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Twitch时代:观看体验和游戏体验的重要性不相上下

发布时间:2017-09-04 16:17:50 Tags:,,

原文作者:Mike Willette  译者:Megan Shieh

Breakaway开发者谈Twitch时代适合竞技直播的游戏典型特征:游戏理解,紧张感/悬念,和关联性。

‘游戏理解’是观看者对正在发生的事情的理解能力。首次观看者能不能轻易地理解游戏的宗旨,跟上动作,并看懂目前谁占上风?

‘紧张感和悬念’让观看者想要坐在玩家的座位边缘,精神上参与到游戏中。

引起高度紧张的几个子因素:

观看者对风险瞬间的了解

视觉清晰度,意思就是游戏画面不要一片混乱

观看者对技巧(vs运气)的感知,以及不可预测的结果(拒绝一边倒的比赛)

‘关联性’是观众对游戏的关联感,玩家、直播者和其他观看者可以增加观看游戏的愉悦感。例如,如果一个观看者对游戏有留恋的感觉,喜欢直播者或是玩家团队,观看比赛的过程对她/他来说会更有趣,因为她/他对游戏的关联感更强烈。

twitch-desk(from polygon)

twitch-desk(from polygon)

以下7个关键领域是我们提高游戏观看性的关注点:

1. 展示竞争性强,技能为本的游戏

Emmett(Twitch首席执行官Emmett Shear)给了我们一个决定性的建议:“你需要给每个人一个发光的机会。”他论述了当时Twitch上所有的热门游戏为实现这点而使用的不同方法。例如,Minecraft用建筑来突出创造力,而CS:GO用爆头来强调精确度。

实现这点并没有特定的方式,但任何成功的Twitch游戏都必须让玩家以一种有意义的方式展示自己的技能。我们做了一些调整来简化战斗,同时保持技能差距;然后转向一个很酷的向下依托系统(down-based system),该系统支持良好的间隔和及时攻击。

2. 展现完整的竞技场

经过深思熟虑,我们极大地缩小了地图的尺寸并要求整个竞技场从一开始就一览无余,跟你在体育运动中看到的场景非常相似。

这一设置提供了一系列好处:

每个人都有相同的体验,因为每个人都能同时看到所有战斗。

它消除了隐藏信息,保持竞技场平均分布,减少了作弊和直播碎片化的可能性。

玩家和观看者几乎不会错过出色的比赛,因为从大多数角度都可以看到整个竞技场的状况。

3. 鼓励爆发性动作

一旦比赛铃声响起,我们希望玩家能够立即加入行动或战斗。我们从回合到比赛长度,再到冷却计时器方面压缩了整体时间。游戏时间限制在20分钟以下,因为游戏的规则是:5轮决胜负;每个回合的时间上限为4分钟;玩家可以在回合开始的5 -10秒内加入战斗。

我们对核心游戏模式也进行了改变:以回合制为基础,两队相互竞争将单个神物搬运到对方的基地。回合制基础的游戏模式带来了一些很好的成果:

它建立了有趣的起跑线紧张感——人们在起跑线等着发令枪,然后一听到发令就立刻采取行动。

玩家还可以利用回合之间的休息时间来谈论策略。

也让直播者有机会暂停片刻来讨论技能组合和上一轮游戏,或者推测下一轮的情况。

4. 建立一个单一的焦点

Breakaway的早期迭代中设有多个宝藏,因此当时有多个焦点。这一举动极大程度地分散了观众的注意力,令观众很难跟上游戏节奏,因为观众必须得不断地将注意力转移到不同的“热点”上。

因此我们创造了‘神物’,一个必须被带到对方基地内才能得分的球体。这一设置有几个优势:

为体验创造了一个焦点,观看者可以轻易地追踪它,并确定自己正在观看的是游戏中的重点

确保了每个人的观看体验都是相同的

也让直播者的故事阐述变得更容易

5. 创造多个胜利场景,建立更有意义的瞬间

拥有一个统一的行动点对集中注意力很有帮助,同时我们也想要在比赛中创造一些增加玩家和观看者紧张感的瞬间。所以我们想出了两种建立在回合制基础上的额外得分方案。

领土胜利——清除自己竞技场内的神物。随着回合时间的流逝,将神物转移到对手的竞技场内,以获得胜利。

团队清除——消除对方团队的所有成员,让他们同时处于死亡计时器上。

两种得分类型的发生频率都很低,因此当它们真的发生的时候就像是一种奇观。

6. 强调重要瞬间

重要瞬间发生的时候,它们需要被强调,这样即使是第一次观看游戏的人也能意识到它们的重要性。

在传统得分中,游戏摄像机将焦点转移到传送门的视野,慢动作回放最后几秒钟的动作。在团队清除的过程中,为了向所有玩家展示最终一击,最后一次攻击会变成超级慢动作。

我们的研究还表明,为重要的、自然演进的瞬间提供机会的游戏更好看。每个人都记得Daigo的完美闪避大招或xPeke的nexus后门。这些激动人心的瞬间会创造戏剧性的感觉和兴奋元素,同时突出了个人技能,致使观众想要再次回来观看。

我们发现最好的瞬间都有这几个特征: a)罕见,b)难以实行,c)能对比赛结果产生影响。

因此我们审核了Breakaway的游戏设置来确保它支持自然演进瞬间。在得分方面我们已经有了一些很酷的设置。为了确保有更多的机会,我们审阅了玩家可能采取的所有动作,并将它们通过上面的过滤条件进行分析。然后我们开始寻找其他的潜在瞬间,比如拦截、出局、后仰跳投、撞击得分、2 – 1传球。社区和玩家们已经开始用他们得到的工具来创建自己的游戏了。
7. 支持观看

围绕观看比赛日渐提升的观看体验。我们都是Evolution,ESL和LCS的忠实粉丝,因此我们想要开发一些特殊工具。这些工具需要为联赛组织者提供一些强调动作的方式,让他们可以为在家观看游戏的人在赛事中突出重要动作。

我们开始在自己的工作室进行直播,邀请社区成员参加与开发团队的比赛。自己进行直播并与社区成员紧密合作,给了我们第一手知识,让我们了解到作为一个直播者展示游戏竞技所需要的东西。

我们将目光专注于观众模式的关键组成部分,以便任何类型的播送都能受益。观看工具:

球型摄影机Ball Camera——以核心动作为中心

自由摄像机Free Camera——突出了战斗和重要场边赛事的更大视野

贴身摄像机Ghost Camera——跟随单个角色,从该玩家的视野观看

玩家摄像机Player camera——-锁定一个角色,将摄像机控制放在观众的手中

报道工具Reporting tools——带来观众感兴趣的大量统计数据,包含网络、击杀/死亡/助攻、设备购买等等。

最后我希望你能在开发自己游戏的时候,从这篇文章中找到灵感。考虑游戏体验的时候也别忘了考虑观看体验,因为它们的重要性不相上下。

本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Breakaway is a 4 vs 4 team battle sport, built to deliver fast action, competition, and teamwork, and to be as fun to watch as it is to play. The rules are simple: Work with your team to seize the Relic and score it into the enemy team’s base. But Breakaway started as a much different game.

Breakaway began life as a 48-player competitive platformer code named Portobello, where two teams of 24 players raced to gather a bounty of gold from a small port town. During development Amazon acquired Twitch.tv, and when Twitch CEO Emmett Shear stopped by the studio to play Portobello with the development team, he immediately saw its potential as a Twitch game.

Inspired by our conversations with Emmett, we shifted gears and started heavily researching highly watchable games. We found a few specific things that keep first-time viewers watching a stream: gameplay understanding, tension/suspense, and relatedness.

Gameplay understanding is the viewer’s ability to understand what’s going on. Can a first-time viewer look at the screen and easily understand the objectives, follow the action, and know who’s winning?

Tension and suspense is what keeps viewers on the edge of their seats and engaged with the action. High tension is a result of several sub-factors, including:

Knowledge of the stakes moment-to-moment

Visual clarity, or the lack of “chaos”

The perception of skillful play (vs luck), and unpredictable results (no one-sided matches)

Relatedness, the viewer’s feeling of connection to the game, the people playing, the broadcasters, and other viewers can make a game more fun to watch. For example, if a viewer feels nostalgia for a game, or enjoys the broadcaster or the team playing, the game will be more fun to watch because of the deeper connection the viewer feels.

As we researched, we started thinking about ways we could transform Portobello into a highly watchable game. This meant making significant changes to the core gameplay loop. Here are 7 critical areas where we focused to address gameplay understanding, tension/suspense and relatedness, in order to improve watchability.

#1 – Showcase competitive, skill based gameplay

One critical piece of advice that Emmett gave us was, “you need to give individuals a chance to shine.”  He discussed how all the popular games on Twitch at the time did that in different ways—for example, Minecraft highlighted creativity with building, while CS:GO highlighted precision with headshots.

There wasn’t one way a game had to do it, but any successful Twitch game had to let players show off a skill in a meaningful way. We made adjustments to simplify the combat while maintaining a skill gap. We shifted toward a cool down-based system for abilities that favored good spacing and well-timed attacks.

#2 – Show the whole arena

We made a deliberate decision to dramatically reduce the size of the maps and make it a requirement that the whole arena be visible from the starting point, very similar to what you see in physical sports.

This provided a number of benefits:

Everyone shares the same experience, since everyone can see all the action at once

It removes any hidden information, keeping the playing field level and reducing the possibility of cheating and stream snipping

Players and viewers rarely miss out on cool plays, since from most angles you can see the whole battlefield

#3 – Promote explosive action

Once the bell sounded to start the match, we wanted players to be able to immediately get into action or conflict. We compressed the overall time, from rounds, to match length to cool down timers. Our time caps out below 20 minutes because of our game rules: Best of 5 rounds; rounds are capped to 4 minutes apiece; players can get into conflict within 5-10 seconds of round start.

We also changed the core gameplay to be round-based, with the two teams competing to carry the single Relic into the opposing base. Round-based gameplay provided some great results:

It created fun starting-line tension, where people wait for the starting gun, then burst immediately into action.

It provided downtime between rounds that players could use to talk strategy

It gave broadcasters a moment to pause and discuss builds and the last round, or speculate on the next round

#4 – Create a single point of focus

In early iterations of Breakaway there were multiple treasures, and thus multiple points of focus. This scattered the action, making it harder to follow since viewers had to continuously switch their attention to the most important “hot spot.”

So we created the Relic, a ball that must be carried to the opposing team’s base to score. This had a few advantages:

It created a focal point for the experience—everyone could easily track it and be sure they were watching the most important thing

It ensured that everyone shared the same viewing experience

It made it easier for a broadcaster to tell the story of the game

#5 - Create more meaningful moments with multiple win scenarios

Having a unified point of action was great for focusing attention, and we also wanted to create moments that increased tension in the match for both the players and viewers. So we came up with two additional scoring scenarios that built upon the round-based structure.

Territory Wins – Clearing out the Relic from your side of the arena. As time runs out on the round, move the Relic to your opponent’s side to win.

Team Wipes – Eliminating all of the members of the opposing team so they are all on death timers at the same time.

Both scoring types happen at a much lower frequency, which makes them more of a spectacle when they occur.

#6 – Supporting moments

When important moments happen, they need to be highlighted so that even someone watching the game for the first time can recognize their importance.

During a traditional score, the game camera shifts focus to a view of the portal, with a slow motion replay of the last seconds of action. During a team wipe, the action goes to super slow motion on the final hit, showing all players the final blow.

Our research also showed that games that provide opportunities for big, organic moments are more fun to watch. Everyone remembers Daigo’s full parry comeback or xPeke’s nexus backdoor. These thrilling moments create drama and excitement and get us to come back and watch again—and they highlight individual skill.

When we looked through memorable moments, we found that the best ones were: a) rare, b) hard to execute, and c) impactful on the outcome of the game.

So we went through Breakaway’s gameplay to make sure it supported organic moments. We already had some cool potential with scoring.  We wanted to make sure there were more opportunities, so we looked at all the actions a player could take and analyzed them through the above filter. We started to find other potential moments, like interceptions, ring outs, jump fade away shots, dash scores, 2-on-1 pass plays. The community and players started creating plays of their own with the tools they were provided.

#7 – Support spectating

A growing part of the viewing experience revolves around watching tournaments. We are big fans of Evolution, ESL, and the LCS. So we wanted to develop tools that would allow tournament organizers ways to highlight the action during events for the viewers at home.

We started broadcasting out of our own studio, inviting members of the community to participate in matches with the dev team. Broadcasting ourselves, and working closely with community members, gave us first-hand knowledge about what was needed to showcase the action as a broadcaster.

We focused on key features for our spectator mode so that any type of broadcast could benefit.

Spectating tools:

Ball camera – Stays centered on the core action

Free camera – Highlights bigger views of the battle and important side events

Ghost camera – Follows individual characters and sees exactly what that player sees

Player camera – Locks to a character but retains camera control with the spectator

Reporting tools – Brings up an abundance of stats that are interesting to viewers, including network, K/D/A, equipment purchases, and more

In closing, I hope that you will find inspiration from this post in developing your own games. Thinking about the people watching the game is nearly as important as thinking about the people playing.(Source: gamasutra.com


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