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创造出真正优秀游戏的一些有效方法

发布时间:2014-08-22 17:12:33 Tags:,,,,

作者:Mark Venturelli

我亲爱的朋友Matheus Motta最近研究了Josh Kauffman的“前20个小时”的方法以学习如何处理问题,看着他获取成功的过程真的很棒。为了“专注于你尝试着去做的事情的最重要方面,学习如何识别你自己的问题,找到一个不会分心的环境然后实践20小时”这一目的,我将快速做出总结。这是元素匮乏原则—-也就是20%你所做的创造了80%的成功,所以你只需要专注于20%的付出你便能够基于可接受的程度去落实行动。

Josh Kaufman's book on the subject(from gamasutra)

Josh Kaufman’s book on the subject(from gamasutra)

我认为自己很热衷学习各种事物,并且我不会撒谎:当我对某些内容感兴趣时,我便会一直遵循着各种指南以尽快学到某些内容。不管是吉他技巧还是声音设计或者是量子物理学等等。但如果你想要在某一天真正擅长某些内容,达到世界级水准,你便需要进行更深入的研究。

所以你该如何快速追踪你的游戏设计技能呢?你可以复制其他人所做的并且得到验证的方法,仔细观察并重新创造最重要的部分,专注于学习如何创造平衡的系统并添加一些不会在你的系统中添加任何有意义的游戏玩法但却引人注意的小花招。

这实际上是大多数人学习游戏设计的方法,以及许多专业人士在产业中的执行方式。关于这种方法是否存在任何固有问题?其实并没有,但我想要再次提倡一种更困难,但却更有帮助的方法。

“不要听取那些害怕失败的人的说法。”

当我刚起步时我并未被游戏系统所吸引。对于我来说它们只是一些非常好看且神秘的事物—-那些复杂且混乱的玩家行为是如何源自那些简单的规则呢?如果某些内容需要消耗3或6种资源,你该如何做出选择?或者游戏拥有多种类型的资源?

因为对于技术的尊重与敬畏,我采取了一个既遭到谩骂也受过祝福的方法,我也将在此与你们分享这一方法:

1.从上自下进行设计

想想你想要实现的目标的本质是什么—-即你想要为玩家创造怎样的游戏体验。然后通过创造最少数量的基础组块去做到这点。避免从下而上的设计。自上而下的设计将最大限度地激发你的能力并提供给你一个可能失败的目标(游戏邦注:失败是非常重要的)。

2.制定计划

为何我们不说你需要在正式开始前先制定一个有效的计划?不,再读一遍:你需要拥有一个明确的目标,但留下如何到达该目标的细节。这便是你的工作所在—-明确如何到达该目标。

3.询问“5个为什么”

又名恼人的六岁设计师:如果未询问5遍“为什么”去搞清楚你现在所做的事的根源是不会往游戏中添加任何内容或作出任何改变。

“我只是想要添加一个滚球闪躲”。为什么?“因为大多数这类型游戏都带有这一机制”。为什么?“因为这感觉很棒。”为什么?“因为这具有很酷的动画并且让滚球能够撞击并跳跃很有趣。”为什么?“因为为了提高速度和防御而改变能力进行攻击并做其它事是一个有趣的战术选择。”为什么?“因为这款游戏的战斗具有基本的交易空间矛盾(即当敌人朝向你前进时),所以如果能够为了空间而交易破坏性的话便能够往系统中添加许多有趣的动态元素。”好的,那现在开始行动吧。

4.游戏测试

一旦你未拥有能够告诉你如何设计游戏的套装,你便需要祈祷游戏能够告诉你下一步该怎么做。在英语中游戏是毫无价值的,所以它们只能通过尝试与你交流。你的游戏需要经常被你或更多人玩,而当人们在玩游戏时你需要在一旁仔细观察着。

到目前为止可能都是一些你所熟悉的建议,但这里的区别在于不管你的游戏是否够酷你都不需要将其写下,因为这是主观且无用的做法。你需要带着在第一步所确立的明确目标进行游戏测试。还记得吗?这是你在游戏测试中所看到的吗?如果是的话,恭喜你,你的工作便完成了。如果不是的话,为什么?回到第一步,并再次尝试一遍。你可能会反反复复遭遇多次失败,但你只需要获得一次成功便可。这也是为何设定可能失败的条件那么重要。

5.永不剽窃

只因为“那是它该行动的方式”而拒绝做某事。实际上,你应该基于不同方式去做某事,甚至即使你清楚那可能会是一个愚蠢的理念。这主要有两大原因:

首先,当我们拥有足够优秀的内容继续前进时我们总是不能有效地传达新内容有多棒。

其次,也是最重要的,你将通过离开熟路而学到更多有帮助的事。说实话,大多数情况下你将会碰壁并说道,‘嘿,也许这便是为什么所有人不选这条路的原因,’—-但是你却可以在这过程中获得成长。

6.做个固执的人

坚持到底即使它不一定有效。如果你所明确的目标以及到达该目标的方法看似疯狂,并且你的同事一直在劝你放弃,你也不要轻易被劝服。只有当真正游戏后证明你所坚持的理念是错误的你才可以改变方向—-而在那之前你的理念始终都可能是最佳结果。不要听信那些害怕失败的人。失败真的非常重要。

多年以来我一直在设计类似的内容,并最终创造出一些带有缺陷的游戏。但是我却可以在不专注于成功的前提下更深入地学习游戏设计,理解自己在做的到底是什么。所以在过去的日子里我对自己的技能变得更有自信,并且我能够通过清除自己在做什么以及尝试着创造怎样的目标而明确各种设计问题。

所以这一方法并不能帮助你快速获取成功。如果忽视这一建议你可能会更轻松地设计出一款从客观上来说“优秀的”游戏,但如果你的目的是学习并理解自己在做什么并实现某一天创造出一些真正优秀的内容的目标的话,我便会建议你去实践这些方法。

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

The Hardest Path Yields More XP

by Mark Venturelli

Hi Gamasutra,

I sincerely apologise for the terrible title of this article. I’m quite aware that this is 2014 and RPG tropes aren’t funny anymore, but you’ll just have to deal with it. It is a pretty accurate description of what I’m going to talk about, promise.

My dear friend Matheus Motta (@matheusrma) has recently been exploring Josh Kauffman’s method of “The First 20 Hours” to learn how to juggle, and it was cool to watch how successful it was for him. I’ll quickly butcher the whole thing here and summarize it for the purposes of this article as “focus on the most important aspects of what you are trying to do, learn how to spot your own mistakes, find a distraction-free environment and then practice for 20 hours”. This is the principle of factor sparsity – that is, 20% of what you do generates 80% your success, so just focus on that 20% and you will be able to perform at acceptable levels.

I like to think that I’m pretty rad at learning stuff, and I won’t lie: I follow guidelines such as these all the time to learn stuff as fast as possible when they interest me. Anything from a guitar technique to sound design to quantum physics. But if you want to be REALLY good at something someday, world-class material, you’re gonna have to dive deeper.

So how do you fast-track your game design skills anyway? You copy what others have done that is proven and works, watching closely to reproduce the most important parts just right, and focus on learning how to create balanced systems and adding some catchy gimmick that doesn’t need to actually add any meaningful gameplay to your system.

This is actually how most people learn game design, and how a lot of professionals operate in the industry. Is there anything inherently wrong with this approach? Not really, but I’d like to advocate a harder, potentially more rewarding path to follow.

“Do not listen to people who are afraid of failure.”

When I was starting out I was simply fascinated by game systems. They seemed to me like these beautiful, mysterious things – how can such wildly complex and seemingly chaotic player behaviour arise from just a few simple rules? How do you even go about choosing if something costs 3 or 6 resources? Or how many types of resources the game has?

This respect and awe for the craft led me to adopt a very radical approach that has been both a curse and a blessing ever since, and I will share this approach with you right here:

1. Design from the top to the bottom

Think about the nature of what you want to achieve – the experience you want to create for the player. Then establish the minimum amount of rough building blocks to get there. Avoid at all costs building something from the bottom-up, making it up as you go. Top-bottom design will strain your abilities to their limits and give you a fail-able goal (failure is super important).

2. Fuck GDDs

Just fuck them.

Wait, didn’t I just say that you need to have a solid plan before starting out? No, just read that again: you need to have a clear goal, but leave the details of how to get there fuzzy. That is actually what your job is – figuring out how to get there.

3. Ask the “5 Whys”

Also known as the annoying six-year-old designer: refuse to add or change anything to the game without asking “why” five times to get to the root of what you are doing.

“I’ve just got to add a dodge roll”. Why? “Because most games in this genre have it”. Why? “Because it feels awesome to do it”. Why? “Because there’s this cool animation and it’s fun to dodge attacks and leap out of the way”. Why? “Because trading the ability to attack and do other stuff for a short speed and defense boost is an interesting tactical choice”. Why? “Because this game’s combat has this fundamental conflict of trading space for damage as the enemies move towards you, so being able to trade damage for space would add a lot of interesting dynamics to the system”. Good, now we’re making progress.

4. Playtest

Once you don’t have a GDD or a clueless suit telling you how to design your game, you have the blessing of having the game tell you what to do next. Games are rubbish at English, though, so they communicate with you through play. Your game needs to be played often, by you and as many people as possible, and you must watch it being played closely.

Familiar advice so far, but the difference is that you’re not going to write down if your game is cool or not because that is subjective and useless. You playtest with a clear goal that has been established in step 1. Remember that? Is that what you’re seeing in the playtest? If it is, congratulations, your job is done. If not, why? Back to step 1 and do it all over again. You will fail a potentially infinite amount of times, but you only need to succeed once. That’s why setting fail-able conditions is important.

5. Never Steal (Just Sometimes)

Refuse to do things just because “that’s the way it’s done”. Actually, go out of your way to do things differently, even when it’s painfully obvious that it’s a stupid idea. Do that for two reasons:

First, we humans suck at being able to tell how new stuff can be good when we have a perfectly adequate thing going on.

Second, and most importantly, you will learn a lot more by going off the beaten path. Honestly, most of the time you will hit a wall and say “hey, maybe that’s why everyone does it THAT way, uh?” and go do just that – but you’ll have learned much more.

6. Be A Stubborn Asshole

Stick to your guns even when it doesn’t seem like things are going to work out. If you have established a goal and a rough way of getting there that seems insane, and your colleagues are trying to convince you of dropping the idea, don’t listen to them. Pivot only when proven wrong by actual play – until then, your idea is the best thing to ever happen. Do not listen to people who are afraid of failure. Failure is super important.

I have been designing like this over the years, and it has paid off handsomely in the form of a collection of games which are fundamentally flawed and I absolutely loathe. The takeaway, however, is that I was able to learn game design in a deeper way by not focusing on succeeding, but on understanding what exactly it is that I am doing. With each passing day I feel more confident in my skills, and I’m able to approach design problems with more clarity and awareness of what I am doing and what I am trying to achieve. Hopefully my first really good game is coming? Soon?

So this approach won’t fast-track your success. It is much easier to design an objectively “good” game by ignoring this advice, but if your purpose is to learn and understand what you are doing with the goal of someday creating something truly great, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.(source:gamasutra)


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