新手玩家设计要点编辑本段回目录
如今多数游戏关注的都是有着丰富经验的高端玩家。游戏行业深知这个市场中的玩家喜欢什么游戏并且根据其喜好设计出产品。然而，多数拥有电脑或只是电脑游戏潜在购买者的人并非经验丰富的高端玩家。我将这些人称为“新手玩家”。
现代游戏经常让新手玩家感到迷茫。游戏的复杂性、奇怪的场景和过分暴力的画面并不会吸引这些人。难道这就意味着游戏不能满足传统玩家市场之外更广大用户的需求吗？我觉得不会这样。在这篇文章中，我将提出些为新手玩家制作游戏的指导意见。
低门槛
飞行模拟和某些角色扮演等许多游戏的门槛非常高。在你开始玩这些游戏之前，你必须掌握许多相关知识。经验丰富的玩家知道这些游戏的运作原理，他们只需要学习游戏的特别内容即可，就像是遇到某种已经掌握的语言的方言一样。
然而，新手玩家则必须首先阅读50页或更多的游戏指南，在玩游戏之前便产生了挫败感。毫无疑问，新手玩家不会浪费这等精力，尤其是当他们还不确定游戏能否给带来乐趣之时。
另一方面，有些游戏可以让玩家直接开始玩游戏，无需掌握大量如何控制游戏的知识。《Myst》等许多冒险游戏很容易便可上手，玩家能够立即体验到游戏的趣味性。在诸如《毁灭战士》之类的3D射击游戏中，新手玩家也很容易掌握游戏控制。因而，这些游戏与其他有着较高门槛的游戏相比能够为更多用户所接受也就不足为奇了。
毁灭战争(from b5togb.hkedcity.net)
当你为新手玩家设计游戏时，游戏的低门槛至关重要。应该让玩家马上便可以开始玩游戏，在短时间内理解游戏内发生的事情。
然后，但玩家进入游戏之时，动作选项应当简单明了。比如，《猴岛》系列等冒险游戏在玩家同其他角色交谈时，向玩家提供3到4个可供选择的回应选项。在其他游戏中，玩家可以点击图标来精确呈现动作选项。比如，在游戏《Eye of the Beholder》中，玩家可以点击图标移动、施放咒语、休息或切换控制其他角色。点击角色可以看到新界面，上面有一系列可供选择控制该角色的动作选项。
在其他游戏中，移动或拾取物品的选项并不那么明显。玩家可能需要点击房屋才能进入，或点击物品才能拾取。随着这些现象并不那么明显，但它们是玩家凭直觉就可以意识到的。
即便某个选项很明显（游戏邦注：比如有个图标），它也不一定很容易察觉。玩家在看到图标时可能并不明白它所代表的含义，而且不敢尝试去点击。
工具提示或其他显示解释性文字的方法或许能够解决此类问题。在角色扮演游戏中，某些图标控制角色的移动，其他图标可能代表角色拾取道具、休息和施放咒语等。这些图标的样式并不能解释其作用，但工具提示（游戏邦注：工具提示指鼠标滑过图标后呈现出的描述图标作用的弹窗）可以让玩家意识到图标的用意。
可见的游戏机制
多数人都玩过桌游，比如《大富翁》或《Ludo》等。在这些游戏中，游戏机制是完全可见的。在《大富翁》中，玩家摇动骰子，根据数字来移动到格子中。格子对玩家的效果就写在格子或相应的卡片上。新手玩家对这种可见的游戏机制较为适应。
考虑新手玩家感受的电脑游戏也应该努力让游戏机制带有可见性。比如，在角色扮演游戏的战斗情形中，理想情况下玩家应该可以看到决定战斗结果的那颗“骰子”。但在现实情况下，这通常是种不切实际的解决方案，因为它会放慢游戏节奏或占据极为珍贵的界面空间。
可采用的解决方案是显示攻击效果，比如在受攻击角色上用数字显示伤害值。顺便提下，这也能够为玩家的成功提供视觉奖励。显示随战斗逐渐减少的生命条是个较差的方案。生命条无法显示玩家造成多少的伤害，只是抽象地显示角色的生命而已。
同样的，当玩家在战略游戏中攻击坦克时，在坦克上显示凹陷并不能足够精确地显示玩家所造成的伤害。这样做确实更接近现实情况，但许多新手玩家把电脑游戏当做桌游来看待，而不是现实生活。数字化显示所造成的伤害是个较好的解决方案，如果在数值现实后坦克上出现凹陷，这就是个对玩家所造成可观伤害的视觉确认。游戏也应该让玩家看到还需要多少伤害才能杀死某个单位，比如玩家将鼠标指向坦克时可以看到坦克的相关属性。
另一个可见游戏机制适用于移动。如果游戏规则设定某个角色可以移动4格，那么角色应该最多就只能移动4格。格子应该以某种方式呈现出来，可以设计成玩家移动鼠标指向时高亮显示。
举个荒谬的例子，如果移动4格意味着角色可以移动等同于身高4倍长的距离，这种游戏机制对玩家来说就非常复杂，玩家很难决断角色究竟能移动多长的距离。
社交性
当人们玩桌游和卡片游戏时，他们通常是同其他玩家一起玩的。游戏本身带来的兴奋感和娱乐价值是人们玩这些游戏的原因之一，但社交因素也是同等重要的原因。
人们偏好多人桌游和卡片游戏而不是单人纸牌游戏的原因在于前者带有社交体验。
电脑游戏采用的确实与之相反的方法，多数电脑游戏是单人游戏。然而，以前是出于技术上的限制，只有近几年技术上的发展使得多人游戏成为可能。电脑游戏的单人化是个需要考虑到的重要因素。许多人关掉电脑游戏仅仅因为电脑游戏只是个人体验，他们无法与他人分享。
因而，你在为新手玩家制作游戏时，社交元素非常重要。现在，我们可以这样说，游戏只是种人们与他人进行社会交往的方法。
然而，你不能仅仅通过添加聊天功能来实现多人游戏的效果。除非你随后遇到其他玩家并分享你的故事，否者在《雷神之锤》或《三角洲部队》中的打斗根本算不上社交体验，因为你没有时间在游戏中进行交谈。
三角洲部队(from game.zol.com.cn)
因而，考虑到新手玩家的游戏应当使玩家能够在游戏过程中与他人交谈。只能在游戏过程之后交谈是个较次等的解决方案，这种解决方案或许只适用于面向动作的游戏。无论采用何种方式，游戏中的聊天是必需品。
在为新手玩家设计游戏时，强调游戏的社交层面看似是个正确的战略。然而，如果游戏本身无法提供娱乐价值，那么其最终也会因社交目标而失败。带有社交性的乏味游戏并不会让人感到兴奋，叫上一堆朋友然后玩一整个小时的一字棋，你就会明白我所说的意思了。
主题和场景
经验丰富玩家能够接受的主题和场景可能会让那些对电脑游戏不甚熟悉的人感到荒诞或厌恶。比如，经验丰富的玩家比较喜欢过度暴力的图像，他们或许会认为满屏的血液会让游戏更具娱乐性。然而，许多人正因为这种暴力图像而拒绝购买电脑游戏。结果，此类画面使电脑游戏的整体声望下降了。
当你为新手玩家制作电脑游戏时，你应该避开那些血腥的画面。如果你制作的是角色扮演游戏，将伤害显示为数值比显示为喷溅的血液来得更好，也能够为更多的用户所接受。
经验丰富的玩家习惯于发挥自己的想象力，因而通常不会怀疑游戏场景的设计。新手玩家却不是如此，因而你必须当心游戏场景的设置。
比如，玄幻是在大量电脑游戏题材中普遍出现的场景，包括冒险类、角色扮演类、战略类或动作类。但是，对多数人来说，大量类人生物与人类共同居住、虚构的怪物游荡在郊外以及魔法师发出咒语看似非常牵强。这一点也在电影行业中得到证实，使用玄幻场景的电影非常少，而且这些电影中鲜有巨作。
但是从另一方面来说，在严肃的现实世界中玩角色扮演游戏确实显得很乏味。为不使游戏显得荒谬可笑，你的角色的能力会受到限制，最多只能发展成詹姆斯·邦德那样的人物。
但是，科幻电影已渐渐成为主流电影行业的一部分。即便有些电影并非纯粹科幻题材，但许多都含有科幻元素。受众已经渐渐习惯了高端科技和外星人。因而，如果现实性会限制到你所设计的游戏，那么科幻场景是个不错的替代品。毕竟在此类场景中，你也可以用魔法或高端科技来做事情。相对于玄幻类场景而言，新手玩家在科幻场景中的感觉会更加自然，而且也更能接受与此类场景相关的术语。
这也同低门槛的概念有所关联。为理解游戏中发生的事情，玩家所需学习的新术语越少，就越容易融入游戏之中。发射火球术咒语或许会让人难以理解，但是新手玩家对投掷手榴弹会更为熟悉，即便这是枚高科技的等离子手榴弹。
思维管理
经验丰富的玩家通常能够同时管理多项任务和单位。举个极端的例子，战略游戏玩家可以从容不迫地管理20到30个建筑和100至150个单位。但是即便是这类玩家，他们也喜欢分组管理单位，因为管理越少单位越容易。也就是说，越少的物品意味着越高的思维管理。
各专业领域的多项独立研究表明，一个人最多只能在头脑中同时留存7类物品。这个最大值也能运用到电脑游戏中。如果你将需要管理的数目维持在最大值之内，那么玩家对这些物品的掌控就会更为简单。在你为新手玩家制作游戏之时，你应该要考虑到游戏的思维管理。
当然，这个最大数字规则只能是个参考意见。这并不意味着只能给玩家提供7个选项。比如，不可将角色扮演类游戏的角色的仓库限制在7格。
选项也可以安排成各个层次，以符合上述规则。在角色扮演游戏的任意时间里，玩家可以选择移动、休息、战斗或其他角色支配方式。如果玩家选择战斗，他们可以攻击、防御、射击或使用道具。在这各个层次中，给玩家提供的选项不要超过7个即可。
正如我上文提到的那样，分组技术也可以用来增加游戏的思维管理。《魔兽争霸》允许玩家选择一组单位，然后发出一个指令即可。因而，即便这个群组中有大于7个的单位，也只能算作是一个单位。
有些游戏的设计违背了上述所有准则，却依然能够赢得大量玩家的青睐。《文明2》便是个绝佳的例证。《文明2》之所以能够吸引大量新手玩家，这其中或许有许多原因，但最重要的原因是玩家刚开始是处在简单且易于管控的情况下（游戏邦注：比如游戏开始只提供一个定居单位），随后在此基础上修建第一座城市并逐步添加各种各样的单位和城市。因而，游戏的复杂性是逐渐增加的，而且是玩家有意识地自觉增加思维管理复杂性。
文明2(from ce.cn)
但是，当你为新手玩家制作游戏时，你仍然应该时刻关注游戏的思维管理。游戏开始的复杂程度尤为关键。如果你立即向玩家呈现相当复杂的情形，那么即便是经验丰富的玩家也会感到迷茫。
结语：这样的游戏不会乏味吗？
你或许会认为为新手玩家制作游戏就意味着必须制作一款乏味的游戏。但是，事实并非如此。
对传统电脑游戏有效的游戏元素仍然适用于那些为新手玩家制作的游戏。优秀游戏的可玩性、有趣的故事情节、令人着迷的视觉效果和吸引人的音频同样也都是为新手玩家所制作游戏中的重要元素。上述指导意见仅仅是为解决你想获得非传统电脑游戏玩家等更多受众时可能面临的挑战。
游戏邦注：本文发稿于1999年5月14日，所涉时间、事件和数据均以此为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Trond Larsen）
Designing Games for Novice Gamers
Trond Larsen
Most games today aim at the known, comfortable market of experienced or advanced gamers. The gaming industry knows what kind of games this market enjoys and targets its products accordingly. However, most people who own computers and are only potentially computer game buyers are not experienced or advanced gamers. I’ll call these people “novice gamers”.
Modern games regularly turn off novice gamers. The games’ complexity, strange settings, and excessive graphic violence don’t appeal to most people. Does this mean that you can’t make games with broad appeal outside the traditional gamer market? I hope not. In this article, I’ll set forth some guidelines for making games for novice gamers.
Low Entrance Barrier
Many games, such as flight simulators and some role-playing games, have a pretty high entrance barrier. Before you can start playing these games, you have to possess a lot of knowledge. Experienced gamers know how these games are supposed to work and only have to learn the specifics of any one game — almost like encountering another dialect of a language you already know.
Novice players, however, will have to read through a manual of 50 or more pages before they can get anything but frustration out of playing the game. Needless to say, novice gamers won’t expend this effort, particularly when they’re not even sure that they’ll enjoy the game in the first place.
On the other hand, several games let players start immediately without having to know lots of stuff about how to control the game. Many adventure games, in particular Myst, are easy to get started with and give immediate enjoyment. Novice players also have an easy time getting into 3D shooters such as Doom. Thus, it’s not surprising to see that these games reach a wider audience than other games with a higher entrance barrier.
So when you design games for novice gamers, a low entrance barrier is critical. The player should be able to start playing the game almost immediately and understand at once what is happening. In a role-playing game, for instance, the player should be able to start with a prerolled character.
Then, when the player gets into the game, the action alternatives should be obvious and intuitive. For instance, many adventure games, such as the Monkey Island series, offer players a list of three or four alternatives from which to choose their responses while conversing with other characters. In other games, players can click on icons that explicitly represent the action alternatives. In the Eye of the Beholder games, for example, players can click on icons for moving, casting spells, resting, or alternating control over each character in the party. Clicking on a character brings up a new screen with a set of action alternatives for managing that character.
In other games, the alternatives for moving or picking up objects aren’t that obvious. Players may have to click on a house to go there, or click on an object to pick it up. But what these alternatives lack in clarity, they make up for in intuitiveness.
Which brings us to the subject of intuitive action alternatives. Even if an alternative is obvious (perhaps it has an icon), it isn’t necessarily intuitive. Players may have difficulty realizing what an icon stands for just by looking at it, and trying it out may be a bit scary.
Tooltips or some other way of displaying explanatory text may be a good way to make up for the lack of intuitiveness in such situations. In a role-playing game, certain icons may move the character and other icons cause the character to pick up items, rest, cast spells, and so on. These icons aren’t always self-explanatory, but a tool-tip will immediately make clear the meaning of an icon (a tool-tip is a pop-up bubble which describes the purpose of an icon when the mouse passes over it).
Visible Game Mechanics
Most people have played one board game or another, such as Monopoly, Ludo, and so on. In these games, the game mechanic is totally visible. In Monopoly, players roll the dice and move that number of squares. That square has an effect on the player that is explicitly written on the square itself or on a corresponding card. Novice gamers are used to visible game mechanics.
A computer game for novice gamers should strive for this visibility in game mechanics as well. In a combat situation in a role-playing game, for instance, ideally players should be able to see the dice that determine the outcome of the combat. In reality, this is often an impractical solution, as it would slow down the game or take up valuable screen space.
An acceptable solution would be to show the effects of a hit — display the amount of inflicted damage as a number just above the character that was hit, for example. Incidentally, this works well as a visual reward for success, too. Displaying a health bar that decreases a couple of notches for each hit is a worse alternative. A health bar doesn’t show how much damage a player made and is an abstract representation of the character’s health anyway.
Likewise, if a player hits a tank in a strategy game, showing a dent in the tank isn’t a sufficiently accurate way to show the damage done. True, it’s closer to reality, but many novice gamers compare computer games to board games, not to real life. Showing the numerical amount of damage done is a better solution, and if afterwards the tank has a dent, then that’s a visual confirmation that the damage was substantial. Players should also be able to see how much more damage is needed to destroy a unit, by pointing the cursor at the tank and seeing the tank’s attributes displayed above it, for example.
Another example of visible game mechanics applies to movement. If the rules of your game state that a certain character has a movement of four, then the character should be able to move a maximum of four squares. The squares should be visible in some way, perhaps by highlighting them when the player moves the mouse pointer over them.
If however, just to pick a ludicrous example, a movement of four means that a character can move four times its height, then the game mechanics are hidden from the player. The relationship between the movement attribute and the distance that the character can actually move is difficult for the player to determine.
Socializing
When people play board and card games, they almost always do so together with others. The excitement and entertainment value of the game itself is one of the reasons that people play these games, but the social factor is at least as important.
The exception is solitaire games, but these are vastly inferior in popularity to the rest of the manual games. People prefer multiplayer board and card games to solitaire games because these games are a social experience.
In computer games, the opposite situation has prevailed — most computer games have been single-player games. However, this has been a consequence of the technology, and only over the last couple of years have true multiplayer games been a technical possibility (with the exception of MUDs, but these games fail in other areas when it comes to enticing novice gamers). The single-player nature of computer games is an important point. Many people have shunned computer games because playing a computer game has been a solitary experience that they cannot share with others.
The social element is thus very important when you want to make a game for novice gamers. We could go so far as to say that the game is only a means for people to socialize with each other.
You don’t get this effect automatically by making a multiplayer game with a chat option, however. Blasting each other to pieces in Quake or Delta Force doesn’t constitute a social experience unless you meet the other players afterwards and share your stories. You don’t have time to talk during the game.
So a game intended for novice gamers should make it possible for the players to chat with each other during, after, and between game sessions. Chatting only after or between sessions is a secondary solution, and may be the only solution in action-oriented games. In any case, some form of chatting is a must.
Emphasizing the social aspects of your game to the detriment of game play may seem a sound strategy when designing games for novice gamers. However, if the game doesn’t offer entertainment value in itself, then it ultimately fails in its socializing purpose. Using a boring game for socializing isn’t exciting — get together with a couple of friends and play tic-tac-toe for an hour and you’ll see what I mean.
Theme and Setting
Themes and settings that seem quite acceptable to experienced gamers may seem weird or disgusting to people who aren’t accustomed to computer games. For example, experienced gamers are quite accustomed to excessive graphic violence and may think that more blood and gore make a game more entertaining. However, many others tout this excessive depiction of violence as a reason not to buy computer games. The reputation of computer games overall has been degraded as a result.
When you make a computer game for novice gamers, you should avoid all the blood and gore. If you hit someone in a role-playing game, showing the damage as a number is just as good a visual reward as is displaying gouts of blood, and much more acceptable among a wider audience.
Experienced gamers are accustomed to stretching their imaginations quite a long way, and it’s generally easier to maintain this audience’s suspension of disbelief. Novice gamers are less inclined to suspend disbelief, so you have to be careful in designing the setting of your game.
For example, fantasy is a popular setting in almost any computer game genre, be it adventure, role-playing, strategy, or action. For most people, however, the notion of having lots of humanoid races living side by side with humans, mythical monsters roaming the countryside, and magicians flinging awesome spells… well, it all seems a bit far-fetched. This point is supported by the film industry — very few movies use a fantasy setting, and those that do seldom become hits.
On the other hand, playing a role-playing game in a strictly realistic world would probably be pretty boring. Your character can get only so powerful before it becomes completely ridiculous. James Bond is probably the furthest you can stretch a setting and still present it as realistic.
However, science fiction movies are more and more a part of the mainstream movie industry. Even if a movie isn’t pure science fiction, many have science fiction elements. Audiences are becoming accustomed to the notion of advanced technology and alien races. Thus, if you design a game that will suffer if it’s restricted to realism, a science fiction setting may be a good alternative. After all, anything that you can do with magic, you can do with advanced technology as well. And novice gamers will feel more at ease in a science fiction setting as opposed to a fantasy setting and will be more familiar with the terms associated with such a setting.
The latter argument also relates to the notion of a low entrance barrier. The fewer new terms that a player that has to learn in order to understand what’s going on, the easier it is to get into the game. Casting a fireball spell may be unfamiliar and confusing, but throwing a hand grenade, even if it’s a high-tech plasma grenade, is familiar and easy to understand.
Intellectual Manageability
An experienced gamer is often accustomed to managing many tasks at once. At one extreme are the strategy gamers who can handle up to 20 to 30 structures and 100 to 150 individual units at once with only a mild sense of panic. But even these people prefer to manage the units in groups because, intellectually, it’s easier to manage fewer objects — fewer objects means higher intellectual manageability.
Many independent studies in various professional fields conclude that seven is the highest number of objects that a person can comfortably keep in mind at once. This maxim applies to computer games as well. Maintaining an overview of what’s going on is easier if you have a maximum of (more or less) seven things on which to concentrate. If you’re making a game for novice gamers, you should pay attention to the game’s intellectual manageability.
Of course, this seven-object rule is only a guideline. It doesn’t mean that no matter what, the player can only choose from one of seven alternatives. Restricting a role-playing–game character’s inventory to seven items would be nonsensical, for example.
Alternatives can also be arranged in hierarchies to adhere to the seven-object rule. At any one time, a player in a role-playing game may choose to move, rest, fight, or administrate his or her character. If the player chooses to fight, he or she can attack, guard, shoot, or use an item. At any level in the hierarchy, the player is never faced with more than seven alternatives from which to choose.
Grouping, as I mentioned previously, is also a technique used to increase the intellectual manageability in games. Games in the Warcraft genre let players choose a group of units and give them a single command. Thus, even if many more than seven units must be managed at once, the units are treated as groups and not as individuals.
Some games violate all of this and still manage to reach a wider group of players. Civilization 2 is a good example. There may be many reasons why Civilization 2 managed to attract novice gamers, but the most important is that players start with a simple, easily manageable situation (one settler unit) and then build the first city and add various units and cities progressively. Thus, the increased intellectual complexity is introduced gradually, and it’s introduced consciously by the players themselves.
Still, when you make a game for novice gamers, you should keep an eye on the game’s intellectual manageability at all times. The level of complexity is especially important in the beginning of a game. If you present players with an immediately complex situation, even experienced gamers will be turned off.
Epilogue: But Won’t It Be Boring?
You may say that making a game for novice gamers means making a boring game. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
Game elements that work traditional computer games are still valid for games intended for novice gamers. Good game play, variation, an interesting story, pleasing visuals, and engaging audio are important elements in making games for novice gamers too. The hypotheses and guidelines described herein are merely additional challenges that you have to face if you truly want to reach a wider audience than the traditional computer gamers. (Source: Gamasutra)
