisso

为何玩家沉迷于自己所玩的游戏？游戏专家兼心理学家John Hopson告诉我们，可能是玩法元素。这位微软游戏工作室的实验心理学家和测试主管在最近的文章如《Shadow Complex》、《Halo 3: ODST》和《Halo: Reach》中回答了是什么导致玩家做某事，以及如何让他们高兴地做某事。

John本人也是一个忠实的《WOW》玩家。他表示：“我主要是在两个半官方的微软公会里玩，最近我已经成为休闲玩家中的硬核玩家了。我妻子几个月前生了宝宝，所以我们都放弃副本之类的活动了，只能升级了，因为那不太需固定的上线时间。到目前为止，我们各自有5个80级的角色。”在以下采访中，他以资深玩家、专业评论者的视角解读了《WOW》。

WoW(from joystiq.com)

15 Minutes of Fame（以下简称M）：首先感谢你接受采访。我们的第一个问题是：你主要玩什么角色？

John：我在两个半官方的微软公会中都有角色。为了防止别人说我的要广告，名称我就不说了。一个是主攻PVP的联盟公会，一个是主攻PVE的部落公会。

听起来很能有些奇怪，我最好的《WOW》体验主要是来自微软朋友-家人组成的公会。这两个公会收罗了各种不同个性的玩家，但每个人都很聪明稳重。此外，公会中有一种来自现实团队的独特氛围。因为所有人都知道可能会在什么地方遇上对方，所以通常不会制造什么事端。当然，有时候也会出现一些很搞笑的情况：底层员工命令总经理，因为前者是当晚的副本领队。

我一直都在玩的是德鲁依。我喜欢当肉盾，喜欢在BOSS战中发挥多种作用。我在《燃烧远征》中玩的是萨蛮，在《经典旧世》中玩的是战士。

M：实验心理学家、游戏研究专家、写手、玩家……哪一个身份先有？先有鸡还是先有蛋？你是怎么开始研究人们如何玩游戏的，并利用那些信息与游戏设计师合作制作出更好的游戏？

John：我是玩家，最先是并且永远是。我大学毕业后，白天我研究行为心理学，晚上就制作一些早期的文本在线RPG，这是我的爱好。我不断发现二者之间颇有联系，于是写了一篇文章叫作《行为游戏设计》，业内很多人都看过。微妙的游戏用户研究团队发现我正是他们要找的人才，给我打了电话。在他们联系我以前，我甚至不知道居然有这种工作存在。

M：说说你自己玩《WOW》的习惯吧。你最喜欢这款游戏什么？

John：在我的《WOW》生涯中，大部分时候我是一名还算不错的副本玩家。我喜欢打副本时的合作、根据副本团队的优势和弱势设计打败BOSS的策略。我还喜欢做一些能够促进副本成功的活动，花一整个晚上做一件可能有助于打败强悍敌人的小事。

因为我儿子出生了，我就变成休闲玩家了，大部分时间都是在升级。所以我现在有5个80级的角色了。

M：当你玩《WOW》时，你有没有发现它的设计很吸引人、使你一下子就着迷的的地方？或者你有没有发现被专业的研究人员质疑、挑剔游戏的设计选择？

John：一直都有人在研究《WOW》。我总是分析游戏的体验，比如“哇，我看出设计师在这里想干嘛了……”当我这么说时，我的好友和公会成员总是很抓狂。

不过总地来说，与其他人一样，这款游戏的设计对我也很受用。唯一的例外就是成就系统。我对这种东西完全免疫。因为我也有份参与Xbox Live成就系统的设计，所以我就无感了，就像用毒的反派总是对自己的毒药免疫。

M：你最近发表了一篇关于行为游戏设计的文章，告诉大家“电子游戏让你上瘾的5个诡计”。游戏设计师对那些行为原理的使用真的比那些制作其他类型的产品和服务的公司来普遍吗？

John：我不想在这里点名哪款游戏有恶行，所以，我只举个例子说明如何把致瘾机制添加到游戏中，使之成为游戏设计基础的有机组份吧。

想一想《WOW》中的炼金术机制。每一次你给朋友做烧瓶或每日例行物品合成，你就有可能学习到新配方。这是一种很好的致瘾机制。它刺激玩家做更多炼金，但又不会太强迫。或者再想想炼金合成的冷却。必须有一些限制因素来保持物品合成的价值，给这种功能一天的冷却时间，意味着玩家每天都要上线。设计师并不是用这些冷却条件来捉弄玩家，他们只是在设计他们给出的奖励。

M：当使用行为设计原理时，是不是有什么监管标准？

John：我认为任何针对游戏的规定都是不必要的，但如果以后出现更多影响游戏的规定，我也不会感到惊讶。法律一直在规范网络隐私和个人数据的使用，如好友列表，这些会影响我们设计游戏的方式。

M：我们来说说《WOW》的行为游戏设计中的社交网络。

John：朋友是我们做什么和怎么做的一个重要影响因素。任何事情，从肥胖到离婚，都过社交网络传播开来的。举个简单的例子，看成就通告。无论何时你看到一个信息说你的朋友获得了某成就，就是提醒你该上《WOW》了。这是一个上线的理由，或者另一种玩游戏的方式，又或者只是朋友之间的聊天话题。重点是，为玩家和游戏提供价值。这个通告不可能只是为了增加用户粘性，还要让游戏本身变得更好。

M：你觉得像真实ID这种东西是否能大大增加游戏对玩家的吸引力？

John：我认为会有一点儿帮助，但不太大。当玩家流失到《星际争霸2》或Blizzard的其他MMO中，让《WOW》不至于沦为鬼城，同时使Blizzard游戏之间更容易互通。另外，我认为它可能变成类似游戏内置语音聊天之类的东西，好，但还没好到让玩家放弃专用的社交网络工具的程度。

M：你认为硬核玩家的行为和上瘾玩家的行为有什么不同吗？

John：与其他活动一样，我认为区别在于游戏对他们生活的其他方面的影响。我知道游戏让许多玩家的生活更快乐更美好了，我自己就是其中之一。

M：Blizzard决定在游戏活动，比如副本中根据所花时间定奖励，你对此有什么看法？

John：这是非常合理的要求。否则，制作只有玩家只会看到一小部分的内容就没有意义了。

这里，部分是因为要继承老式街机游戏的精神遗产。因为那些游戏太小了，为了提供长期的玩法，只能提高进展的难度。在《俄罗斯方块》中也能看出这一点，玩法还是一样的，但速度却越来越快，直到你输掉。现在，开发者更加注重难度的平衡。我们不想让玩家觉得无聊，但除了盲目提高难度把他们逼走，应该还有其他办法让他们不断玩下去。看看其他类型的娱乐媒体，没有人会希望电影变得越来越观看。

M：硬核游戏玩家们的大声抗议似乎是因为游戏关卡的风险与时间和奖励之间严重不平衡，比如现在的《WOW》让硬核玩家感觉有点像休闲玩家爱玩的“EZ模式”的游戏。你认为硬核游戏的市场与这些玩家所声称的一样大吗？

John：《WOW》当然比大部分MMO都容易。然而，游戏仍然为精英玩家提供相当丰富的目标，如特殊的副本和荣誉。还要记住，只有约30%的《WOW》玩家能玩到10级以上。在我看来，这意味着即使像《WOW》这么照顾休闲玩家的游戏，仍然要流失70%的玩家。

专注于硬核玩法的游戏一定会更少。受众为那5%的硬核玩家的游戏当然也只能有5%的规模。那类游戏现在还有，如《星战前夜》、《黑暗降临》。这些游戏不错，但毕竟只是小众产品。

M：游戏攻略网站和公会大战的YouTube视频对游戏设计有什么影响？如何影响玩家期待和沉浸感？

John：网络资源使玩家得以选择自己的难度等级。如果你想独自穿越The Barrens去寻找Mankrik的妻子，那就去吧。不考虑策略就去打BOSS也是可能的。人的本性就是这么矛盾：当玩家可以选择时，他们会选择使游戏更容易，然后再抱怨游戏太容易。

这对游戏设计师来说也是严峻的考验。通过研究这些网络资源，玩家堵住了乐趣的潜在源泉，这就迫使设计师想办法再开源。如果你已经在YouTube上看过BOSS战了，那么当你自己玩时，你就不会觉得打BOSS是多么不得了的事了。那意味着设计师必须让真正的战斗执行有趣，而不是
靠玩家的困惑和发现来娱乐他们。

M：你当爸爸了（恭喜你！）。你和你的妻子一起玩《WOW》那么久了，游戏对你们的关系和家庭生活有什么影响？作为游戏夫妻，你有过什么积极的体验？

John：游戏对我们来说是一种很好的互动活动。它让我们共享社交圈，让我们有共同话题。我们通常通常一个当肉盾，一个当医生，这样比较好找队伍。因为我们的儿子刚出生，所以我们玩得比较少了，基本上是升升级。

比较麻烦的一方面是，我们得供起两套完整的装备。比较好的一面是，很容易说服她让我再买一个新显卡。只是，这一买又是两个了。

Sarth 3D(from joystiq.com)

M：你是不是一直关注即将推出的《大灾变》资料片？有什么想法吗？

John：我很高兴他们最终忍痛修改了战士的怒气机制。怒气与释放和受到的伤害量成比，意味着这个职业不可能平衡。

M：你和你的妻子打算玩《大灾变》吗？

John：必须的啊，但仍然要看看情况吧。我们可能先玩玩小地精之类的角色，或者说服我们的副本队伍让我们共用一个角色，也就是谁没带孩子时就让谁玩。

（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）

15 Minutes of Fame: Psychologist and games researcher John Hopson

by Lisa Poisso

From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We’re giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame.

What keeps gamers hooked on their game of choice? Chances are, it’s an element of the gameplay that was teased out with the help of games researcher John Hopson. The experimental psychologist and beta program head for Microsoft Game Studios examines what makes gamers do the things they do and then designs ways to keep them happily doing just that — most recently, in titles such as Shadow Complex, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.

All that, and he’s a WoW player to the core. “I mostly play in the two semi-official Microsoft WoW guilds, and lately I’ve been a hardcore player in a casual’s body,” he notes. “My wife and I had our first child a few months ago, so we’ve both dropped raiding and have been levelling alts instead since that doesn’t require a fixed schedule. So far, we’re both up to 5 level 80s apiece. ” We thought it was time to turn the tables on Hopson, a loyal reader and occasional commenter at WoW.com, and ask him for his perspectives on WoW from the inside out.

15 Minutes of Fame: Thanks for talking with us, John. Let’s start at the top: Who’s your main?

John Hopson: I play in two of the semi-official Microsoft guilds, and they’d prefer to not to advertise. One’s an Alliance guild on a PvP realm, one’s a Horde guild on a PvE realm.

Weird as it may sound, being in the Microsoft friends-and-family guilds has been one of the best aspects of my WoW experience. They’re big enough to encompass a wide variety of players, but everyone’s smart and mature. There’s also a certain undertone of civility that I find unique to guilds derived from real-world groups. Because everyone knows they might end up running into each other in the hall, the drama tends to be a lot lower. Of course, it also leads to weird situations like a low level employee giving orders to a general manager because the employee is the raid leader that night.

For most of this expansion, I’ve been playing a feral druid. I love being an off tank and having a different job in every boss fight. I raided in TBC as a resto shaman and in vanilla WoW as an arms warrior.

Experimental psychologist, games researcher, writer … Gamer … Which came first, the chicken or the egg? How did you find yourself studying how people play games and working with game designers to make better games with that information?

I’m a gamer, first and always. When I went to graduate school, I found myself doing behavioral psychology during the day and working on some of the early text-based online roleplaying games (MUDs) as a hobby at night. I kept seeing connections between the two and ended up writing an article called “Behavioral Game Design” that was pretty widely read within the industry. The Games User Research group at Microsoft decided I was their kind of guy and gave me a call. I didn’t even know this job existed before they contacted me.

Tell us a little about your own WoW habit. What do enjoy most about the game?

For most of my WoW career, I’ve been a moderately serious raider. I enjoy the coordination aspects of raiding, working out the right strategies to beat a boss with the strengths and weaknesses of a particular raid group. I also like being able to do little activities that add up to raid success, spending an off night getting that one last little thing that might help beat a hard encounter.

Since my son was born, I’ve become very casual and spend most of my game time leveling alts. So far, I’m up to five level 80s.

When you play WoW, do you find that its design sucks you in and propels you through the content without a second thought — or do you find the professional researcher on your shoulder picking, poking and questions the design choices?

The researcher is there all the time. I drive my friends and guildmates crazy by dissecting the experience as I go. “Oh, I see what the designer’s trying to do here …”

In general though, the design works as well on me as on anyone else. The only exception is achievements; I’m totally immune to them. Since my work was part of the inspiration for the original Xbox Live achievements, that seems strangely appropriate, like a supervillain immune to his own toxins.

You blogged recently about having your article on behavioral game design used in a Cracked piece on “5 creepy ways videogames are trying to get you addicted.” Are game designers really using behavioral principles much differently or extensively than companies making other types of products and services?

I don’t think that game companies are using behavioral principles any differently than any other industry. No one complains that their airline is addicting them when they offer frequent flyer miles or that their coffee shop is manipulating them by offering every tenth latte free. But when it comes to games, some people get a little antsy about this sort of “engagement engineering” in a way they don’t get about other products.

Psychology informs game design the same way anatomy informs furniture design. If a chair is shaped to fit your body, no one says the chair designer is trying to manipulate you. But the idea of games designed to fit your mind seems to cross into uncomfortable territory for many people. Our minds are already set up to respond in certain ways and a good game designer can use those responses to create a better experience for the player. It’s in everyone’s best interest for designers to understand their players.

When does the idea of designing a game that players want to play slide into the shadier territory of “tricking” players into becoming “hooked”? Is there a line in the sand, a point at which a compelling rewards system begins to feel unethical?

For me, the line is when the reward mechanisms are unrelated to the game design. Every game has something players find rewarding, otherwise you wouldn’t play it. There’s no way to make a fun game that doesn’t have a reward mechanism of some kind. The point of my work is to help designers understand the impact of their design choices so that they can choose mechanisms that are consistent with their overall vision for the game. If the game is intended as a deep, immersive experience, the designer needs to choose reward mechanisms that encourage that style of play. If it’s a casual game played in short bursts, the rewards should reflect that.

Think of it like cooking. It’s perfectly ethical for a chef to tweak the levels of various ingredients in their recipe to make it taste better. It’s not ethical to add in some other chemical purely to cause cravings.

Can you give us an in-game example?

I don’t want to accuse any particular game of shady practices, so I’ll focus on an example of how engagement mechanics can be added to a game in a way that’s ethical and organic to the fundamental game design.

Consider the alchemy mechanics in WoW. Every time you make a flask for a friend or do your daily transmute, there’s a chance of a proc or learning a new recipe. That’s a great engagement mechanic. It gives the player an extra little nudge to do more alchemy without being too pushy. Or consider the cooldowns on major alchemy transmutes. They have to have some kind of limiting factor on those transmutes to make them valuable, and giving them a one day cooldown means that every day there’s one more reason to log on. The designers aren’t tricking the players with those cooldowns, they’re just structuring the rewards they’d be giving out anyway.

Is this concern something that should even be considered at a regulatory level when employing behavioral design principles?

I don’t think there needs to be any gaming-specific regulations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more regulations in the future that affected gaming. I could easily see laws governing online privacy or the use of personal data such as friends lists affecting how we design games.

Let’s talk about the importance of social networking in WoW’s behavioral game design.

Our friends are a huge factor in what we do and how we do it. Everything from obesity to divorce has been shown to spread along social networks. To pick a simple example, look at achievement notifications. Whenever time you see a message saying your friend has gotten an achievement, it’s a little reminder about WoW. It’s a reason to log in, or a reminder of another way to play the game, or even just a topic of conversation for you and your friend. The key here is to provide value to both the player and the game. The notifications can’t be just in there for attachment purposes, they have to make the game better for the players as well.

Do you think features like Real ID will contribute significantly to the attachment and attraction players feel for the game?

I think it will help attachment a little, but not much. It’ll make WoW feel like less of a ghost town if and when players move to StarCraft II or Blizzard’s next MMO, and makes it slightly easier to transition between Blizzard games than to games by other studios. Past that, I think it might turn out to be like the in-game voice chat, decent but not good enough to make people switch away from dedicated social networking tools.

Is there a difference in how you define the behavior of a hardcore gamer and one who is literally “addicted”?

Like any other activity, I think the difference is the effect that their gaming has on the rest of their lives. I know plenty of people who are happier and better off because of their gaming, myself among them.

What’s your take on Blizzard’s decision to crank up the reward vs. time spent in game activities, from leveling to raiding?

It was exactly the right call. There’s just no way to justify creating content that only a tiny fraction of players ever got to see.

Part of the problem here is the mental legacy of old-school arcade games. Because those games were so small, the only way they could provide long-term play was to get progressively harder. You can see this in games like Tetris, where it’s always the same game and just gets faster and faster until you lose. These days, the industry is moving towards a more balanced perspective on difficulty. We don’t want players to get bored, but there are other ways to keep them playing besides blindly ramping up the difficulty curve until they quit. Look at other types of entertainment; no one expects a movie to get harder and harder to watch as it goes along.

The hue and cry from the hardcore gaming community seems to be for a game with a more unforgiving level of risk and time vs. reward, with today’s WoW being perceived in that crowd as the “EZ-mode” game of choice for the casuals. Do you think there’s as large a market for a more hardcore experience as these gamers would claim there is?

WoW is certainly easier than most MMOs, as the progress of the <Undergeared> guild demonstrates pretty definitively. However, there are still plenty of goals for elite players, such as the special raid mounts and titles. It’s also important to remember that only about 30% of WoW players ever make it past level 10. To my point of view, that means even a game as casual-friendly as WoW is still failing 70% of its players.

A game focused on the hardcore would necessarily be a much smaller game. A game focused on the top 5% of players would have to be 5% the size. Some of them exist now, like EVE Online and Darkfall. They do OK, but they’re niche products.

Your screenshot of a “secret” Sarth 3D strat raises the whole topic of strat resources. How does the proliferation of strategy sites and YouTube video guides to game encounters affect game design? How do they affect player expectations and then the degree of involvement and ultimately reward they get from the game?

The online resources make it possible for players to choose their own difficulty level. If you want to wander around The Barrens looking for Mankrik’s wife on your own, go for it. And nothing is stopping a raid from seeing a boss without reading a strategy first. It’s a wonderful contradiction of human nature. When players have a choice, they make the game easier and then complain that it’s too easy.

It’s also a serious challenge for game designers. By tapping into these online resources, players are removing mystery as a potential source of fun, which in turn forces designers to compensate. If you’ve already seen the boss fight on YouTube, then just seeing it on your own screen won’t be that big a deal. That means the designer has to make the actual execution of the fight fun, rather than just relying on the players’ confusion and discovery to entertain them.

You’re a new dad (congratulations!), and you and your wife have historically played WoW together. How does WoW fit into your relationship and now your family life? What are the positives you’ve experienced as a gaming couple?

Gaming has been a great mutual activity for us. It gives us a shared social group and stuff to talk about. We usually play as a tank/healer combo, which is fabulous for finding groups. Since our son was born in February, we’ve both been playing very casually, mostly leveling alts to give ourselves options in Cataclysm.

On the downside, it means we have to maintain two full gaming rigs. On the upside, it’s generally pretty easy to talk her into letting me get a new graphics card, we just have to get two.

Have you kept up with the flow of changes ahead for WoW in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion? Any thoughts there?

I’m really glad they’re finally biting the bullet and fixing the rage mechanic for warriors. Having rage be proportional to the amount of damage taken and received made the class impossible to balance well.

What about personally — are you and wife planning to play in the expansion?

We’re definitely planning to play, but it’s still up in the air what that play will look like. We may start some goblin alts, or we may try to convince our raid to let us share a raid slot, with a single raiding character controlled by whoever’s not on baby duty.(source:joystiq)