作者：Niall Taylor

什么是游戏设计？

根据Pearson的Level 3 BTEC，“游戏设计是一场白日梦。”这是关于想出一些理念的特殊卖点，并通过有趣的展示，头脑风暴会议还有市场研究数据包将这些理念传达给程序员，美术师和投资者们。这便是关于去出售你的梦。

不管游戏开发者所处的职位是什么，这些对他们来说都是很重要的技能，但即使如此这也还不足以回答游戏设计师真正在做什么的问题。毕竟任何人都可以想出一些理念—-那我们为什么还需要专门的点子人员呢？简单来说，游戏设计师的工作便是将优秀的理念变成优秀的游戏。而这一过程便是从最重要的技能，理解开始。

我总是通过一系列简单的问题为我的学生们引出各种概念：

你玩过的上一款糟糕的游戏是什么？

你是否能够说出它最糟糕的功能之一？

为什么你觉得那一功能很糟糕？

你会如何去修改它？

大多数新学生都可以说出他们觉得糟糕的游戏以及他们感觉有问题的特殊区域或功能。但是大多数人都不能解释为什么这些功能未能有效运行，失去了平衡或者并不有趣。也就是他们只能说出症状但却找不出病因。这便会导致他们总是会过度复杂化问题的解决方法，即变成去处理问题的结果而不是问题本身。

案例研究：Hello Games的《无人深空》（2016年）

no mans sky(from taable)

为了进一步阐述这一概念，我将使用数字游戏《无人深空》作为例子，当我在询问上述问题时，这款游戏的出现频率总是很高，并且也是学生们不能有效说出他们在游戏中遇到任何问题的原因的典型例子。我们将在此明确我最常听到的一些抱怨，即游戏经济崩溃了，不公平的刷任务以及“无趣”。

为了回答为什么会这样的问题，我们需要先明确一款电子游戏中的经济属性，这能够帮助我们更好地进行理解。维基百科对经济的定义是：“从商品和服务的生产与消费，货币的供应中来判断一个国家或区域的发展状态。”更简单来说，我们可以将经济定义为供应，需求与资源间的关系。

从《无人深空》来看，这便是指玩家所获得的资源，所拥有的货币，以及消费货币换取的产品间的关系。玩家可以挖掘稀有的矿物，发现神奇的器具，并将其出售给Galactic Trade Terminal或和交易者交换Units。然后他们可以花费Units去升级服装，获取全新舰船等等。

一旦我们理解了这些，我们便能清楚地看到《无人深空》中的经济问题，即这款游戏最大的优势便是大大削弱了交易，即游戏中的一大核心游戏系统。

任何经济的最大敌人之一便是膨胀。膨胀可以定义为“价格的上升以及金钱购买价值的下降”，这通常是出现在资源与供求失去平衡的时候。举个例子来说吧，如果因为严冬导致小麦产量下降，那么市场上的面粉供应便会减少。这便会导致面包生产的减少，如此面包店便很难去满足顾客的需求，面包也将因此变成稀缺产品，从而导致价格的上升。而卖鞋的商人如果想要购买面包就必须卖掉更多鞋子，随着时间的发展这一雪球将越滚越大，并最终导致经济中货币的个体价值的降低。所有东西的成本都将提高，如此每个人就必须赚更多钱才能维持生活的稳定。所以政府需要为此印刷更多钱币—-他们将通过削弱货币的价值去稳定经济。

《无人深空》拥有1800亿亿个星球—-每一个星球都具有难以想象的规模，并填满了各种资源。如果说每个星球都拥有无限资源的话，那1800亿亿个星球所拥有的资源就不用去想象了吧。所以我们马上就能意识到无限资源的无限宇宙将快速引发游戏的通货膨胀。如果做出了选择，玩家便可以通过刷任务去获取无尽的货币而变成亿万富翁，从而能在离开自己的星球前在游戏中购买任何东西。

《无人深空》并未尝试着去解决这一问题，相反地他们通过引进了虚拟经济中的“gold sink”概念去处理这种症状。

从根本上来看，在玩家能够轻松累积无数单位的经济中，如果开发者可以确保游戏中的所有内容真的都很昂贵便能够有效解决这一的问题。就像舰船，运输机，Aelas Stones等等都需要消耗炸弹，所以它们的价格也会迅速飙升。而这将创造一种让人受挫的玩家体验循环。

不能“出色”玩游戏的玩家（游戏邦注：即从一个星球到达另一个星球，从一个系统到达另一个系统，去探索充满惊喜的美丽科幻宇宙）通常都没有能力去购买能让自己尽情享受《无人深空》的内容。他们将只能被迫花费大量时间去通过刷任务获取Units。

而花费大量时间通过刷任务获取Units并不是玩家想要的游戏行动。

这样的循环将会破坏游戏中的其它贸易系统。不同系统的资源拥有不同价值。但当刷任务更有价值时便不会有玩家愿意花时间和细胞去寻找一个铝的价值高出1.4%的星球系统。

不管你是如何玩游戏的，游戏的交易系统真的很让人受挫，并且因为开发者所采取的解决方法只处理了症状而未正视根源，所以这一问题也变得更加严重。

既然我们真正理解了问题，我们便能够通过着眼于让玩家受挫的根源而想出一个简单且有效的解决方法，即限制每个系统中AI能够用于贸易的Units数量。

通过限制玩家在任何时候可获得的Units数量，我们便能够抑制游戏中的通货膨胀并阻止无尽的刷任务。如果交易者只拥有5000个单位去购买商品，这便会让我们的库存中堆积许多没有作用的黄金。这不仅能够确保玩家按照想要的方式玩游戏，同时也能提供给游戏设计师更多数据去提供让人兴奋的交易体验。如果我们知道在探索了3个太阳系后玩家所拥有的units数量将非常有限，我们便可以更有效地提高升级道具和舰船的价格。一般玩家都能够支付得起一艘不错的舰船，而拥有交易能力的玩家则能够购买更厉害的舰船—-如此便不会有玩家在此受挫。玩家将始终拥有可争取的目标，而无意中发现一些稀有矿物等都能带给玩家额外奖励感。

关于这种简单解决方法还存在其它好处，能够让游戏中的交易更深入。如果我们最终拥有过多资源的话会怎样？它们也仍然具有价值—-即使交易者已经负担不起它们了。但是交易者可能也拥有自己的资源或者他们也可以考虑出售自己的舰船。如果我们知道资源拥有固有价值的话，为什么不用它们来交换其它商品呢？就像我所拥有的过多Gek Charms便能够用于交换一艘新舰船，并且在Gek所控制的区域将拥有更多价值，这将让我能够发现真正的星际商人进行交易的方式。当然了，我已经知道无限资源通货膨胀的问题，所以作为游戏设计师的我们必须清楚，当一个交易者拥有更多特殊资源时，他赋予该资源的价值便会变少。

解决方法应该是瞄准问题的根源，并且是能够有效且反复用于该问题的方法。

理念vs理解

就像神奇野兽一样，如果我们不能瞄准问题本身，很快地我们便会用尽宝物并面对不断涌现出来等待我们去斩断的野兽的头。

一旦我们理解了问题，并明确问题是什么以及为什么会出现，那么最简单也是最有效的解决方法便会出现。我们可以使用游戏设计“军库”中的工具并确保任何有效的理念会是平衡且有趣的游戏功能。这是一名有技能的游戏设计师应该扮演的真正角色，也是我为什么会认为应该在游戏设计教育早期教授给学生的重要技能。

你的白日梦固然重要，但如何使用它们更加重要。

（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）

What is Game Design? – Ideas vs Understanding

by Niall Taylor

What is Game Design?

According to Pearson’s Level 3 BTEC unit, “Game Design is about daydreams”. It is about coming up with ideas and USPs, and communicating those ideas to programmers, artists and investors with lovely presentations and portfolios of brainstorming sessions and market research packets. Its about selling the dream.

Those are important skills for any game developer, regardless of the position they hold, but it still doesn’t answer the question of what a game designer actually does all day. After all, anyone can come up with ideas – why do we need a dedicated ideas person? The answer is, of course, that we don’t. A game designer’s job is, quite simply, to transform good ideas into a good game. I feel that this process starts with the most important skill of all – understanding.

I like to introduce the concept to my students with a series of simple questions;

What was the last bad game you played?

Can you name one feature that was bad about it?

Why was that feature bad?

How could you fix it?

Most new students can name a game they did not have fun with, as well as the specific area or feature they found fault with. However, the majority are completely unable to explain why that feature was broken, unbalanced or simply not fun. They are able to name symptoms – but not the cause. This naturally leads to their solutions to the problem being over-complicated “band-aid” fixes, addressing the results of the problem rather than the problem itself.

Its only when you understand why something is a problem that you can begin to fix it.

CASE STUDY: No Mans Sky – Hello Games (2016)

To illustrate this concept further, I will be using contemporary digital game No Man’s Sky – this game is mentioned often when I ask the questions above, and is almost always one in which students are most frequently unable to articulate why any problems they might have had with the game are occurring. We will be examining the most common complaint I hear – that the game’s economy is broken, a demoralising grind and “not fun”.

To answer the question of why this is the case, we need to start by defining the nature of an economy within a video game, in order to aid our understanding. Wikipedia defines an economy as “the state of a country or region in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services, and the supply of currency.” In even more simple terms, an economy can be defined as the relationship between supply, demand and resources.

In the case of No Man’s Sky, this is the relationship between the resources scavenged by the player, the available currency, and products to spend that currency on. Players can mine rare minerals and discover amazing artifacts, and sell them to a Galactic Trade Terminal or passing alien Trader in exchange for Units. Units can then be spent on suit upgrades, new ships and much more.

Once we understand this, the problem with the economy in No Man’s Sky becomes obvious – the game’s greatest strength is massively undermining Trade, one of its core gameplay systems.

One of the biggest enemies of any economy is inflation. Inflation can be defined as the “general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money” that occurs when the relationship between resources, supply and demand falls out of balance. For example, if a harsh winter causes a crop to fail, flour may become scarce. This might result in less bread being baked and bakers being unable to meet demand – bread becomes a rarer commodity, and prices rise. A shoe salesman wishing to purchase bread must now sell his shoes for more in order to afford to eat, and over time the snowballing situation will result in that economy’s currency having a lower individual value per unit. Everything costs more, so everyone must earn more for the economy to remain stable. This may be achieved by the government printing more money – stabilising the economy at the cost of weakening the value of that currency even further.

No Man’s Sky has eighteen quintillion planets – each one generated on an unimaginable scale, and filled with resources. Every planet has what equates to an infinite amount of resources, never mind 18 quintillion of them. It shouldn’t take long to realise that an infinite universe of infinite resources is going to kick inflation into overdrive. If a player so chooses, they can spend their grinding for an infinite amount of currency, billionaires capable of purchasing anything and everything in the game even before leaving their home planet.

No Man’s Sky makes no attempt to fix the cause of this problem – instead it tackles the symptom through introduction of a concept in virtual economies known as a “gold sink”.

In essence, in an economy where players can amass millions of units very easily, the problem is addressed by ensuring that everything in the game is really, really expensive. Ships, Freighters, Atlas Stones – all cost an absolute bomb, with prices soaring into the multi-million Unit range. This creates a loop of frustrating player experiences;

Players playing the game “properly” – that is, moving from planet to planet, system to system, exploring a beautiful sci-fi universe full of wonder and surprises – are extremely poor and unable to afford any of the things they need to fully enjoy what No Man’s Sky offers. They feel forced into spending large amounts of time grinding resources for Units.

Spending large amounts of time grinding resources for Units is very dull, and certainly not the intended behaviour for players.

This loop undermines all the other trading systems in the game as well. Resources have different value in different systems. However, no player is going to spend their time and (fiddly to craft) warp cells on finding a star system where Aluminium is worth 1.4% more when simply grinding a little more of the resource is massively more profitable.

No matter how you approach the game, Trading is a frustrating experience – and the problem is exacerbated even further because the implemented solution only tackles the symptom not the cause!

Now that we truly understand the problem, however, we can come up with a simple and effective solution by targeting the root cause of a player’s frustration – limit the amount of Units that the AI has available for trading in each system.

By limiting the number of Units available to the player at any given point (we call this Gating), we can curb inflation and discourage mass grinding of resources. If a Trader only has 5000 Units with which to buy goods, overloading our inventories with excess gold serves little to no purpose. This not only ensures players are more likely to play the game as intended, it gives game designers more data with which to provide a tight and exciting Trading experience. If we know that after exploring 3 solar systems even the most meticulous of players will not have more than a certain amount of units, we can price upgrades and ships more fairly. The average player might be able to afford a decent ship, but a player who has been diligent in trading is able to afford a slightly better one – and neither player feels frustrated with what they had to do to get there. Players always have something to strive for, and stumbling on a cache of rare minerals or vortex cubes feels infinitely more rewarding.

There are both additional benefits and implementations of this simple solution that could make Trading even deeper. What happens if we do end up with excess resources? They still have a value, even if the trader we’ve met can’t afford them. However, that Trader might have their own resources, or even a fancy ship they’d consider selling. If we know that resources have an inherent value – why not use them as bartering goods? My excess Gek Charms could be used in part exchange for a new ship, and be worth more in Gek-controlled space – allowing me to find even better deals the way a true intergalactic merchant should. Of course, I already know about the infinite-resource inflation problem, so as a game designer I would have to ensure that the more of a particular resource a Trader has, the less value they are going to attribute to it.

The solution targets the cause of the problem, and is massively effective and reusable for it.

Ideas VS Understanding

Its easy to throw ideas at a problem, to cut the heads off the hydra as they appear. Like that mythical beast however, failing to target the problem itself means that very soon we’ll run out of swords and have more heads than we can handle.

As soon as we understand a problem, and can quantify exactly what that problem is and why it is occuring, the simplest and strongest solutions become immediately obvious. We can use the tools in our game design arsenal – be it simulations, spreadsheets, or probability mathematics – and ensure that a cool idea becomes a balanced and fun gameplay feature. This is the true role of a skilled game designer, and why I feel it is important that we teach these skills as early as possible in game design education.

Your daydreams are important, but its what you do with them that matters.(source:gamasutra)