设计游戏循环机制的5条黄金法则编辑本段回目录
德国社交游戏开发商Wooga公司代表Henric Suuronen在日前的GDC Europe在会上阐述了五条“黄金法则”，他称这是有助于社交游戏工作室获胜的秘诀。
他演讲的题目是“社交游戏中的杀手级循环机制”（Killer Game Loops in Social Games），他所指的循环是，玩家为赚取游戏虚拟货币而频繁重复的活动。《Tiny Tower》和其他热门游戏就是靠这种循环机制而成功。
Suuronen称，如果要优化具有吸引力和盈利性的游戏循环，其秘决就在于增加“精明深度”。他如此定义：“它是置于游戏循环之上的添加层——不是次于游戏循环或靠近游戏循环，而是在它之上。精明深度增加了核心循环的游戏玩法和策略性。”
根据Suuronen所述，精明深度正是《Millionaire City》和《Cafe World》这类游戏吸金又抢手的原因所在。
wooga(from allfacebook.de)
Wooga工作室的“设计精明深度的五条法则”如下：
第一条：在核心游戏循环上增加“精明深度”，而非新的循环。工作室必须在游戏循环上添加游戏玩法，但不可过于复杂。
第二条：不可让新手玩家一开始接触游戏时就注意到精明深度的元素，最好让他们自己偶然发现。
第三条：精明深度不应该引入具有手眼协调要求的游戏玩法，因为这会吓走许多玩家。添加精明深度的游戏玩法应该引入策略性和丰富的解决方案。
第四条：精明深度的元素应该容易被玩家偶然发现和意外学成，应该让他们感到自己的发现真是了不起。
第五条：玩家理解精明深度和解决问题之后，仍然可以在同一个系统里发现其他解决方案。
Suuronen另外还建议，社交游戏开发商应该玩玩乐高积木，“乐高积木是令人惊叹的游戏设计。每一支社交游戏开发团队都应该有一套乐高积木。帮助你用网格思维看待问题。”
他强调《FishVille》虽然是款好游戏，但未免过于简单。他坚信，高品质的核心循环应该由四到六个阶段组成，不多不少。他还鼓励开发商从自己熟悉的社交游戏、现实世界的情况出发而设计游戏，并称用户每结束一次游戏体验后，都应该让他们因想得到奖励或担心被“惩罚”而重返游戏。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Will Freeman）
Wooga’s five rules for game loop success
by Will Freeman
GDC Europe: Social gaming specialist on why ‘smart depth’ will make your studio a Facebook giant
Wooga’s Henric Suuronen has used his GDC Europe session to establish five ‘golden rules’ that he insists will help studios succeed in the social gaming space.
Suuronen’s talk, titled ‘Killer Game Loops in Social Games’, looked at crafting and refining the kind of compulsion loops that have made games by the likes of Zynga and Playdom hugely successful.
The loops Suuronen refers to are the intensely repeated actions, usually to earn soft currency, that define titles like Tiny Tower and the increasingly popular games that have seen Wooga emerge as one of most successful Facebook studios in recent months.
The secret to perfecting a compelling, monetising game loop, says Suuronen, is to add ‘smart depth’, which he defines as: “an extra layer that you put on top of the game loop; not next to it or beside it but on top of it. Smart depth adds the gameplay and strategy to the core loop”.
Smart depth, Suuronen argued, is the reason titles like Millionaire City and Cafe World are so popular and profitable.
The Wooga studio head’s ‘five rules of smart depth design’ are as follows:
Add smart depth as a new layer on your core game loop; not as a new loop. Studios need to add gameplay to their game loops; not complicate matters.
Novice players should not need to concern themselves with the smart depth elements to play the game at first. It should only be needed when they stumble upon it of their own accord.
Smart depth should not introduce gameplay that requires hand-eye coordination, as that will ostracise many players. Instead smart depth gameplay should focus on introducing strategy and variable solutions.
Smart depth elements should be easy to discover and learn by accident, and should make the player feel clever for having discovered them.
Having understood a game’s smart depth and solved a problem, there should be alternative solutions players can discover in the same system.
“Making game loops work like this can make the success Wooga has enjoyed possible,” claimed Suuronen.
He also recommended that social game developers playtest in both paper and Lego, stating: “Lego is amazing for game design. Every game team in the socail gaming space should have a Lego set. I helps you think in grids.”
Highlighting FishVille as good but too simplistic, Suuronen also affirmed his belief that a high quality core loop should consist of four-to-six stages and no more. He also encouraged developers to base their social games on familiar, real world activities, and stated several times that upon closing a loop by ending a play session, users should only return to rewards and expected ‘punishments’, and not to surprises.
Suuronen also made a friendly jibe at other social game companies who have struggled to retain players with their compulsion loops.
“They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” he offered. “When the going got tough on Facebook and retention started to become a challenge, the tough didn’t get going; they started crying. Wooga didn’t.”（source:develop-online）
