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万字长文,从游戏设定中的叙事和机制谈重玩性

发布时间:2014-11-27 11:02:10 Tags:,,

作者:Ernest Adams

是什么促使一款电脑游戏呈现重玩性?为什么有些游戏具有重玩性而有些没有?

基本上,任何游戏都应该具有重玩性。如果你到一家玩具店,花了20或30美元购买了一个盒装棋盘游戏,然后回到家发现你只能玩一次游戏,你肯定会非常愤怒吧。然而这种情况 经常出现在计算机游戏中,而我们的用户有可能会因此抛弃它。然而重玩性并不是一个意外事件:这是作为设计师的我们可以有意创造的某些内容。

让我们从是否想要这么做这一问题开始。从单纯的利益角度来看,重玩性并不总是件好事。如果一款游戏无止境地重玩下去,我们的用户便没有理由去购买其它游戏。我们需要他 们去购买新游戏从而确保我们不会失业,所以我们拥有财政动机在游戏中创造特定的生命周期。然而我并不知道任何开发者是否会这么想。首先,因为飞速发展的技术,大多数游 戏已经拥有特定的生命周期;当Intel和AMD正在尽所能地确保我们游戏在几年内将被淘汰时,我们也不需要特地去创造什么。但更重要的是,我们中的大多数人都带有某种创造性 骄傲。我们希望人们能够长时间继续玩我们的游戏。

civ3(from cdaccess.com)

civ3(from cdaccess.com)

我们尊重像《文明》以及《神秘岛》等玩家玩了好几年的游戏,我们也尊重那些能够创造如此内容的设计师们。

所以假设我们想要创造一款具有重玩性的游戏,那么到底怎样的内容会影响重玩性呢?撇开技术不说(我们控制不了),我们该如何设计一款具有重玩性的游戏?在本文的第一部 分中,我们将处理游戏中的叙述效果,而在第二部分我将着眼于游戏机制。

游戏中的叙述,也就是故事情节倾向于较为固定且基于线性。尽管经过25年的研究,仍然没有人能够设计出真正让人满意的“分支故事情节。”当人们重新游戏去寻找他们一开始 所错过的分支内时,他们便会快速通过自己已经看过的某些部分。如果叙述是线性的,就像在《星际争霸》或《暗黑破坏神》中那样,一旦你知道了故事,它便不能激励你再次游 戏。幸运的是,在那些提供了足够有趣的游戏玩法的游戏中,即使你已经知道了故事,你也值得再次游戏。但对于某些游戏来说,故事便是玩家玩游戏的重要原因。一旦你解决了 所有谜题并了解了整个故事,你便没有理由再继续了。对于游戏来说,如果叙述更重要,玩家便更难去继续游戏。但我认为这并不是绝对。

如果你开车到苏格兰北端,即那个海鹦窝筑在海边的悬崖上,即使是在盛夏也是雾气弥漫的一个地方,你便可以朝北看到彭特兰海湾那片变幻莫测的海域,以及没有树木的群岛: 奥克尼群岛。如果你坐船前往奥克尼,你便能够看到许多比我们能吃苦的人所留下的石碑:他们是新石器时代的农民,皮克特人或维京人。在石碑间有着保留完好的小村庄Skara Brae,这里所有的墙壁,地板甚至是家具都是用石头所创造的。今天你可以站在墙顶,俯视带有用石头做出来的床,架子和橱子的房间(没有屋顶),并想象5000多年前在北海冬 季的夜晚被呼啸的寒风吹打着是怎样的情况。人们穿着毛皮,围坐在炉边,烧着他们所找到的浮木,周围一片黑暗,唯一的光源便是火。

他们该如何度过着无尽的冬天呢?工作:煮饭,缝纫,照顾小孩以及修补工具。玩:唱歌,聊天,开玩笑以及大笑。做人类会做的事:吃饭,睡觉,做爱,生孩子,生病以及死亡 。经历了所有的这一切,跨越一代又一代,便能够:讲故事并听他们讲故事。

所以在今天,我们能够选择的故事有许多,如果一个人花了一生的时间每天都去阅读,看电视和电影,他也不会听到同样的故事(如果他想这么做的话)。但是在古代,故事却比 现在少很多,并且并未被记录下来。也许他们只会告诉一些享有特权的群组,或者甚至是个人:吟游诗人,歌手。所以当一个女人变得很老时(也就是50岁左右,如果她能从分娩 中活下来),那么这个女人肯定听过同样的故事好几百遍了。

为什么他们会烦恼?为什么他们会担忧?是否因为不管何时听到任何故事总是比静默好?我怀疑是这样的。静默总是会孕育出故事,不管好坏;而在讲话中,这将变成事实。再一 次地,沉默比听到糟糕的故事来的好。我相信我们的祖先之所以愿意反复听取同样的故事是因为他们所听到的都是好故事。

面对如此多的故事选择,现在我们假设,一旦我们知道故事情节,便不再想要听那个故事。这对于我们的大多数故事而言是真的:《侦探科杰克》或《龙虎少年队》中是否存在任 何特定的章节值得我们看第二遍?可能并没有。但有一些故事却是我们愿意反复看,听或阅读的。我们每一年都会翻出《圣诞颂歌》,即使Tiny Tim不再符合现代人的口味,但关 于那个痛苦老男人的救赎故事却仍让现代人回味不已。

我会每隔18个月便再次阅读《指环王》或其中的某些部分。我知道其故事前前后后的发展。我知道我将不会听到任何有关情节的新内容。但是将我重新带回故事中的并不是故事本 身,而是叙述。

以下句子是书的结尾所出现的内容。它出现在倒数第二章节。当Frodo拿着Ring站在Cracks of Doom时,Dark Lord突然注意到他,并清楚他非常危险。

From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired.

请大声读出来,这个句子充满了诗歌的韵律。前面两个短语是基于平行结构,实际上,它们是非常完美的七音步抑扬格和六步格:

From all / his pol- / i-cies / and webs / of fear / and trea- / cher-y

From all / his stra- / ta-gems / and wars / his mind / shook free

它们甚至是押韵的。下一个短语听起来就像是伴随着重复的开首辅音的盎格鲁撒克逊的头韵诗:

and Throughout his Realm / a Tremor Ran

除了“and”以外,它同样也是由抑扬格构成:

through-out / his realm / a tre- / mor ran

然后我们回到“his slaves quailed, and his armies halted”的平行结构中。当韵律开始被打乱,就像Dark Lord遭受管制一样,机械化的世界也开始瓦解了。Tolkien是故意这 么做的吗?没有其它叙述方式,但他是个诗人,他了解英语,并且有意识或无意识地,他的脑子便会使用这些知识去创造素材。此时此刻在故事中,当只有诗歌能够传达他的愿景 时,他便有效地使用了这一方法。这是书中最强大的一个句子,但这也是只有你在第二次或第三次,甚至是第十二次阅读时才会注意到的内容。

讲一个很伟大的故事

不一定要是新内容才能让我们欣赏到伟大的故事。人们会去看带有完整情节的歌剧,但实际上大多数歌剧的情节都非常稀薄。他们所追求的只是表演,人声的震撼力和美感。为什 么十几岁的女孩会反复看《泰坦尼号》?她们已经了解了电影情节。这是因为刺激他们感官的是叙述而不是故事。

不久前,我开始好奇该如何看待漫画书—-它们的故事总是不断持续着,里面的英雄和恶棍从不会变老也很少死去。他们会反复遭遇挫折,但很少改变是永久的。故事的呈现就好似 它们是持续叙述的组成部分,当然了这是说不通的;这意味着蝙蝠侠这个正常人在将近70年间都在与犯罪行为相抗衡。漫画到底属于什么类型的文学呢?最终,我想说它们既不是 小说,也不是连载故事或肥皂剧,而是传说。传说并不需要形成一个连贯的整体。可能有无数关于Paul Bunyan的故事,他从不会变老或死亡,因为每一个故事都是独立的个体。

《泰坦尼号》提供给观众超越情节本身的情感共鸣。

漫画书的发行商害怕扼杀了角色,害怕人们会期待他永远死去。他们创造了角色的来源,他们为角色的冒险设定了持续的故事,但是他们却不敢告诉人们他们将如何死去。他们仍 然沉迷于自己的书籍是持续叙述的理念。至少在1986年以前都是这样的。

1986年,Frank Miller写了一部名为《The Dark Knight Returns》的图画小说。在这本书里,他讲述了蝙蝠侠最后的故事及其结局。他意识到漫画书的读者不一定都是小孩;他们 已经足够成熟能够阅读蝙蝠侠的死亡故事,并且无需假设其它蝙蝠侠的故事就必须就此终结。在书的引言中Alan Moore写道:

我们所有最棒且最古老的传说都意识到了时间流逝这一事实,人们都会经历生老病死。关于罗宾汉的传说如果缺少了最终的箭射去决定他的墓穴的位置也就不回完整。若缺少了世 界末日的内容,挪威传说也就失去了魅力,就像大卫·克洛科特的故事缺少了Alamo的存在也就不再完整一样。

为了为蝙蝠侠的生涯提供一个顶点,Miller并未去阻止进一步传说的创造。他只是创造了一个恰当的结局,但这并不代表传说的结束。

关于传说的另外一点便是它们不一定要相一致。我们知道它们是虚构的,并不是真实存在的。并不存在任何答案能够解释为何一个特殊版本的蝙蝠侠的命运是最终结果。在创造 《The Ring of the Nibelung》时,Richard Wagner从新编写了挪威传说故事,尽管最终结果与其找到的原始资料并不相同,但其实原始资料也不一定是“准确的”。他参考的是 写于中世纪使其的传说副本,作者们所记录的是更早前人们口头流传的故事的特殊版本。或者让我们看看一个更现代的例子,作者John Fowles决定不了《法国中尉的女人》的结局 ,所以他便创造了两个不同的结局并将其传达给读者。

我认为这是创造一款具有重玩性的叙述游戏的关键。首先,如果故事是线性的,我们就必须确保它是足够优秀且值得人们反复感受,即使已经了解了情节。要像Tolkien所做的那样 ,进行适当编写;要像歌剧所传达的那样,好好表演;要像《泰坦尼号》所演的那样,提供超越情节本身的情感共鸣。如果能像石器时代的歌者在北海的冬夜讲故事的话,你的用 户便会愿意不厌其烦地听上无数遍。这是很困难的,但如果我们找到合适的人才并付诸承诺的话便有可能做到。

其次,我们需要避免故事看起来像是关于从未发生的“历史”记录的集合体,但却是讲述强大的英雄,伟大的事件和事迹的传说故事。那些读万卷书的人会纠结于《星际迷航》宇 宙中的矛盾;几十年前,他们也是这么看待《福尔摩斯》故事的。这是因为他们将这些虚构的世界看成是客观存在的。他们这么做是无害的,但是我们必须对此有所警惕。作为设 计师,如果我们将自己与现实世界的某一事件绑定在一起也就意味着亲自将自己的创造性捆绑起来,从而难以创造出具有重玩性的游戏。重玩一款游戏将创造变化,而变化则要求 叙述能够容忍它。故事,不一定要是“真的”。

显然,对游戏重玩性具有最大贡献者首先就是游戏本身的可玩性。如果游戏平衡性极差,用户界面也很差,如果它缺乏实质的功能,那它就不会太好玩,更不可能让人们再次体验 。但还有特定的设计考虑会影响游戏的重玩性,这些就是我打算在此讨论的内容。

让我们先从基本的单人电脑游戏说起吧。玩家是否认为某款游戏具有重玩性,要取决于他们自己是哪种类型的玩家。比如我有两位好友,一个是硬核玩家,一个是休闲玩家。由于 硬核玩家的主要动机就是打败游戏,只要玩法有趣并且具有挑战性,他就会继续重玩直到打败游戏为止,即便每一回的玩法都非常相似。硬核玩家对《吃豆人》这种游戏也不会有 意见,因为即便你每回玩这款游戏的方法都一样,它也还是能提供大量玩法。《吃豆人》包含256个关卡,极少数人能够玩遍这些关卡。硬核玩家并不在乎每次都以相同方式玩游戏 ,只要他获得了具有娱乐性的挑战即可。

Pac-Man(from gamasutra)

Pac-Man(from gamasutra)

这正是街机游戏为何针对硬核玩家而设计,以及它们为何能够大量盈利的原因。多数街机游戏提供大量关卡和渐进增长的难度,许多游戏还拥有决定性的玩法。这种决定性的玩法
允许硬核玩家轻松通过早期关卡,并且适应更困难的挑战。多数街机游戏也极难打败,它们会变得越来越快,直到没有人能够跟上其速度。这意味着其中目标实际上并非打败游戏 ,而是打败你自己的个人最高得分,你可以一直尝试,试多少次都没有关系。硬核玩家会在厌倦玩法或者到达自己的瓶颈时放弃街机游戏,并且当他们打败一次游戏时,就不会再 继续投入其中了。这种快乐来自胜利,只要他知道如何获胜,游戏就会失去其挑战性。

而休闲玩家却并不是为了获胜的快感而玩游戏,而是为了乐趣玩游戏。你不仅仅是为其提供困难的挑战,寄希望于他们自得其乐,必须让他们获得趣味,吸引他们重返游戏。休闲 玩家所需要的是多样性,他们每次玩游戏时必须都有不同的体验。

多样性的来源

游戏中的多样性有数个来源:

变化的初始条件

多数简单的桌游,如象棋、西洋棋、西洋双陆棋等每次都是以相同的初始条件开始。双方玩家拥有相同数量的棋子,在棋盘上处于对称的位置。但并非所有游戏都要求绝对的对称 性。例如,在桌游《Stratego》中,玩家是以相同数量相同威力的棋子开始,但他们可以用自己所喜欢的方式确立自己在棋盘上的位置。这种初始条件的自由为玩家创造了多样性 。

chess(from gamasutra)

chess(from gamasutra)

初始条件还可以随机确立,这当然是多数卡牌游戏的基础。洗牌的时候会随机分配牌组,之后每位玩家都得到特定数量的纸牌。桥牌和红桃就是完全依靠玩法初始条件变化的纸牌 例子——所有纸牌都分配出去了,玩家可以根据自己的判断来出牌。

运气也是玩法的一部分

即使初始条件是相同的,游戏也可以在其规则中包含一些随机元素。西洋双陆棋和《大富翁》就是这方面的优秀例子。棋子从相同的位置开始,但它们的移动由抛骰子来决定。任何让玩家从牌组中抽取纸牌的游戏都会在玩法中同时使用随机初始条件和随机性来创造多样性。

非决定性的对手

在象棋这类拥有相同的初始条件和非随机性元素的游戏中,提供多样性的是对手的玩法。这通常(但并不总是)意味着人类是一个比电脑更有趣的对手。电脑一般是用决定性、以 数据为中心的算法来编程并找到最佳策略。电脑程序会用决定性算法在特定情况下选择相同的招术。人类玩家则可掌握和利用这种可预测性,但也会觉得这相当无趣。

人类竞争对手更有趣,因为他们除了能够带来富有变化的策略和战术能力外,他们在侵略性或防御性,直接性或迂回性,谨慎性和冒险性的程度上也有所不同。当然,你还可以同 他们对话。对他人过招具有与电脑较量所不具有的社交意义,这一点会让游戏更具重玩性。

玩家角色和战略的选择

如果玩家可以扮演不同角色来玩游戏,即使游戏内容一样也会让他们获得不同体验。《龙与地下城》中的角色种族、职业和阵营就是这方面的完美典型。你可以作为一名正义的人 类战士来玩电脑游戏,之后再重玩时也可以扮演邪恶的巫师。虽然你第二次时遇到的是相同的人,怪物和危险,你与它们打交道的方法却明显不同,尤其是在设计师构建了可用多 种方法克服的障碍的时候。

绝对大小

你可以从头到尾地玩像《Baldur’s Gate》这种大型游戏,但却仍然无法看到每个地点或接受每个任务,尤其是在你关注主线故事,并且不允许自己分心的情况下。这令《Baldur ’s Gate》获得了相当可观的重玩性。它的规模值得玩家再次重该游戏,体验第一次错过的那些冒险机遇。

其他考虑因素

最具持续重玩性的电脑游戏当属《单人纸牌》(Solitaire)了,微软Windows平台就有它的Klondike版本。那么它究竟魅力何在?

Solitaire(from gamasutra)

Solitaire(from gamasutra)

1.它直接来源于现实生活中的游戏。多数人已经知道玩法,对他们来说这并不存在什么掌握难度。

2.对于那些并不了解游戏的人来说,其规则也相当简单。该游戏的帮助文件中仅有131个文字。

3.你可以在5分钟内从头到尾玩完游戏。它并不需要投入大量的时间和精力。

4.其用户界面很平常。

5.它是免费的。

其中有些特征对我们有帮助,有些则不然。例如第1点,就并不常用。我们多数人都想设计新游戏,所以将现实生活中的现成游戏编译成电脑游戏对设计师来说并没有什么吸引力( 游戏邦注:但对于AI程序员来说,这可能很有趣。许多现成的游戏可以创造有趣的编程挑战——象棋是一款极为简单的游戏,没有随机性和隐藏信息,但为象棋游戏编程却需耗费 大量资金)。

第5点亦是如此,它对我们也没有多大帮助。《单人纸牌》是免费游戏这一点对我们的意义不大。我们多数人都想让自己的游戏畅销,这意味着游戏中必须有足够玩家掏钱的内容。 不幸的是,内容的制作很昂贵,它通常会延长和复杂化游戏。这里存在一个有趣的关系,我认为我们可以从中获得一点经验:最具重玩性的游戏也是执行成本最小的游戏。

第2、3和4点最重要。我们可用一个词分别进行总结,它们分别是简单性,简短性和易用性。EA创始人Trip Hawkins曾经指出游戏要具有“简单、刺激和深度”的特点。简单性和深 度(如微妙性或多样性)都有利于创造重玩性。他所指的“刺激”是指兴奋感,但它在此与重玩性没有多大关系。《单人纸牌》并不具有太大兴奋感,但仍然极具重玩性。

我个人并不认为《单人纸牌》是一款非常有趣的游戏。它太随机了。你输的次数远多于赢,并且你无法通过思考来扭转这一局面。Windows平台的《Free Cell》是一款更棒的游戏 。它需要投入更长的时间,但提供了一种《单人纸牌》所缺乏的脑力挑战。它的规则也很简单,其用户界面也与前者相同。但与《单人纸牌》不同的是,它奖励的是玩家的耐心和 坚持。

为重玩性而设计游戏对游戏设计师来说是一个纯粹的考验。重玩性要求简单、富有吸引力,成瘾性的挑战,以及最为自然、无缝的用户界面。而Patrick Stewart所说的壮观的图像 、无数设备型号,15个不同的摄像视角,以及配音等这些我们认为游戏开发应该具备的大型、昂贵而有趣的东西却并不重要。游戏要回归其最初本质:挑战以及克服挑战的方法。 如果我想设计一款极具重玩性的游戏,我可能就会从纸牌或多米诺入手。它们未必需要像纸牌或多米诺一样,只要玩法可行,它们的外观怎样并不重要。

总结

重玩性并非电脑游戏的绝对必需品。正如我在Deep Red Games的好友Jeff Wofford所指出的那北塔,许多游戏提供了大量玩法——40或50个小时玩法也挺普遍,许多玩家第一次甚 至都没有全部玩遍游戏,更少人会不断重玩游戏。如果你们以1小时1美元的代价为顾客提供快乐,那就已经很好了,这甚至比电影做得更好,即使他们只玩一次游戏。如果我要设 计一款大型游戏,我可能就不会太担心这个问题。

但是,重玩性仍然是每个设计师在游戏设计的初始阶段需要自问的一个问题。所有玩家,无论是休闲还是硬核类型,都希望自己花的钱有所回报。如果游戏能够在数分钟或数小时 内玩完,你最好据此定价,或者确保它的设计具有重玩性。

相关拓展:篇目1篇目2(本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao)

Replayability, Part One: Narrative

by Ernest Adams

What makes a computer game replayable? And why are some replayable and some not?

In principle, any game should be replayable. If you went down to the toy store, bought a board game in a box for twenty or thirty dollars, and then came home to discover that you could only play it once, you would be rightfully wrathful. Yet, this happens fairly frequently with computer games, and our customers are more or less resigned to it. Replayability, however, is no accident: it’s something we as designers can build in on purpose…if we want to.

Let’s start with the question of whether we want to. From a purely mercenary standpoint, replayability isn’t always a good thing. If a game is endlessly replayable, our customers have no reason to go buy another game. We need them to buy new games to keep ourselves employed, so we have a financial motive to build a certain lifespan into our games. However, I don’t know of any developer who actually feels this way. For one thing, most games already have a certain lifespan because of galloping technology; there’s no need to build one in artificially when Intel and AMD are doing their best to make sure our games are obsolete in a couple of years no matter what we do. But more importantly, most of us have some creative pride. We want people to go on playing our games for a long time. We respect games, like Civilization and Myst, which people continue to play for years, and we respect their designers for having achieved such a thing.

So assuming that we do want to make a game replayable, what issues influence replayability? Leaving aside technology, which we can’t control, how do we design a replayable game? In the first part of this article, I’ll address the effect of narrative on games, and in the second part, I’ll look at game mechanics.

Narrative in games – that is, the storyline, when there is one – tends to be fairly fixed and fairly linear. Despite 25-odd years of more or less haphazard research, no one has devised a really satisfactory “branching storyline.” When people replay the game to see branches that they missed the first time, they tend to hurry through those parts that they’ve already seen, paying little attention. And if the narrative is linear, as in Starcraft or Diablo, once you know the story, it doesn’t provide much motivation to play the game again. Fortunately, those games offer sufficiently interesting gameplay that they’re worth playing again even if you already know the story. But for adventure games, the story is most of the reason for playing them. Once you’ve solved all the puzzles and you know the whole story, there’s little reason to do it again. The more important narrative is to a game, the more of a disincentive it is to play it again.But I don’t think it has to be that way.If you drive to the far northern tip of Scotland, where puffins nest among the sea-cliffs and the mist swirls over the grass even in high summer, you can stand and look north across the treacherous waters of the Pentland Firth to a low, treeless archipelago: the Orkney Islands.And if you take the ferry over to the Orkneys, you can visit dozens of ancient stone monuments left by people hardier than we: Neolithic farmers, Picts, Vikings. Among them is a beautifully preserved little village, Skara Brae, where all the walls, floors, and even furniture are made of flagstones. Nowadays you can stand on the wall-tops, look down into the roofless rooms with their beds and shelves and cupboards all of stone, and try to imagine what it must have been like during the icy howling darkness of a North Sea winter’s night, five thousand years ago. People dressed in skins, huddling around the hearth in the reeking gloom, burning such driftwood as they could find, the only light coming from the fire.

How did they pass those endless winters? Working, certainly: cooking, sewing, tending babies and mending tools. Playing, certainly: singing, talking, telling jokes and laughing. Doing what humans do: eating and sleeping, making love and giving birth, falling ill and dying. And throughout it all, the thread that spans the generations: telling tales and listening to them told.

Nowadays we have so many stories to choose from that a man could spend his entire life reading, watching television, going to the movies all day, every day, and never once hear the same story again if he did not want to. But in ancient times, the tales were fewer, and memorized, not written down. Perhaps their telling was the province of a privileged group, or even a single person: the bard, the singer. And so by the time she had reached old age – that is to say,
her fifties, if she survived childbirth – a woman must have heard the same tale many a hundred times.

Why did they bother? Why did they care? Was it because any story, no matter how many times heard, was better than silence? I doubt it. In silence inheres the potential for all stories, good and bad; in speech, the potential becomes the real. It is better to hear only silence than to hear a bad story told again. I believe the reason our ancestors listened to the same stories again and again was that they were good stories.

With so many tales to choose from, we now assume that once we know the plot there’s no longer any point in hearing the story again. This is true for most of our stories: is any given episode of Kojak or 21 Jump Street that worth seeing a second time? Probably not. But there are a few tales that we do see, or hear, or read over and over. We drag out A Christmas Carol year after year, and even if Tiny Tim is too saccharine for modern tastes, the story of a bitter old man’s redemption is not.

I usually re-read The Lord of the Rings, or parts of it, about every 18 months. I know it backwards and forwards. I know I’m not going to learn anything new about the plot. What brings me back, what keeps my attention, is not the tale but the telling.

Consider the following sentence from near the end of the book. It occurs at the penultimate moment, when Frodo is standing at the Cracks of Doom with the Ring in his hand. The Dark Lord has suddenly become aware of him, and knows that his very existence hangs by a thread.

From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired.

Read aloud, this sentence rings with the rhythms of poetry. The first two phrases have a parallel construction, and in fact, they are perfect iambic heptameter and hexameter respectively:

From all / his pol- / i-cies / and webs / of fear / and trea- / cher-y

From all / his stra- / ta-gems / and wars / his mind / shook free

They even rhyme. The next phrase sounds like Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, with its repeating initial consonants:

and Throughout his Realm / a Tremor Ran

and with the exception of the word “and,” it too is composed of iambs:

through-out / his realm / a tre- / mor ran

Then we return to parallel construction with “his slaves quailed, and his armies halted.” After that the rhythm begins to break up, just as the Dark Lord’ s regimented, mechanized world began to break up. Did Tolkien do this deliberately? There’s no way to tell, but he was a poet who knew everything there was to know about the English language, and consciously or unconsciously, his mind used that knowledge to work his material. At a moment in the story when only
poetry could do justice to his vision, he employed its methods to great effect. This is one of the most powerful sentences in the book, but it’s the kind of thing you only notice on a second, or third, or twelfth reading.

Telling a Great Tale

To appreciate great stories it isn’t necessary that they be new. People go to the opera with a full knowledge of the plot, and indeed the plots of most operas are pretty thin. What they go for is the performance, the power and beauty of the human voice. Why did teenaged girls go back to see Titanic again and again and again? They already knew the plot. It was because of the way it made them feel, and that, too, is a function not only of the tale but the telling.

Some time ago, I began wondering how to think about comic books – their stories go on and on, and their heroes and villains never grow old and seldom die. They suffer setbacks from time to time, but few of these changes are permanent. The stories are presented as if they are part of a continuous narrative, but of course that makes no sense; it means that Batman, a normal human being, has been fighting crime continuously for nearly seventy years. To what class of
literature do comic books belong? Finally, I concluded that they are not novels, not serials or soap operas, but legends. Legends don’t have to hang together to form a coherent whole. There can be an infinite number of stories about Paul Bunyan, and he never grows old or dies, because each tale is self- contained.

Titanic offered viewers an emotional resonance that goes beyond the plot alone.

The publishers of comic books are afraid to kill a character, for fear that people will expect him to remain dead forever. They invent origins for their characters, and they have ongoing stories of their adventures, but they don’t dare tell how they die. They’re still hung up on this idea that their books are continuous narratives. At least, they were until 1986.

In 1986, Frank Miller wrote a graphic novel called The Dark Knight Returns. In this book, he told the tale of Batman’s final battle and his end. He recognized that the readers of comic books are not necessarily small children; that they are mature enough to be able to read the story of Batman’s doom without assuming that the publication of other Batman stories must therefore cease. In his introduction to the book, Alan Moore wrote:

All of our best and oldest legends recognize that time passes and that people grow old and die. The legend of Robin Hood would not be complete without the final blind arrow shot to determine the site of his grave. The Norse Legends would lose much of their power were it not for the knowledge of an eventual Ragnarok, as would the story of Davy Crockett without the existence of an Alamo.

In providing a capstone to Batman’s career, Miller took nothing away and did nothing to obstruct the creation of further legends. He simply gave it a fitting end, one without which the legend was incomplete.

Another thing about legends is that it isn’t necessary for them to be consistent. We know they’re fiction, not fact. There’s no reason why one particular version of Batman’s fate must be definitive. In composing The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner substantially re-wrote the Norse legends for his own purposes, and while the results are not “true” to his source material, his source material isn’t “true” to anything either. He was working from copies of the legends written down in medieval times, by authors who themselves chose to record one particular version of far more ancient oral tales. In a more modern example, the author John Fowles was unable to decide on an nding for The French Lieutenant’s Woman, so he unapologetically created two different endings and told them both.

These, I think, are the keys to making a narrative game replayable. First, if the story is linear, to make it so good that it’s worth hearing again and again, even if we know the plot. To do as Tolkien did, and write it well; to do as opera does, and perform it well; to do as Titanic did, and offer an emotional resonance that goes beyond the plot alone. To tell the tale as the Ston Age singer told it on a North Sea winter’s night, so spellbindingly that your audience can hear it a hundred times without tiring of it. That’s a tall order, but it can be done if we find the right talent and make the commitment to do so.

In composing The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner substantially re-wrote the Norse legends for his own purposes.

Second, to treat our stories not as collections of fixed immutable facts that accurately record a “history” that never happened, but as legends that speak of mighty heroes, great events and deeds. People have spilled gallons of ink arguing about minute inconsistencies in the Star Trek universe; a few decades ago, they did the same over the Sherlock Holmes stories. That’s because they’re treating these fictitious worlds as if they were objective reality. There’ s no harm in letting them enjoy themselves in this manner, but we should be wary of doing so ourselves. For us as designers to bind ourselves to a single version of events in our worlds is to tie our hands creatively and make it much more difficult to make a game replayable. Replaying a game creates variation, and variation demands narratives that are tolerant of it. Tales, not “truth.”

Last month I looked at the way narrative affects game replayability. This time I’ll be looking at how replayability is affected by the game mechanics themselves.

Obviously, the single most important contributor to a game’s replayability is its playability in the first place. If a game is badly balanced, if it has a poor user interface, if it seems to be lacking essential features, then it’s not going to be much fun to play, much less to play again. But there are specific design considerations that influence a game’s re-playability, and those are the ones I’ll be talking about here.

Let’s start with your basic single-player computer game. Whether a player perceives such a game as replayable depends to some extent on what kind of a player he or she is. Consider our two old friends, the core gamer and the casual gamer. (See my earlier column, “Casual versus Core” for a discussion of these folks.) Since a core gamer’s primary motivation is beating the game, as long as the gameplay is interesting and above all challenging, he will continue to play that game repeatedly until he has beaten it, even if the gameplay is very similar every time. The core gamer has no problem with a game like Pac-Man, because even though Pac-Man is a deterministic game that behaves exactly the same way every time you play it, it offers a huge amount of gameplay. Pac-Man contains 256 levels, and very, very few people have ever played them all. The core gamer doesn’t mind a game that plays the same way every time, as long as he’s got an entertaining challenge to overcome.

Pac-Man contains 256 levels, and very, very few people have ever played them all.

This is why arcade games are designed for core gamers, and why they make so much money. Most arcade games provide large numbers of levels and progressively increasing difficulty, and many have deterministic gameplay. The eterministic gameplay allows the core gamer to move swiftly through the early, easy levels, and get up to the harder ones where the real challenge is. Most arcade games are also ultimately unbeatable; they simply get faster and faster until no human
being could possibly keep up with them. This means that the object is not actually to beat the game, but to beat your own personal best score, and that’s something you can always try for no matter how many times you have played the game. Core gamers give up on arcade games once they become tired of the gameplay or they reach a point beyond which they simply cannot improve, and once a core gamer does beat a game once and for all, he’s seldom interested in playing it any more. The pleasure comes from winning, and since he now knows how to beat it, the challenge is gone.

The casual gamer, on the other hand, plays not for the exhilaration of victory, but for the joy of playing the game. It’s not enough to simply supply the casual gamer with a tough challenge and let her go at it; she has to be having a good time, and to lure her back again, one thing the casual gamer needs is variety. The game has to be different the next time she plays it.

Sources of Variety

Variety in a game can come from several places:

Varying initial conditions

Most simple board games like chess, checkers and backgammon start with the same initial conditions every time. Both players have the same number of pieces, placed in symmetric positions on the board. But not all games require absolute symmetry. In the board game Stratego, for example, the players start with equal numbers of pieces of equal strength, but they may set them up in their own areas of the board any way they like. This freedom in the initial conditions creates variety for the players.

Initial conditions can also be established randomly; this is of course the basis of most card games. The deck is randomized by shuffling, and then a certain number of cards are dealt out to each player. Bridge and hearts are good examples of card games that depend entirely on varying initial conditions for its gameplay – all the cards are dealt out, and the players play them as they best see fit.

Chance as a part of gameplay

Even if the initial conditions are identical, a game can include random elements as part of the rules of the game. Backgammon and Monopoly are good examples of this. The pieces start in identical positions, but their movement is determined by throwing dice.

Any card game in which you draw cards from a shuffled deck in the course of play (gin rummy and most forms of poker, for example) is using both random initial conditions and randomness during gameplay to create variety.

Non-deterministic opponents

In a game like chess, with identical starting conditions and no random elements, what provides the variety is the opponent’s gameplay. This usually (but not always) means that a human being is a more interesting opponent than a computer. Computers tend to be programmed with deterministic, number-crunching algorithms to find the best move, according to some metric for measuring the quality of a given move. With a deterministic algorithm, a computer program will always choose the same move in a given situation. In time, human players can learn to take advantage of this predictability; they also tend to find it rather dull.

In a game like chess, with identical starting conditions and no random elements, what provides the variety is the opponent’s gameplay.

Human opponents are more interesting because in addition to having varying strategic and tactical abilities, they differ in the degree to which they’re aggressive or defensive, devious or forthright, cautious or risk-takers. And of course, you can talk to them. There’s a social aspect of playing against other people that is completely absent when playing against a computer, and that tends to make the game replayable even if nothing else does.

A choice of player roles and strategies

If a player can play a game in several different roles, the game will feel different even if its content is the same. The character classes, races, and alignments in Dungeons & Dragons are a perfect example of this sort of thing. You might play an entire computer game as a lawful good human fighter, then decide to replay it again as a chaotic evil elf magic-user. Although you encounter the same people, creatures, and dangers the second time around, your approach to dealing with them will be significantly different, especially if the designers have constructed obstacles that can be overcome by a variety of methods. (Unfortunately, in far too many role-playing games the only method available is “whack it until it’s dead.” But at least there are a variety of ways of whacking it.)

Sheer size

You can play an enormous game like Baldur’s Gate from beginning to end and still not see every location or undertake every quest, particularly if you concentrate on the main storyline and don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked often the first time through. This gives Baldur’s Gate considerable replayability. It’s just so big that it’s worth going back and playing again to follow up on adventuring opportunities that you missed the first time around.

Other Considerations

The most consistently-replayed computer game in the world has got to be Solitaire, the version of Klondike that is included with Microsoft Windows. So what’ s its appeal?

It’s taken directly from an existing game in the real world. Most people already know how to play; for them it has no learning curve whatsoever.

The rules, for those who don’t know them, are extremely simple. In the help file that comes with Solitaire, the game is explained in only 131 words.You can play a complete game from start to finish in less than five minutes. It doesn’t take a big commitment of time and mental energy.

The user interface is trivial.

It’s free.

Some of these characteristics are helpful to us and some of aren’t. Item one, for example, isn’t much use. Most of us want to design new games, so computerizing existing games from the real world doesn’t have a great deal of appeal to us as designers. (It can have a great deal of appeal to those of us who are AI programmers, however. Many existing games make interesting programming challenges – chess is an extremely simple game, with no randomness and no hidden information, but look how much money has been spent on chess programming!)

Item five, too, doesn’t help us much. There’s not a lot we can do about the fact that Solitaire is free. Most of us want to get paid, so our games have to sell, and that means that there has to be enough content in them for players to justify opening their wallets. Unfortunately, content is expensive to make, and it often lengthens and complicates games. There’s an interesting relationship here, one that I think we can learn from: the most replayable games are also the smallest and cheapest to implement.

Items two, three, and four get to the heart of the matter. Summed up in one word each, they are simplicity, shortness, and ease. Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, used to insist that games be “simple, hot, and deep.” Simplicity and depth (i.e. subtlety or variety) both contribute to replayability. By “hot”, he meant exciting, which is neither here nor there as far as replayability is concerned; it helps if that’s the sort of game you like. Solitaire isn’t very exciting, but it’s still highly replayable.

Replayability requires a simple, compelling, addictive challenge and the most natural, frictionless user interface possible.

Personally, I don’t think Solitaire is a very interesting game. It’s too random. You lose far more than you win and no amount of thinking you can do will change that. Free Cell, which also ships with Windows, is a much better game. It takes a little longer to play, but it offers a mental challenge that Solitaire lacks. Its rules are almost as simple and its user interface is identical. And unlike Solitaire, Free Cell rewards patience and persistence; it isn ’t that hard to solve to begin with, and in fact all but one of the 32,767 deals of Free Cell can be solved with enough effort. The knowledge that it can be done encourages you to continue to try.

Designing for replayability is the purest test of the game designer. Replayability requires a simple, compelling, addictive challenge and the most natural, frictionless user interface possible. All the big, expensive, fun things that we think game development is about – spectacular graphics, hundreds of unit types, fifteen different camera angles, and voiceover narration by Patrick Stewart – are irrelevant. The game is reduced to its barest essentials: the challenge and the means of overcoming it. If I were trying to design a game for high replayability, I might actually start with cards or dominoes, something I can shuffle around on a tabletop. They wouldn’t necessarily end up as cards or dominoes in the game; they could end up as genies or giant worms just as well. Their surface appearance doesn’t make much difference as long as the gameplay works.

Conclusion

Replayability is not an absolute necessity for computer games. As my friend Jeff Wofford at Deep Red Games points out, many games offer so much gameplay – forty or fifty hours is not uncommon – that a lot of players don’t even finish them the first time through, much less play them again and again. If we’ve given our customers an enjoyable time for a dollar an hour or so, we’re doing pretty well; certainly better than the movies do, even if our customers only play the game once. If I were designing a large game, I probably wouldn’t worry about it much.

Still, the question of replayability is one that every designer should ask herself in the initial stages of game design. All players, casual or core, want good value for their money. If the game can be played to its conclusion in a few minutes or hours, then you had better either set the price accordingly, or make sure that it’s replayable by design.


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