乐趣理论读书笔记 (Notes of A Theory of Fun)

A Theory of Fun for Game Design

How the Brain Works

People dislike chaos. We like order (with a bit of texture or variation)

“人们不喜欢混乱，我们喜欢（丰富多彩的）”
无法理解的事物等于噪音

Practice to Build up a Library, Routine

“通过训练建立流程“
理解训练，很重要
新玩法须考虑玩家学习成本

What Games Are

1. concentrated chunks, abstracted, iconic, exclude distracting extra details
2. very fundamental and powerful learning tools
3. Games that fail to exercise the brain become boring (tic-tac-toe)
4. learning is the drug

会使人沉迷上瘾的，正是学习本身。应当和解开一道很难的数学/物理题的感觉是类似的，通过长期学习训练掌握了解题方法并通过活用而取得成果，的那种快感。

What Games Are Not

Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally

Different Fun for Differnt Folks

People will usually choose to play the games they are already good at, that reflect their strengths.

人们通常选择玩那些他们擅长的，能体现他们能力的游戏

if people are to achieve their maximum potential, they need to do the hard work of playing the games they don’t get, the games that don’t appeal to their natures.

然而大多数人可能会选择放弃

The Problem with Learning

Human mind want to take shortcuts
When a player cheats in a game, she is choosing a battlefield that is broader in context than the game itself.
That’s what games are...package up the unpredictable and the learning experience into a space and time where there is no risk.
It’s outright unnatural for a human being to see another human being succeeding at something and not want to compete.
The human mind is goal-driven
Rewards are one of the key components of a successful game activity

Successful games tend to incorporate the following elements:

1. Preparation
2. A sense of space
3. A solid core mechanic
4. A range of challenges
5. A range of abilities required to solve the encounter
6. Skill required in using the abilities

If there’s no sense of space, we call it trivial.
If there’s no core mechanic, there’s no game system at all.
If there’s no range of challenges, we exhaust it quickly.
If there aren’t multiple choices to make, it’s simplistic.
And if skill isn’t required, it’s tedious.

To make the experience a learning experience:

1. A variable feedback system.
2. The Mastery Problem must be dealt with.
3. Failure must have a cost.

Most long-lasting games in the past have been competitive, because they lead to an endless supply of similar yet slightly varied puzzles.

Designers of games need to be careful not to make the game demand too much skill. They must keep in mind that players are always trying to reduce the difficulty of a task. The easiest way to do that is to not play.

Tool for checking for the absence of fun:

1. Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge?
2. Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed?
3. Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge?
4. Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake?
5. Can the core mechanic support multiple types of challenges?
6. Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge?
7. At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge?
8. Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental “move” in the game, like moving one checker piece?)
9. Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.)
10. Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling easy challenges?
11. Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again?
If your answer to any of the above questions is “no,” then the game system is probably worth readdressing.

Your sole responsibility is to know what the game is about and to ensure that the game teaches that thing. That one thing, the theme, the core, the heart of the game...no system should be in the game that does not contribute towards that lesson

The Problem with People

Tactics to make games self-refreshing:

1. “Emergent behavior”
2. Storytelling
3. Placing players head-to-head
4. Using players to generate content

The real problem with people is that: PEOPLE ARE LAZY.

The problem with people isn’t that they work to undermine games and make them boring.
We’re reluctant to abandon known solutions.

Because games exist within the confines of “let’s pretend,” They let you be a godlet. They can offer false positive feedback to keep a player playing.
Making you feel good about yourself in a pretend arena isn’t what games are for.
Games are for offering challenges. Going back through defeated challenges in order to pass time isn’t a productive exercise of your brain’s abilities.
Nonetheless, lots of people do it.

赞同作者贯穿本书的一个观点：游戏的目的是学习
我之前也有相同的想法，所以看到ToF之后有种同道的感觉。Raph对于游戏的寄望是纯粹的，令人敬仰，但这种纯粹其实是我不同意的。
人性既然如此，如何在这客观条件下引导，达成学到东西这一目的，才是设计者(教育者)应当做的。
我同意游戏的目的是使玩家挑战自己并不断学习，但我同时认为给人带来快乐也是游戏的目的，
作为引导学习的更好的方式，也许是 在快乐的游戏中学习

Basically, game designers suffer from what I call “designeritis.” They build up encyclopedic recollections of games past and present, and they then theoretically use these to make new games.
其实能从过往抽象出一些经验，这个未必不正确，比如如果对技术和美术了解的情况下，对于可行性判断乃至整个设计都会很有帮助。

The most creative and fertile game designers working today tend to be the ones who make a point of not focusing too much on other games for inspiration.
即游戏设计者要广涉猎，比如电影，漫画，小说，以及其它很多事物

Games in Context

UserGoal		[ Constructive, Experiential, Destructive ]
Interaction 	[ Collaborative, Competitive, Solo ]

Modding is just playing the game in another way
我最近也在想这个，比如做M&B或者Paradox的历史游戏的Mod，再或者Dominions的Mod，的时候，确实非常有趣，不亚于玩游戏本身。

The chills are not always enjoyable…engaging in interaction with games need not be fun, either, but might indeed be fulfilling, thought-provoking, challenging, and also difficult, painful, and even compulsive.
并不仅有快乐使人觉得一款游戏好

Mere entertainment becomes art when the communicative element in the work is either novel or exceptionally well done.
The analogy for a game would be one you can replay over and over again, and still discover new things.
Choosing constraints is one of the most fruitful ways to creativity.

Entertainment and Art
若以学习为目的，则应靠向Entertainment，但游戏本身则不受这限制，二者皆可。

The Ethics of Entertainment

画面、音效等等也是用户体验的一部分，也非常重要

The constructive thing to do is to push the boundary gently so that it doesn’t backfire. That’s how we got Lolita, Catcher in the Rye, and Apocalypse Now.

Where Games Should Go

Mastery of the medium of games will have to imply authorial intent. The formal systems must be capable of invoking desired learning patterns.
If they can’t, then games are a second-rate art form, and always will be.

Taking Their Rightful Place

…games do need to illuminate aspects of ourselves that we do not understand fully.

The gap between those who want games to entertain and those who want games to be art does not exist.

Art and entertainment are not terms of type — they are terms of intensity.

Most people ... are very willing to settle for easy entertainment
We call this “pop music.” We call it “mass market.”

如果大部分人喜欢轻松的娱乐，而轻松娱乐与有突破性相抵，则对大多数人来说寓教于乐为不可能。
似乎并非如此，权力的游戏可能就是一个例外，吉卜力的作品可能大部都是例外。
还是要明确目的，掌控方法。
寓教于乐，最差的情况下，只要比现行教科书生动有趣，就是一种进步。

Popular ... is largely an accident of history

In the end, if I can say with a straight face after a day’s work making games that one person out there learned to be a better leader, a better parent, a better co-worker, learned a new skill that kept her her job, a new skill that helped him advance the state of the art in his chosen field, a new skill that made their her grow a little…
Then I will know that my work was valuable. It was worthwhile. It was a contribution to society.

I MAKE GAMES, AND I'M PROUD OF I T.

Epilogue

Film was once trashy kinetoscopes at the penny arcade
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### Ten Years Later

But after ten years, I look back on it all and I see games as not just a swirl of systems,
but as a space between the dust from which we come and the dust we shall be,
a space in which we can engage in that grand pursuit of happiness.
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