电子计算机编程入门游戏
Over the last decade, I’ve played more unique and interesting games than I can count. Looking back at all those games, there have been many great experiences. But I’ve also noticed one common mistake — or perhaps, omission — across a lot of indie titles: player onboarding (or lack thereof). Appropriate use of play testing, and a commitment to strong tutorial development and UI design are all key factors that contribute to a great onboarding experience.
Ø版本过去的十年中,我打得更独特和有趣的游戏比我可以指望。 回顾所有这些游戏,有很多很棒的经验。 但是我也注意到很多独立游戏中的一个常见错误-也许是遗漏 -玩家入职(或缺乏)。 适当地使用游戏测试以及对强大的教程开发和UI设计的承诺都是促成出色的入职体验的关键因素。
Before I continue, you might be wondering what I mean by “onboarding”. Put simply, it’s all about getting the player acclimated to new concepts as quickly as possible. In a job, for example, onboarding might refer to the process of training someone to do the tasks their role requires. In a computer or software context, one term you might have heard is “first-time user experience”. Of course, it can be a struggle to build features that people actually want in the first place — but sometimes it’s an even bigger struggle to correctly onboard users with said features. One of the challenges, especially in a gaming context, is that consumers are likely to form an opinion about the product very early on — this includes whether or not they feel they are grasping the game’s concepts (and, therefore, if they’re going to keep on playing).
在继续之前,您可能想知道“入职”是什么意思。 简而言之,这就是让玩家尽快适应新概念。 例如,在工作中,入职可能是指培训某人以完成其角色所需的任务的过程。 在计算机或软件环境中,您可能听说过的一个术语是“首次用户体验”。 当然,首先要构建人们真正想要的功能可能会很费力,但有时要正确地将具有这些功能的用户纳入工作范围,这甚至是更大的努力。 挑战之一(尤其是在游戏环境中)是,消费者很可能会在很早的时候就产品形成意见-这包括他们是否觉得自己已经掌握了游戏的概念(以及因此而去)。继续玩)。
Let me use myself as an example here. In the past, I’ve said that a game has around fifteen minutes to not only show me its core gameplay loop, but to convince me that I should keep playing. Fifteen minutes is a pretty short window. And before anyone asks, yes, this same window includes everything from grand strategy titles, RPGs, and roguelikes known for featuring repeated playthroughs.
让我以自己为例。 过去,我曾说过一款游戏大约需要十五分钟,不仅可以向我展示其核心游戏循环,还可以说服我继续玩。 十五分钟是一个很短的窗口。 而且在有人问之前,是的,这个窗口包含了所有内容,包括大战略头衔,RPG和以重复播放而闻名的流氓。
Although I’m applying this same brief window to all genres, it’s also true that the way a player is onboarded will vary greatly depending on the genre and the mechanics and systems your game utilizes. If you’re building a game within a very well-established franchise (and you’re building on well-established mechanics), it’s probably true that you don’t need so much onboarding focus — after all, many players will come to your game understanding its core patterns already and won’t need to be re-trained on the basics.
尽管我对所有游戏类型都使用了相同的简短窗口,但也确实如此,玩家的入职方式将根据游戏类型和游戏所使用的机制和系统而有很大不同。 如果您是在非常完善的特许经营范围内开发游戏(并且您是在完善的机制基础上开发),那么您可能并不需要太多的入职重点-毕竟,很多玩家会加入您的行列游戏已经了解了其核心模式,因此不需要重新进行基础训练。
In any case, there’s one important rule-of-thumb here that you should never forget: every video game is someone’s first. Let that sink in for a moment; it can be highly counter-intuitive to those of us who grew up with games, or who know certain genres incredibly well. But this rule applies to every single game: every iteration of Nintendo’s famous and popular platformers will be played by someone who has never experienced them before — and for this reason, Nintendo still put significant effort into onboarding the player.
无论如何,这里有一个重要的经验法则,您永远不会忘记: 每个视频游戏都是某人的第一手 。 让它沉入片刻; 对于那些在游戏中成长的人,或者对某些类型的游戏非常了解的人,这可能与我们的直觉相反。 但是,该规则适用于每款游戏:任天堂的知名和流行平台游戏的每一次迭代都将由从未体验过的人进行,因此,任天堂仍在投入玩家方面做出了巨大努力。
Importantly though, it’s easy to assume that the onboarding experience begins and ends with a solid tutorial. But in reality, having a good tutorial — or really, any tutorial — isn’t enough.
但重要的是,很容易假设入职体验始于可靠的教程。 但是实际上,拥有一个好的教程(或者实际上是任何教程)是不够的。
不仅仅是教程 (More than tutorials)
There are various genres (grand strategy being one example) where many developers will think that all they must do is create a quick tutorial, and that’ll be enough. But truly great onboarding is all about a new player’s experience: what will the player think when loading your game up for the very first time?
各种各样的流派(大战略就是一个例子),许多开发人员会认为他们所要做的只是创建一个快速教程,就足够了。 但是真正出色的入职关乎新玩家的体验:玩家首次加载游戏时会怎么想?
This first thirty minutes of your game should be heavily scrutinized by your design team due to its critical importance in ensuring new players stick with the experience. All too often, indie developers will do one of the following:
由于游戏在确保新玩家坚持使用体验中至关重要,因此游戏的前三十分钟应由设计团队进行严格审查。 独立开发人员经常会执行以下操作之一:
- Make a tutorial that just goes over the essentials without explaining anything in context, and then throw the player to the wolves. 制作一个只讲要领而不涉及任何上下文的教程,然后将玩家扔给狼群。
- The opening is frontloaded with exposition and/or choices that someone new is not going to understand and then be confused when the game begins proper. 开幕式上充满了博览会和/或新手不愿理解的选择,然后在游戏开始时感到困惑。
- Drag out the onboarding process to the point that it takes too long and the player becomes uninterested in seeing the game to the end. 将入职过程拖到太长的时间,以至于玩家对最终观看游戏变得不感兴趣。
Earlier, I mentioned UI (user interface) as being a key component of onboarding. It’s really essential to carefully consider your UI while play testing. Are players easily getting lost/not finding important waypoints? Are they fumbling around in menus — perhaps they’re looking for something they can’t find? If there’s one area of a game that shouldn’t be confusing for players, it’s the UI.
之前,我提到过UI(用户界面)是入门的关键组成部分。 在进行游戏测试时,认真考虑您的UI确实至关重要。 玩家是否容易迷路/找不到重要的航路点? 他们是否在菜单中摸索-也许他们正在寻找找不到的东西? 如果游戏的某个区域不应该让玩家感到困惑,那就是用户界面。
The beginning of a game can be a somewhat awkward moment for both new players and designers alike. From a design standpoint, your natural instinct will be to get the preamble over as quickly as possible and jump straight into the guts of the game. But a new player isn’t necessarily going to have the foundational skills to be able to move at your pace.
对于新手和设计师而言,游戏的开始可能都是一个尴尬的时刻。 从设计的角度来看,您的自然本能将是尽快获得序言,并直接进入游戏的勇气。 但是,新玩家不一定具备掌握基本技能的能力才能按照您的步调前进。
Developers who prefer focusing on the more artistic or storytelling aspects of games may find it jarring to stop telling the story in order to help onboard players to the game’s mechanics — but it’s important for you to do that. No matter how great the game itself is, none of this means anything if players put the controller down early on and don’t actually progress to begin with. Oftentimes, a designer must “break character” to introduce game mechanics and rules to the player. Of course, the very best tutorials occur organically within the level design itself — but this may not always be a relevant option, depending on the gameplay loop and genre.
喜欢专注于游戏的更具艺术性或讲故事性的开发人员可能会发现停止讲故事以帮助机上玩家了解游戏的机制感到不高兴-但这样做对您而言很重要。 无论游戏本身有多出色,如果玩家尽早放下控制器并且从一开始就没有真正的进展,那么这都不意味着什么。 通常,设计师必须“打破角色”才能向玩家介绍游戏机制和规则。 当然,最好的教程会在关卡设计本身中有机地出现-但这可能并不总是一个合适的选择,具体取决于游戏循环和类型。
Remember, too, that just as you can mess things up by going too fast, you can also break the onboarding process by going too slow.
还要记住,就像过分快速搞砸一样,过慢也可能破坏入职过程。
So far, I’ve emphasized the importance of giving the player the time and attention they need to understand your game; but there’s such thing as dawdling for too long without getting to the point. There are numerous games which get onboarding wrong in this way — we’ve all heard about titles where “the real game begins at X”; this tends to be code for “wade through the boring bits ‘till you get to something good”.
到目前为止,我已经强调了为玩家提供他们理解您的游戏所需的时间和注意力的重要性。 但是有些事情太拖延了,没有切入要害。 许多游戏都以这种方式入门错误-我们都听说过“真正的游戏始于X”的游戏; 这往往是“经过无聊的事情直到您获得好的东西”的代码。
Figuring out the correct pacing — and where it makes sense to reveal the core gameplay loop to the player — is vital. No game out there should still be introducing brand new mechanics and systems 10–15+ hours in.
确定正确的步调(以及向玩家揭示核心游戏循环的合理位置)至关重要。 任何游戏都不应在10-15个小时以上引入全新的机制和系统。
闲暇重播 (Replay at leisure)
Another key piece — and one that’s often forgotten — in this discussion is the importance of enabling players to always revisit any tutorials or other onboarding-related information in-game. There are plenty of titles out there that turn off tutorials upon repeated playthroughs — but if someone is returning to a game months or years later, they are likely to have forgotten a whole lot about how the game works.
在本次讨论中,另一个关键要素(也是一个经常被遗忘的要素)的重要性在于,使玩家能够始终重新访问游戏中的任何教程或其他与入职相关的信息。 有很多标题可以在反复播放后关闭教程,但是如果有人几个月或几年后重返游戏,他们可能会忘记很多关于游戏如何运作的信息。
Any helpful tips or information should be arranged in an organized fashion and be easy to surf through. For free-to-play titles that track account progress, the player should be able to replay any tutorial section without affecting said progress
任何有用的提示或信息都应以有条理的方式排列,并且易于浏览。 对于跟踪帐户进度的免费游戏,玩家应该能够重播任何教程部分而不会影响进度
As a developer, you always need to be thinking about how players are going to respond to your title. When it comes to onboarding, it is especially important to gain insights from other people — that is, fresh eyes that are going in without any pre-conceived ideas. Again, this is where play testing is so valuable; the folks you test with will be able to tell you — either explicitly or implicitly — where they’re having trouble learning your game.
作为开发人员,您始终需要考虑玩家将如何回应您的头衔。 在入职方面,从其他人那里获得见解特别重要-也就是说,没有任何先入为主的想法的新鲜眼睛。 同样,在这里,游戏测试非常有价值。 与您进行测试的人将能够(无论是显式还是隐式)告诉您他们在学习游戏时遇到的困难。
There’s nothing at all wrong with, or inherently bad about, creating a complicated title. But learning how to play a game shouldn’t be complex. It’s your job as a designer to figure out the best way of explaining your gameplay to someone; remember that this very first experience a player has with any game is also arguably the most important. Your goal is to draw players in and get them familiar and comfortable with the game’s mechanics, not throwing down their controller early on because they don’t understand what’s going on.
创建复杂的标题完全没有错,也没有本质上的缺点。 但是学习如何玩游戏应该并不复杂。 找出最佳的方式向某人解释游戏玩法是您作为设计师的工作; 请记住,玩家在任何游戏中获得的这种第一体验也是最重要的。 您的目标是吸引玩家,使他们熟悉并熟悉游戏的机制,而不是因为他们不了解发生的事情而提早放弃控制器。
If you enjoy my work and like talking game design, the Game-Wisdom Discord is open to everyone.
如果您喜欢我的工作并且喜欢谈论游戏设计,那么 Game-Wisdom Discord 对所有人开放。
翻译自: https://medium.com/super-jump/video-game-onboarding-a52ae1db80fa
电子计算机编程入门游戏