作者：Tadhg Kelly

我们中有很多人自称为“游戏设计师”，但实际上我们却不一定是同一个群组。游戏设计并不非适用于所有公司（或者同一家公司内部的所有项目）的工作描述。它并未拥有一套标准的工具或者标准化的输出内容。与工程师或美术师不同的是，我们很难确定游戏设计的可交付成果是什么，因此我们往往看起来就像是天才或骗子。我们必须回答一个非常模糊的问题：你是否真的需要一名游戏设计师，或者“游戏设计”只是一种元素？

Game-Designer(from simpsonsparadox)

三个设计理念

在我的旅程中，我遇到了有关什么是游戏设计的三个理念。

第一个理念被描述为“建筑师”模型。在这一模型中，一间大型工作室的核心往往有一个人扮演着“火焰守护者”的角色。他是先见型领导者—-尽管他总是带领着一支专注于独立领域（游戏邦注：如战斗，机制，平衡，用户界面，内容等等）个体领域的年轻设计师，并且是作为游戏创造性见解的中心。建筑师型设计师的数量很少，并且经常被当成是游戏产业的名人。

第二种模型被描述为“制造者”。这类型的游戏设计师属于亲自动手型，他们想出了游戏理念并进一步将其绘制出来，形象化，编程并编写出收尾呼应的完整内容。不管他是独自完成这些工作还是借助了别人的帮助，他所传达出的整体印象都是一个项目最具潜力的核心。许多独立开发者都属于这一类型的设计师，并会使用像Unity3D这样的工具去创造出自己脑子里的想法。

然后便是第三种模型，即“工程师”。有些商店（不管大小）宣称他们并没有与“游戏设计”相关的角色，相反地他们拥有产品经理兼程序员，即不断地在实时项目中迭代着。在这一环境中，“设计”经常只是等同于内容（关卡，任务等等）创造，但游戏的基本动态则是由纯粹的代码所完成。所有的一切都是相互协作，游戏将会在这些任务完成后完成，但有时候这种情况永远都不会发生。

三个设计问题

基于游戏类型，所有的这三种方法将具有不同的优势，但同时它们也具有自己的缺陷。

建筑师型设计师将遭遇分离性。尽管他知道自己想要呈现出怎样的体验，但是将其转变成细节却常常是个大问题。建筑师型设计师将会因为为团队设定方向，但却因为最终原型未能匹配心目中的设想而在3个月，六个月或12个月后宣布将其抛弃而遭到其他团队成员的讨厌。在追寻特定游戏感的道路上他们将创造许多废物，许多大型试验也将消耗大量的钱财，并且最终有可能只会创造出一些平平淡淡的结果。对于建筑师型设计师最常见的批评便是他们太优柔寡断并且自尊心太强。

制造者型设计师将遭遇完全不同的问题。他可能没有足够的资本去创造游戏，但是他所面临的更大问题是会因为几棵树木而失去整片森林。制作人型设计师可能会专注于执行游戏中一些不重要的细节，但却未意识到其核心动态元素不能进行有效的扩展。或者他创造游戏的前提根本就是错误的。或者机制与美学间存在分歧。与未能考虑到细节因素去将历年变成行动的建筑师型设计师不同，制作人型设计师总是未能考虑到如何将行动相匹配地组合在一起。

同时，工程师型设计师的问题是集体思维将衍生出保守主义。首先，这听起来像是反直觉的，通常情况下更多想法所创造出来的解决方法总是更具有创造性，但事实却不是如此。这是属于开发游戏与开发软件并不相同的众多领域中的一个。在软件中，存在可明确的问题（如实用性，易用性或速度）的直接解决方法。而在游戏中，问题并不是这层意义上的问题：它们是指创造性问题。如何创造出某些有趣，与众不同，让人兴奋且能够娱乐大众的内容与创造出更棒的技术是不同的。因为工程师型设计师的集体思维往往未注意到这点，它要求在执行前（以避免废物的出现）验证理念，因此会讲所有的创造性过滤到那些适应迭代以及那些从未尝试过的内容中。这也是为何基于工程师型设计师的工作室会反复陷入制作同样游戏的问题中。

正式的游戏设计

存在第四种模型。

有些人认为游戏设计是一种新兴的形式训练。他们是那些深受游戏机制，用户界面模式，经济元素及其结果所吸引的人。他们认为游戏设计也就是着眼于游戏，观看内部机械设备运行然后将所学到的内容应用于新游戏设计中。

他们同意也相信自己的设计方法是可教学的。许多形式主义者是在学术领域进行操作，即尝试着让下一代学生去思考游戏。有些是以纯粹的机制服务做到这点，也有些人是将设计作为创造没学愿景或叙述体验的基础进行传授。形式主义者是基于实用主义和哲学性去看待游戏，即作为基于技术或没学以外的动词和村换等组建而创造起来的交流与表达语言。

正式游戏设计师的潜在价值是作为一名译者。正式游戏设计师将负责吧建筑师的高级概念转变成有意义的机制元素，在保留创造性方向的同时为工作室剩下大量时间于金钱。正式设计师将通过评价制作人的理念和原型去帮助他们，并识别早前的缺口然后挑战他的假设。正式设计师将提供给工程师方向去打破他所深陷的周期，并有可能将其带向不同的领域。

从理论上看

当于正式设计师一起吃饭时，我们会激烈地讨论我们方法的细节。餐巾纸将变成临时设计文件，我们将在上面为游戏的分子或机制模式拟定电路般的图标。我们将讨论动词和符号，睡迟和发射器，演员和条件规则，我们将粗略地达成共识。这里的问题，也是关于正式游戏设计最大的批评是，所有的这一切都看起来像是废话。虽然提到高级概念，但废话就是废话。

答案其实很标准化。被拒绝的设计与创造性控制具有很大的关系，但最重要的还是输出内容的质量。例如游戏设计文件的历史便是一个可耻的故事或者说是写得很糟糕的《圣经》，偷偷交给工程团队然后让他们独自去思考应该怎么做。因为没人知道该在设计中寻求什么，并且这里总是存在许多修补空间，因此会出现各种废物。缺少对于早前重要问题的可靠答案将把廉价的设计时间变成昂贵的代码和图像创造时间，这也是为何游戏设计未能得到尊重的原因。

为了让正式游戏设计能够帮助解决问题，它必须变得不再那么秘籍且是收到交付内容的驱动。世界上的其他人将不会在做些来学习我们的辞典，所以我们应该明确如何在所有人都能够轻松找到的方式下去传达设计。如此设计的价值也将清晰可见了。

（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 Games Are: Is Formal Game Design Valuable?

by Tadhg Kelly

There’s a number of us who claim the title of “game designer” but we aren’t really a contiguous group. Game design isn’t a set job description that applies evenly across all companies (or even projects within the same company). It doesn’t have a set of standard tools, or a standardized kind of output. Unlike engineers or artists, it’s hard to pin down what the deliverables of game design are, and as a result we tend look like geniuses or frauds. Given such haziness the question must be asked: Do you really need a game designer, or is “game design” just helium?

Three Design Ideals

In my travels I’ve encountered three ideas of what game design is or should be.

The first could be described as the “architect” model. In this model there tends to be one person at the heart of a large studio acting as the keeper of the flame. He’s the visionary leader and – although he usually leads a team of more junior designers who focus on individual areas (combat, mechanics, balancing, user interface, content, etc) – is perceived as the all round central creative voice of the game. Architect-style designers are few in number and often regarded as games industry celebrities.

The second model could be described as the “maker”. This game designer is a hands-on type who had an idea for a game and proceeded to draw, diagrammed, visualize, program and write the whole thing end to end. Either she did this alone or with some help, but the overall impression she exudes is of the talented core at the heart of a project. A lot of indies sit in this maker category and use tools like Unity3D to just make the thing that they see in their head and let the Universe sort out what it all means.

Then the third model could be described as the “engineer”. Some shops (large and small) declare that they don’t have any truck with “game design” and instead have product managers corralling coders who iterate endlessly on living projects. In this context “design” usually only equates to content creation (levels, quests, etc) but the fundamental dynamics of the game are held to be pure code. Everything is kept deliberately collaborative and the game will be done when it’s done, which sometimes means never (and sometimes that’s ok).

Three Design Problems

All three approaches have significant advantages depending on the type of game being made, but they also have their shortcomings.

The architect-designer runs into disconnects. While he knows the experience that he wants to engender, translating that into specifics is often a major problem. Architect designers become the most hated people in their own teams because they will set the course for what the team should deliver, but then throw out the resulting prototype three, six or twelve months later because it doesn’t match what they saw in their minds. They generate a lot of waste in the quest for a certain feel for a game, on a lot of grand experiments costing millions of dollars, and yet the end results are usually quite ordinary. The most common criticism against architect-designers is they are too egg-headed, too indecisive and too much about their own ego.

The maker-designer runs into a very different kind of problem. She may be cash-strapped and hacking her game together, but her larger issue is how she loses sight of the forest for the trees. The maker-designer barrels away on the minutiae of implementing her game but doesn’t realize that its core dynamic doesn’t extend well. Or that her premises for making the game are false. Or that there’s a big disconnect between the mechanics and the aesthetics (“ludonarrative dissonance”). Unlike the architect who can’t think down enough to turn ideas into action, the maker-designer doesn’t think up enough and consider how action is supposed to fit together.

Meanwhile the engineer-designers’ problem is that groupthink leads to conservatism. At first this sounds counter-intuitive as surely more minds approaching a solution should be more creative, but they’re not. This is one of those areas where developing games is different to developing software. In software there are direct solutions to definable problems like utility, ease of use or speed. In games the problems aren’t problems in that sense: They’re creative problems. How to make something fun, different, exciting and entertaining is rarely a matter of making better technology. But because engineer-designer groupthink tends not to see that, it demands validation for ideas before they are implemented (to avoid waste), and thus filters all innovations into those that will fit inside iterations and those that are never attempted. This is why engineer-designer studios get stuck making the same game over and over.

Formal Game Design

There is a fourth model.

There are some people who consider game design to be an emerging formal discipline. They’re the people for whom the mechanics of games, the user interaction patterns, the economics and their outcomes, are fascinating in the abstract. They tend to think that game design is actually a way of looking at games, seeing the operations of the mechanical machines underneath and then applying that learning to the design of new games.

They also believe that their approach to design is teachable. Many formalists operate in the academic sphere, trying to get the next generation of students to think on games. Some do so in the service of pure mechanics, others to impart design as a foundation upon which to then build aesthetic vistas or narrative experiences. Formalists view games both pragmatically and philosophically, as a language of communication and expression built on components like verbs and loops outside of either the technical or the aesthetic.

The potential value of the formal game designer is as a translator. The formal designer does the complex work of turning the architect’s high concept into mechanical specifications that make sense, saving studios millions of dollars and thousands of hours while preserving a creative direction. The formal designer helps the maker by assessing her ideas and prototypes, identifying the early gaps and then challenging her assumptions. The formal designer gives the engineers a direction that breaks them out of the cycle that they’re stuck in and maybe spins them off to somewhere else.

…Maybe

Well in theory.

When we formal designers go to dinner we talk animatedly about the ins and outs of our approaches. Napkins become instant design documents as we draw out circuit-like diagrams for the molecules of our games or their mechanical patterns. We talk of verbs and tokens, pools and emitters, actors and conditional rules, and we’re all roughly on the same page. The problem is that nobody else is, and so the biggest criticism of formal game design is that it seems to be bullshit. High concept bullshit perhaps, but bullshit nonetheless.

I think the answer lies in standards. The rejection of design has something to do with creative control, but mostly quality of output. The history of game design documents, for example, is an ignominious tale of massive and poorly-written bibles foisted upon engineering teams then left to figure out what they’re supposed to do with them. Since nobody knows what to look for in a design there’s often too much room for vamping, and therefore waste. The lack of solid answers to key early questions turns cheap design time into expensive code and art time, and this is why game design gets no respect.

For formal game design to help solve problems it has to becomes less dense and more deliverable-driven. The rest of the world is never going to sit down and learn our lexicon, so it’s up to us to figure out how to express design in a way that everyone else finds accessible. Then maybe design’s value will become apparent for all to see.(source:techcrunch)