开发者以实际案例谈游戏一致性的关键作用

原作者：Richard Atlas 译者：Willow Wu

之前我一直在思考怎样才能塑造一款成功的游戏，或者说怎样才能保证游戏不失败。在这篇文章中，我对成功的定义就是不失败——也就是说如果一个游戏能够回本、结果不是一败涂地，那它就是一款成功的游戏。我不是在探寻游戏开发的通用公式，因为我觉得这样的东西并不存在。但我认为记住一些重要的事情能够帮助我们减轻失败所带来的后果。我一直在努力探寻它们是什么。

如果我们把成功定义为卖出100万份或者让你的公司被微软收购，那我认为成功是无法预测的……但我们可以找出一些避免让游戏遭遇失败的关键因素。这是一个热门行业，如果我知道哪款游戏会成为摇钱树，那我会成为千万富翁……但我不知道。我不会装作知道怎么才能做出一个大热门游戏，但是我会提出一个想法，在我所定义的成功下进行深入探讨。这个想法是我在听过很多开发者的失败故事之后思考出来的，我想其中的原因可能在一定程度上与此有关：

一致性是游戏成功的关键指标之一。

这是我的假设，希望大家能够围绕它进行讨论、辩论，提出完善或反驳。我不是这方面的专家，我的目的也不是单方面地告诉你们应该怎样做，但我认为这个想法值得思考、探讨，让我们对做游戏有更深的理解。

在详解定义之前我应该加上一句，一个垃圾游戏不管一致性多好也不会成功的。我不知道这个最低质量标准具体应该是什么样的，但我的想法是许多本可以获得成功的游戏最终都未能如愿，其主要原因可能就是缺乏一致性。

我对一致性的定义

当开发者在创作游戏的时候，一个世界也随之诞生。他们创造出了新的视觉艺术风格、物理规则、音效音乐、互动方式、玩家体验等等，形成一个游戏世界。除此之外，他们还可能原创游戏机制、不同系统的互动规则、剧情、语言、习俗等等。这些系统的内部设定必须保持前后一致，系统与系统之间不能产生矛盾，还有就是要跟游戏整体保持一致。

我想在本文中分析三类一致性，然后我们可以讨论它到底是不是游戏成功（也就是不失败）的关键指标之一。以下的分析顺序是按照我个人所认为的重要次序排列。

warlords of drakendor(from gamesindustry)

1.营销一致

我们经常在讨论用不同的方式、在不同平台、向不同的人推广游戏。我们为游戏介绍做了精心准备，用简洁、易记的描述来概括产品。我们展示了截图、预告片，希望能够表现出玩家的游戏体验。不幸的是，我们经常会打破我们试图创造的世界一致性，在推广或市场营销的过程中亦是如此。我们炫耀着这些可爱角色的固静态镜头，但其实展示动画才能真正表现出他们的魅力。我们展示rogue-like游戏的PCG（procedural generation，程序生成游戏内容的简称，它使用了随机或者伪随机数的技术，给游戏带来了无限的可能），但其实真正的趣味在于游戏的对战机制。我们展示游戏的开放世界、建造系统，但其实最大的亮点在剧情。

Stellar Jockeys工作室的Hugh Monahan在2016年 Full Indie Summit Failure Workshop环节上谈到Brigador的早期测试版预告：“问题在于从视频中看Brigador就像个双摇杆射击游戏，但它绝对不是。有些游戏，包括Brigador，亲自去玩和仅仅看玩法视频或者是看别人玩是完全不一样的体验。”他继续解释这两者的体验为什么不同，还强调了游戏玩法的深度是不能光凭眼睛体会到的。很多玩家在玩完后都会说“这不是我想买的那个游戏”。“Brigador看起来跟市面上已经存在的游戏类型很相似，有很多独一无二的特色都被‘哦，这是个双摇杆射击游戏’一句话抹杀了。”

我知道这个例子不能直接证明我的观点，而且不管我举什么例子，我敢肯定都有人会反驳说某某公司在营销中也没有保持一致性，但游戏仍然做得很好。但我认为Brigador的失败反映出了缺乏一致性是非常危险的。

2.类型一致

玩家肯定会根据他们之前所玩的类似游戏而对你的产品抱有一定期待，比如说同一类型的游戏、同一艺术风格的游戏、机制类似的游戏或者是特点相似的游戏。如果一个游戏是hardcore策略游戏，那么它就必须得像是一个hardcore策略游戏。如果并不是这样，那开发者必须表达清楚为什么这个游戏不是玩家想象中的那样。补充一下，我们做游戏的时候必须多加谨慎，因为只要我们的游戏有任何跟其它游戏相似的迹象都会让玩家产生对应的期待，而且期待值会越来越高。

这并不是说我们要做一个跟完全没有特色的游戏，绝对不是。重点是我们必须要意识到玩家期望的存在，无论你自己希望的是什么。如果你选择制作一款类似《小马宝莉》这样儿童画风格的深度策略游戏，那无疑你要花很大的力气去改变玩家因同类游戏而产生的期待。

虽然我还没有玩过《尤卡莱莉大冒险》（Yooka-Laylee），但大家普遍认为它并没有达到玩家的预期。我认为它的销售情况没有预期的那么好，metacritic的评分也不太乐观。用户评论表示怀旧元素这个想法是挺好，但是怀旧游戏也带来了那个时代尚未解决的恼人问题：比如《班卓熊大冒险》（Banjo Kazooie）的视角问题、毫无意义的货币收藏机制等等。我不确定《尤卡莱莉大冒险》团队是否可以成功避免它们，自从Playtonic宣布他们要做3D平台游戏的那一刻起，玩家的期待值就吊得很高了。但到了最后，他们还是无法满足玩家。

顺便说一句，拿出来当“失败例子”重点分析的这两家公司我都十分了解以及尊重，作为游戏开发者，我依然很敬仰他们。

3.游戏一致

我之前大概说了下一致性所需的条件：游戏中的事物不能彼此相互矛盾，在感觉、玩法上也要保持一致。你在这个游戏世界中创造出来的所有东西都要前后一致，符合一定的逻辑。

已经建立好的规则不能被打破，不然游戏就存在破坏一致性的风险。如果你的游戏设定在2093年，那么菜单字体就不应该用Times New Roman（除非你有特别特别充分的理由，不然你为什么非得用这个一个半世纪多之前就出现的Times New Roman？？）如果玩家扮演的是一个非常善良、仁慈、平和的人，那他们就不应该在下一关中冷血地杀人。如果玩家总是能抓住平台游戏中的某个架子（或者其它能够帮助玩家跳跃的建筑、工具等），那么类似的架子应该都能抓到，不能制造无厘头的意外。塞尔达就是一个例子（实际上是我玩过的所有塞尔达游戏），有裂痕的墙意味着你可以炸它，始终如此。不然的话玩家就会对自己的游戏经历产生疑问，这样的墙到底是不是一定就可以炸。

我们用很多不同的方式来教玩家这个世界的规则，如果我们违背了自己建立的规则或玩家认为是我们建立的规则，游戏沉浸感就会被破坏，形成糟糕的游戏体验。

我们为何要对此给予关注？

在我看来一致性是具有关键作用的，因为玩家对游戏的期待源于它的一致性。如果你在营销以及游戏设计上没有达到前后一致，那么游戏到最后也不会如玩家所愿。

他们的期待是由你、游戏世界、游戏预告、截图、菜单、机制、艺术风格、网站以及其它所有跟游戏相关的东西所催生的。这些期望也会受市场上已发行游戏的影响，你在做任何事情时都必须要意识到玩家可能会因此产生先入为主的看法。

这就是为什么我在探寻什么样的游戏特性能够帮助开发者避免失败时，我选择将一致性作为建议指参考标。

一些优秀的例子

我想展示一些真正达到上文所讨论的一致性的例子。就像之前一样，这些例子无法成为强而有力的论据……但我只是想在讨论了几个“失败”例子之后，再展示一些比较正面的例子。

说到成功，我要分析的是Yacht Club Games的《铲子骑士》（Shovel Knight）。开发者承诺这个游戏复古、很有挑战性，然后人们得到的就是如此。在体验怀旧内容的同时，我们还能享受新时代游戏所带来的优势，比如存档功能、响应式输入、游戏变长等等。游戏世界中的所有东西都保持了一致性：音乐、关卡设计、艺术风格、菜单、音效设计等等，玩家也因此沉浸其中。

Campo Santo的《看火人》也是一个成功例子。首先我得说它的预告片堪称艺术。它们完美地保持了一致性。

你看完预告片的感觉就是玩游戏时的感觉：悬疑、探索、关系养成、恐惧、休闲，应有尽有。这确实为游戏定下了基调，也给玩家传达了正确的信息。他们可以从音乐、艺术、一切事物中感受到游戏的核心主题。

如我所说，些例子并不能“证明”我的观点，但是能够解释为什么我认为一致性是游戏成功的关键因素之一。

提高一致性的建议

我想出了几个可以确保游戏一致性的方法，有些做起来比较难。

1.确保你的游戏预告能够表现出实际的游戏体验

M. Joshua Cauller在博客上写了一篇非常好的文章。(http://mjoshua.com/blog/2018/05/15/craft-emotional-intelligence-into-your-game-trailer/）这大概是我最常见到的游戏一致性问题了：开发者们做出来的预告（或者是由其它公司做，这样更糟糕）无法准确表现出真实玩家体验。这款游戏的预告片可能会完全偏离主题，重点展示那些开发者觉得兴趣的内容，但这并不是游戏的真正亮点所在。或者有时候，预告片本身很好，但是它并不能表现出游戏会给玩家带来怎样的感觉。比如说，你的游戏是因为行动流畅、射击精准而让人觉得好玩，而你制作了一个重点展示剧情的预告片，让玩家“被误导”……这样就会招致不少差评。

2.请个艺术家

我不是艺术家，我希望之前能做的更好……但是我建议大家去请一位审美优秀的艺术家来审阅你的平面元素。我之前看过很多游戏菜单用了很奇怪的字体和颜色，跟主题一点都不相搭——UI部分像是《炉石传说》，其它部分像是Fez，类似这样的。如果游戏的视觉风格不统一，其他人也不会把它视为一部好作品。

3.要尽早并且经常性地展示游戏

在早期阶段获得玩家的反馈能够帮助你及时止损。把游戏展示给游戏开发者、策划、画师、电影制作人、建筑师……这些人会帮助你进一步理解艺术风格与游戏整体的统一性。

4.要充分了解你的游戏中或者与游戏相关一切东西。

或许我只是在空谈，但从我的经历来看，我发现游戏的不一致性常常与监管不严的外包工作紧密相关。美术资源指派其他公司去做，预告片完全外包，还有远在他方的音效团队这些都可能破坏游戏的一致性。如果我们对游戏的开发过程或者在游戏世界相关的所有事情上更加细心、谨慎，出现一致性问题的可能性也会降低不少。

你的意见？

你认为在保证一定质量的前提下，一致性是游戏成功重要参考指标之一吗？你觉得我有遗漏什么重要的东西吗？或者说我不应该把焦点放在一致性上？你认为我对某个部分有误解吗？你可以随时通过邮件或者推特跟我联系，我非常高兴能够听到各位的见解。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Hello friends!

I’ve been thinking for a while about what makes a game successful, or rather what makes a game unlikely to fail. My definition of success, in this context, is simply not failing. That is to say, a game has been successful if it can earn its money back and not be a financial and critical failure. I’m not looking for a formula to solve game development, because I don’t think that exists. But I do think we can mitigate our failures by keeping some important points in mind, and I’ve been trying to discover what these points are.

I don’t think we can predict success if we define success as selling 1M copies or having your company bought by Microsoft… but I like to think that we can identify some key properties that will make a game unlikely to fail. This is a hit based industry and I would be a multi-millionaire if I knew which games would be critically acclaimed monumental financial successes… but I’m not. And I won’t pretend that I know the answers to what makes a hit, but I will throw an idea out there to be pondered within my definition of success. This idea was created in hearing tons of game developers talking about their failure stories, and I think there might be something to it:

Consistency is one of the most important predictors for a game’s success.

That’s my hypothesis, and hopefully it can be discussed, debated, and refined or refuted. I am by no means an expert in this subject and don’t intend this to be purely informative, but I think this is a point worth considering and discussing, and that discussion may help us achieve a deeper understanding of our craft.

I should add, before we get to definitions, that a crappy game won’t succeed regardless of how consistent it is. I can’t claim to know where exactly how high that minimum quality bar is set, but the idea is that many games that could have had success ended up not finding it, mostly due to a lack of consistency.

My Definition(s) of Consistency

When one creates a game, they create a universe. They create at the bare minimum a visual style, a set of rules of physics, a soundscape, interactions between parts, a user experience, and a universe. Beyond that, game developers may create mechanics, rules of interaction between systems, stories, cultures, languages, customs, and more. These systems need to be consistent with how the game is talked about, consistent with one another, and consistent in themselves.

I’d like to consider three kinds of consistency here, and then we can discuss whether this is actually a strong predictor for success (i.e. non-failure). Personally, I think the order I’m presenting them is their order of importance.

Marketing Consistency

We talk about and pitch our games in different ways, on different platforms, and to different people. We try to explain our entire game in a catchy sentence, we show a screenshot, or we make a trailer that tries to convey the player’s experience in our games. Unfortunately, we often break the consistency of the universe we’re attempting to create even in the way we pitch or market out games; we show off static shots of cute characters when really the in-context animations are what give them their charm, we talk about procedural generation in a rogue-like when the real fun comes from the combat mechanics, and we talk about open-world and crafting when the best part is the story.

From a failure workshop talk that Hugh Monahan of Stellar Jockeys gave at Full Indie Summit in 2016, he talks about his early access trailer for Brigador: “The problem is that it looks like a twin-stick shooter. Brigador is anything but a twin-stick shooter. For some games, Brigador included, the subjective experience of playing the game is totally different from what it looks like watching a video of gameplay or watching somebody else play.” He goes on to explain how the feel is different from what it looks, and how much deeper the gameplay is than it looks: “This isn’t the game I was sold”, is what many players were saying after playing it. “Because this game looked close enough to existing tropes, or existing genres of gameplay, a lot of what was creative and unique and different about Brigador got completely wiped by this instinctive ‘oh, it’s a twin-stick’”.

Now, I know that anecdotal evidence isn’t going to prove my point, because for any example I give I’m sure others can be found that were inconsistent in their marketing but still did well, but I think this shows how this inconsistency can be dangerous.

Genre Consistency

Players have certain expectations about your game based on other games they’ve played in the genre, other games they’ve played with the same art style, and other games that list similar mechanics or features to yours. If a game is a hardcore strategy game, it needs to look like a hardcore strategy game. If it doesn’t, it needs to be made abundantly clear to players why it doesn’t look like they would expect it to. I should add that we have to be careful when making games, because any hint that our game is similar to another game or similar to games in a genre will be picked up by players, and the expectations start to creep up.

This is not to say that we should make games that all look like one another… absolutely not. But I think we need to be aware that player expectations exist regardless of what we want, and that making a deep strategy game that looks like the image below is setting yourself up for an uphill struggle of trying to change player expectations that are already pre-established.

While I haven’t played the game yet, there’s a pretty wide agreement that Yooka-Laylee didn’t live up to expectations. I don’t think it sold as well as was anticipated, and its review scores for metacritic were not too favourable. The issues that reviewers talk about always include the idea that the nostalgia element was good, but the game brought with it all of the annoying things from those old games like Banjo Kazooie: the camera, the pointless currency collection, etc. I’m not sure the Yooka-Laylee team could have prevented this, since the expectations were set high as soon as Playtonic mentioned that they were making a 3D platformer. But at the end of the day, people expected something more than what they got.

Just as a quick aside, I know and respect both of these companies whose “failures” I’m highlighting, and I still look up to them as game developers despite using their games as “failure” examples.

Game Consistency

I touched a bit already on what game consistency is comprised of: things in the game cannot contradict what other things in the game say, how they work, or how they feel. Within the game itself, the mechanics and everything that you’ve created in your game universe need to be consistent and predictable.

A rule that has been established and conveyed to the player cannot be broken by the game, otherwise the game risks losing consistency. If the game is set in the year 2093, the font used in the menus shouldn’t be Times New Roman (unless there’s a damn good explanation, and even then, why are you using Times New Roman??). If the player plays as an extremely kind-hearted, benevolent, peaceful person, they shouldn’t be killing in cold blood in the next level. If the player can always grab ledges in a platformer, there shouldn’t be similar looking ledges that can’t be grabbed. The example here is in Zelda (in every Zelda game I’ve ever played, in fact), a cracked wall means you can bomb it. It never, ever means that anything else, as this would bring the player out of the experience and lead them to question the rule they learned, that all cracked walls are bombable.

We teach our players the rules of our universe in many ways, and if we ever contradict the rules that we established or the rules that players believe we established then we break the immersion and we create a bad experience for players.

Why Do We Care?

Consistency is key, in my opinion, becauseplayer expectations are created by consistency and those same expectations are shattered by inconsistent marketing and game design, leading to a bad experience.

These player expectations are created by you, your universe, trailers, screenshots, menus, game mechanics, art style, website, and everything else that has anything to do with the game. These expectations are also created by preexisting genre tropes, and anything your game does has to be aware of those preconceived notions.

This is why, in my search to find some properties of a game that will help it to avoid failure, I’m pointing to the idea of consistency as a proposed indicator.

Some Good Examples

I’m going to give some examples of some projects that I think achieved the consistency I’m discussing. As is the case with any argument, using anecdotal evidence is not a strong way to provide “proof”… but I’d just like to demonstrate some strong consistency examples after talking about a couple of weak examples in the above sections.

To provide an example of success, I present the game Shovel Knight by Yacht Club Games. That game promised retro, old school, challenging gaming and that’s what people got. What we also got was the innovations in new games (save files, responsive input, longer game, etc.) while not ruining any of the old stuff that we found so charming. Plus, everything about the game kept you in its world by being consistent: the music, the level design, the art style, the menus, the sound design, etc.

Firewatch from Campo Santo is another good example. First I should say that the trailer for Firewatch is a work of art. This is just one of the trailers they made, but they all seem to be consistently amazing.

It gives you every feeling that you’re going to feel while playing the game: suspense, discovery, relationship building, fear, relaxation, everything. This really sets the tone for the game, and it doesn’t fail to deliver. The music, the art, and everything else about the game reinforces this core point.

Like I said before, finding these examples doesn’t “prove” my point, but it can help illustrate why I think consistency might be a major factor in determining success of a game.

Suggestions to Improve Consistency

I can think of a few ways to try to ensure consistency, some harder than others.

Make sure your trailer conveys how the player will feel when playing your game.

M. Joshua Cauller has a great article about this on his blog. This is probably the consistency issue I’ve seen most: developers will create trailers (or worse, have trailers created for them by other companies) which don’t properly explain what the player experience is like. The trailer might completely miss the mark and focus on something that the developers find interesting, but that isn’t the real thing that makes the game fun. Sometimes, trailers can even be good on their own accord, but not linked to how the game makes the player feel. For example, if your game is interesting because of the flow and precise shooting and movements, creating a story-heavy trailer that doesn’t show those elements might cause people to expect something very different from what you’re providing… that lack of consistency leads to bad reviews.

Get an artist.

Probably not this artist…

I’m not an artist, and I wish I was better at this… but people need to have an artist with a good eye look at their graphical elements. I’ve seen too many games with strange menu fonts, colours that don’t match the theme, UI elements that look like they came from Hearthstone in a game where the rest of the screen looks like Fez, etc. Strangers and other developers will can you if your visual style is inconsistent… leading to the next point.

Show the game often, and show it early.

By soliciting player feedback early, you practically ensure that you’ll catch the major issues before you get too far. Showing the game to other game developers, artists, film people, designers, architects… all of these will help you to understand the consistency of your art style and your game in general.

Be aware of everything that is in or related to your game.

I might just be picking patterns out of nothing here, but I find that often the inconsistency I’ve seen in games is linked closely to outsourced work that wasn’t well monitored. Art asset creation assigned to other companies, completely outsourced trailers, and far removed audio teams could contribute to this. If we are careful about the details about all of the things that are going in our game or are related to the game’s universe, we may be able to mitigate some of that.

What Do You Think?

Do you agree with that consistency might be a good predictor for success, above a certain low quality bar? Do you disagree? Do you think I’ve missed something important and shouldn’t be focusing on consistency? Do you think I might be on to something, but misinterpreting it? I’d love to hear what you think, so feel free to email me or discuss on Twitter.

Thanks for reading, if you’ve made it this far! （source:gamasutra.com ）