作者：Darran Jamieson

互动性是游戏设计的一个基本元素。如果缺少了互动性，游戏便不再是游戏：它将只是一个电视节目，一本书，或者其它一种静态媒体。互动性是真正能够定义游戏的内容，并且是确保玩家对游戏感兴趣的最重要方面。

让人遗憾的是，互动性同时也是经常遭遇冷落的一个元素。我们可能会想到一个很酷的游戏元素理念，并专注于执行它而未着眼于其中的任何含义。或者更糟糕的是，我们会因为“这是游戏最常见的方式”而忽视了互动性。

存在其它能够带给玩家娱乐的方式：《亲爱的艾斯特》便带有非常糟糕的互动性设置，但不管怎样它都努力去创造一个粉丝基础。所以如果你正在计划创造一款艺术游戏，那么本文所提到的内容可能并不能直接作用于你身上，但这些都是你必须清楚的一些重要方面。

Dear Esther(from tutplus)

《亲爱的艾斯特》非常华丽，但对于它是否有资格作为一款游戏这一问题却备受争论。

实际上，大多数玩家都想要游戏—-所以将他们拒之门外是导致他们受挫并失去兴趣的有效方法。像添加不可略过的过场动画或较长的加载时间等等都有可能导致这种结果，但我们将专注于研究将玩家拒之门外的游戏机制并讨论如何避开它们。

暂停游戏就好像一种惩罚方式

在《大富翁》中，当玩家输掉自己的所有钱时，他们便需要退出游戏。在《反恐精英》中，当玩家死掉时，他们便需要退出游戏直至下一轮开始。在这两个例子中，玩家都遭遇了“失败”，所以作为惩罚，他们将不能继续游戏。

在这样的情况下，你会发现这些玩家很快失去了对于游戏的兴趣。在《大富翁》中，输掉游戏的玩家必须等待1个小时以上的时间直至游戏结束，并尝试着从将自己拒之门外的游戏中获得乐趣。而《反恐精英》的玩家可以在等待下一轮开始前浏览网页。

将玩家从游戏中删除是一种非常极端的惩罚，特别是当他们不得不等待游戏再次开始的情况下。桌面游戏设计师已经意识到了这一点，欧洲游戏之所以突然间大受欢迎的部分原因便是它们不具有“删除玩家”的设计策略：比起提供给玩家失败的资源（如金钱或分数点），它们会在游戏最后提供给任何获得最高分数的人获胜奖励。

同样地，在大多数第一人称射击游戏中，玩家的复苏是与计时器无关。对于许多Valve游戏，如《军团要塞2》，实时复苏模式非常受欢迎。死亡已经是很大的惩罚了，再使用“暂停”机制便太过了。

甚至连一些单人游戏也会使用“游戏结束”页面去惩罚玩家，强迫他们重新加载游戏，甚至会要求他们重玩某些内容。《超级食肉男孩》便通过即时重生而解决了这一问题—-尽管这对于这款游戏的死亡游戏玩法来说是个必要内容（既玩家可以在尝试一个全新关卡时死掉多次），这意味着死亡并不会带给玩家惩罚感。

《王牌英雄》同样也尝试着去缓解死亡。尽管玩家仍然会因为死亡而“暂停”游戏，但这时候的玩家可以通过玩一些迷你游戏去收集Solar（游戏邦注：即游戏中的货币）。玩家也会因为完美地完成迷你游戏而获得成就。

这并不是说每一款单人游戏都应该设有即时重生机制，但让玩家能够更快重生或在死亡后拥有直接回到游戏中的能力能够帮助游戏有效地维持用户流。

在展开游戏玩法的同时暂停游戏

这种形式的暂停经常出现在回合制游戏中。在大多数JRPG战斗系统中，玩家将发现自己能够执行特定行动并使用一些能力。使用这些能力能够在执行行动的同时促使短暂的暂停，随后玩家也能够继续游戏。

虽然这种回合制战斗是合理的，但是它却不一定需要基于这种方式呈现出来。《纸片马里奥》系列拥有非常出色的系统，即在战斗中选择攻击能够开启一个快速迷你游戏。攻击敌人可能创造10点的破坏力，但是如果你能在动画期间的适当时候按压攻击按键，你便可能创造出20点的破坏力。

尽管处理这些风格化的行动并不是穿越游戏的必要内容，但是它们却能够让战斗变得更加简单，玩家也能够像期待中的那样获得一些成就感。

尽管这种额外的互动并不是很明显，它却能够在游戏过程中发挥较大的作用，并能够用于各种情境中。

在等待某些事件发生时暂停游戏

在有些游戏中，当等待游戏玩法向前发展的过程中可能出现的暂停形式较少。在此，尽管玩家并不是遭遇直接暂停，但是他们所采取的任何行动都将阻碍他们获得胜利，所以玩家将被迫进行等待直至出现有利局面。

但再一次地，《反恐精英》又出现了这一问题，不过它也不是唯一的“罪犯”。因为枪的致命性，以及每轮只有一条生命的系统，“临时安顿”（游戏邦注：即在一段时间内隐藏在一些别人难以察觉到的区域）成为了非常有效的一种策略。这是一种“待着一动不动”的方法，尽管是有效的，但同时也会阻碍玩家参与游戏玩法。尽管有许多《反恐精英》的粉丝会声明临时安顿是策略性游戏玩法的一部分，但是对于新玩家来说，不断被周围的玩家所杀死是一件非常受挫的事。

对此并不存在任何快捷的解决方法，但是我们能够通过改变特定的基本游戏玩法元素去缓解这一问题。第一人称射击游戏《Dystopia》便提供给玩家“透视”能力，即每隔20秒游戏便会发送一个“pulse”向玩家呈现出所有敌人的位置。《反恐精英》中的一些模式也会推动那些长时间待在同一个地方的玩家不断移动，否则他们便会遭遇死亡。这种方法在某种程度上是有帮助的，但对于解决一条命的游戏玩法来说，它仍然不能起到较显著的作用。

甚至是在像《反恐精英》这样的游戏外部，玩家也会发现自己身处一些不得不等待的情况。如果玩家正在等待再生，或者等待工人创造出更多资源，他们便是处于暂停状态。这并不意味着你应该立即提供给玩家所有内容，但如果他们发现自己在农民为城堡收集到足够金子前什么都做不了时，他们便不会愿意再花更多时间于游戏中。

但等待也有可能是好处

当然了，有时候让玩家等待是有益的。让我们以《合金装备3》中著名的阶梯场景为例，即主角需要一步步地攀登阶梯2分钟：

从表面上来看这似乎是个很糟糕的游戏设计。但是什么原因推动着设计师去添加这2分钟的等待呢？这是故事叙述和节奏的一部分：阶梯是在与boss进行激烈打斗之后出现的，让玩家去攀登阶梯能够让他们恢复到平静的状态下。这是不再遭遇任何敌人攻击的2分钟，是思考战斗的2分钟，同时也是玩家能够从混乱的战斗中获得休息的2分钟。

与几乎所有的游戏设计一样，你能够打破规则，但是理解打破规则的理由同样很重要。

在轮到对手时暂停

在轮到对手时暂停游戏是回合制游戏的主要内容。在象棋中，玩家将在对手移动旗子前暂停游戏。这时候玩家能够考虑之后该怎么走，但是等待对手做出决定的时候可能会让玩家感到无聊。

存在多种缓解这一问题的方法：象棋中便有一种很流行的变通方式，即（5分钟一盘）快棋赛，每个玩家需要在特定时间内完成游戏。如果玩家用光了时间，他们便输了。尽管快棋赛在所有象棋玩家中并不是特别受欢迎（因为它不像正规象棋游戏那样能够进行较常见的规划），但是它也拥有着自己的粉丝群体。

象棋所具有的问题是这样的游戏太过复杂。它需要玩家花时间去考虑所有可行的选择，特别是在开始进行计划时。如果你着眼于像拼字游戏这样的游戏时，你便会发现它们的游戏玩法更快。部分原因是拼字游戏较为简单，但更多地是因为它们只具有有限的选择。在象棋中，玩家所走出的第1步可以是18种可行选择中的1种。而在拼字游戏中，选择则缩小了一半。在象棋中，随着玩家的前进，它们有可能发现自己面对着越来越多的选择；而在拼字游戏中，玩家的选择则是会快速缩减。

当然了，如果说自动限制玩家的选择能够创造出一款更优秀的游戏是很奇怪的，因为我们在游戏中所作出的选择有可能让事情变得更加有趣。但如果我们能够保证玩家不会被过多选择所压倒，我们便可以尝试着确保游戏玩法更加快速。国际跳棋似乎是处于象棋与拼字游戏之间；它拥有足够复杂的游戏玩法能够提供给玩家机智的挑战，同时也不至于过分复杂而要求玩家需要花费10分钟的时间去考虑每一次移动。

无需等待而进行游戏

我们可以通过设定同步回合去解决部分的“等待我的回合”问题。桌面游戏《外交官》便采取了这样的方法：在每个回合期间，每个玩家将写下自己的单位移动，然后在最终阶段期间将公开所有的这些移动。《文明》也尝试着做到这点，尽管并不是特别成功：玩家能够同时进入自己的回合，但是因为这款游戏较为复杂的属性，所以在某些情况下战斗中的赢家将能够优先移动自己的单位。尽管玩家总是喜欢更快速的游戏玩法，但似乎这会破坏游戏基于回合的属性。

Civ4ScreenShot(from tutplus)

比起使用“最快速的优先”方法去进行同步回合，让玩家不能对游戏玩法创造直接影响而继续游戏或许更加可行。像《文明》这样风格的游戏通常都需要进行大量的微观管理，特别是在较后面的关卡中，所以玩家没有理由不能在对手的回合中进行这些管理。

你可能想要为即将到来的战斗创建军队，如此你便能够检查你的每一座城市并改变它们的建筑从而变得更加舒适。同样地，你可能想要执行外交行动或改变你的政府范式。这些行动都不需要得到即刻解决，但让玩家在自己的回合期间做这些行动而在其他玩家回合时做其它事则能够确保玩家的回合更快速地进展下去。

让玩家能够在其他玩家回合的时候采取行动去回应特定事件是保持玩家参与度的有效方式。如果玩家能够参与对手的行动，他们便更有可能对游戏充满兴趣。然而如果玩家并不在乎对手在做什么，他们便会很快失去对游戏的兴趣。

让玩家游戏

始终保持玩家在玩游戏。尝试着最大限度减少等待时间，如果玩家并不能受到直接控制，那么至少尝试着提供给他们行动以至于他们不会感到无聊。

当我们打破这些规则时，我们需要理解自己为何要打破它们。在任何游戏中，最重要的一点便是有趣，有时候行动中的一次休息可能是一种受欢迎的休息，或者说能够改变游戏的氛围。但是当我们尝试着改变一些事物时，我们必须采取一种简单的方式让玩家参与其中，如在适当时间按压X键，这能够带给玩家深深的参与感。要记住，我们正在创造的是一款游戏，而非其它媒体。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Let Them Play: Don’t Lock Your Players Out of Playing

by Darran Jamieson

Interactivity is a fundamental element of games design. Without it, a game isn’t a game: it’s a TV show, or a book, or an instance of some other static medium. Interactivity is what really defines games, and is (arguably) the single most important aspect for keeping players interested.

Sadly, interactivity is also an element that often falls to the wayside. We might get an idea for a cool game element, and become focused on getting that to work without looking at the implications. Or, worse, we ignore interactivity because “that’s the way these games are done”.

There are other ways to keep players entertained: the incredibly divisive Dear Esther had very poor interactivity, but managed to find a fan base nevertheless. So, if you’re planning on making an art game, then the lessons here may not apply directly to you, but these aspects are important to be aware of anyway.

Dear Esther is beautiful, but there’s debate about whether it qualifies as a game.
The fact is, most players want to play—so locking them out is an incredibly effective way to frustrate them and make them lose interest. There are some obvious ways of doing this, such as including unskippable cutscenes or lengthy loading times, but we’ll focus on game mechanics that lock players out, and how to avoid them.

Lockout as Punishment

In Monopoly, when a player loses all their money, they are removed from the game. In Counter-Strike, when a player dies, they are removed from the game until the next round. In both cases, the player has “lost”, and, as a punishment, they are no longer allowed to play.

In cases like these, you will find these players very quickly losing interest in the game. In Monopoly, the losing player may have to sit around for an hour or more waiting for the game to finish, trying to keep themselves entertained by a game in which they are no longer invested. Counter-Strike players may tab out and browse the internet while waiting for the next round.

Removing a player from a game is extremely punishing, especially if they have to wait around to play again. Board game designers have realised this, and Euro games have rocketed in popularity, partly due to their “no player elimination” design strategy: rather than giving players resources to lose (such as money or hit points), they award victory to whoever has amassed the most points at the end of the game.

Similarly, in most first-person shooters, players respawn independently of round timers. For many Valve games, such as Team Fortress 2, instant-respawn mods are extremely popular. Dying is already punishment enough, and forcing a “time out” for performing badly just compounds that unnecessarily.

Even some single player games punish the player with a “game over” screen, forcing them to reload the game, and possibly even making them replay content. Super Meat Boy solved this issue by making respawning instantaneous—although this was arguably a necessity for SMBs deadly gameplay (where a player can easily die dozens of times trying a new level), it meant that death never really felt like a punishment.

Awesomenauts also tries to mitigate death. Although the player still has a “time out” period for dying, part of this time out is used playing a mini-game in which the player can collect Solar (the in-game currency). Players can even earn an achievement for playing this mini-game perfectly.

That’s not to say that every single player game should have instant respawns, but simply having faster respawns, or the ability to get straight back into the action after death can really help a game maintain its flow, rather than breaking momentum with death screens and “Replay/Quit” menus.

Lockout While Gameplay Unfolds

This form of lockout is often (but not always) found in turn-based games. In most JRPG combat systems, players will find themselves able to perform certain moves and use abilities. Using these abilities will often enforce a short lockout while the move is executed, after which the player can continue playing.

While this sort of turn-based combat makes sense, it doesn’t have to be done this way. The Paper Mario series have an excellent system where choosing attacks in combat opens up a quick time event mini-game. Striking an enemy might deal 10 damage, but if you press the attack button at the correct time during the animation (at the point where your weapon collides), then you might deal 20 damage instead.

While mastering these “stylish moves” wasn’t absolutely necessary to get through the game, it certainly made fights a lot easier, and players were expected to be able to hit some (if not all) of these moves.

Although this sort of added interaction is small, it can add up to a large effect over the course of the game, and it can be applied to a variety of situations.

Lockout While Waiting for Something to Happen

A lesser form of lockout occurs in some games when waiting for gameplay to progress. Here, although the player is not directly locked out, any action the user takes is normally detrimental to winning, so the player is forced to sit until a favourable position emerges.

Once again, Counter-Strike is guilty of this, although it is by no means the only offender. Due to the lethality of the guns, and the one-life-per-round system, “camping”—that is, hiding for long periods of time in difficult-to-see areas—is an incredibly effective tactic. This “sit still, don’t move” approach, while valid, also discourages active gameplay from participants. Although many Counter-Strike fans will no doubt protest that camping is part of the tactical gameplay, for new players it can be frustrating to be killed repeatedly by players that simply sit near the objective and shoot anyone that moves.

There is no quick fix for this, but it is possible to mitigate it by changing certain basic gameplay elements. The first person shooter Dystopia gives players a “wallhack” ability, where once every 20 seconds they can send a “pulse” that briefly shows them the location of all enemies. Some Counter-Strike mods damage players who stay in one spot for too long, forcing them to keep moving or die. These help to a degree, but they are mostly just small fixes to the larger problem of one-life gameplay.

Even outside of games like Counter-Strike, players can find themselves in situations where they simply have to wait. If a player is waiting for health to regenerate, or for more resources to be gathered by workers, then they’re effectively locked out. This doesn’t mean that you should give the player everything instantly, but if they find themselves unable to do anything until the peasants gather enough gold for a castle, then they’re not able to spend their time constructively.

But Waiting Can Be Good

There are times, of course, when it is good to make a player wait. Take the famous ladder scene from Metal Gear Solid 3, where the protagonist literally climbs a ladder for two minutes:

This, on the surface, seems like terrible game design. What would possess the designers to insert a mandatory two minute wait? The purpose is one of storytelling and pacing: the ladder comes after a hectic boss fight, and forcing the player to climb the ladder allows them to transition into a place of calm. Two minutes of not being attacked by enemies, two minutes of reflecting on the battle that took place, two minutes of being allowed a break from the chaos.

As with almost all aspects of games design, you’re allowed to break the rules, but its important to understand why you’re breaking them.

Lockout During the Opponent’s Turn

Locking players out of a game during their opponents’ turns is, not surprisingly, a staple of turn-based games. In chess, a player is essentially locked out the game until his opponent moves. Players may be able to consider further options, but waiting for opponents to take their turn may leave them bored.

There are ways to mitigate this: chess has a popular variant known as speed chess, where each player is given a certain total amount of time (say, five minutes each), and must finish the game within that period. If a player runs out of time, they lose. And while speed chess is not popular with all chess players—partly because it does not allow for the same sort of long-term tactical planning as normal chess games—it does have its fans.

The problem with chess is that the game is complex. It takes time for a player to consider all the options available, especially when they start planning ahead. If you look at a game like noughts and crosses, you’ll find that the gameplay is much faster. This is partly because noughts and crosses is a simpler game, but more due to the fact that there are limited options. In chess, the first move a player makes can be one of 18 possible options. In noughts and crosses, half that. In chess, as the game progresses, the player will likely find themselves with more and more options; in noughts and crosses, their options rapidly diminish.

Of course, it’d be strange to say that limiting a player’s options automatically makes for a better game, as it’s the choices we make within games that make things interesting. But if we ensure that the players aren’t overwhelmed by choices, we can try to ensure that gameplay is kept relatively fast. Draughts (or checkers) finds itself in a middle-ground between chess and noughts and crosses; it’s complex enough to provide an intellectual challenge, but limited enough that players will rarely have to spend ten minutes considering a single move. The player generally has fewer pieces available, and all the pieces do the same thing anyway (except kings).

Taking Turns Without Waiting

It’s possible to partially solve the “waiting for my turn” issue by having simultaneous turns. The board game Diplomacy does this: during each turn, every player writes down their unit moves, then all those moves are enacted during the final phase. Civilisation also attempted this, though arguably less successfully: players were able to take their turns at the same time, but due to the more complex nature of the game this created some situations where the winner of a battle would be whoever moved their units first. While there are players who prefer the faster gameplay, it seems to somewhat destroy the turn-based nature of the game.

Rather than having a “fastest first” approach to simultaneous turns, it’s possible to allow players to still play without having a direct effect on gameplay. Civilisation-style games generally require some heavy micro-management, especially at later levels, and there’s no reason player can’t deal with this during opponents’ turns.

You may want to build military units for an upcoming battle, so you could inspect each of your cities and change their build chain to something more suitable. Similarly, you may want to perform diplomatic actions, or change your government type. These actions do not have to be resolved instantly, but allowing players to chain up these actions for the start of their turn allows them to do something during other players’ turns, and also (hopefully) makes their own turns faster.

Allowing players to take actions, or respond to certain events, during other players’ turns is a good way to keep their involvement high. If a player is invested in opponents’ actions, then they are more likely to remain interested in the game. However, if a player doesn’t care what their opponent does, then they lose interest

Let Them Play

Keep the player playing. Try to keep wait times to a minimum, and if the player isn’t in direct control, then at least try and give them actions they can perform to keep themselves entertained.

When we break these rules, understand why you’re breaking them. The most important thing in any game is fun, and sometimes a break from the action—a “ladder scene”—can be a welcome rest, or can help change the atmosphere. But even when trying changing things around, keeping the player involved in a simple way, such as by pressing X at the right time, will give them a feeling of involvement. Remember, we’re making games.(source:tutplus)