作者：Christopher Gile

不久前我曾描述了我所谓的椅子问题。在现实世界中我们可以用椅子做很多事。如我可以坐在椅子上，可以站在椅子上，可以朝别人丢一字，可以摧毁椅子等等。现在，《生化危机6》也拥有一些精细的椅子。它们看起来非常真是，但是你又不能使用它们做任何事。它们只是作为障碍并且可能已经被固定在地上了。在大多数游戏中我们知道通常都不能以我们所熟悉的方式与一些常见的物体进行互动，但是在像《生化危机6》等游戏中突出这些物体的细节将进一步强化我期待能够使用椅子做什么与在游戏中我真正能够使用椅子做什么间的反差。物体越现实，我便期待着它能够表现得更现实。即我们必须牢记，图像的现实性会真正改变玩家对于游戏内容的期待。

当图像并不那么现实时，玩家便会下意识地清楚自己并不能以超现实的方式与游戏世界进行互动。抽象图像便意味着抽象的游戏玩法和世界互动。也许这样的游戏并不现实，但却具有一致性，如此玩家便能够更轻松地进行游戏。另一方面，现实的图像也意味着游戏玩法需要更加现实。对于游戏的每一部分来说这张期待的转变是个问题所在，不过今天我想专注于分析这一问题对关卡设计的影响。

基于同样的方式我也会凭直觉去理解一个人感到失落时脸部的变化，我们也都会凭直觉去理解我们在生活中所经历的空间。违背这种理解会让一切变得不真实，更糟糕的是会让我们感到困惑。我们知道饮水机本应该放在哪里，但是它却出现在一个莫名其妙的地方就好像（可能游戏需要它位于那个地方吧）。

而当图像变得超现实时人们便会觉得这个空间代表了现实世界并会注意到里面没有任何浴室，停车场等等，并会觉得待在一个需要手动曲轴才能四处走动的建筑会很烦。你可以在游戏将抽象化所有东西去避免这种情况，但是如果是在一款拥有要求你像在现实世界中那样看待游戏世界的图像的游戏，你便恨你做到这一点。再一次地，现实性隐含着现实性，而当玩家的期待未能得到满足时，他们便会感到困惑或者他们的沉浸感便会受到影响。

现实世界中的空间都不是为了有趣而创造的。实际上大多数空间都是基于一种非常无聊的方式不断重复出现。就像公寓建筑，办公室和学校都是不断重复的相同空间。而如果这些空间出现在设备上便会让关卡变得非常无聊。所以游戏往往会屏蔽掉建筑中的很多部分（游戏邦注：即那些会无尽重复的部分）或想办法让玩家以一种特殊方式更有趣地穿越这些空间。然后我们需要思考不能屏蔽某些场所的原因并想出赋予拥有现实性的游戏关卡有趣的游戏方式。就像在许多游戏中主角会说“我不想去那里“将玩家拉回现实中，而这是很难做到的事。

很多后启示录游戏会使用一般空间并通过在墙上凿洞并用碎石去阻塞走道而让空间在关卡设计角度中变得更加有趣。即某个空间本来是间办公室，但是现在变成了废墟，关卡设计师可以忽视平面图而随意发挥创造性。这里所存在的问题是，这将提醒玩家墙壁是坚不可摧的。为什么我们不能只是在墙上凿个洞？或许我们并不需要面对恶势力才能获得钥匙，或许我们只需要在这面墙上凿个洞便可。

door（from gamasutra）

这并不是说图像的现实性是糟糕的或者会引出任何棘手的问题。我只是想表达这会引出玩家之后的某种期待，而这也是设计师需要认真考虑的情况。你必须让空间的存在是有目的感的而不知是为了让玩家有趣地穿越。《到家》在这方面便表现的不错。游戏中的空间不仅始终都如一个真实的家一般，同时也能让玩家有趣地进行穿越与探索。

最后我想说的是，这只是设计师必须想办法平衡的无数元素中的一个目标/局限性。但我们也必须理解这些元素并非存在于真空中。这便涉及到了玩家期待的问题。这并不是关于“玩家能够做什么”，而是“他们期待着能够做什么？”当一款游戏经过超现实渲染时，游戏传达给玩家的一切信息将是基于表面价值。这便是现实。而当图像拥有较低的分辨率或者更加抽象，玩家便能够理解自己所看到的只是一些粗略的内容，而他们的大脑便会自然去填补其中的不足。

这种期待可以源自许多不同地方，包括图像，故事，游戏机制，类型等等。每一款游戏都拥有自己的局限性，这也是玩家能够理解的地方。对于玩家来说接受这种局限性并不是什么问题，除非他们觉得游戏事先给予了自己某种承诺。所以作为开发者的你必须谨慎对待游戏所做出的承诺。

（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）

How Graphical Realism Makes Level Design Harder

by Christopher Gile

A while ago I described what I call the Chair Problem. In the real world I can do a lot of different things with a chair. I can sit on it, stand on it, throw it at people, destroy it, and so on. Now, Resident Evil 6 has some amazingly detailed chairs. They look real but you can’t do anything with them. They are just another barrier and might as well be bolted to the ground. In most games the fact that I can’t interact with such a common object in normal ways is to be expected but the high degree of detail in a game like RE6 only heightens the contrast between what I would expect to be able to do with a chair and what I can actually do with it in game. The more real it looks, the more real I expect it to act. This is important to remember, an increase in graphical realism changes player expectations.

When the graphics aren’t realistic then the player instinctively understands that you can’t interact with this world in super realistic ways. Abstract graphics imply abstract gameplay and world interaction. It might not be realistic but it is consistent and so players can more easily go along with it. Realistic graphics on the other hand, implies more realism in terms of gameplay. This shift in expectations is a problem for basically every part of a game but I want to focus on how it effects level design today.

In the same way I have an instinctual understanding of how a face moves when a person is upset (even though I couldn’t describe it if my life depended on it) we all have an instinctual understanding of the types of spaces we spend our lives traversing. Violating that understanding makes the area feel less real, or worse is actively confusing as our instincts for how to navigate the space kick in but are completely wrong. We know where the water cooler should be but instead it is in a place that makes absolutely no sense (except that the game needs it to be there for some reason).

When the graphics are hyper realistic people will start to understand the space as a literal representation of a world and so will notice if there are never any bathrooms, parking garages, or how annoying it would be to work in a building that required hand cranks to get around. Those are things you can get away with in a game that represents everything abstractly but that you can’t easily get away with that in a game whose graphics ask you to think of the game world as you would the real world. Again, realism implies realism, and when that expectation isn’t met it is confusing or immersion breaking.

Spaces in the real world aren’t made to be interesting to move through. In fact most spaces are very repetitive in a very boring way. Apartment buildings, offices, and schools are all buildings with dozens of identical spaces repeated over and over again. These spaces, left to their own devices, make really boring levels. So games will often cordon off large parts of the building (the parts that would be repetitive dead ends) or make the space more interesting to move though by having you traverse it in a non-traditional way. We then have to come up with reasons why you can’t go to cordoned off places and interesting ways to gate a level that fit the degree of realism the game is going for. As evidenced by the number of games that just have the protagonist say “I don’t want to go over there” in order to keep the player on track, this is hard to do.

A lot of post-apocalyptic games will take normal spaces and then put holes in the walls and rubble blocking hallways in order to make the space more interesting from a level design standpoint. It was an office, but now it is in ruins and the level designer can ignore the floor plan and do whatever they want with it. The problem here though is that this reminds the players that walls aren’t invulnerable. Why can’t we just tear a hole in this wall? Maybe we don’t have to go face that unspeakable evil in order to get a key, maybe we can just punch a hole through this dry wall.

This isn’t to say that graphical realism is bad or leads to intractable problems, I’m simply trying to say that it leads to further expectations that must be taken into account along side the thousands of others things that need to be handled. You have to make the space feel like it existed for a purpose other than being interesting for the player to move through. Gone Home does this brilliantly, it is an amazing example of a space that feels like a home all while making it interesting to move through and explore.

At the end of the day though, this is just another goal/limitation that a designer must balance against the thousands of other factors that they have to deal with. But it is important to understand that these elements don’t exist in a vacuum. This gets at the deeper problem of player expectations. It isn’t a question of “What can the player do”, but “What do they expect to be able to do?” When a game is super realistically rendered then the message being sent to the player is to take everything they see at face value. This is what it is, definitively. When the graphics are lower res or more abstract then the player understands that what they are seeing is a rough approximation and their brain will help fill in the rest.

Those expectations can come from a thousand different places: graphics, story, game mechanics, genre traditions, and so on. Every game has limitations, players understand that. Accepting those limitations is generally not a problem for players, unless they feel like they were promised otherwise. So, be wary of what your game implicitly promises.（source：gamasutra）