复合设计时代是从1985年到1998年或1999年，那时出现了一个竞争设计理念，尽管它并未替换复合设计而是尽可能地与之共存。在这13年里，电子游戏设计领域出现了许多创新开发。在这一时代关于复合设计我们必须知道两件事：一件是不同公司的设计师（甚至是不同国家）完善了他们的复合设计理念，并在复合游戏领域展现了许多不同的技巧。第二件是，尽管复合游戏基本上是由别人所创造的两种游戏类型所组成，它们却仍能具有独创性。今天我们将从历史的角度看看复合设计是如何做到这两点。（请点击此处阅读本文第1、2篇）

在20世纪80年代中后期，因为知道复合设计能够帮助玩家更轻松地到达精通/满足门槛，世界各地的设计师都倾向于复合设计。精通/满足门槛是在玩家觉得他们满意地完成游戏时所出现的，即使这种情况只是暂时的。尽管在不同玩家以及不同游戏间这种情况是不同的，但我想每个体验过这一门槛的读者还是会觉得不够。想想有多少有趣且引人入胜的游戏让人觉得是完整的，尽管从理论上看来它们早已结束了。有时候这是不完整的故事或主要漏洞的结果，但通常情况下它只是引人入胜的游戏机制的结果，但却从未到达玩家所期待的挑战高潮。大多数电子游戏设计师知道玩家是否带走游戏的印象将成为玩家离开游戏时的想法。关于街机游戏的问题就在于它们只专注于一两种技能，所以玩家经常是在受挫时离开游戏而不是带着满足感离开游戏。

curve（from thegamedesignforum）

复合游戏能够帮助设计师解决这一问题。你在这里所看到的是街机游戏带给玩家满足感同时还与玩家受挫并不再投入时间，只是不满地离开游戏的时间重叠在一起。在右图，你将看到复合游戏是如何处理这一问题，即在挫折出现时移向另外一个类型。这是一个简化图：真正的复合游戏并不会在游戏中途从一种类型转换到另一种类型，但集合效应仍是一样的。通过磨练两种以上类型的技能（而不是一种），玩家将无需通过漫长的受挫时期去到达精通/满足门槛。相反地，游戏将自然地带着玩家离开当前的受挫点并前往新的技能组合，然后根据复合流的节奏而再次回归。因为玩家并未将复合游戏看成传递两种完全不同的曲线，所以他们将获得同样的满足感；玩家将从总体上看待游戏的精通。这些较小的技能曲线综合仍然能够从总体精通方面满足玩家，同时还能减少让他们受挫的几率。

尽管许多电子游戏设计师意识到复合游戏在阻止受挫并保持游戏长期乐趣的重要性，但是在如何基于文体去执行复合设计方面他们却出现了分歧。在NES时代关于这一问题存在两种观点。一方面，像Capcom和Konami等创造了一系列热门游戏的公司在难度和设计结构上仍依赖于街机时代。这些游戏当然是复合游戏，但它们却是基于简单且二元的方式在使用复合设计。Capcom早前的一款热门游戏《鬼魅》便使用了平台/射击复合元素并立刻找到了前后移动的节奏。

GDH GnG（from thegamedesignforum）

在中间的那张图中你可以看到我们所认为的经典平台/射击游戏部分，即伴随着充满巡逻的敌人和可跳跃穿过的阶梯的多个平台。然而该关卡是介于两个部分（前后关卡）之间，就像是伴随着平行伸张的街机射击游戏中的关卡。在这些部分中，跳跃只能够用于避开敌人；实际上，这是将跳跃变成更像是《太空入侵者》或《Galaga》中的垂直操纵的方法。既然这样，复合便非常刻板：平台游戏关卡非常专注于一个伴随着不断提升精确度的时间并从不同高度和角度向前扑跳的平台关卡。射击关卡是关于疯狂地向大群不断接近的敌人开火并立即对玩家通过跳跃而通过的任何障碍做出反应。任何特定的关卡都能源自一款街机游戏，所以尽管我们能够说《鬼魅》是一款复合游戏，它却并未远离其街机先辈。其它像《忍者外传系列》，《洛克人》以及Konami的大热门游戏《忍者神龟》都反复重申了这一准则，为复合游戏中每种类型的一两种技能而专注于大幅度的精通曲线。这些游戏的确取得了巨大的成功，但它们却因为某些复杂的关卡而丢失了一部分玩家。

而另外一个主要的设计派系是来自任天堂。毕竟是宫本茂发现升级道具的作用不只是上下移动障碍轴而导致复合设计的确立。从《大金刚》开始，宫本茂及其在任天堂中的同事便专注于使用升级道具去塑造游戏的复合结构。如果游戏中的一个关卡需要从行动游戏转变到平台游戏，设计师便会丢给玩家角色许多平台主题的升级道具，然后让他们在不同的相关挑战中使用这些升级道具所承认的能力。例如，《超级玛丽兄弟3》的激烈平台阶段并倾向于突出更多Raccoon的尾巴而不是火花，然而不只这些升级道具能够帮助玩家在不同类型间移动并获得复合流，同时还将强调活跃类型中的不同附属技能。

上边左图的升级道具是源自《超级玛丽兄弟3》。在它们出现的关卡中，每个道具都将强调行动游戏或平台游戏中的一种特定技能。而任天堂的设计师也已经意识到创造出以指数增加的升级道具并非可持续的设计原理，并且最终将不能在基于这种方式去完善他们的游戏。在《超级玛丽兄弟3》及其升级道具出现不久后，《超级玛丽世界》带着两个包含了设计师想要呈现于游戏中的所有技能的两个主要升级道具出现了。

这是复合设计开发变得真正有趣的时候：大约从1990年开始，任天堂与剩下的市场开始变得更相像。试验了复合设计的任天堂外部设计师看到了任天堂的游戏成功吸引了大量用户的注意。其部分成功是马里奥文化渗透到世界各地的结果。而更多的原因则是取决于游戏设计。任天堂使用许多受升级驱动的复合设计去创造具有更适合新玩家的技能曲线的游戏。他们也意识到太多升级道具或硬核技能将阻碍部分玩家，因为这会导致技能出现过多变量从而让玩家感到困惑。这一观察的结果便是，当时最主流的游戏简化了只用少数升级道具创造起来的控制方案。你可以在之后的游戏，如《耀西岛》和《洛克人X》（及其续集）中看到这种方法成功运行于复合游戏中。复合设计找到了一种能够持续发展的媒体，直至竞争多人游戏变成控制方案的主要驱动器。

现在如果你正在阅读本文内容并好奇所有的这些方法是否只适用于90年代的AAA级日本游戏，我想说答案是否定的。美国复合游戏揭示了复合设计的另一个有趣元素：结合两种以上的类型能够创造出一个全新的类型。

发明的问题

如果8，90年代的设计师发现了结合两种（或以上）现有的街机类型到一款游戏中的最大成功，那么他们是否仍然能够创造真正独创的游戏？该问题的答案是取决于你所谓的独创性含义。设计师发现甚至是两款具有同样复合类型的游戏也可能是不同的。举个例子来说吧，《塞尔达传说：时空隧道》和《圣剑传说》都是2D行动RPG游戏，并伴随着谜题导向型地牢和各种漫长的boss打斗。尽管在2年内这两款游戏出现在同一款主机上，它们却具有很大的差别。

LtP and SoM（from thegamedesignforum）

差别在于每一款游戏强调了不同的行动，冒险和RPG游戏元素。这些游戏是独创性的突出例子，它们基于全新且有趣的方式在使用早前的游戏类型。但是这与发明却是不同的；发明意味着创造出对于世界来说全新的内容。玩家同意《塞尔达传说》和《圣剑传说》都是行动RPG，同样地《刺猬索尼克》系列游戏则是平台游戏。在此真正重要的并不是这些游戏中有怎样的类型，而是它们是如何将其组装在一起。

就像我们可以通过研究电子游戏设计历史获得学习一样，我们也可以通过有关类型的游戏公众观点的历史学到某些内容。第一人称射击游戏通常被认为属于其独特的类别中，但FPS却是作为射击，冒险和RPG类型的结合。公众的观点并不总是真相的可靠指标，但通常我们对于类型标签的使用却是有意义的。有些在寻找RPG的人将会对《塞尔达传说》和《圣剑传说》感到满足，但有些在寻找FPS的人却不会喜欢像《战区》这样的侧卷轴游戏，尽管这两种游戏都属于射击游戏。第一人称射击游戏是源于它们的卷轴游戏先辈，但它们却并未被当成是同样的内容。早前的第一人称射击游戏通过借用PC RPG和冒险游戏的元素去区别自己。例如基于HUD的《毁灭战士2》。

HUD将提供给你有关健康，盔甲和弹药的信息；这是基本的RPG属性值。这些属性并未像在RPG那样全部增加，但它们却同样是复杂的且要求封闭式管理。如今《毁灭战士》中的冒险元素是关于那些密道和隐藏的凹室吗？现代射击游戏已经失去了早前游戏那样充满隐藏钥匙和开关的迷宫式关卡，但这正是早前的FPS关卡的设计方式。如果这并不是关于游戏中的冒险元素，那就不存在以射击通过的关卡！（需要注意的是，比起其它类型，定位进攻时代更多地改变了FPS，但是我们很快便会到达那里。）

实时策略游戏便是基于类似的方式出现。尽管我们现在认为这是一种不同的类别，但它是在电子游戏环境下通过许多尝试去使用来自桌面策略理念的丰富遗产。就像RPG那样，策略游戏继承了许多源自桌面开发的完整游戏设计理念。关于RPG，PC游戏设计师发现它们可以将这些桌面设计理念带到电子游戏业务中，并让电子游戏更像是它们的桌面游戏先辈。这些PC策略游戏，如《Legionnaire》和《Eastern Front》显然都能够吸引那些喜欢桌面策略的玩家们，但在利基范围外却不是很受欢迎。然而，80年代末期和90年代初期的设计师们很清楚这些策略游戏理念具有巨大的潜力，他们需要做的只是去吸引大众市场的注意。关于创造出更能吸引电子游戏用户注意的策略类型的最初成功尝试之一便是《离子战机》。

许多人认为这款游戏是第一款实时策略游戏，的确这是一款添加了有趣的事实战斗元素的策略游戏。如果你想要玩这款游戏，你很快便会发现它与你今天了解的实时策略游戏具有很大的差别。因为《离子战机》是一个结合了策略游戏，高空射击游戏并包含了一些经济元素的复合游戏。

《离子战机》成为了一个经典，但却很难推广一种新类型，这种情况一直持续到《沙丘魔堡》结合了策略战斗和成熟的经济模拟而创造出我们现在所熟悉的RTS类型。经济是很容易进行游戏化的，所以尽管在80年代，也存在许多提供给玩家在游戏中使用钱的机会的游戏。基于其策略元素，《沙丘魔堡》覆盖了经济HUD元素以及像《模拟城市》和《Populous》等游戏的上帝模式角度。

结果便是创造出一个从品质上不同于其父辈的吸引人的混合内容。在像《沙丘魔堡》这样的RTS游戏中，玩家可以使用经济原理和后勤原理（游戏邦注：创建一个巨大的基础设施和巨大的军队）去解决军事问题（更具有战术性技能的敌人）。反面也是正确的：玩家可以使用准确有效的军事行动去补偿资源的不足。简单地说这便是复合设计。与许多复合游戏一样，这在时候看来是非常明显的，经过证明RTS是非常受欢迎且持久的类型。

尽管游戏新时代始于1999年间，复合设计的实践却从未像街机设计那样结束。的确，我们能够说游戏设计的下一波将与复合设计同时存在。我们仍然拥有复合游戏，并且许多这类游戏还被当成是富有独创性的游戏，尽管它们只是结合了两种现有的游戏类型。像《传送门》和《块魂》等出色的创造性游戏便都术语复合游戏。复合设计的实践仍然存活着，尽管现在的它们正与其它原理相竞争。深入探析本文的一大要点便是电子游戏设计中关于复合游戏最重要的开发是发生在1985年到1999年间。我们接下来所着眼的时期将带来更多内容，但却不会彻底取代复合游戏的创造实践，似乎任何情况都不会取代它们。

（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）

Part 3: Later Development & Genre Innovation in the Composite Era

The composite design era lasted from 1985 until about 1998 or 1999, at which point a competing design philosophy emerged, although it didn‘t replace composite design as much as coexist with it. During those thirteen years, there were was a tremendous amount of innovative developments in videogame design. There are two important things to know about composite design in this period: one was that designers in different companies (and even countries) refined their composite design ideas, revealing a variety of techniques within the field of composite games. The second point, made on the second half of this page, is that even though composite games are essentially made up of two game genres that were created by someone else, they can still be quite original. We’ll see how the richness of composite design allows for these two things, from a historical perspective.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, designers all over the world latched onto composite design because they understood that it was easier for players to reach the mastery/satisfaction threshold in composite games than in arcade games. The mastery/satisfaction threshold is the point at which a player feels like they are satisfactorily finished with a game, even if only temporarily. Although this point varies from player to player and game to game, I expect that every reader has experienced this threshold梠r a lack of it. Consider how many fun, engrossing games that felt complete even though they were theoretically over. Sometimes this can be the result of an incomplete story or major bugs, but more often it‘s just that the mechanics of the game were engrossing but they never reached the climactic challenges that the player was hoping for. Most videogame designers know that the player抯 takeaway impression of the game (and, therefore, the public’s opinion of it) is going to be a reflection of the point at which that player leaves the game. The problem with arcade games was that they only focused on one or two skills, and so players often left the game at the point of frustration rather than at the point of satisfaction.

Composite games helped to solve this problem. What you see here is that the point at which an arcade game satisfies its players also overlaps with the time at which players will simply get frustrated and stop throwing their quarters (and/or time) away, and simply leave the game dissatisfied. On the right hand side, however, you see how a composite game gets around this problem, by moving toward another genre when frustration looms. This is a simplified figure: a real composite game doesn’t switch from one genre to another halfway through the game. Rather, it bounces back and forth between genres throughout the game, but the aggregate effect is still the same. By honing skills from two or more genres instead of one, players don‘t have to push through as long a frustration period to get to the mastery/satisfaction threshold. Instead, the game will naturally move them away from their current frustration to a new set of skills and then back again according to the rhythm of composite flow. Players still get the same satisfaction because they don’t view a composite game as delivering two incomplete curves; players think of their mastery of the game as a whole. The sum of those smaller skill curves still satisfies the player抯 desire for overall mastery, while at the same time reducing the chances for frustration.

While many videogame designers realized how useful the composite game was in preventing frustration and enabling long-lasting fun, they nevertheless disagreed about how to implement composite design stylistically. There were two schools of thought on this issue in the NES era. On one side there were companies like Capcom and Konami who produced a series of hit games that were strongly reminiscent of the arcade era in their difficulty and design structure. These games were definitely composite games, but they employed composite design in a simple and binary way. One early Capcom hit, Ghosts and Goblins, takes the platform/shooter composite and immediately finds that back-and-forth rhythm.

In the middle you see what we抳e come to think of as a typical platform/shooter section, with multiple platforms full of patrolling enemies and jump-through floors. That level, however, is sandwiched between two sections (the levels before and after it) which seem almost like levels borrowed from an arcade shooter, with flat, parallel stretches. In those sections, the jumping only serves to avoid enemies; really, it‘s a way of turning the jump into something a lot more like the vertical steering in Space Invaders or Galaga. In this case the composite is very stark: the platforming levels are very focused on a single kind of forward-lunging jump executed with increasingly precise timing from different heights and angles. The shooter levels are all about madly firing at swarms of approaching enemies and instantly reacting to any of the obstacles that get through the player抯 barrage by 搒teering? away with a jump. Any given level could be pulled from an arcade game, so while it’s safe to say that Ghosts and Goblins is a composite game, it‘s not very far removed from its arcade ancestors. Other games like Ninja Gaiden, Mega-Man, and Konami抯 big hit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would reiterate this formula over and over again, focusing on steep mastery curves for one or two skills from each genre in the composite. These games did have considerable success, but they also turned off some audiences with a level of difficulty we now look back on with awe and/or consternation.

The other major school of design, obviously, was the one practiced by Nintendo. After all, it was Miyamoto抯 discovery that powerups could do more than merely move the axis of obstacles up or down that led to the establishment of composite design. From Donkey Kong onward, Miyamoto and his peers at Nintendo focused on using powerups to shape the composite structures of their games. If a level in a game needed to shift from action to platforming, the designers would throw a bunch of platforming-themed powerups at the player character, and then let them use the abilities granted by those powerups in various pertinent challenges. For example, platforming-intense stages in Super Mario Bros 3 tend to feature more Raccoon tails than fire flowers, whereas action stages feature the reverse. The important thing was that not only did these powerups help to move between genres to achieve composite flow, but each emphasized different sub-skills within the active genre.

The powerups on the left, above, are some of the many from Super Mario Brothers 3. For the levels in which they appear, each of these emphasizes a certain skill in either action or platforming梐lthough they all do at least a little bit of both. Nintendo designers realized, however, that inventing an exponentially increasing number of powerups wasn抰 a sustainable design philosophy, and that it would eventually become impossible to improve upon their own games in this manner. Not long after Super Mario Brothers 3 and its many powerups, Super Mario World came out with essentially two primary powerups that encompassed all of the skills the designers wanted in the game.

This is where the development of composite design gets really interesting: starting around 1990 Nintendo and the rest of the market started to become more like one another. Designers outside Nintendo who had been experimenting in composite games saw that Nintendo’s games appealed to a huge audience. Some of this success was a result of Mario’s cultural penetration all over the world. Much of that success, though, was a result of game design. Nintendo used numerous, powerup-driven composite designs to make games whose skill curves were smaller and more approachable for new players. They also realized that too many powerups and/or core skills would deter parts of their audience as it might result in too many variations in skills, and be confusing. The result of this observation was that most mainstream games of the time had simplified control schemes built out of just a few powerups. You can this at work in later composite games like Yoshi’s Island and Mega Man X (and its sequels). Composite design had found a happy medium? that lasted more or less until competitive multiplayer became a major driver of control schemes.

Now, if you have been reading and wondering whether all of this only applies to AAA Japanese games from the 90s, the answer is no. American composite games reveal another interesting aspect of composite design: combining two or more genres can, somehow, result in a new genre entirely.

The Problem of Invention

If designers of the 80s and 90s found the greatest success in combining two (or more) already-established arcade genres into one game, was it still possible for them to create truly original games? The answer depends on what you mean by originality. Designers found that even two games that had the same composited genres could be different. For example, A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana are both 2D, overhead action-RPGs with puzzle-oriented dungeons and a variety of long, involved boss fights. And yet, even though those two games came out for the same console within two years of each other, they are very different.

The difference is in the way that each of those games emphasizes different elements of the action, adventure and RPG genres of which they are composed. These games are great examples of innovation, in that they use old genres in new and exciting ways. That is different from invention, however; invention means the creation of something completely new to the world. Gamers generally agree that entries in the Zelda and Mana series are both action RPGs in the same way that Sonic the Hedgehog games are clearly platformers. What really matters is not what genre those games are in, but how they fit together.

Just as we can learn things from by studying history of videogame design, however, we can learn things from the history of the gaming public抯 opinions about genre. The first person shooter genre is generally considered its own distinct category, but FPSes came into being as a composite of the shooter, adventure and RPG genres. Public opinion is not always a reliable indicator of truth, but generally it’s true that our common uses of genre labels are meaningful. Someone looking for an RPG is probably going to be satisfied with a Zelda or Mana game, but someone looking for an FPS probably isn’t going to be happy with a side-scroller like UN Squadron, even though both games are shooters. First person shooters are clearly derived from their scrolling ancestors, but they’re not considered the same thing. Early first person shooters differentiated themselves by borrowing heavily from PC RPGs and adventure games. Consider the HUD of Doom 2.

That HUD is in place to give you information about your health, armor and ammo; it’s basically a set of RPG stats. Those stats don’t all increase like they would in an RPG, but they’re still complex and require close management. As for the adventure elements in Doom now about all those secret passages and hidden alcoves? Modern shooters have largely lost the maze-like levels full of hidden keys and switches of their ancestors, but that was how early FPS levels were designed. If it weren’t for the adventure elements in the game, there would have been no levels to shoot through! (It should be noted that the set-piece era has changed the FPS more than it has any other genre, but we’ll get there soon.)

The real time strategy genre came into being in much the same way. Although we think of it as a distinct category now, it came out of numerous attempts to use a rich legacy of tabletop strategy ideas in a videogame context. Strategy games, much like RPGs, inherited a huge number of fully-developed game design ideas from decades of tabletop development. And as was the case with RPGs, PC game designers found that they could import these tabletop design ideas into their electronic games wholesale, resulting in videogames which very closely resembled their tabletop ancestors. These PC strategy games like Legionnaire and Eastern Front were obviously very appealing to people who enjoyed tabletop strategy, but not very popular outside that niche. Nevertheless, it was clear to designers of the late 80s and early 90s that there was a ton of potential in those strategy game ideas they just needed tempering for mass market appeal. One of the first (relatively) successful attempts to make the strategy genre more accessible for the videogames audience was Herzog Zwei.

Many consider this game to be the first real time strategy game, and it’s true that it was a strategy game that added the exciting element of real time combat. If you were to play it, however, you抎 quickly discover that it抯 very different from the real time strategy games you know today. The reason is that Herzog Zwei is a composite of strategy games and overhead shooters (that plane you see in the image is not just a unit梚t抯 the player avatar) with a few economic elements included.

Herzog Zwei became a cult classic, but hardly popularized a new genre; it wasn抰 until Dune II married strategic combat to full-fledged economic simulation that the RTS genre became what we know today. Economics is easily gamified, and so even in the 80s there were plenty of games that offered gamers a chance to play with money everything from the ASCII graphics 揕emonade Stand? to the revolutionary Sim City. On top of its strategic elements, Dune II overlaid the economic HUD elements and god-mode perspective of games like Sim City and Populous.

The result was an engaging hybrid that felt qualitatively different from its parents. In RTS games like Dune II, the player can use economics and logistics (building a vast infrastructure and a huge army) to solve military problems (a more tactically skilled opponent). The reverse is also true: the player can use precise, efficient military action to make up for a scarcity of resources. That’s composite design in a nutshell. Like many composites that seem obvious in hindsight, the RTS turned out to be a very popular and enduring genre.

Although a new era in games began around 1999, the practice of composite design never really ended the way arcade design did. Indeed, it’s more appropriate to say that the next wave in game design (the set piece period) came to exist simultaneously with composite games. We still have composite games, and many of those games are considered original even though they抮e basically composites of two already-established game types. Beloved, brilliantly innovative titles like Portal and Katamari Damacy are actually composite games. The practice of composite design is still very much alive, although it competes with other philosophies now. The point of going so in-depth with this article is that most of the important developments in videogame design as a whole happened in composite games between 1985 and 1999. The set-piece period which we’ll look at next梒hanged many things, but it didn抰 completely displace the practice of making composite games, and it seems unlikely that anything ever will.（source：thegamedesignforum）