Chapter 16. Artificial Life, Puzzle Games, and Other Genres 第十六章：人造生命，益智游戏和其它类型

This chapter is about a few game genres that aren't as popular as the ones we've already covered: artificial life, puzzle games, and games for girls. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them; they have produced some extremely successful games. In fact, because there are fewer games in these categories, the market isn't crowded with look-alike products. Working in one of these genres, you actually have a better chance of creating something distinctly new. However, you might have trouble persuading a conservative producer that a really good puzzle game is a better bet than yet another first-person shooter.

本章讨论了一些游戏类型，它们没有我们之前提到的那些类型那么流行，它们是：人造生命、益智游戏和女孩游戏。但这并不意味着它们有什么问题，它们也曾推出过一些极为成功的游戏。事实上，由于这些类别的游戏数量较少，市场上没有充斥着千篇一律的产品。在这些类型中创作，你实际上更有机会创造出与众不同的新产品。不过，你可能很难说服保守的制作人，让他相信一款真正优秀的益智游戏比另一款第一人称射击游戏更好。

Because we're covering several genres in this chapter, we don't have room to explore the elements of each one; instead, we'll just hit the highlights.

因为我们在这一章中涵盖了几种类型，我们没有足够的空间去深入探讨每一种类型的元素；相反，我们只会突出重点。

Artificial Life Games 人造生命

Artificial life is a branch of computer science research, just as artificial intelligence is. Artificial life, or A-life, as it is sometimes called, involves modeling biological processes, often to simulate the life cycles of living things. A-life researchers hope to discover new ways of using computers by using biological mechanisms—mutation and natural selection, for example—rather than algorithmic ones. In particular, A-life is the study of emergent properties, unanticipated qualities or behaviors that arise out of the interaction of complex systems. Life itself is considered an emergent property of the planet Earth.

人造生命和人工智能一样，是计算机科学研究的一个分支。人造生命（有时也称作 A-life）涉及生物过程建模，通常是为了模拟生物的生命周期。人造生命研究人员希望通过使用生物机制——例如突变和自然选择——而不是算法机制，发现使用计算机的新方法。具体而言，人造生命是对突发特性的研究，即复杂系统相互作用产生的意料之外的品质或行为。生命本身就被认为是地球的突发特性。

The most famous (though not the first) A-life game is called simply Life and was created by a mathematician named John Conway. It depicts cellular automata, simulated beings that "live" on a grid. All they do is survive, reproduce, and die according to three very simple rules. When people first began playing with the game, they quickly discovered that it had a number of emergent properties even though it had such simple rules. Certain patterns of cells could move across the grid ("gliders"), and some ("glider guns") could even generate an endless stream of new cells.

最有名的（尽管不是第一个）人造生命游戏叫做《生命》，由数学家约翰·康威创造。它描述的是细胞自动机，一种“生活”在网格上的模拟生命。它们所做的一切就是按照三个非常简单的规则生存、繁殖和死亡。当人们第一次开始玩这个游戏时，他们很快发现，尽管游戏规则如此简单，但它却具有许多突发特性。某些图案的细胞可以在网格中移动（“滑行者”），有些细胞（“滑行枪”）甚至可以产生无尽的新细胞流。

Because they're intended for entertainment rather than research, commercial A-life games implement only a subset of what A-life research investigates. There aren't any commercial A-life games about observing thousands of generations of one-celled animals evolving in an environment, for example. Typically, A-life games are about maintaining and growing a manageable population of organisms, each of which is unique.

因为商业人造生命游戏的目的是娱乐而非研究，所以它们只实现了人造生命研究所调查内容的一个子集。例如，没有任何商业人造生命游戏是关于观察成千上万代单细胞动物在环境中进化的。通常，人造生命游戏是关于维持和发展一个可管理的生物种群，每个生物群体都是独一无二的。

Artificial Pets 人造宠物

One subcategory of artificial life game is the artificial pet. Artificial pets are simulated animals that live on your computer, either in an environment of their own or on your desktop. They can be simulations of real animals, as in the Petz series developed by PF.Magic, or fantasy ones like the Tamagotchi, a tiny and very simple computer game built into a keychain.

人造宠物是人造生命游戏的一个子类别。人造宠物是生活在电脑上的仿真动物，它们可以生活在自己的环境中，也可以生活在电脑桌面上。它们可以是真实动物的模拟（如 PF.Magic 开发的 《宠物》 系列），也可以是幻想出来的动物，比如拓麻歌子，一种内置在钥匙链中的非常简单的小型电脑游戏。

Artificial pets are almost always cute. The nature of their gameplay concentrates on training and maintenance, and watching them do endearing things. They seldom reproduce or die, and the player usually wants to interact with only one or two at once. (Games about whole populations of organisms, in which they do reproduce and die, are discussed in the section "Genetic A-Life Games," later in this chapter.)

人造宠物几乎都很可爱。它们的游戏玩法集中于训练和维护，以及看它们做可爱的事情。它们很少繁殖或死亡，玩家通常只想同时与一两只宠物互动。(本章后面的“基因人造生命游戏”部分将讨论有关整个生物群体的游戏，在这些游戏中，生物会繁殖和死亡）。

If the player is going to spend much time looking at an artificial pet, then the pet needs to have quite a lot of AI: a variety of things that stimulate it and behaviors that it exhibits. An artificial pet should have a number of emotions, or moods, that the player can learn by observation and can influence by interacting with it somehow. It also needs to interact meaningfully with others of its own kind: teasing, playing, grooming, fighting, and so on. Above all, it needs to be able to learn, so there must be a way for the player to show it how to do things. The learning process must not be too long (or the player will get frustrated and think his pet is stupid) or too short (or the player will run through everything he can teach it very quickly). (Tamagotchi, being so tiny and inexpensive, are obviously an exception to this principle!)

如果玩家要花很多时间观察人造宠物，那么宠物就需要有大量的人工智能：各种刺激它的事物和它表现出来的行为。人造宠物应该有一些情绪或心情，玩家可以通过观察了解这些情绪或心情，也可以通过与宠物互动来影响这些情绪或心情。它还需要与其他同类进行有意义的互动：逗趣、玩耍、梳理毛发、打斗等等。最重要的是，它必须能够学习，因此必须有一种方法让玩家向它展示如何做事。学习过程不能太长（否则玩家会感到沮丧，认为自己的宠物很愚蠢），也不能太短（否则玩家会很快把能教给它的东西都教完）。(拓麻歌子因为体积小、价格便宜，显然是这一原则的例外！）。

This quality of rich artificial intelligence distinguishes artificial pets from other kinds of A-life, in which individuals have simple rules but the population as a whole develops emergent properties. Artificial pets can have properties that appear only after they have been around for a while, but typically these are preprogrammed and are not truly emergent.

这种丰富的人工智能特性使人造宠物有别于其他类型的人造生命，后者的个体具有简单的规则，但群体作为一个整体会发展出突发特性。人造宠物可能具有一些只有在存在一段时间后才会出现的特性，但通常这些特性都是预先编程好的，并不是真正的突发特性。

Because an artificial pet doesn't have much of a challenge or a victory condition (apart from training it to do something specific), it's a software toy rather than a game. ("Software toy" is a term coined by Will Wright, the original designer of Sim City, for entertainment software that you just play around with, without trying to defeat an opponent or achieve victory.) The entertainment of an artificial pet comes from watching it do things and interacting with it. In Petz, shown in Figure 16.1, you can see three cats, all of which are interacting with things in their environments. One is simply sitting on a rug, but it knows that it is a rug and has chosen to sit on it rather than somewhere else. An artificial pet has a large number of behaviors that the player sees repeatedly, and others that occur more rarely. Part of balancing it—making sure that the player doesn't get bored with it—is making sure that these rare behaviors occur often enough that the player does get to see them but doesn't take them for granted.

因为人造宠物没有太多的挑战或胜利条件（除了训练它做一些特定的事情），所以它只是一个软件玩具，而不是游戏。(“软件玩具”是由《模拟城市》的原设计者威尔·赖特创造的一个术语，指的是那些你只是随便玩玩，而不试图打败对手或取得胜利的娱乐软件）。人造宠物的娱乐性来自于观察它的行为和与它的互动。在图 16.1 所示的 《宠物》 中，你可以看到三只猫，它们都在与周围的事物互动。其中一只猫只是坐在一块地毯上，但它知道这是一块地毯，并选择坐在上面而不是其他地方。人造宠物有大量玩家会反复看到的行为，而其他行为则很少出现。为了确保玩家不会对它感到厌倦，平衡它的部分工作就是确保这些罕见行为出现的频率足以让玩家看到它们，但又不会认为它们是理所当然的。

Figure 16.1. Petz from PF.Magic. 图 16.1. PF.Magic 的 《宠物》。

The Sims 模拟人生

The Sims is almost the only game of its kind. There was one game a bit like it, Little Computer People, many years ago on the Commodore 64, but it wasn't nearly as rich as The Sims. If The Sims can be said to belong to a class, it is a virtual dollhouse: It simulates a family in a suburban home. You can make the people move around, cause them to complete certain tasks, tell them when to go to bed and when to get up, and so on. You can indirectly influence their relationships by making them talk to each other—the big difference is that you can't decide what they say, and you can't guarantee that they will like each other. Each simulated person has her own personality, likes, and dislikes.

《模拟人生》几乎它类型下的唯一一款游戏。多年前在 Commodore 64 上曾出现过一款与之有点类似的游戏，即《小小电脑人》，但其内容远不及《模拟人生》丰富。如果说《模拟人生》属于一个类别，那它就是一个虚拟娃娃屋：它模拟了一个家庭在郊区的住所。你可以让这些人四处走动，让他们完成某些任务，告诉他们什么时候睡觉，什么时候起床，等等。你可以让他们相互交谈，从而间接影响他们之间的关系——最大的区别在于，你不能决定他们说什么，也不能保证他们会喜欢对方。每个模拟人都有自己的个性、喜好和厌恶。

One of the best things about The Sims is that there are multiple ways to play with it. It's sort of a cross between an artificial pet and a construction and management simulation. You need money to build additions to the house and to buy new furniture for it. The family has to earn that money by at least one member having a job. You can spend quite a lot of time in the buying-and-building mode, if you can afford it, which has nothing at all to do with artificial life. Some players, the particularly goal-oriented ones, really concentrate on this aspect, working hard to construct a mansion and fill it with luxuries. Others are more interested in the interactions among the people. In Figure 8.11 in Chapter 8, "The Internal Economy of Games and Game Balancing," you can see two sims dancing in their kitchen. This might have been spontaneous behavior, but it was more likely in response to an instruction given by the player.

《模拟人生》最棒的一点就是有多种玩法。它是一种介于人造宠物和建筑及管理模拟游戏之间的游戏。你需要钱来为房子添砖加瓦和购买新家具。家里至少要有一名成员工作才能赚到钱。如果你能负担得起，你可以在“购买和建造”模式中花费大量时间，这与人造生命完全无关。有些玩家，特别是目标明确的玩家，会把精力集中在这方面，努力建造一座豪宅，让里面充满奢侈品。而其他人则对人与人之间的互动更感兴趣。在第八章“游戏的内部经济和游戏平衡”中的图 8.11 中，你可以看到两个模拟人在厨房里跳舞。这可能是自发行为，但更有可能是对玩家指令的回应。

Needs 需求

The main challenge of The Sims is to manage this group of slightly incompetent people and to improve their career prospects by teaching them things that will help them get better jobs. Each person, called a "sim," has eight needs that she must meet on an ongoing basis: hunger, comfort, hygiene, bladder, energy level, fun, social interaction, and room (which, in effect, means uncrowded, attractive surroundings). These needs drive her behavior. When a sim feels a need, she takes actions to meet it somehow. If the need goes unmet for too long, the sim becomes unhappy and can even die (in the case of hunger). Each sim always has a queue of things to do to meet her current needs, unless they're all met at the moment. The player can also give the sim orders, in effect inserting a behavior at the front of the queue. This need-based AI is at the heart of most simple behavior simulations, whether of people or animals; if implemented properly, it works very well.

《模拟人生》的主要挑战在于如何管理这群略显无能的人，并通过教导他们一些事情来改善他们的职业前景，帮助他们找到更好的工作。每个被称为“模拟人”的人都有八种必须不断满足的需求：饥饿、舒适、卫生、膀胱、能量水平、乐趣、社交互动和空间（实际上就是指不拥挤、有吸引力的环境）。这些需求驱动着模拟人的行为。当模拟人感觉到某种需求时，她就会采取行动来满足这种需求。如果需求长期得不到满足，模拟人就会变得不快乐，甚至会死亡（在饥饿的情况下）。每个模拟人都有一连串的事情要做，以满足她当前的需求，除非这些需求目前都得到了满足。玩家还可以向模拟人下达命令，实际上就是在队列的前面插入一个行为。这种基于需求的人工智能是大多数简单行为模拟（无论是人还是动物）的核心；如果实施得当，效果会非常好。

Skills 技能

Unlike with an artificial pet, it isn't necessary to teach the sims by repeatedly showing them something. Instead, the trick is finding the time for them to improve their skills, which they can do by a variety of means. The sims have six skills: cooking, repair, charisma, body (physical strength and dexterity), logic, and creativity. These skills influence the jobs that they can take and, consequently, the amount of money that they can earn. Unfortunately, the sims are so busy and do everything so slowly that often they don't get enough leisure time to study or work out. The game is very much an exercise in time management.

与人造宠物不同，没有必要通过反复向模拟人展示某些东西来教导他们。相反，关键是要抽出时间来提高它们的技能，它们可以通过各种方法来做到这一点。模拟人有六种技能：烹饪、修理、魅力、身体（体力和灵活性）、逻辑和创造力。这些技能会影响他们可以从事的工作，进而影响他们可以赚到的钱。不幸的是，模拟人太忙了，做任何事情都很慢，常常没有足够的闲暇时间学习或锻炼。这款游戏在很大程度上就是时间管理的练习。

Personalities 个性

Unlike almost every other computer game, The Sims tries to simulate relationships among individual people. These relationships are not terribly sophisticated, but they do include such concepts as jealousy, anger, and love. Each sim's personality is defined by five key variables: neat, outgoing, active, playful, and nice. These determine how they react to one another and whether they're likely to get along. The Sims also encourages the player to develop friendships among his fellow sims because career advancement is conditional upon having a certain number of friends.

与几乎所有其他电脑游戏不同，《模拟人生》试图模拟人与人之间的关系。这些关系并不复杂，但确实包括嫉妒、愤怒和爱等概念。每个模拟人的个性都由五个关键变量定义：整洁、外向、活跃、爱玩和友善。这些变量决定了他们彼此间的反应，以及他们是否可能和睦相处。《模拟人生》还鼓励玩家与其他模拟人建立友谊，因为拥有一定数量的朋友是职业发展的条件。

The Success of The Sims 《模拟人生》的成功

The Sims has been a huge success, which we believe it owes to two things. First, it enables the player to exercise his creativity in a familiar sphere: the ordinary suburban home. In addition to building and furnishing a house, players can design their own "skins" for the sims, creating people who look like themselves (or anyone else). The game actually offers more creative play than Sim City or Sim Tower, for example, just because there are more different kinds of things to do. Players can also take photographs of their houses and store them in albums, along with written commentary that they supply, effectively creating illustrated stories. And they can share all these things over the Internet. The game offers more scope for personal creativity on the part of the player than just about any other on the market.

《模拟人生》获得了巨大成功，我们认为这归功于两点。首先，它让玩家能够在一个熟悉的领域发挥自己的创造力：普通的郊区住宅。除了建造和布置房屋，玩家还可以为模拟人设计自己的“皮肤”，创造与自己（或其他人）相似的人。与《模拟城市》或《模拟大厦》等游戏相比，这款游戏实际上提供了更多的创意玩法，因为有更多不同的事情可以做。玩家还可以为自己的房子拍照，并将其存储在相册中，同时附上自己提供的文字评论，从而有效地创作出图文并茂的故事。他们还可以通过互联网分享所有这些内容。与市场上的其他游戏相比，这款游戏为玩家提供了更多的个人创造空间。

The second reason for the success of The Sims is that it is about human relationships. The player's immediate objective in playing The Sims is to make sure his sims' physical needs are met, but his secondary, longer-term objective is to meet the sims' mental or emotional needs: fun, social interaction, and quality living space. The need for social interaction is considerably more complex because it involves building relationships with other people rather than simply interacting with objects, and those social interactions can produce emergent properties. Players enjoy watching and influencing these interactions. In fact, the player's imagination plays a very large role in the game, just as it does in playing with dolls. The sims are not terribly complex simulations, but players give them names and personalities and ascribe many more characteristics to them than they actually possess. This quality of imaginative play is actually another form of creativity that contributes strongly to its success, especially among female players.

《模拟人生》成功的第二个原因是它与人际关系有关。玩家玩《模拟人生》的直接目标是确保模拟人的生理需求得到满足，而次要的、长期的目标则是满足模拟人的心理或情感需求：乐趣、社交互动和高质量的生活空间。社交互动的需求要复杂得多，因为它涉及到与其他人建立关系，而不仅仅是与物品互动，而且这些社交互动可以产生新的属性。玩家喜欢观察和影响这些互动。事实上，玩家的想象力在游戏中起着非常重要的作用，就像玩洋娃娃一样。模拟人并不是非常复杂的模拟物，但玩家会给它们起名字、赋予个性，并赋予它们比实际拥有的更多的特征。这种充满想象力的游戏实际上是另一种形式的创造力，这也是它取得成功的重要原因，尤其是在女性玩家中。

Genetic A-Life Games 基因人造生命游戏

Some A-life games are about managing a population of creatures over time. Rather than concentrating so much on individuals, the object of the game is to achieve certain things with the population as a whole. By far, the most successful of these is the Creatures series from Creature Labs (formerly Cyberlife). In Creatures, you manage a small group of beings called Norns. Norns have a certain amount of AI, and they can be taught things through repetition, like the animals in Petz. Norns also have distinct genetic characteristics. Unlike either the people in The Sims or the animals in Petz, they have a limited life span, so the game is about breeding generation after generation of Norns and exploring and manipulating their world indirectly through them.

有些人造生命游戏是关于长期管理生物种群的。游戏的目标不是集中在个体上，而是通过整个群体实现某些目标。迄今为止，这类游戏中最成功的当属 Creature Labs（前身为 Cyberlife）的 《生物》 系列。在《生物》中，你要管理一小群名为“诺恩”的生物。诺恩具有一定的人工智能，它们可以像《宠物》中的动物一样，通过重复学习来掌握知识。诺恩还具有明显的遗传特征。与《模拟人生》中的人或《宠物》中的动物不同，它们的寿命有限，因此游戏的目的就是培育出一代又一代的诺恩，并通过它们间接地探索和操纵它们的世界。

Designing a Genome 设计基因组

To create a game in which you crossbreed creatures and get new, unique individuals, you need to devise a genome: a set of descriptors (genes) that define all the important characteristics of the creature. These characteristics should include everything about the creature that can vary from individual to individual: shape, size, coloration, and so on. You can leave out details that are common to all creatures. For example, if all your creatures will have two eyes and that will never change, there's no need to store a gene called Number of Eyes. Genes can have any number of possible values, from two (striped or spotted?) to floating-point numbers (height of creature in meters).

要制作一款能让生物杂交并获得新的独特个体的游戏，你需要设计一个基因组：一组定义生物所有重要特征的描述符（基因）。这些特征应包括生物个体间可能存在差异的所有方面：形状、大小、颜色等。你可以省略所有生物共有的细节。例如，如果所有生物都有两只眼睛，而且永远不会改变，那么就没有必要存储名为“眼睛数量”的基因。基因可以有任意数量的可能值，从两个（条纹或斑点？）到浮点数（生物的高度，以米为单位）。

When two individuals reproduce, they mix their genes somehow, and you will need to define how this is done. For a quantitative value such as height, the initial temptation is to average them. Don't do this. Within a very few generations, all your creatures will be the same height, or very nearly. In fact, human genetics works differently. We have not one value for each characteristic, but two, one inherited from the mother and one from the father. These two values are called alleles. If a person's two alleles for the same trait don't match, one of them dominates according to a rule (the allele for brown eyes dominates the allele for blue, so people with one brown allele and one blue allele will have brown eyes). When a human reproduces, one of the two alleles is chosen at random to go on to the next generation. This means that it's possible for a brown-eyed person to still pass on the allele for blue eyes. Otherwise, the allele for blue eyes would disappear from the population almost immediately.

当两个个体繁衍后代时，它们会以某种方式混合基因，你需要定义如何做到这一点。对于身高这样的定量值，最初的诱惑是将它们平均。不要这样做。在几代人的时间内，你的所有生物都会身高相同，或者非常接近。事实上，人类遗传学的工作原理与此不同。我们的每个特征不是一个值，而是两个值，一个是从母亲那里遗传来的，一个是从父亲那里遗传来的。这两个值被称为等位基因。如果一个人同一特征的两个等位基因不匹配，其中一个等位基因就会根据规则占优势（例如，棕色眼睛的等位基因比蓝色基因占主导地位，所以有一个棕色等位基因和一个蓝色等位基因的人会有棕色眼睛）。当人类繁衍后代时，两个等位基因中的一个会被随机选中，传给下一代。这就意味着，棕色眼睛的人仍有可能遗传蓝色眼睛的等位基因。否则，蓝色眼睛等位基因几乎会立即从人群中消失。

As for quantitative values such as weight, in humans, they tend to be controlled by multiple genes and influenced by environmental factors as well. You can define these mechanisms any way you like; you certainly don't have to do it the way humans do. As research goes on, geneticists are finding that mechanisms for genetic recombination and expression are quite complex and vary a lot even within a single species.

至于体重等定量值，在人类中，它们往往受多种基因控制，同时也受环境因素的影响。你可以用任何方式来定义这些机制，当然不必按照人类的方式来定义。随着研究的深入，遗传学家们发现基因重组和表达的机制相当复杂，即使在一个物种内部也有很大差异。

Mutation 突变

Mutation is a change to a gene that occurs as a result of some environmental factor. Radiation is well known as being mutagenic; so are some chemicals. Mutation has the benefit that it introduces random new values into the gene pool. Bear in mind that mutation doesn't normally affect the individual whose genes are mutated; it affects only his offspring. Of course, some of these changes can be detrimental or even lethal to the individual that inherits them. For the purposes of your game, you probably don't want to allow lethal mutations—those that produce miscarriages or stillborn offspring. If your creatures' gestation period is long, it wastes time and doesn't add anything of value to the gene pool.

突变是由于某些环境因素导致基因发生变化。众所周知，辐射具有诱变性；某些化学物质也具有诱变性。突变的好处是可以在基因库中引入随机的新值。要知道，基因突变通常不会影响基因变异的个体，只会影响其后代。当然，有些变化可能会对继承这些变化的个体有害，甚至致命。在游戏中，你可能不希望出现致命的变异——那些会导致流产或死胎的变异。如果你的生物妊娠期很长，就会浪费时间，而且不会给基因库增加任何价值。

Life Span, Maturity, and Natural Selection 寿命、成熟度和自然选择

Each of your creatures needs a natural life span, or your population will explode. (In Creatures, the life span of a Norn is about 30 real-time minutes.) If you want your population to evolve through natural selection—that is, to become better adapted to its environment—then your creatures also need a period of immaturity, when they are not fertile, followed by a period of maturity, when they are. Natural selection works only if it kills off creatures with maladaptive genes before they are old enough to reproduce. If creatures could reproduce immediately after they were born, maladaptive genes would never leave the gene pool. For example, suppose that a creature's genes are such that it is unable to recognize food. This creature should die of starvation very soon. Whatever genetic values determine its food-recognition ability are clearly maladaptive. However, if it can reproduce immediately, those genes will be passed on. For natural selection to take place, you will have to design environmental hazards or other mechanisms (such as starvation) that tend to kill off young individuals with poor genes before they get the chance to pass on those genes.

你的每种生物都需要有一个自然寿命，否则你的种群就会爆炸（在《生物》中，诺恩的寿命大约为现实世界的 30 分钟）。如果你想让你的生物种群通过自然选择进化，也就是更好地适应环境，那么你的生物也需要一个不成熟期，也就是没有生育能力的时期，然后是成熟期，也就是有生育能力的时期。自然选择只有在具有不适应性基因的生物长大到足以繁衍后代之前将其杀死，才能发挥作用。如果生物在出生后就能立即繁殖，那么不适应的基因就永远不会离开基因库。例如，假设某种生物的基因导致它无法识别食物。这种生物应该很快就会饿死。决定它识别食物能力的基因值显然是不适应的。但是，如果它能立即繁殖，这些基因就会遗传下去。要进行自然选择，就必须设计环境危害或其他机制（如饥饿），在基因较差的年轻个体有机会传递这些基因之前，将它们杀死。

(One of the reasons there are so many diseases associated with aging in humans is that those diseases catch you only after you have had the chance to reproduce. There's no natural selection against genes for arthritis and osteoporosis because those are diseases that occur later in life, after people have already had children.)

(人类有如此多与衰老有关的疾病，原因之一就是这些疾病只有在人类有机会生育后才会发病。并不存在针对关节炎和骨质疏松症基因的自然选择，因为这些疾病都是在晚年，在人们已经有了孩子之后才发生的）。

If there's one thing we know about evolution, it's that it's very slow—at least, if it works purely through random mutation and natural selection (evidence is growing to suggest that it's more complex than that). The life span of the Norns in Creatures is really too long for the player to breed hundreds of generations. If you want evolution to be a part of your game, you'll need to find ways of making it work non-randomly or keep the life span of your creatures very short. Of course, the shorter the lifespan is, the less chance a given creature has to exhibit an interesting behavior, so there's a balance to be struck.

如果说我们对进化有什么认识的话，那就是它非常缓慢——至少，如果它纯粹是通过随机变异和自然选择来实现的话（越来越多的证据表明，进化比随机变异和自然选择更复杂）。《生物》中诺恩的寿命实在是太长了，玩家不可能培育出数百代的诺恩。如果你想让进化成为游戏的一部分，就必须想办法让它非随机地发挥作用，或者让生物的寿命非常短。当然，生命周期越短，特定生物表现出有趣行为的机会就越少，因此需要取得平衡。

Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics 后天特征的遗传

Long ago, in the morning of the world, the first zebra was pure white. But one day, there was a great fire amid the grasses of the savanna. The zebra stood deep in a pond for safety. When she came out, she was very wet. And as she passed through the burned grasses and reeds on the shore of the pond, the cinders left black stripes all along her sides. And from that day to this, all zebras have had black stripes along their sides.\

很久以前，在世界的早晨，第一匹斑马是纯白色的。但是有一天，草原上的草丛中发生了一场大火。为了安全起见，斑马站在池塘深处。当它出来的时候，全身都湿透了。当它穿过池塘边被烧焦的草丛和芦苇时，灰烬在它的两侧留下了黑色的条纹。从那天起，所有斑马的体侧都有了黑色条纹。

Inheritance of acquired characteristics is a fancy term for this old children's-story idea. People used to think it was how evolution worked—if giraffes stretched up their necks to get food, the next generation of giraffes would have slightly longer necks, and so on. In fact, the opposite is true: Giraffes with short necks tend to starve without reproducing, leaving only giraffes with long necks in the gene pool. The outcome is the same, but the mechanism is entirely different. Stretching your neck doesn't change your genes.

后天特征的遗传是这个古老的儿童故事观点的一个华丽术语。人们曾经认为这是进化的原理——如果长颈鹿伸长脖子去觅食，那么下一代长颈鹿的脖子就会稍长，以此类推。事实上，情况恰恰相反：脖子短的长颈鹿往往不会繁衍后代就会饿死，基因库中只剩下脖子长的长颈鹿。结果是一样的，但机制却完全不同。伸长脖子并不会改变你的基因。

However, you're designing a computer game. There's no reason you can't include inheritance of acquired characteristics if you want to. If the player pours blue ink over one of his creatures, that could change the creature's genes to produce blue offspring. In fact, this provides a convenient way for the player to do his own genetic engineering. Instead of fiddling with the creature's genes in a rather artificial user interface, he can fiddle with the creature directly to change its genes.

然而，你正在设计一款电脑游戏。如果你想的话，没有理由不把后天特征的遗传包括在内。如果玩家将蓝色墨水倒在他的一个生物身上，就可以改变该生物的基因，使其产生蓝色后代。事实上，这为玩家进行自己的基因工程提供了便利。与其在一个相当人工化的用户界面上摆弄生物的基因，玩家可以直接摆弄生物来改变它的基因。

Learned Behavior 习得行为

Notice that learned information is also an acquired characteristic. Humans are not born knowing arithmetic; they have to be taught it. When you teach a human arithmetic, unfortunately, that doesn't cause her children to be born knowing it because the learning goes into her brain, not into her genes. In a game, however, there's a good reason for storing learned behavior in genes as well. If your creatures need to learn something important to survive, it's unlikely that the player will want to teach each individual one by one. It would be better for the player to teach one individual and then for that learning to be expressed in the genes of its offspring so that the player never has to teach them again.

请注意，学习到的信息也是一种后天习得的特征。人类并不是生来就会算术的，他们必须通过学习才能掌握算术。不幸的是，当你教一个人算术时，并不会让她的孩子生下来就会算术，因为学习是在她的大脑里进行的，而不是在她的基因里。不过，在游戏中，把学到的行为储存在基因中也是有道理的。如果你的生物需要学习一些重要的生存知识，那么玩家不太可能想一个一个地教他们。最好的办法是玩家先教一个个体，然后将学到的知识表达在其后代的基因中，这样玩家就不用再教它们了。

Alternatively, the creatures could store the information in their brains and then begin to teach each other. Of course, you could allow the content of the teaching to change over time, producing behaviors slightly different from what the player originally intended. If certain teachings produce adaptive behavior, they themselves could be selected for, just as genes are. (The notion that ideas behave the way genes do is called memetics and is a highly controversial topic in academic circles. We're talking about computer games, however, and we can do whatever we like.)

或者，生物可以将信息储存在大脑中，然后开始互相教授。当然，你也可以允许教学内容随着时间的推移而改变，从而产生与玩家最初意图略有不同的行为。如果某些教学内容能产生适应性行为，那么它们本身就会被选择，就像基因一样。(观念的行为方式与基因的行为方式相同的观点被称为记忆学，在学术界是一个极具争议的话题。不过，我们现在讨论的是电脑游戏，我们可以为所欲为）。

How Many Sexes? 有几种性别？

Sexual reproduction has the advantage over asexual reproduction in that it mixes up the genes and creates unique new individuals, which might be better adapted to their environment. You don't have to restrict your number of sexes to two, but it is the most efficient mechanism. Two is a convenient number of sexes because it has the maximum probability that two individuals of opposite sexes will find each other when roaming around their habitat.

有性生殖比无性生殖更有优势，因为有性生殖可以混合基因，创造出独特的新个体，从而更好地适应环境。你不必把性别数量限制在两个，但这是最有效的机制。两种性别是很方便的，因为它有最大的概率让两个不同性别的个体在它们的栖息地漫游时会找到彼此。

Here's an example. Let's assume that you have equal numbers of each sex in the population, and it takes a certain amount of time for a given individual to find another one and determine whether it is a member of the opposite sex. In a two-sex species, there's a 50-50 chance that any other individual is of the opposite sex; that's not bad odds. But if three sexes are required for reproduction, it is harder for all three to find each other. A given individual would need to find two others, which takes longer, and the odds aren't as good, either. Suppose that I'm of sex A, and I need to find two other creatures of sexes B and C, respectively. When I find the first one, the chance is one third that it is also of sex A (no use to me) and two thirds that it is of sex B or C, either of which will do for now. Let's suppose that it's of sex B. Now the two of us have to go hunt for another creature of sex C. The chance of any given creature being of sex C is only one third. So, the total probability that I'll find members of the sexes I need when I bump into two random individuals is only two ninths (2/3 x 1/3) instead of 50%. And of course, it gets worse the more sexes you have.

这里有一个例子。假设种群中男女数量相等，一个个体需要一定的时间才能找到另一个个体并确定其是否为异性。在双性物种中，任何其他个体都有 50-50 的几率是异性；这个几率还不错。但是，如果繁殖需要三种性别，那么这三种性别就很难找到对方。一个个体需要找到另外两个个体，这需要更长的时间，几率也没有那么高。假设我的性别是 A，我需要分别找到另外两个性别为 B 和 C 的生物。当我找到第一个生物时，三分之一的几率它也是性别 A（对我没用），三分之二的几率它是性别 B 或 C，这两种情况都可以。假设是性别 B。现在我们两个必须去寻找另一个性别为 C 的生物。因此，当我遇到两个随机个体时，我找到我需要的性别成员的总概率只有九分之二（2/3 x 1/3），而不是 50%。当然，性别越多，情况越糟糕。

You don't have to stick to that rule of having equal numbers of each sex, however. Beehives contain one fertile female (the queen), hundreds of infertile females (the workers), and a few fertile males (the drones). The sex of creatures need not be determined by their genes, either. The sex of many reptiles is determined by the temperatures of their eggs during gestation. Eggs at the top of the pile, nearer the sun, develop into females; the cooler ones at the bottom develop into males.

不过，你不必拘泥于男女数量相等的规则。蜂箱里有一只能生育的雌蜂（蜂王）、数百只不能生育的雌蜂（工蜂）和几只能生育的雄蜂（雄蜂）。生物的性别也不一定由基因决定。许多爬行动物的性别是由其妊娠期卵的温度决定的。位于卵堆顶端、靠近阳光的卵发育成雌性，而位于卵堆底部、温度较低的卵则发育成雄性。

What Does the Player Do? 玩家做什么？

A genetic A-life game might not seem to have much for the player to do: Wind it up and watch it go. However, there is actually a fair number of things she might do. For example, she can create completely new individuals and add them to the population to observe how their genes influence the population. She can add and remove environmental hazards that would tend to weed out certain genes. She can play with the rate and nature of mutation by adding or modifying mutagenic objects or areas of the environment. She can also mate particular individuals to select for particular characteristics (with animals, this is considered useful and is called breeding; with people, it is considered evil and is called eugenics).

基因人造生命游戏似乎没有太多玩家可做的事情：给它上发条，看着它走。然而，玩家实际上可以做很多事情。例如，她可以创造全新的个体，并将其添加到种群中，观察它们的基因如何影响种群。她可以添加或移除会淘汰某些基因的环境危害。她可以通过添加或改变环境中的致突变物体或区域来改变突变的速度和性质。她还可以让特定的个体交配，以选择特定的特征（对于动物，这被认为是有益的，被称为育种；对于人，这被认为是邪恶的，被称为优生学）。

Puzzle Games 益智游戏

Many single-player computer games contain puzzles. In action games, you often have to figure out the boss opponent's weakness. Adventure games are full of puzzles, frequently about obtaining inaccessible objects or getting information from other people. Even first-person shooters have the occasional puzzle, figuring out how to get past locked doors and other obstacles. Puzzle design is an essential element of game design, and it's harder than it sounds.

许多单人电脑游戏都包含谜题。在动作游戏中，你经常需要找出头目敌人的弱点。冒险游戏中充满了谜题，经常是为了获得无法接近的物品或从其他人那里获取信息。即使是第一人称射击游戏也会偶尔出现谜题，比如如何穿过上锁的门和其他障碍。谜题设计是游戏设计的一个基本要素，它比听起来更难。

Puzzle games are games that are primarily about puzzle solving, sometimes without incorporating the puzzles into a story line or larger goal. That doesn't mean that they're a random collection, however. Puzzle games are usually variations on a single theme. To be a commercial success, a puzzle game needs to be challenging (but not too hard), visually attractive, and, above all, enjoyable to play with. It also needs to be fresh and large enough to justify spending the money on. Although solitaire card games such as FreeCell belong in the class of puzzle games, unless you sell a lot of them together as a collection, people are unlikely to want to pay for them.

益智游戏是以解谜为主要内容的游戏，有时并没有将谜题融入故事线或更大的目标中。但这并不意味着它们是随机的集合。益智游戏通常是单一主题的变体。要想在商业上取得成功，益智游戏必须具有挑战性（但又不能太难）、视觉效果吸引人，最重要的是玩起来要愉快。此外，它还需要有足够的新鲜感和足够大的规模，以证明花钱购买是值得的。尽管像《空当接龙》 这样的纸牌接龙游戏也属于益智游戏的范畴，但除非你把大量的纸牌游戏作为一个系列合集出售，否则人们不太可能愿意花钱购买。

Scott Kim's Eight Steps 斯科特·金的八个步骤

Scott Kim is a designer who creates puzzles for the print media, web sites, and computer games. He has worked in the field for many years and has identified eight steps in puzzle game design. The first four steps comprise the process of specifying the rules, while the last four comprise the process of building the puzzles and the game itself:

斯科特·金是一位为印刷媒体、网站和电脑游戏设计谜题的设计师。他在这一领域工作多年，总结出了解谜游戏设计的八个步骤。前四个步骤包括指定规则的过程，后四个步骤包括制作谜题和游戏本身的过程：

1. Find inspiration. This can come from a variety of sources, including other games. Tetris, for example, was inspired by a non-computer game called Pentominoes. You can be inspired by a piece of art (the drawings of M.C. Escher have a very puzzle-like feel), a story, or some particular subject matter. Another source of inspiration is a play dynamic of some kind: flipping switches, turning knobs, sliding objects around, or picking them up and putting them down. Or, there are more complex dynamics among objects: balancing, reflection, connection, and transmission. 寻找灵感。灵感的来源有很多，包括其他游戏。例如，俄罗斯方块的灵感就来自一款名为“五子棋”的非电脑游戏。你也可以从一件艺术作品（埃舍尔的画作就很有拼图游戏的感觉）、一个故事或某些特定主题中获得灵感。灵感的另一个来源是某种游戏动态：翻动开关、转动旋钮、滑动物体，或拿起和放下物体。或者是物体之间更复杂的动态：平衡、反射、连接和传递。

2. Simplify. Suppose you have an idea for a puzzle: efficiently parking vehicles of different sizes in a crowded parking lot so that when someone asks you to retrieve their car, you have to move as few other cars as possible. Part of making this task fun is simplifying it to its essentials. First, identify the essential tricky core skill (in this case, space planning on the fly) and concentrate on that. Second, eliminate any irrelevant details. Don't make your player worry about crashing the cars, for example. Third, make the pieces uniform. Instead of having cars with infinitely variable shapes and sizes, it's better to have several standard types that conform to a square grid. Finally, simplify the controls. Figure out what the essential moves are, and devise controls that implement them with a minimum of fiddling. 简化。假设你有一个谜题创意：在拥挤的停车场有效地停放不同大小的车辆，这样当有人要求你取车时，你必须尽可能少地移动其他车辆。要让这项任务变得有趣，就必须将其简化到最基本的程度。首先，找出最基本、最棘手的核心技能（在本例中，就是快速规划空间），并将精力集中于此。其次，消除任何无关的细节。例如，不要让玩家担心撞车。第三，使部件统一。与其让汽车的形状和大小无限变化，不如让它们按照正方形网格排列成几种标准类型。最后，简化控制。弄清基本动作是什么，然后设计出只需少量操作就能实现这些动作的控件。

3. Create a construction set. The only way to be sure that a puzzle concept works is to play it, but obviously you don't want to code up the whole game before you know whether it's fun. You can build a paper prototype or a simple version in something like Macromedia Flash to see if it works. The rule designer can play with it to tweak the rules, and later the level designer can use it to build levels. You can also code a construction set into the final game so that players can construct puzzles for each other.\ 创建一个构建套件。要确定一个谜题概念是否可行，唯一的办法就是玩一玩，但显然你不想在知道它是否有趣之前就把整个游戏编码好。你可以用纸做一个原型，或者用 Macromedia Flash 做一个简单的版本，看看是否可行。规则设计者可以用它来调整规则，之后关卡设计者可以用它来构建关卡。你还可以在最终的游戏中加入一个构建套件，这样玩家们就可以互相构造谜题了。

4. Define the rules. This is the key part of puzzle design. Most puzzles are characterized in terms of four things: the board (Is it a grid? A network? Is it irregular? Or is there no board at all?), the pieces (How are they shaped? What pictures are on them? What other attributes do they have? Where do they come from?), the moves (What is allowed and what is not? Are they sequential or simultaneous? What side effects do they have?), and the goal or victory condition (Does it have to be an exact match, or will a partial one do?). 定义规则。这是谜题设计的关键部分。大多数谜题都有四个方面的特征：棋盘（是网格？ 是网络？ 是不规则的？还是根本就没有棋盘？）、部件（形状如何？上面有什么图画？它们还有什么其他属性？它们来自哪里？）、移动（允许什么，不允许什么？它们是按顺序进行还是同时进行？它们有什么副作用？），以及目标或胜利条件（是否必须完全匹配，还是部分匹配也可以？）

5. Construct the puzzles. A puzzle challenges the player to get from a problem to a solution, but, of course, the path isn't simple. Every puzzle requires that the player make choices, some of which lead to dead ends. In an adventure game, each puzzle appears in a larger context (the story) that gives it meaning, and solving it advances the plot somehow. Some puzzle games also offer an overall plot of sorts or won't let you try the next puzzle until you've completed the current one. Good puzzles require insight from the player, that "Aha!" moment that occurs when the player realizes how the puzzle works and how to solve it. But you mustn't require an insight that's too obscure, or it will feel unfair. If you tell the player that he's in a maze, it's unfair for the only solution to be to knock down the walls unless you indicate somehow that this is possible. 构建谜题。谜题挑战玩家从问题到解决方案的过程，当然，这个过程并不简单。每个谜题都要求玩家做出选择，其中有些选择会导致死胡同。在冒险游戏中，每道谜题都会出现在一个更大的背景（故事）中，赋予谜题以意义，而解开谜题则会以某种方式推动情节的发展。有些益智游戏还提供某种整体情节，或者在完成当前谜题之前不让玩家尝试下一个谜题。好的谜题需要玩家的洞察力，当玩家明白谜题的工作原理和解题方法时，就会出现“啊哈！”的那一刻。但是你不能要求玩家提供过于复杂的洞察力，否则会让人感觉不公平。如果你告诉玩家他在一个迷宫里，那么唯一的解决办法就是推倒墙壁，这是不公平的，除非你以某种方式表明这是可能的。

6. Test. Testing tells you several things. It tells you whether the puzzle is too easy or too hard (this can be difficult to predict in advance), and it also tells you whether it's fun in the first place. It helps you find out if there are alternate solutions that you didn't think of, and it helps you discover errors in the rules. And, of course, it lets people try out the user interface. Because puzzle actions tend to be repetitive, it's important that the interface be smooth and not frustrating. 测试。测试能告诉你一些事情。它能告诉你谜题是太容易了还是太难了（这很难提前预测），还能告诉你谜题是否有趣。它还能帮助你发现是否存在你没有想到的其他解决方案，帮助你发现规则中的错误。当然，它还能让人们试用用户界面。因为谜题操作往往是重复性的，所以界面的流畅性和不令人沮丧就显得尤为重要。

7. Devise a sequence. Now it's time to order all your puzzles into a sequence. The most obvious arrangement is a linear or accelerating sequence going from easy to difficult, but in practice, that becomes tiring and discouraging. A better arrangement is a sawtooth shape, which gets difficult for a while, then goes back to an easy puzzle, and so on, over and over. And, of course, you can give the player the freedom to play the puzzles out of order or let her earn it. You also need to think about transitions between puzzles, something that will keep her moving on to the next one. War games and role-playing games often do this with a story line. Or, the player can be working on a metapuzzle in between the regular puzzles, which motivates her to complete the whole game. 设计一个序列 现在是时候将所有谜题排成一个序列了。最明显的排列方式是由易到难的线性或加速序列，但在实际操作中，这种排列方式会让人感到疲惫和气馁。更好的排列方式是锯齿形，一会儿变难，一会儿变简单，如此反复。当然，你也可以让玩家自由选择不按顺序玩谜题，或者让她自己去争取。你还需要考虑谜题之间的过渡，让她继续下一个谜题。战争游戏和角色扮演游戏通常通过故事线来实现这一点。或者，玩家可以在常规谜题之间做一个元谜题，这样可以激励她完成整个游戏。

8. Pay attention to presentation. Finally, of course, there are all the other details of game design: sound, graphical style, animation, user interface elements, story line (if any), and so on. If you're used to designing other kinds of games, it might be tempting to move this to an earlier point in the process, but with puzzle games, the puzzles are 90% of the battle. Get them right first, and the rest won't be nearly as hard. 注意表现形式。最后，当然还有游戏设计的所有其他细节：音效、图形风格、动画、用户界面元素、故事线（如果有的话）等等。如果你习惯于设计其他类型的游戏，可能会想在这个过程中更早地考虑这些，但对于益智游戏来说，谜题是战斗的 90%。先把谜题设计好，剩下的就不会那么难了。

What Computers Bring to Puzzles 计算机给谜题带来了什么

Computers enable us to make a lot of puzzles that would be impossible or very expensive to create in the real world—all the mechanical parts in The Incredible Machine, for example. But even if a puzzle is physically possible, the computer can add a number of useful features to make the gameplay easier and more enjoyable.

计算机使我们能够制作出许多在现实世界中不可能完成或非常昂贵的谜题——例如《不可思议的机器》中的所有机械零件。但是，即使一个谜题在物理上是可行的，计算机也可以添加一些有用的功能，让游戏变得更简单、更有趣。

• **Enable nonphysical or awkward moves.**The computer can let players do things that don't correspond to physical actions in the real world—for example, changing the color of something. You can also let the player control several things at once with just one key, something that would be awkward to do in a physical implementation. **启用非物理或困难的动作。**电脑可以让玩家做一些与现实世界中的物理动作不对应的事情——例如，改变某些东西的颜色。你还可以让玩家只用一个键就能同时控制几件事情，而这在物理实现中是很难做到的。

• Include computation features. You can use the computing power available to automatically generate new puzzles, find solutions to the current puzzle, or generate hints about what the player should do next. **包含计算功能。**你可以利用现有的计算能力自动生成新的谜题，找到当前谜题的解决方案，或者生成关于玩家下一步该做什么的提示。

• Enforce the rules. In a lot of physical puzzles, it's up to the player to enforce the rules on himself. Sometimes players make mistakes and break the rules accidentally. A computer game can make sure that never happens. **执行规则。**在很多物理谜题中，玩家需要自己执行规则。有时玩家会犯错，不小心破坏了规则。电脑游戏可以确保这种情况永远不会发生。

• Undo and record moves. This very useful feature for games involves moving objects around in a sequence, as in Solitaire. **撤销和记录移动。**这项非常有用的功能适用于按顺序移动物体的游戏，如纸牌游戏。

• Structure the experience. The computer allows you to present the experience in a particular order, if necessary, passing automatically from one phase to another, if that's what your game requires. In the real world, the player would be looking at the instructions and saying, "Let's see, what am I supposed to do next?" **安排体验的结构。**如果有必要，电脑允许你按照特定的顺序展示体验，自动从一个阶段过渡到另一个阶段，如果你的游戏需要这样的话。在现实世界中，玩家会看着说明说：“让我想想，接下来我该怎么做？”

• Teach. You can include tutorial modes and step-by-step instructions to help your player get into the game. **教学。**你可以在游戏中加入教程模式和逐步说明，帮助玩家进入游戏。

• Utilize bells and whistles. Obviously, with sound and animation, you can make a puzzle much more aesthetically interesting on the computer than it would be as a physical object. **利用附加功能。**很明显，通过声音和动画，你可以让电脑上的谜题比实物上的谜题更有美感。

• Enable online play. The computer lets players compete against one another, compare solutions, and be part of a puzzle-solving community. **启用在线游戏。**玩家可以在电脑上相互竞争，比较解题方法，并成为解谜社区的一员。

Checking the Victory Condition 检查胜利条件

Bear in mind that players don't always find the solution to a puzzle the same way that you did when you invented it. There might be more than one path to the goal. When your game is checking to see whether the puzzle has been solved, you should test only to see if the player has met the victory condition you gave her, not that she has done it in the way you expected. Otherwise, you've cheated her, and she'll be very frustrated. She's managed to get to the correct solution state, but your game refuses to recognize it.

记住，玩家找到谜题的解决方案并不总是和你当初发明它时的方式相同。达到目标可能不止一条路径。当你的游戏检查谜题是否被解决时，你应该只测试玩家是否达到了你给她的胜利条件，而不是她是否以你预期的方式完成。否则，你就欺骗了她，她会非常沮丧。她已经成功地找到了正确的解决方案，但你的游戏却拒绝承认。

This problem occurred in the game Interstate '76. It wasn't a puzzle game, but one of the levels did contain a puzzle of sorts. The player was driving an armed and armored car around in an area enclosed by a concrete wall, and the victory condition for winning the level stated that (among other things) it was necessary to get out of the enclosed area somehow. The game's designers had put in a hidden ramp, which they wanted players to find and use to drive out of the area. However, players of the game discovered that there was another way to get out. If a player dropped a land mine near the wall and then drove toward it at full speed, the force of the explosion would lift the car high enough to clear the wall, and the car would fly over it and out. Unfortunately, the software didn't test for the solution state given: Is the car outside the wall? Instead, it tested to see if the ramp was being used. If a player got out without using the ramp, it didn't know that the level was finished, even though the victory condition had been met.

这个问题出现在游戏《76 号州际公路》中。这并不是一款益智游戏，但其中一个关卡确实包含了一个谜题。玩家驾驶着一辆武装装甲车在一个被水泥墙围起来的区域内行驶，而关卡的胜利条件是（除其他事项外）必须以某种方式离开这个被围起来的区域。游戏的设计者设置了一个隐藏的斜坡，他们希望玩家找到并利用这个斜坡驶出该区域。然而，游戏的玩家发现，还有另一种方法可以出去。如果玩家在墙壁附近投下一枚地雷，然后全速驶向墙壁，爆炸的威力就会将汽车掀起足够高的高度，使汽车越过墙壁飞出去。遗憾的是，软件并没有测试给定的解决方案状态：汽车是否在墙外？而是测试是否使用了斜坡。如果玩家没有使用斜坡就冲了出去，那么即使胜利条件已经满足，它也不知道关卡已经完成。

Of course, sometimes games contain bugs that allow a player to cheat in some way and reach a solution by a means that's completely outside the rules. In Interstate '76, however, the trick with the land mine wasn't a bug; it was just an innovative solution that the designers didn't consider. When the software is checking the victory condition, be sure it's checking the solution state that you told the player to achieve, not the way in which he achieved it.

当然，有时游戏中也会出现一些漏洞，让玩家可以通过某种方式作弊，以完全不符合规则的方法来解决问题。然而，在《76 号州际公路》中，地雷的技巧并不是一个错误，它只是一个设计者没有考虑到的创新解决方案。当软件检查胜利条件时，一定要确保它检查的是你让玩家实现的解法状态，而不是他实现解法的方式。

Case Study: The Incredible Machine

The Incredible Machine is an excellent example of a puzzle game that is imaginative and clever and that has sold really well. In fact, it's not just a game, but a whole game franchise, with five editions so far. The current version is called Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions, and it's published by Sierra Entertainment (formerly Sierra On-Line).

《不可思议的机器》是益智游戏的一个极佳范例，它富有想象力和智慧，销量非常好。事实上，它不仅仅是一款游戏，而是一个完整的游戏系列，迄今已有五个版本。目前的版本名为《不可思议机器的回归：新奇装置》，该游戏由 Sierra Entertainment（前身为 Sierra On-Line）发行。

The game consists of a series of puzzles, each of which involves building a Rube Goldberg–like machine to accomplish a certain task. Each machine is constructed in a two-dimensional space upon which a variety of mechanical devices can be placed. (Some of these devices are actually animals, which can be frightened by noises or lured by food.) A few objects are already in position at the beginning of the puzzle, and the victory condition states what the player is trying to accomplish (for example, pop the balloon). The player is given a limited number of additional devices to place in the area. The object is to place them and hook them up in such a way that when the machine is set in motion, the goal is achieved. Playing the game consists of adding elements to the machine, trying them out, adjusting them, trying again, and so on. Figure 16.2 shows one of the scenarios in The Incredible Machine. The goal is given at the left. Available parts are in the area beneath the main workspace.

游戏由一系列谜题组成，每个谜题都涉及建造一个类似鲁布·戈德堡的机器来完成某项任务。每台机器都建在一个二维空间里，上面可以放置各种机械装置。(其中一些装置实际上是动物，它们可以被噪音吓到或被食物引诱）。谜题开始时，一些物体已经就位，胜利条件说明了玩家要完成的任务（例如，戳破气球）。玩家被给予有限数量的额外装置来放置在区域内。游戏的目的是放置这些装置并将它们连接起来，当机器开始运转时，目标就达到了。玩游戏的过程包括在机器上添加元素、尝试、调整、再尝试，等等。图 16.2 显示了《不可思议的机器》中的一个场景。任务目标位于左侧。可用部件位于主工作区下方的区域。 Figure 16.2. The Incredible Machine. 图 16.2. 《不可思议的机器》。

Scott Kim has identified three key design decisions that he feels have made The Incredible Machine the prototypical construction puzzle game.

斯科特·金认为，《不可思议的机器》之所以能成为典型的建筑解谜游戏，有三个关键的设计决定。

1. Allow the player to build things. This makes The Incredible Machine a construction game and differentiates it from, say, Tetris (an action puzzle game) or Marble Drop (a logic game in which you decide where and when to drop marbles into a mechanism). The player feels as if he is exercising his creativity. 允许玩家建造东西。这使《不可思议的机器》成为一款建筑游戏，并使其有别于《俄罗斯方块》（一款动作益智游戏）或《弹珠掉落》（一款逻辑游戏，由玩家决定何时何地将弹珠投掷到一个机关中）。玩家感觉自己在发挥创造力。

2. Include no real-time decision making. Constructing the machine and running it take place in separate modes. The player can take as long as he wants to think about what he's doing. This is in contrast with Lemmings, which is also an excellent game but requires the player to solve the puzzle on the fly. Often if the player didn't get it figured out in time, he had to start over. 不包括实时决策。建造机器和运行机器在不同的模式下进行。玩家想花多长时间思考自己在做什么都可以。这一点与《旅鼠》形成鲜明对比，后者也是一款出色的游戏，但却要求玩家即时解谜。通常情况下，如果玩家没有及时解开谜题，就必须重新开始。

3. Allow players to design their own puzzles. Any time players can build their own elements, it adds value to the game and helps create a community of devoted fans. Players can exchange their puzzles by email, post them on web sites, run tournaments, and enjoy all kinds of other activities, all of which is free publicity for the game. 允许玩家自己设计谜题。任何时候，只要玩家能够构建自己的元素，就能为游戏增添价值，并有助于创建一个由忠实粉丝组成的社区。玩家可以通过电子邮件交流自己的谜题，在网站上发布谜题，举办锦标赛，享受各种其他活动，所有这些都是对游戏的免费宣传。

译者注：《弹珠掉落》游玩视频。

Games for Girls 女孩的游戏

The game industry has always been overwhelmingly male, and male developers have tended to design games that they themselves would like (or would have liked when they were boys). For most of the industry's history, no one made an effort to design games specifically for girls, or to even to think much about what kinds of games girls would like. It was a Catch-22 situation: If you proposed a game for girls to a publisher, you would be met with the reply, "Girls don't play video games." But, of course, the reason they didn't play video games was that there weren't many games they liked to play—or, at least, that was the general perception. (Further research showed that this was an unfounded stereotype; far more girls played games than people realized, even though no one was considering their interests.)

游戏行业一直以来都是男性占主导地位，男性开发者倾向于设计他们自己会喜欢的游戏（或者当他们还是男孩时会喜欢的游戏）。在游戏行业的大部分历史中，没有人专门为女孩设计游戏，甚至没有人考虑过女孩会喜欢什么样的游戏。这是一个自相矛盾的局面：如果你向出版商推荐一款针对女孩的游戏，你会得到这样的回答：“女孩不玩电子游戏。”当然，她们不玩电子游戏的原因是她们喜欢玩的游戏不多——至少，这是普遍的看法。(进一步的研究表明，这是毫无根据的刻板印象；玩游戏的女孩比人们意识到的要多得多，尽管没有人考虑到她们的兴趣）。

In the mid-1990s, a number of people realized that girls represented an untapped market, and several companies were set up to exploit it. One in particular, Purple Moon, did a great deal of research to try to discover how girls play games and what kinds of games they would like. Unfortunately, the games that Purple Moon published on the basis of this research took little time to finish, and they offered less value for the money than most other games did. They didn't sell very well, and eventually Purple Moon got into financial trouble and was sold to Mattel, the toy company. Industry attention waned, and games for girls ceased to be a major subject of debate.

20 世纪 90 年代中期，一些人意识到女孩是一个尚未开发的市场，于是成立了几家公司来开发这个市场。其中，紫月公司（Purple Moon）做了大量研究，试图发现女孩是如何玩游戏的，以及她们喜欢什么样的游戏。遗憾的是，紫月公司根据这些研究成果出版的游戏耗时甚短，性价比也不如其他大多数游戏。这些游戏的销量并不理想，最终紫月公司陷入了财务困境，被卖给了玩具公司美泰。业界的关注度逐渐减弱，女孩游戏也不再是人们争论的焦点。

However, we think it's an area worth discussing because some people are continuing to make money with games for girls, and this remains an underserved market. Remember, however, that we're talking about girls, not women. Adults are more diverse than children are: They live in a larger world, and they've been exposed to more things and have a wider variety of interests. Don't make the assumption that what applies to girls also applies to women generally.

然而，我们认为这是一个值得讨论的领域，因为有些人仍在通过女孩游戏赚钱，而这仍然是一个服务不足的市场。但请记住，我们谈论的是女孩，而不是女性。成年人比儿童更加多样化：他们生活在更广阔的世界里，接触的事物更多，兴趣也更广泛。不要假设适用于女孩的东西也适用于一般女性。

Mattel's Approach 美泰的方法

If you want to make games specifically for girls, as opposed to games that appeal to children of both sexes, you have to ask yourself what girls are especially interested in—and, perhaps more important, what they're not interested in. For the answer, you need look no farther than Mattel. Mattel is the manufacturer of Barbie®, the single most famous toy for girls in the world. Mattel has had great success developing games for girls because it understands its target market. (Mattel doesn't publish software itself anymore, but it licenses its brands to others.)

如果你想专门为女孩制作游戏，而不是吸引男女儿童的游戏，你就必须问问自己，女孩对什么特别感兴趣——也许更重要的是，她们对什么不感兴趣。要想知道答案，美泰是不二之选。美泰是芭比娃娃的制造商，芭比娃娃是世界上最著名的女孩玩具。美泰在为女孩开发游戏方面取得了巨大成功，因为它了解自己的目标市场。(美泰不再自己发布软件，而是将其品牌授权给其他公司）。

Part of the reason for Barbie's success is that she follows a proven, time-tested formula. She is aimed a core age group from four to eight years old; after that, girls' interests change, and Mattel does not try for a one-size-fits-all approach. The company has no social agenda and makes no claim of political correctness.

芭比娃娃之所以成功，部分原因在于她遵循了一个经过时间考验的成熟模式。她的目标群体是 4 至 8 岁的核心年龄段；在此之后，女孩的兴趣会发生变化，美泰公司不会尝试一刀切的方法。该公司没有社会议程，也不声称政治正确。

Jesyca Durchin is the owner of the consulting company Nena Media (www.nenamedia.com), which creates media content for young girls, and is a former executive producer for Mattel. At the 2000 Game Developers' Conference, she gave an extremely useful summary of what she had learned about how girls in this age group play games:

杰西卡·达奇是咨询公司 Nena Media (www.nenamedia.com) 的所有人，该公司专门为年轻女孩制作媒体内容，她还曾担任过美泰公司的执行制作人。在 2000 年的游戏开发者大会上，她对自己了解到的这个年龄段的女孩是如何玩游戏的进行了非常有用的总结：

Developing Games for Girls 为女孩开发游戏

Girls Have a Wide Variety of Interests 女孩的兴趣多种多样

It is vital to identify what type of girl is interested in your type of game. Girls are much more fragmented in their interests than boys. Girls change more rapidly, and their emotional and intellectual growth happens differently. A girl will have different needs in her playtime almost every year of her childhood—loosely defining childhood to be ages 4 to 14.

确定哪种类型的女孩对你的游戏感兴趣至关重要。女孩的兴趣要比男孩分散得多。女孩的变化更快，她们的情感和智力成长也不同。女孩几乎在童年的每一年都会有不同的游戏需求——童年可宽泛地定义为 4 至 14 岁。

Hinge Interactivity on Proven Play Patterns

将互动性建立在成熟的游戏模式之上

A play pattern is a traditional and almost instinctual way a child will approach an object or an activity to entertain her. Girls traditionally value the following:

游戏模式是一种传统的、近乎本能的方式，孩子会用这种方式来对待一件物品或一项活动，以此来娱乐自己。女孩历来重视以下方面：

• Fashion play 时尚游戏

• Glamour play 魅力游戏

• Nurture play 培养游戏

• Adventure play 冒险游戏

• Action/twitch play 动作/反应游戏

• Collection play 收集游戏

• Communication/social play 交流/社交游戏

As well as exercising their own imaginations, girls like to reproduce daily life in play. Barbie is a vehicle for projecting adult activities into a child's world. Don't be afraid of open-ended or non–goal-oriented play.

除了发挥自己的想象力，女孩们还喜欢在游戏中再现日常生活。芭比娃娃是将成人活动投射到孩子世界的载体。不要害怕开放式或无目标的游戏。

Girls Like Stuff 女孩喜欢的东西

Stuff is what the girl can collect, display, or take away from the product. It is incredibly important for the girl to feel there is a reason for her to play. In some ways, collecting stuff replaces the concept of scoring in traditional boy's software. Collecting each one of a variety of shells, for example, is more interesting than trying to achieve a high, but abstract, numerical score.

物品是女孩可以收集、展示或带走的东西。让女孩感觉到玩游戏是有原因的，这一点非常重要。在某种程度上，收集物品取代了传统男孩软件中的得分概念。例如，收集各种贝壳，比试图获得一个高分但抽象的数字分数更有趣。

Create Environments That Are Attractive to Girls 创造对女孩有吸引力的环境

Girls like environments that are reality-based but either are beautiful or make sense to the story line. Symmetry and color coherency are important to girls. Not everything has to be pink, purple, and pretty, but each environment should give the girl the feeling of being in another place. Girls (and boys) are highly imaginative, and they will create alternative story lines in their own heads. Be aware that the girl's imagination will influence her view of your environment.

女孩喜欢基于现实的环境，但要么美观，要么对故事情节有意义。对称性和色彩一致性对女孩来说很重要。并不是所有的东西都必须是粉色、紫色和漂亮的，但每个环境都应让女孩有身临其境的感觉。女孩（和男孩）的想象力都很丰富，她们会在自己的脑海中创造出不同的故事情节。要知道，女孩的想象力会影响她对环境的看法。

Girls Appreciate Sensual Interfaces 女孩欣赏感性的界面

Girls tend to respond more positively to what I refer to as the sensual interface. They need colorful, sound-driven interfaces that "feel" good. The interface needs to feel magical and needs to have what I call the brrrring factor. Don't give girls a group of identical gray pushbuttons, no matter how logically organized they may be; give them buttons that ring and change shape and color.

女孩往往对我所说的感性界面有更积极的反应。她们需要色彩丰富、声音驱动、“感觉”良好的界面。界面需要有神奇的感觉，需要有我所说的“刺激”因素。不要给女孩们一组完全相同的灰色按钮，不管它们的逻辑组织有多么合理；要给她们一些会响、会改变形状和颜色的按钮。

Extend the Play from Existing Toys or Media into Software 将现有玩具或媒体的玩法扩展到软件中

Branding is becoming more and more important in the business of software. It is doubly important in the girl's software business because girls are still just getting involved in viewing the computer as an entertainment tool. Branding is important to rising above all the muck.

在软件行业中，品牌变得越来越重要。在女孩的软件业务中，这一点加倍重要，因为女孩们还刚刚开始将电脑视为一种娱乐工具。要想在芸芸众生中脱颖而出，品牌建设非常重要。

Don't Be Ashamed of Your Work 不要为自己的工作感到羞愧

If you're embarrassed by what you're doing, it will show. Do it wholeheartedly or don't do it at all. Girls can tell if you're ashamed of making games for them. If you're uncomfortable using terms like "hair play" or "relationship games," don't bother.

如果你对自己的工作感到羞愧，就会表现出来。要么全心全意地做，要么就别做。女孩们可以看出你是否因为为她们制作游戏而感到羞愧。如果你对使用“头发游戏”或“关系游戏”这样的术语感到不自在，那就别费心了。

A Few Misconceptions 一些误解

Because people see fewer girls playing hard-core games than boys, they have tended to jump to conclusions about what girls want.

因为人们看到玩硬核游戏的女孩比男孩少，所以往往会对女孩的需求妄下结论。

• Girls don't like computer games because computers are techie. This is patently false. Although most girls and women generally are less fascinated by the technical details of computers than boys and men are, that doesn't discourage them from playing computer games any more than automotive specifications discourage them from driving cars. 女孩不喜欢电脑游戏，因为电脑是高科技产品。这显然是错误的。虽然大多数女孩和女性对电脑技术细节的着迷程度普遍低于男孩和男性，但这并不妨碍她们玩电脑游戏，就像汽车技术规范并不妨碍她们驾驶汽车一样。

• Girls don't like violence. No, what girls don't like is nonstop, meaningless violence. It's not so much that they're repulsed by it as that they're bored by it. It doesn't stimulate their imaginations. If you've seen one explosion, you've seen them all. 女孩不喜欢暴力。不，女孩不喜欢的是无休止的、毫无意义的暴力。与其说她们排斥暴力，不如说她们厌烦暴力。暴力无法激发她们的想象力。如果你看过一次爆炸，那你就看过了所有的爆炸。

• Girls want everything to be happy and sweet. Not true. Ever see a group of girls setting up a party and planning to exclude someone? Girls are perfectly capable of being deliberately hurtful. If you read books written specifically for girls, you'll see that they're not just saccharine from one end to the other. Girls like stories filled with mystery, suspense, even danger—but again, it has to be meaningful, not just random or pointless. 女孩们希望一切都幸福甜蜜。不是这样的。你见过一群女孩在开派对的时候计划把谁排除在外吗？女孩们完全可以故意伤害别人。如果你读过专门为女孩写的书，你就会发现它们并不是从头到尾都是糖衣炮弹。女孩喜欢充满神秘、悬念甚至危险的故事——但同样，这些故事必须是有意义的，而不是随意的或毫无意义的。

• Girls don't like to be scared. This is only partially true. Jesyca Durchin makes a useful distinction between spooky and scary. Girls like things that are spooky but not scary. The abandoned house that contains a clue to the mystery, or the carnival at night, are spooky. Walking through dark streets with a murderer on the loose is scary. Spooky is about the possibility of being startled or frightened; scary is about the possibility of being hurt or killed. 女孩不喜欢被惊吓。这只说对了一部分。杰西卡·达奇对“诡异”和“恐怖”做了有用的区分。女孩喜欢阴森但不恐怖的东西。包含神秘线索的废弃房屋或夜晚的嘉年华都是阴森恐怖的。而在杀人犯逍遥法外的黑暗街道上行走则是可怕的。阴森是指可能受到惊吓或恐惧；可怕是指可能受到伤害或死亡。

A Final Note 最后说明

Bear in mind that these are generalities. In her 1989 book Gender Blending, Holly Devor quoted studies that showed that as many as 50% of heterosexual women identified themselves has having been tomboys as children. We wouldn't claim that the characteristics described previously appeal to all girls, but they certainly appeal to many. You should take them into consideration if you're trying to make a game for them.

请记住，这些都是概括性的。霍利·德沃尔在其 1989 年出版的《性别混合》一书中引用的研究表明，多达 50%的异性恋女性认为自己小时候是假小子。我们不敢说前面描述的特征对所有女孩都有吸引力，但肯定对很多女孩有吸引力。如果你想为她们制作一款游戏，就应该考虑到这些特点。

Some developers, both male and female, are repulsed by the idea of making games about hair and clothing and makeup; they feel that this perpetuates a stereotype of femininity. Although there's some merit in that argument, goodness knows that a vastly larger number of games perpetuate a much more unfortunate stereotype of masculinity: They depict men (and reward players) who are violent, greedy, wanton, and monomaniacal. To condemn games for girls on the basis that they're stereotypical is to establish an unfair double standard.

一些开发者，无论是男性还是女性，都对制作关于发型、服装和化妆的游戏感到反感；他们认为这延续了对女性的刻板印象。虽然这种说法有一定道理，但天知道有更多的游戏在延续一种更不幸的男性刻板印象：它们描绘的男性（以及奖励玩家）是暴力、贪婪、恣意妄为和癫狂的。以刻板印象为由谴责女孩的游戏，是建立了不公平的双重标准。

Putting It Together 总结

We've divided our book into genres because there are distinct differences in the ways various genres are designed. An action game for the Nintendo GameCube has very little in common with a construction and management simulation for the PC: The target market is different, the user interface is different, and the internal economy of the game is different. This chapter has been a bit of a catchall for other categories that don't get as much attention.

我们将本书分为不同类型，是因为各种类型的设计方式存在明显差异。任天堂 GameCube 的动作游戏与 PC 的建筑和管理模拟游戏几乎没有共同之处：目标市场不同，用户界面不同，游戏的内部经济也不同。本章就像一个大杂汇，涵盖了其他一些不太受关注的类别。

We strongly encourage you not to become a slave to these divisions. It's true that some genres don't mix well—an adventure gamer will be annoyed if you suddenly make her play an action game—but we will only fully exploit the possibilities of our medium by testing its boundaries, not by remaining within safe little pigeonholes. Ultimately, what matters is that your game is entertaining and rewarding to play. If you have a game in mind that doesn't fit one of these categories, you might have a harder time persuading jaded industry executives to fund it, but try not to compromise your vision if you can. Both your game and the players will be better off for it.

我们强烈建议你不要成为这样划分的奴隶。的确，有些类型不能很好地融合在一起，比如冒险游戏玩家会因为你突然让她玩动作游戏而恼火，但我们只有通过测试游戏的界限，而不是停留在安全的小鸽子笼里，才能充分发挥游戏媒介的可能性。归根结底，最重要的是你的游戏具有娱乐性，玩起来有成就感。如果你心目中的游戏不符合这些类别中的任何一类，那么你可能很难说服厌倦的行业高管为其提供资金，但如果可以的话，尽量不要妥协你的愿景。你的游戏和玩家都会因此而受益。