Chapter 3 What Games Are? 第三章 游戏是什么？

Which brings us, finally, to games.

这最终把我们引向游戏。

If you review those definitions of "game" I presented earlier, you'll see that they have some elements in common. They all present games as if they exist within a world of their own. They describe games as a simulation, a formal system, or as Huizinga put it, a "magic circle" that is disconnected from reality. They all talk about how choices or rules are important, as well as conflict. Finally, a lot of them define games as objects that aren't real, things for pretending with.

如果你回顾一下我前面介绍的那些关于“游戏”的定义，就会发现它们有一些共同之处。它们都把游戏说成是存在于自己的世界中。它们都把游戏描述为一种模拟、一种形式系统，或者如赫伊津哈所说，是一个与现实脱节的“魔法圈”。他们都谈到了选择或规则以及冲突的重要性。最后，他们中的很多人都把游戏定义为不真实的物体，是用来假装的东西。

But games are very real to me. Games might seem abstracted from reality because they are iconic depictions of patterns in the world. They have more in common with how our brain visualizes things than they do with how reality is actually formed. Since anyway, I call it a wash.

但对我来说，游戏是非常真实的。游戏看似从现实中抽象出来，因为它们是对世界模式的标志性描述。它们与我们大脑将事物视觉化的方式有更多共通之处，而不是与现实的实际形成方式有更多共通之处。既然，我称之为洗脑。

The pattern depicted may or may not exist in reality. Nobody is claiming that tic-tac-toe is a decent mimicry of warfare, for example. But the rules we perceive—what I'll call the pattern—get processed exactly the same way we process very real things like "fire burns" and "how cars move forward."

游戏描述的模式在现实中可能存在，也可能不存在。例如，没有人说井字游戏是对战争的完美模仿。但我们感知到的规则——我称之为模式——的处理方式与我们处理“火会燃烧”和“汽车如何前进”等真实事物的方式完全相同。

The world is full of systems that we can choose to approach as games, and by approaching them that way, we make them into games. Games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life. They are on the same order as learning to drive a car, play the mandolin, or multiply seven times seven. We learn the underlying patterns, grok them fully, and file them away so that they can be rerun as needed. The only real difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games.

这个世界充满了各种系统，我们可以选择把它们当作游戏来处理，通过这样的处理方式，我们就把它们变成了游戏。游戏是待解决的谜题，就像我们在生活中遇到的其他事情一样。它们与学习驾驶汽车、弹奏曼陀林或计算七乘七的级别相同。我们学习潜在的模式，完全领悟它们，并将它们归档，以便在需要时重新运行。游戏与现实的唯一真正区别在于，游戏的风险较低。

Games are puzzles

游戏是谜题

Games are something special and unique. They are concentrated chunks ready for our brains to chew on. Since they are abstracted and iconic, they are readily absorbed. Since they are formal systems, they exclude distracting extra details. Usually, our brains have to do hard work to turn messy reality into something as clear as a game is.

游戏是一种特殊而独特的东西。它们是可供我们大脑咀嚼的浓缩块。由于它们是抽象的、标志性的，因此很容易被吸收。由于它们是形式系统，因此舍弃了分散注意力的额外细节。通常，我们的大脑需要做艰苦的工作，才能把杂乱无章的现实变成像游戏一样清晰的东西。

In other words, games serve as very fundamental and powerful learning tools. It's one thing to read in a book that "" and another to have your armies rolled over by your opponent in a game. When the latter happens because your map didn't adequately reflect what was going on, you're gonna get the point even if the actual armies aren't marching into your suburban home.

换句话说，游戏是非常基本和强大的学习工具。在书中读到“”是一回事，而在游戏中你的军队被对手辗过又是另一回事。当后者发生时，是因为你的地图没有充分反映当时的情况，即使真正的军队没有开进你郊区的家，你也会明白这一点。

The distinctions between toys and games, or between play and sport, start to seem a bit picky and irrelevant when you look at them in this light. There's been a lot of hay made over how play is non-goal-oriented and games tend to have goals; over how toys are aimed at pointless play rather than being games; about how make-believe is a form of play and not a game.

从这个角度看，玩具与游戏之间，或玩耍与体育之间的区别开始显得有些吹毛求疵和无关紧要。人们对此有很多争论，比如玩耍是非目标导向的，而游戏往往有明确的目标；玩具旨在促进无目的的玩耍，而非成为游戏的一部分；假装是一种玩耍形式，而非游戏。

A game designer might find those distinctions useful because they provide helpful guideposts. But all these things are the same at their most fundamental level. Perhaps this is the reason why language hasn't done a very good job of making distinctions between "play," "game," and "sport." Playing a goal-oriented game involves simply recognizing a particular sort of pattern; playing make-believe is recognizing another one. Both deservedly belong in the same category of "iconified representations of human experience that we can practice with and learn patterns from."

游戏设计师可能会觉得这些区别很有用，因为它们提供了有益的指导原则。但所有这些东西在最根本的层面上都是一样的。也许这就是为什么语言没有很好地区分“玩耍”、“游戏”和“运动”的原因。玩一种以目标为导向的游戏，只涉及识别一种特定的模式；而玩“假装”游戏则是识别另一种模式。两者都应属于“人类经验的图标化表征，我们可以从中练习和学习模式”的同一类别。。

Consider the key difference between something like a book and different kinds of games. A book can do the logical conscious part of the brain pretty well. And really good readers have an ability to slurp that info directly into the subconscious, intuitive mind. But what a book will never be able to do is accelerate the grokking process to the degree that games do, because you cannot practice a pattern and , and have the book respond with feedback.

考虑一下像书这样的东西与不同种类的游戏之间的主要区别。一本书可以很好地完成大脑的逻辑意识部分。而真正优秀的读者有能力将这些信息直接吸收到潜意识、直觉思维中。但书永远无法做到的是，像游戏那样加速神入过程，因为你无法，然后让书做出反馈。

cog.ni.tion

n. 1. The mental process of knowing.

名词 1. 认识的心理过程。

[from Latin cognitio]

[源于拉丁语 cognitio，意思是认识，了解]

-- they are about cognition, and learning to analyze patterns.

——它们是关于认知和学习分析模式的。

Linguists have noticed that language obeys fairly strict mathematical rules. For example, humans cannot understand a sentence that is too . "The house the cheese the rat the cat the dog chased caught ate lay in was built by Jack" is a bad sentence because it violates this rule. The clauses are too deeply nested. We can puzzle it out with our slow logical conscious brain, but we work against our own natures when we do so.

语言学家注意到，语言遵守相当严格的数学规则。例如，人类无法理解的句子。“放有被老鼠吃掉、老鼠又被猫抓、猫又被狗追的奶酪的房子是杰克造的。”就是一个糟糕的句子，因为它违反了这一规则。从句嵌套太深。我们可以用逻辑思维迟钝的大脑来解题，但这样做违背了我们的本性。

Games run into similar limitations. The biggest of these lies in games' very nature as exercises for our brains. Games that fail to exercise the brain become boring. This is why tic-tac-toe ends up falling down—it's exercise, but so limited we don't need to spend much time on it. As we learn more patterns, more novelty is needed to make a game attractive. Practicing can keep a game fresh for a while, but in many cases we'll say, "Eh, I get it, I don't need to practice this task," and we'll move on.

游戏也有类似的局限性。其中最大的限制在于游戏作为大脑练习的本质。无法锻炼大脑的游戏会变得枯燥乏味。这就是为什么井字游戏最终会失败的原因——它是一种练习，但却非常有限，我们不需要花太多时间在它上面。当我们学会更多的游戏模式时，就需要更多的新颖性来吸引我们。练习可以让游戏保持一段时间的新鲜感，但在很多情况下，我们会说：“嗯，我懂了，我不需要练习这个任务了”，然后我们就会转移到其它事物上。

Almost all intentionally designed games fall prey to this. They are limited formal systems. If you keep playing them, you'll eventually grok wide swaths of their possibility space. In that sense, games are disposable, and boredom is inevitable.

几乎所有有意设计的游戏都会遇到这个问题。它们是有限的形式系统。如果你一直玩下去，你最终会完全摸索出它们可能性空间的全部区域。从这个意义上说，游戏是一次性的，厌倦不可避免。

Fun comes from . Games that rigidly define rules and situations are more susceptible to mathematical analysis, which is a limitation in itself. We don't think that we can drive just because we know the rules of the road and the controls of a car, but extremely formal games (such as most board games) have fairly few variables, and so you can often extrapolate out everything about how the game will go from the known rule set. This is an important insight for game designers: To make games more long-lasting, they need to integrate either math problems we don't know the solutions to, or more variables (and less predictable ones) such as human psychology, physics, and so on. These are elements that arise from outside the game's rules and from outside the "magic circle."

乐趣来自于。严格定义规则和情境的游戏更容易受到数学分析的影响，这本身就是一种局限性。我们不会因为知道了道路规则和汽车的控制方法就认为自己会开车，但极其形式化的游戏（如大多数棋盘游戏）变量相当少，因此你往往可以从已知的规则中推断出游戏的一切走向。这对游戏设计者来说是一个重要的启示： 要想让游戏耐玩，它们需要融入我们不知道解决方案的数学问题，或者更多的变量（而且是不那么容易预测的变量），比如人类心理学、物理学等等。这些元素来自游戏规则之外，也来自“魔法圈”之外。

(If it's any consolation to games, that's where game theory tends to fall down too—psych tends not to be that amenable to math.)

(如果说这对游戏有什么安慰的话，那就是博弈论往往也会失败的地方——心理学往往不那么适合数学）。

Constant motion @ 3 pixels/second

匀速运动 @ 3 像素/秒

Bullet vertical vector @ 20 pixels per second

子弹垂直矢量 @ 20 像素/秒

Ideal firing trajectory for interception.

理想的拦截射击弹道。

Max acceleration 5 pixels/sec.

最大加速度为 5 像素/秒。

When you're playing a game, it exercises your brain.

当你玩游戏时，它能锻炼你的大脑。

This finally brings us to the title of the book and the fundamental question: What is fun?

这最终引出了本书的标题和根本问题：什么是乐趣？

If you dig into the origins of the word, you'll find that it comes either from "fonne," which is "fool" in Middle English, or from "fonn," which means "pleasure" in Gaelic. Either way, fun is defined as "a source of enjoyment." This can happen via physical stimuli, aesthetic appreciation, or direct chemical manipulation.

如果你仔细研究这个词的起源，就会发现它要么来自“fonne”，在中古英语中是“傻瓜”的意思，要么来自“fonn”，在盖尔语中是“快乐”的意思。无论哪种说法，“乐趣”都被定义为“享受的源泉”。这可以通过物理刺激、审美鉴赏或直接化学操纵来实现。

Fun is all about our brains feeling good—the release of into our system. There are a variety of complex cocktails of chemicals that result in different sensations. Science has shown that the pleasurable chills that we get down the spine after exceptionally powerful music or a really great book are caused by the same sorts of chemicals we get when we have cocaine, an orgasm, or chocolate. Basically, our brains are on drugs pretty much all the time.

乐趣就是让我们的大脑感觉良好——释放到我们的身体中。各种复杂的化学物质混合在一起，会产生不同的感觉。科学表明，我们在听了特别震撼的音乐或读了一本非常棒的书之后，脊背会感到阵阵凉意，这与我们吸食可卡因、达到性高潮或吃巧克力时产生的化学物质是一样的。基本上，我们的大脑无时无刻不在吸毒。

One of the releases of chemicals triggering good feelings is at that moment of triumph when we learn something or master a task. This almost always causes us to . After all, it is important to the survival of the species that we learn—therefore our bodies reward us for it with moments of pleasure. There are many ways we find fun in games, and I will talk about the others. But learning is the one I believe to be the most important.

当我们学到某样东西或掌握了某项任务时，释放出的化学物质会引发美好的感觉。这几乎总是会让我们。毕竟，学习对人类的生存非常重要，因此我们的身体会用快乐的时刻来奖励我们。我们在游戏中找到乐趣的方式有很多，下面我将谈谈其他方式。但我认为学习是最重要的。

Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun.

游戏的乐趣源于掌握。它源于理解。正是解谜行为让游戏充满乐趣。

In other words, with games, .

换句话说，对于游戏来说，。

but you'll only play it until you master the pattern.

但你只能玩到掌握模式为止。

Boredom is the opposite of learning. When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored. Boredom is the brain casting about for new information. It is the feeling you get when there are no new visible patterns to absorb. When a book is dull and fails to lead you on to the next chapter, it is failing to exhibit a captivating pattern. When you feel a piece of music is repetitive or derivative, it grows boring because it presents no cognitive challenge. And of course, it could arise when a pattern is present but "going over our heads."

无聊是学习的反面。当一个游戏不再教我们任何东西时，我们会感到无聊。无聊是大脑在寻找新信息。当没有新的可见模式可供吸收时，你就会有这种感觉。当一本书枯燥乏味，无法引导你进入下一章时，它就没有展现出吸引人的模式。当你觉得一首音乐是重复或模仿时，它就会变得乏味，因为它没有给你带来认知上的挑战。当然，当存在一种模式但“超出我们的理解范围”时，也可能产生这种感觉。

We shouldn't underestimate the brain's desire to learn. If you put a person in a sensory deprivation chamber, he or she will get very unhappy very quickly. The brain craves stimuli. At all times, the brain is casting about trying to learn something, trying to integrate information into its worldview. It is insatiable in that way.

我们不应该低估大脑的学习欲望。如果你把一个人放在感官剥夺室里，他或她很快就会变得非常不开心。大脑渴望刺激。无论何时，大脑都在努力学习，试图将信息融入它的世界观。在这方面，它是贪得无厌的。

This doesn't mean it necessarily craves new experiences—mostly, it just craves new data. New data is all it needs to flesh out a pattern. A new experience might force a whole new system on the brain, and often the brain doesn't like that. It's disruptive. The brain doesn't like to do more work than it has to. That's why it chunks in the first place. That's why we have the term "," as an opposite to "sensory deprivation."

这并不意味着它一定渴望新体验——主要是渴望新数据。它需要新数据来充实模式。新的体验可能会给大脑带来全新的系统，而大脑往往不喜欢这样。这具有破坏性。大脑不喜欢超负荷地工作。这就是为什么它首先要分块。这就是为什么我们有“”这个词，作为“感官剥夺”的反义词。

Games grow boring when they fail to unfold new niceties in the puzzles they present. But they have to navigate between the of deprivation and overload, of excessive order and excessive chaos, of silence and noise.

当游戏无法在谜题中展现新的乐趣时，游戏就会变得枯燥乏味。但游戏必须在剥夺和超载、过度秩序和过度混乱、寂静和嘈杂的之间游刃有余。

This means that it's easy for the player to get bored before the end of the game. After all, people are really good at pattern-matching and dismissing noise and silence that doesn't fit the pattern they have in mind.

这意味着玩家很容易在游戏结束前感到厌倦。毕竟，人们非常善于进行模式匹配，并消除不符合他们心目中模式的噪音和沉默。

Once you've mastered it -- or realized you can't get any better --

一旦你掌握了它——或者意识到你无法再提高——

Here are some ways in which boredom might strike, killing the pleasurable learning experience that games are supposed to provide:

以下是一些让人感到无聊的方式，它们会扼杀游戏本应带来的愉悦的学习体验：

• The player might grok how the game works from just the first five minutes, and then the game will be dismissed as trivial, just as an adult dismisses tic-tac-toe. This doesn't mean the player actually solved the game; she may have just arrived at a good-enough strategy or heuristic that lets her get by. "Too easy," might be the remark the player makes. 玩家可能在游戏开始的五分钟内就明白了游戏的玩法，然后就会把游戏当成小菜一碟，就像成年人不屑于玩井字游戏一样。这并不意味着玩家真的解决了这个游戏；她可能只是找到了一个足够好的策略或启发式方法，让她能够过关。玩家可能会说：“太简单了。”

• The player might grok that there's a ton of depth to the possible permutations in a game, but conclude that these permutations are below their level of interest—sort of like saying, "Yeah, there's a ton of depth in baseball, but memorizing the for the past 20 years is not all that useful to me." 玩家可能会认为游戏中可能出现的排列组合有很大的深度，但得出的结论是这些排列组合低于他们的兴趣水平——有点像在说：“是的，棒球有很大的深度，但记住过去 20 年的 对我来说并没有什么用。”

• The player might fail to see any patterns whatsoever, and nothing is more boring than noise. "This is too hard." 玩家可能看不到任何模式，而没有什么比噪音更无聊了。“这太难了。”

• The game might unveil new variations in the pattern too slowly, in which case the game may be dismissed as trivial too early, even though it does have depth. "The difficulty ramps too slowly." 游戏揭示模式新变化的速度可能太慢，在这种情况下，尽管游戏确实有深度，但玩家可能会过早地将其视为小菜一碟。“难度提升太慢。”

• The game might also unveil the variations too quickly, which then leads to players losing control of the pattern and giving up because it looks like noise again. "This got too hard too fast," they'll say. 游戏也可能过快地揭示出模式的变化，从而导致玩家失去对模式的控制并放弃游戏，因为它看起来又像是噪音。他们会说“这太难了，太快了。”

• The player might master everything in the pattern. He has exhausted the fun, consumed it all. "I beat it." 玩家可能掌握了模式中的所有内容。他已经耗尽了乐趣，享受完了所有。“我征服了它。”

the game becomes boring.

游戏就会变得无聊乏味。

Any of these will result in the player stating that she is bored. In reality, some of these are boredom+frustration, and some are boredom+triumph, and so on. If your goal is to keep things fun (read as "keep the player learning"), boredom is always the signal to let you know you have failed.

任何一种情况都会让玩家表示自己很无聊。实际上，有些是无聊+挫败，有些是无聊+胜利，等等。如果你的目标是保持游戏的趣味性（可以理解为“让玩家不断学习”），那么“无聊”永远是让你知道自己失败了的信号。

The definition of a good game is therefore "one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing."

因此，好游戏的定义就是“能在玩家停止游戏之前教会他所有东西的游戏。”

That's what games are, in the end. Teachers. . Games teach you how aspects of reality work, how to understand yourself, how to understand the actions of others, and how to imagine.

这就是游戏的本质。老师。。游戏教会你现实的方方面面如何运作，如何理解自己，如何理解他人的行为，以及如何想象。

One wonders, then, why learning is so damn boring to so many people. It's almost certainly because the method of transmission is wrong. We praise good teachers by saying that they "make learning fun." Games are very good teachers...of something. The question is, what do they teach?

那么，我们不禁要问，为什么对这么多人来说，学习是如此该死的无聊呢？这几乎可以肯定是因为传授的方法不对。我们称赞好老师，说他们“让学习变得有趣”。游戏是很好的老师……在某些方面。问题是，游戏能教什么？

Either way, I have an answer for my late grandfather, and it looks like what I do fits right alongside the upstanding professions of my various aunts and uncles. Fireman, carpenter, and...teacher.

无论如何，我已经为我已故的祖父找到了答案，而且看起来我所从事的工作正好与我的叔叔阿姨们的正直职业相提并论。消防员，木匠，还有……老师。

THIS GAME SUCKS!

这游戏烂透了！

Basically, all games are edutainment.

基本上，所有游戏都是寓教于乐的。