开发者从用户体验的角度聊《Getting Over it with Bennett Foddy》

原文作者： Lars Doucet 译者：Megan Shieh

Bennett Foddy制作的游戏向来都很奇怪，有时甚至会故意激怒玩家。尽管这类游戏完全不是我的菜，但我还是一玩就停不下来。Bennett最近刚刚发布了一款名为《和班尼特福迪一起攻克难关（Getting Over it with Bennett Foddy）》的游戏，它的灵感来源于一位捷克游戏开发者Jazzuo在2002年推出的一款B类游戏经典《迷人远足（Sexy Hiking）》。

上述两部作品带有相同的核心机制——玩家需要控制一个看上去很奇葩的男人，通过滑动鼠标的方式来控制男人手中的锤子，以点对点的方式与物体碰撞，从而爬过各种障碍物。

就这样，这就是整个游戏的核心。

游戏中唯一的“进度”就是“主人公爬到的地方离起点有多远”，然而玩家一不小心就有可能跌回到起点，这时你就只能从头再来。

与《迷人远足》不同的是，《和班尼特福迪一起攻克难关》提供专业制作的图像、声音和无故障代码，尽管如此，它仍是一款怪异而又引人注目的游戏。每当玩家到达一个新地点的时候，叙述者 (大概是Bennett本人？)就会开始解释他的设计理念；每当玩家摔下去的时候，他会朗读一段关于在“逆境中取得胜利”的励志名言。

一般而言我会对这种游戏感到反感，但出乎意料的是我非但不讨厌它，反而非常喜爱这款游戏。

为什么？因为它以一种真诚、直接的方式，赤裸裸地呈现出了开发者的设计美学。

Getting Over it with Bennett Foddy(from gamasutra.com)

设计美学

我喜欢游玩某些特定类型的游戏，也喜欢为某些特定类型的人制作特定类型的游戏。Bennett显然也是同路人，游戏刚开始的时候，叙述者说了这么一句话：

“我做这款游戏是为了某一类人，目的是让他们受尽煎熬。”

关于“受尽煎熬”的部分，我的设计美学正好与之相反。2004年的时候，一篇由Ron Gilbert撰写的文章中写道：

“普通的美国人一天中绝大多数的时间都是在办公室里失败，他们最不想要的就是回到家试图放松和娱乐的时候，还继续失败。”

而这句话也成为了我设计游戏时的座右铭。

我主张的设计美学是：在游戏中加入更多选项，让玩家可以以自己想要的方式去体验游戏。我的游戏《守护者冒险（Defender’s Quest ）》特地消除了传统RPG结构中固有的痛点：时间榨取。在正确设置的情况下，玩家可以在三个小时内通关（尽管游戏中包含了100+个小时的内容）。《守护者冒险》不会用剧情来拖缓玩家的进度，也不会在玩家失败的时候直接将TA送回起点，即便是在玩二周目（New Game Plus）的时候也是如此。

尽管我俩的设计美学大相径庭，但我认为我和Bennett存在一个共同点，那就是对痛苦的尊重。

有意为之

当人们谈及游戏设计中的“痛感”和“困境”时，通常只关注那些在有意识的情况下设计出来的挑战，然而大多数游戏都充满了意想不到的挫折，游戏设计师往往意识不到这些挫折的存在。

而这就是Bennet Foddy的作品最吸引人的地方，尤其是《和班尼特福迪一起攻克难关》的设计。游戏中的一切都是有意识的选择，设计师的意图赤裸裸地摆在你眼前。玩家的每一次失败、每一次挫折、每一次气到爆粗口，所有这一切都是故意的，叙述者的安抚之声也默认了这一点。意料之外的是，这些励志的话语竟然真能起到激励的作用。

也许有些人会认为叙述者鼓励的话语其实是在嘲讽玩家，但我自己却被游戏的真诚打动。

关于游戏的设计还有很多东西没说，但老实说，我真心推荐你去玩这款游戏。

下面让我们来聊聊叙述者没有谈及的东西。

尽管操控的方式存在限制，但操作起来十分流畅。主人公的大锤会跟着你的鼠标移动，除此之外没有其他控制选项。玩家会感到沮丧通常是因为无法达到自己想去的地方，而不是因为大锤失去控制自己乱跑。我总是在不经意间期待大锤能够夹在某个地方，等我点击鼠标的时候再开始移动，但这是不可能滴，无论你想勾住哪个位置，都得小心翼翼地滑动鼠标，在不撞到墙上并把自己推下悬崖的情况下做到这点。

我推测，有关《和班尼特福迪一起攻克难关》的评论大多都带有“受虐狂”或“虐待狂”之类的词汇，但我不确定这些词语是否恰当。没错，这款游戏充满了折磨，但我并不认为它（或它的设计师）享受折磨我的过程，感觉更像是“我给你建造了一个障碍，要做到毫不退缩、毫不妥协显然是不可能的。你不会相信自己能够克服这个障碍，虽然过程会非常非常艰难，但要克服它并非不可能。”

这与充满了死亡陷阱的跳台类游戏形成了鲜明的对比，在这些游戏中，设计师和玩家的乐趣往往都来自于被出乎意料的陷阱杀死。平心而论，Bennett开发过的其他游戏也是半斤八两。

我永远不会开发像《和班尼特福迪一起攻克难关》这样的游戏。多数试图玩这款游戏的人几乎马上就会感到沮丧。游戏中没有难度选项，没有检查点（checkpoints），而且为了防止玩家修改存档（save-scumming），游戏会自动存档。

然而除了一次次地尝试之外，没有其他选择。在长达几个小时的、徒劳无功的攀登之后，我开始疯狂挥舞、旋转着大锤，电光火石之间，我竟然爬上了整个悬崖！我几乎不相信自己的眼睛，肌肉记忆竟然帮助我以极小的精确度完成了几乎不可能的事情！

然后一次手残就又把我送回了起点…

当然，我还没有通关。说实话，我估计自己永远都不会通关，但是我很庆幸我玩了这款游戏。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

If I had to select a single game designer that embodied the exact opposite of my personal design aesthetic, it’d be Bennett Foddy. Whereas modern games have mostly filed off all the rough edges of the early NES-era, each Bennett Foddy game is a shrine to one of those rough edges, carefully chosen, plucked off, and sharpened to a gleaming point.

“QWOP is a simple game about running extremely fast down a 100 meter track.”

Foddy’s games are weird and intentionally infuriating, and despite being so totally not my jam I can’t stop playing (and thinking about) them. I’ve been meaning to write an article like this for a while, and today the perfect opportunity arrived.

His latest title, Getting Over it, has just been released:

This game is a doozy, even by Bennett Foddy standards.

First and foremost, it’s an homage to an obscure “B-game” called Sexy Hiking, developed by an enigmatic Czech developer called “Jazzuo”

“The hiking action is very similar to way you would do it in real life, remember that and you will do well”

Sexy Hiking and Getting Over It share the same basic mechanic — you’ve got a weird little dude who’s trying to climb over obstacles using nothing but a sledgehammer that follows your mouse cursor, colliding with objects with pixel-perfect precision. That’s it. That’s the whole game.

The only “progress” is how far you’ve physically climbed, and the threat of plummeting all the way back to the bottom is always just one slight mouse wiggle away.

Unlike Sexy Hiking, Getting Over It features professionally done (and legally procured) graphics and sound, as well as non-glitchy code, but it’s also a weird and compelling sort of video game essay, as a narrator (presumably Bennett himself?) explains his design ideas and reflections on Sexy Hiking whenever you reach a new point. And when you unceremoniously knock yourself down for the 500th time, he reads a new inspirational quote about triumph in the face of adversity.

This is exactly the sort of game I’m naturally inclined to hate, but I don’t. I love it.

Why? Maybe because of how honestly and directly the game presents it’s own design aesthetic.

Design Aesthetic

I use “design aesthetic” here rather than “design philosphy” because the latter carries the flavor of a big world-view with lots of truth claims, and today I’m talking about subjective preferences. I prefer to play (and make) certain kinds of games, for certain kinds of people. Clearly, Bennett does as well:

“I created this game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them.”

On the “hurt them” part I’m the exact opposite, and my personal aesthetic takes a rather hard line on this. In 2004, I read this article by Ron Gilbert and adopted the parting line as my personal motto:

“The average American spends most of the day failing at the office, the last thing he wants to do is come home and fail while trying to relax and be entertained.”

My game Defender’s Quest set out to explicitly eliminate the time sinks and pain points of the traditional RPG structure, going to arguably extreme lengths. The game has customizable reward multipliers, can be blazed through in three hours under the right settings (even though it has 100+ hours of content), doesn’t hold the story hostage behind arbitrary challenge, and features zero points of no return, not even after you start a New Game+.

But whether we’re inflicting pain or stomping it out, I like to think what Bennett and I have in common isrespect for pain.

I don’t begrudge anyone their hard-ass games, whether it’s Cuphead, Spelunky or Dark Souls even as I continue to advocate for adding more options to let players experience games the way they want — particularly rudimentary mod support.

That said, a lot of conversations about “pain” and “difficulty” in game design focus exclusively on the consciously designed challenges, whereas most games are filled

with unintended frustrations, often the sort the designer wasn’t even aware they’d put in. I covered some of this in Oil it or Spoil it!, but this problem exists at a higher level, too — for instance, giving the player an interesting choice that only leads to Loss Aversion, or a bunch of cool sidequests that accidentally invoke the Checklist Effect.

Intentional

And this is what’s so fascinating about Bennet Foddy’s games, particularly Getting Over It. Everything about this game is consciously chosen. Every setback, every frustration, every curse leveled at the sky is absolutely intentional, and the narrator’s soothing voice is there to acknowledge it, and it’s strangelymotivating.

I’m sure some will read a mocking tone into the narrator’s encouragements (punctuated by occasional public domain blues tracks), but I was struck by how sincere everything comes across. After all, the traditional approach to mark a video game player’s passing is to make to fun of them

There’s more to be said about the design process, but honestly, play the game (or watch the parts you can’t reach on youtube after you’ve given up) and Bennett will tell you all those details himself. The game doubles as its own director’s commentary. So to round this out, I’ll move on to things the narrator doesn’t touch on.

The controls, as limited as they are, are really smooth in a strange sort of way. Your sledgehammer goes only where you tell it to, and your frustrations come from it not being able to reach where you want rather than going someplace you didn’t direct it. Oh, you’ll be plenty mad at it going somewhere you didn’t want – but you always put it there, somehow. I constantly find myself wanting the hammer head to clip through the terrain just this once and solidify only after I click the mouse cursor. But no, if you want to reach up and hook that ledge, you have to get it there yourself, without carelessly smashing against the wall and propelling yourself downwards.

I suspect that a lot of reviews of Getting Over It will invoke the word “Masochistic” or “Sadistic.” I’m not quite sure that fits. The game is full of torments, but I don’t feel like the game (or it’s designer) enjoystormenting me, exactly. It’s more like, “I built you an obstacle — unflinching, uncompromising, patently impossible. You won’t believe you can surmount it, but it’s possible. It’s also really, really, hard.”

This is in sharp contrast to Platform Hell games filled with Kaizo Traps, where the fun (for both designer and player) comes from being intentionally killed by traps you could have never anticipated:

To be fair, Bennett isn’t above this sort of behavior in his other games:

Getting Over It is exactly the sort of game I would never make. Most people who try to play it will get super frustrated and quit immediately. It has no difficulty options, no checkpoints (that I’ve found), and aggressively autosaves to prevent save-scumming.

And yet, there’s an experience I can’t really get anywhere else except by flinging my face against this mountain over and over again: how after hours of fruitless climbing, I suddenly surmount the whole cliff in a few seconds of mad, whirling sledgehammer somersaults, not believing my own eyes as muscle memory kicks in and I pull off the impossible with minute precision. And then a single mis-placed stroke sends me careening back to earth.

I still haven’t finished the game, of course. I probably never will. But I’m glad I tried, and I’m sure Bennett feels the same way. （Source: gamasutra.com )