多位開發者以產品為例談三消遊戲的設計關鍵
多位開發者以產品為例談三消遊戲的設計關鍵
原作者：Tracey Lien 譯者：Willow Wu
三消解謎市場是個擁擠而混亂的地方。
你在App Store的搜尋欄中輸入三消能得到超過2200個結果。寶開公司的《寶石迷陣》（Bejeweled）位列搜尋結果的第一位，然後後面跟著很多圖示相似、名字相似的遊戲。有Jewel World——寶石主題的三消遊戲，有Jewel Mania——寶石主題的三消遊戲，有《糖果傳奇》（Candy Crush Saga）——糖果主題的三消遊戲，有Candy Blast Mania——糖果主題的三消遊戲，有Matching With Friends——三消配對遊戲，還有其它2000多種遊戲……
三消市場已經處於飽和狀態了，而且經常會因為缺乏創新而招致批評。無論是老的還是新的三消遊戲，它們經常會被稱為“類似《寶石迷陣》的遊戲”或者是“山寨版的《寶石迷陣》，”基本上很快就會被玩家拋之腦後。這些批評中確實包含著不可否認的事實——克隆遊戲確實很多，有不少遊戲開發者是想借別人的成功撈一把。業內人士也認為一個好的三消遊戲除了相似的核心機制之外，還應該有更多與眾不同的東西。
“作為一個擁有十多年休閒遊戲開發經驗的人，我們已經習慣了人的誤解，他們認為所有的益智遊戲都是差不多的，”King公司的CCO Sebastian Knutsson說，他們的代表作就是《糖果傳奇》。“除非你有經常玩，否則你就會覺得它們是一樣的。但我知道我們的活躍玩家對遊戲中的差別和細微變化非常敏銳。這一切都歸結於玩遊戲的真實體驗，而不僅僅是看看遊戲的截圖、描述資訊什麼的。”
Candy Crush Saga（from pocketgamer.biz）
根據Knutsson的說法，當人們不熟悉某類遊戲時，他們很容易會變得目光短淺，以偏概全。但是對於一個經常玩三消遊戲的人來說，各個遊戲之間的差異是顯而易見的，而且非常重要。他告訴Polygon，其實那些說他們的遊戲是山寨的都是“局外人”——他們並沒有玩過，甚至根本對King旗下、或者是其它任何三消遊戲不感興趣。“你可以說單人紙牌遊戲都一樣，但是確實是有非常多的人喜歡這類遊戲，能夠欣賞不同遊戲的獨特之處，”他說。“所以我認為人們對於三消遊戲的看法就是分為兩類：一是玩過的，能看出、欣賞遊戲所具有的特色，另外一群人就是沒玩過遊戲，對這三消一概而論。”
此外，丹麥皇家藝術學院的副教授、作家、遊戲設計師Jesper Juul表示FPS遊戲也有類似的情況。Juul說三消遊戲實際上並沒有那麼相似，看似大同小異是因為遊戲剛開始的玩法都差不多。
“第一人稱射擊遊戲顯然都是非常相似的，這類遊戲已經有30多年的歷史了，”他說。“但我覺得如果你真正投入於某類遊戲，你一定能夠發現各種有趣、重要的區別。所以如果某個人是射擊遊戲的死忠粉，《戰地》和《使命召喚》之間的不同在他們看來肯定是非常關鍵的。但如果你並不是FPS的愛好者，那麼這些遊戲在你看來肯定是非常相似的，我想三消遊戲的情況也是這樣。”
對於那些不玩射擊遊戲的人來說，如果不看劇情和主題就很難辨別出是哪個遊戲。玩家不停地移動瞄準器，用一個按鍵鎖定目標，另一個進行射擊，這類行動貫穿了大多數射擊遊戲。雖然現在沒什麼人會指責FPS遊戲的山寨問題，但曾經它們都被人們稱為類《毀滅戰士》遊戲。直到玩家終於把FPS劃為一個單獨的類別，理解它們與其它遊戲有著細微但是獨特的不同之處，人們才開始注意到這些區別的趣味所在，頗具創意而且非常重要。
“劇情對FPS遊戲來說也非常重要，而且我認為這能更加凸顯遊戲個體的精巧之處，”遊戲設計師、紐約大學遊戲中心負責人Frank Lantz說。“人們往往會比較關注遊戲主題和劇情。從本質上講，三消是一種抽象性遊戲，它們的核心是形式邏輯。不管這些元素是寶石是可愛的小動物是昆蟲還是石頭，玩家要思考的是當下的選擇以及你要怎麼重新排列這些元素。也許這就是人們說三消遊戲都一個樣時想要表達的真正意思——也就是主題這種表象的東西其實對他們來說是無關緊要的，除去‘包裝’後的玩法、機制都差不多。”
Nigel Li是Storm8的藝術總監，他們發行的遊戲有Bakery Story、Candy Blast Mania、Jewel Mania、Kingdoms Live等等。這家工作室的目標就是爭取做他們產品所在領域的佼佼者，其中就有三消類別。剝離藝術以及音效設計之後，Candy Blast Mania的核心機制就是讓玩家不斷匹配三個同樣的糖果，直至達成關卡目標。這聽起來就跟寶開的《寶石迷陣》、King的《糖果傳奇》非常相似。但正如Li所說的，是機制之外的這些東西才讓遊戲有了完全不同的體驗。
“我認為藝術設計對休閒遊戲有非常大的影響作用，”他說。“事實上，我認為它是填充、塑造遊戲世界和劇情的關鍵素材，並且還能激勵玩家對遊戲增加投入。玩家剛進入遊戲時是什麼樣的感覺？他們玩得好嗎？我們要怎麼引導他們？我們會依賴於藝術手段，把它當成是視覺獎勵。藝術也是一種交流語言，語言的好壞將會直接影響遊戲的表現。”
決定遊戲體驗好壞的當然還不止於藝術。Li說Storm8的開發者會反覆測試他們遊戲中的每一個元素，以確保它們不出差錯。“就比如Jewel Mania和Fruit Mania，光是寶石或者是水果的消除方式我們就進行了10、20、30次測試，”他說。“我們想找到對的感覺，製作出酷炫的效果，讓玩家有種成就感。”
Heather Hazen是《寶石迷陣》的監製，她相信，這款遊戲的成功不僅僅是因為它搶佔了市場先機，和Li的看法相同，她將其歸因於對細節的關注。“遊戲看似簡單，但正是那些細節的精緻感才能讓玩家獲得有趣的遊戲體驗，”她說。“寶石不應該是硬生生地掉入面板，它們落下時應該會受到重力的影響，觸碰到面板時應該會發出清脆的響聲。
同樣地，寶石匹配後也不應該是直接消失，它們要有一個華麗的爆炸效果，並對面板上的其它寶石產生一定影響。每個細節都需要與遊戲的整體體驗保持連貫。”
有些三消遊戲的特色還不止於音效或者是視覺特效。把《寶石迷陣》和《糖果傳奇》放在一起對比，前者是讓玩家自由爭取高分記錄，而後者採用的是關卡進階方式。《寶石迷陣》中，玩家每局的遊戲面板都是隨機的。而《糖果傳奇》的每個關卡都是指定的，是這幾百個關卡中的一環。在Candy Blast Mania中，有些關卡就是boss戰，玩家要通過匹配特定的糖果來對敵人造成傷害。像Puzzle Quest這樣的遊戲就包含了角色扮演元素，而Puzzle and Dragons則融合了三消和地牢元素。所有的這些遊戲都是以三消為基礎，但是遊戲經驗豐富的玩家和並不豐富的玩家看到的是兩個完全不一樣的世界。
“如果把核心機制看作是主要原料，那麼製作水平就是原料的處理以及呈現方式，”Lantz說。“這非常重要。”
1994年，俄羅斯程式員Eugene Alemzhin為DOS做了個遊戲叫Shariki，它被認為是歷史上第一個三消電子遊戲。將三個一樣的東西匹配到一起，從遊戲面板上消除，這種簡單而抽象的機制到了20年後依然沒有改變，但是三消遊戲變了很多。
“如果你去回顧下初代的《寶石迷陣》，你會發現它很扁平化，遠沒有現在的立體，”Juul說。“隨著時間的推移，很多事情都發生了改變。使用者的期待也變了，幾年前覺得很新穎的東西放到今天就會有完全不一樣的感覺。”
Hazen說創新的空間一直都有，即使是在核心機制不改變的情況下。PopCap的聯合創始人John Vechey在Reddit中說過，很多遊戲都是受《寶石迷陣》的啟發，但是他自己也承認PopCap的競爭者，比如King，都對遊戲進行了創新。
“King公司可能是我們的競爭對手，很明顯《糖果傳奇》和《帕帕彈珠》分別借鑑了《寶石迷陣》和《幻幻球》，但是它們並不是山寨，”Vechey說。“《糖果傳奇》在三消的基礎上加了不少新機制，不僅僅是saga meta部分，還有強化道具以及隨著遊戲程序所呈現的一系列變化。如果要把《糖果傳奇》說成是《寶石迷陣》的克隆遊戲，那就相當於說《半條命》克隆了《雷神之錘》。
“他們是競爭對手，但是如今他們的確做得很好……我必須坦誠地說，雖然這些遊戲都參考了我們的遊戲機制（也是受別的遊戲啟發），但是他們也在此基礎上創造出了很多新穎的內容，它們並不是在克隆。”
本文由遊戲邦編譯，轉載請註明來源，或諮詢微信zhengjintiao
The match-3 puzzle game market is a cluttered space.
Typing “match-3″ into the iTunes App Store yields more than 2,200 search results. PopCap’s Bejeweled sits at the top of the list alongside similar-looking titles that share similar names. There’s Jewel World — a match-3 gem game, Jewel Mania — a match-3 gem game, Candy Crush Saga — a match-3 candy game, Candy Blast Mania — a match-3 candy game, Matching With Friends — a match-3 matching game and, well, some 2,000 more.
The market is saturated and frequently faces criticism for its seeming lack of innovation. Match-3 games both new and old are often called “Bejeweled clones” or copycats, and are quickly dismissed for all being the same. And while there is some truth to the criticisms — there are indeed lots of video game clones, and there are puzzle games that exist only to capitalize on the success of others — members of the games industry believe there’s more to a good match-3 game than a similar core mechanic.
“Having developed casual games for more than 10 years, the misconception that all puzzle games are the same is something we’re used to,” said Sebastian Knutsson, the chief creator officer of King, a company best known for Candy Crush Saga. “Unless you play them regularly, you’ll see that they’re the same, but we know our active players are very perceptive to the differences and nuances. It all comes down to the actual exposure of playing them as opposed to just reading about these games.”
According to Knutsson, it’s easy for people to be myopic and make sweeping generalizations about entire game genres and categories when they’re not familiar with them. But to a player who regularly plays match-3 puzzle games, the differences between them are clear, and the differences matter. He told Polygon the copycat and cloning criticisms the company faces tend to come from “outsiders” — people who either haven’t or aren’t interested in playing King’s games, or any match-3 puzzle games. “You can always say that all card Solitaire games are the same, but there’s tons of people who love them, who appreciate the different variations that are out there,” he said. “So I think you either play them and appreciate the difference or uniqueness, or from the outside you just judge them all as the same type of game.”
A similar analogy can be drawn with first-person shooters, according to author, game designer and associate professor at The Royal Danish Academic of Fine Arts — The School of Design, Jesper Juul. Juul says the similarities between popular match-3 games are over-blown, and that genres tend to be similar because that’s how they form to begin with.
“Shooters are obviously very, very similar, and have been going for almost 30 years now,” he said. “But I think what happens is if you’re really into a particular genre, you see all kinds of interesting, important distinctions. So if somebody is a big shooter fan, the distinctions between the Battlefield series and Call of Duty will be really, really important to them. But if you’re not a shooter fan, those games look incredibly similar, and I think that’s what’s happening with match-3 games.”
To the outsider who doesn’t play shooters, when the stories and themes are stripped from the game, it can be hard to differentiate them. Players are moving a reticule around and using one button to aim and another to shoot. This is fairly consistent among most shooters. And while first-person shooters don’t face copycat accusations any more, there was a time when all first-person shooters were known as Doom clones. It wasn’t until players eventually recognized the first-person shooter as a genre and understood the subtle distinctions that separated the games that people started paying more attention to them as interesting, creative and important.
“First-person shooters are also heavily-framed by narrative, and I think that helped to make the distinctions between different first-person shooters feel more substantial,” said game designer and director of the NYU Game Center, Frank Lantz. “People tend to focus a lot on theme and narrative and, by their nature, match-3 games tend to be kind of abstract games. They’re more about the kind of formal logic of what you’re doing and how you’re re-arranging the elements. It doesn’t matter if those elements are themed as gems or cute little critters or bugs or rocks. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say all match-3 games are the same — that the theme, the sort of representational surface is kind of immaterial, and what they’re really saying is under the hood, all these games are the same.”
Nigel Li is an art director at Storm8, a studio that has worked on titles like Bakery Story, Candy Blast Mania, Jewel Mania and Kingdoms Live. The studio aims to have the best game in each category it enters, one of which is the match-3 category. When stripped of its art, sounds and design, the core mechanic of Candy Blast Mania requires players to match three of the same kinds of candy to achieve certain goals. This description alone makes it sound a lot like PopCap’s Bejeweled and King’s Candy Crush Saga. But as Li says, it’s everything else about the game that makes it a completely different experience.
“I think art plays a huge role in casual games,” he said. “In fact, I think it’s a key ingredient to painting the world and the story, and encourages the player to be invested. How does a player feel when they first enter the game? How well are they doing? How do we guide them through the game? We rely on the art as visual rewards. Art is a language we use to communicate with them, and how good that language is has a direct result on how good the game is going to do.”
It’s not just the art, either. Li says developers at Storm8 iterate on every element of their games to make sure they feel right. “For Jewel Mania and Fruit Mania, just the way that you either pop the jewel or pop the fruit has gone through 10, 20, 30 iterations,” he said. “We try to get the feeling right, to make it feel rewarding and very snappy.”
Heather Hazen is the executive producer of Bejeweled at PopCap. She believes there’s more to the game’s success beyond it being one of the first to market and, like Li, she puts it down to attention to detail. “The game looks and appears simple, but it’s the nuances that make it a great experience,” she said. “Gems shouldn’t just drop onto the board; they should fall with an obvious relationship to gravity and land with a satisfying ‘clink.’
“Gems shouldn’t just disappear when they are matched; they should explode in a visual flourish with an exciting effect on the rest of the board. Every detail needs to be consistent with the overall experience.”
Some of the differences between match-3 games are bigger and more obvious than the sound effects and visual flourishes. When comparing Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga, the former offers a raw system where players try to score as high as possible, while the latter offers distinct level progression. In Bejeweled, players are given a different, randomized board each time. In Candy Crush Saga, players are given a specific, composed level that is part of a series of hundreds of levels. In Candy Blast Mania, levels are punctuated with boss battles where players have to match certain kinds of candy to inflict damage on the enemy. Games like Puzzle Quest tie in a role-playing element, while Puzzle and Dragons merges a match-3 mechanic with a dungeon crawler. All of these titles use match-3 as their base, but to the seasoned and even not-so-seasoned player, they’re worlds apart.
“If the core mechanic is the main ingredient, then the production values are the way that ingredient is prepared and presented to the player,” Lantz said. “And that’s really important.”
There’s a puzzle game by Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin called Shariki. Developed for DOS in 1994, it is believed to be the first video game to feature the match-3 mechanic. The simple and abstract mechanic of matching three of the same items to clear them from the board hasn’t changed in more than 20 years, but match-3 games have.
“If you look at something like the original Bejeweled, it’s very flat,” Juul said. “A lot has changed over time. The audience’s expectations have changed, and something that felt very new a few years ago just feels different today.”
Hazen says there’s always room for innovation, even if the core mechanic remains the same. PopCap’s own co-founder John Vechey said in a Reddit thread that many games have been inspired by Bejeweled, but even he acknowledged that PopCap’s competitors like King have innovated.
“King may be a competitor, and clearly both [Candy Crush Saga] and Papa Pear are inspired by Bejeweled and Peggle respectively, but they’re not clones,” Vechey said. “Candy Crush has added a lot of great mechanics to the match-3 genre, not just the saga meta-game, but the power-ups, and how they change the game as it goes. Calling Candy Crush a Bejeweled ‘clone’ would be like calling Half-Life a Quake clone.
“They’re a competitor, and right now doing quite well … I must be candid and honest that they’ve done a lot of innovative things around mechanics we originally created (which were inspired by other games), and that’s not cloning.”(source： ofollow,noindex" target="_blank">polygon