英文名：Game Designer’s Playlist, The: Innovative Games Every Game Designer Needs to Play

作者：【美】 Zack Hiwiller

前言

这本书当然是一本烂书，只不过里面提到的一些内容很是很有参考意义的，比如《Diplomacy》和tit-for-tat策略的关系。同时想认识点游戏行业的“黑话”，故简要记录下这本书的内容。

内容简介

Game Designers: Learn from the Masters!

In The Game Designers Playlist, top game design instructor Zack Hiwiller introduces more than 70 remarkable games, revealing how they work, why they’re great, and how to apply their breakthrough techniques in your own games.

Ranging from Go to Texas Hold’em and Magic: The Gathering to Dishonored 2, Hiwiller teaches indispensable lessons about game decision-making, playability, narrative, mechanics, chance, winning, originality, cheats, and a whole lot more. He gleans powerful insights from virtually every type of game: console, mobile, PC, board, card, and beyond.

Every game is presented in full color, with a single purpose: to show you what makes it exceptional, so you can create legendary games of your own.

  • Discover how game designers use randomness and luck
  • Make the most of narrative and the narrator’s role
  • Place the game challenge front and center
  • Optimize game mechanics, and place mechanics in a broader context
  • Uncover deep dynamic play in games with the simplest rules
  • Find better ways to teach players how to play
  • See what games can teach about the process of game design
  • Build games with unusual input/output modalities
  • Explore winning, losing, and game dynamics beyond “one-vs.-all”

modality：模态

目录

Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Contents Preface Acknowledgments About the Author

前言中提到了作者在游戏认知度调研的100个例子中也安排了2个虚构的游戏。第一个是《幻想工会Online》（Fantasy Guild Online），听起来像那么回事。让人吃惊的是，这个词组在Google上只有5个搜索结果。大约3%的调查对象表示他们曾经玩过这款游戏，而约20%的玩家表示他们在一定程度上熟悉这款游戏。

注：忘了心理学中如何定义这种行径的，如果不是瞎填的话，这确实是个观察地球人性格的良好案例。

1 From Simplicity, The Universe

A Universe, Conquered The Simplicity and Complexity of Go More Than Thinking, Learning Play to Win Summary

2 Randomness and Cholesterol（随机性和胆固醇）

A Short History of Randomness Pass the Chips Mate Stranger and Stranger Danger Goofspiel Agency and Uncertainty Types of Uncertainty in Mechanics Randomness and Perceptions of Fairness Summary

3 Pushing One’s Luck

Press Your Luck or Press Your Skill? No Whammy It’s in the Name Greed and Risk Let Them Eat Cake Equity Summary

4 Piecemeal Perspectives（零碎的景象）

Interactive Fictions Actors and Interactions Armchair Jurors Her Story Orwell The Eye Above Summary

这节讨论使用有趣的叙事技巧来提供体验的游戏。

5 Permanence

Saving（存档）
Fiero Memories of Places That Have Never Been Summary

6 Mechanics as Message

Where Meaning Exists Marriage of Theme and Interaction September 12th Passage Dissonance Bioshock and Dissonance Systems as Politics Parable of the Polygons Summary

7 Requiem for a Pewter Shoe（锡鞋的安魂曲）

Pieces and Meaning The Buddha Nature Nomic Eying Basic Grammars Summary

8 The Second Chance Phenomenon（再创作成就精品）

Flexibility Hearthstone Dominion 7 Wonders Summary

9 Challenging Complexity

Retracing Your Steps Drop7 Triple Town Game of Life Pair Solitaire Love Letter Summary

10 Learning to Walk

The Price of Entry Building a Structure Thinking with Portals Summary

这节主要讲新手教程的重要性。

11 Mechanics in Milieu（环境中的机制）

Taste and Distaste Agency and Dilemma Depression Quest and Indirect Representation Papers, Please A Mind Forever Voyaging One Vision Summary

12 The Clone Wars

Here Comes the Flood What If Clones Are Necessary First Steps? How Mechanically Different Can a Clone Be? Summary of Questions

13 The Discipline of Game Design

The Worst Game Design Question So Then What Is a Game Designer? Accidental Game Design Write What You Love … or Not? Why Rewards? Summary

14 Winning and Losing

Playing Together Communication Diplomacy Informal Rules Summary

15 Inputs and Outputs

Mimicry Jousting Life as Game Inputs Waiting Is the Hardest Part Verbal Communication as Game Inputs Summary

16 Whose Stories?

Negotiated Storytelling Automated Dungeon Masters（自动化的地下城主）
Symbolic Worlds Who Are You? Summary

17 Cheat Codes（作弊码）

On Cheating Katamari Damacy Terry Cavanaugh Dream Quest Desert Golfing Summary

18 Conclusion and Final Playlist

Mindset Final Playlist, Divided by Platform Index

Diplomacy和Tit-for-tat策略

《强权外交》是对第一次世界大战的一个极为简单的模拟。……由于没有真正具有约束力的协议，暗箭伤人是游不可缺少的一部分。

让《强权外交》变得更有趣的一点是，它并不受社会隐形规则的约束。……而在《强权外交》中，只要不被人发现，那么干什么都行。

……

让《强权外交》长盛不衰的，是它的纯粹性。当然，这是一款令人讨厌的游戏，你肯定会失去盟友，但是游戏鼓励你采用一切可以获胜的手段。你不仅要有军事头脑，以便高效地铺设你的作战单位，你还需要有政治头脑，这样你才能建立一种架构，这种架构既能鼓励盟友，又能在不再需要他们之时从他们手里获得足够的优势。

政治学者利用囚徒困境来模拟一种特定类型的直接冲突。在囚徒困境中，两个能从合作中获益的玩家都被鼓励背叛对方，这让双方的处境都变得更糟。在迭代的囚徒困境模型中，直接冲突反复发生，玩家可以报复那些背叛他的人。政治学者罗伯特·阿克塞尔罗德（Robert Axelrod）曾经举办过一场著名的（至少在政治学文献中是这样的）锦标赛，挑战人们应对迭代的囚徒困境的策略。锦标赛的冠军采用了一种名为“以牙还牙”（tit-for-tat）的策略，这种策略本质上是信任别人，不嫉妒其他玩家，但是如果遭到背叛则要报复回去。《强权外交》是一个庞大的7人迭代囚徒困境，在这当中，像“以牙还牙”这样复杂的策略只有当你活得足够久、有足够强的实力去报复时才有效。在这种情况下，何时及如何背叛他人都是非常讲究的。因此，“何时及如何进行撒谎和欺骗”是游戏的核心，这是其他游戏无法效仿的。

Diplomacy（强权外交）简介

Diplomacy is a strategic board game created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released commercially in the United States in 1959. Its main distinctions from most board wargames are its negotiation phases (players spend much of their time forming and betraying alliances with other players and forming beneficial strategies) and the absence of dice and other game elements that produce random effects. Set in Europe in the years leading to the First World War, Diplomacy is played by two to seven players, each controlling the armed forces of a major European power (or, with fewer players, multiple powers). Each player aims to move their few starting units and defeat those of others to win possession of a majority of strategic cities and provinces marked as “supply centers” on the map; these supply centers allow players who control them to produce more units. Following each round of player negotiations, each player can issue attack and support orders, which are then executed during the movement phase. A player takes control of a province when the number of provinces that are given orders to support the attacking province exceeds the number of provinces given orders to support the defending province.

Diplomacy was the first commercially published game to be played by mail (PBM); only chess, which is in the public domain, saw significant postal play earlier. Diplomacy was also the first commercially published game to generate an active hobby scene with amateur fanzines; only science-fiction, fantasy and comics fandom saw fanzines earlier. Competitive face-to-face Diplomacy tournaments have been held since the 1970s. Play of Diplomacy by e-mail (PBEM) has been widespread since the late 1980s.

Diplomacy has been published in the United States by Games Research, Avalon Hill, and Hasbro; the name is currently a registered trademark of Hasbro’s Avalon Hill division. Diplomacy has also been licensed to various companies for publication in other countries. Diplomacy is also played on the Internet, adjudicated by a computer or a human gamemaster.

Tit-for-tat策略简介

Tit for tat is an English saying meaning “equivalent retaliation”. It developed from “tip for tap”.

Tit-for-tat has been very successfully used as a strategy for the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. The strategy was first introduced by Anatol Rapoport in Robert Axelrod’s two tournaments, held around 1980. Notably, it was (on both occasions) both the simplest strategy and the most successful in direct competition.

An agent using this strategy will first cooperate, then subsequently replicate an opponent’s previous action. If the opponent previously was cooperative, the agent is cooperative. If not, the agent is not. This is similar to reciprocal altruism in biology.

The success of the tit-for-tat strategy, which is largely cooperative despite that its name emphasizes an adversarial nature, took many by surprise. Arrayed against strategies produced by various teams it won in two competitions. After the first competition, new strategies formulated specifically to combat tit-for-tat failed due to their negative interactions with each other; a successful strategy other than tit-for-tat would have had to be formulated with both tit-for-tat and itself in mind.

This result may give insight into how groups of animals (and particularly human societies) have come to live in largely (or entirely) cooperative societies, rather than the individualistic “red in tooth and claw” way that might be expected from individuals engaged in a Hobbesian state of nature. This, and particularly its application to human society and politics, is the subject of Robert Axelrod’s book The Evolution of Cooperation.

Moreover, the tit-for-tat strategy has been of beneficial use to social psychologists and sociologists in studying effective techniques to reduce conflict. Research has indicated that when individuals who have been in competition for a period of time no longer trust one another, the most effective competition reverser is the use of the tit-for-tat strategy. Individuals commonly engage in behavioral assimilation, a process in which they tend to match their own behaviors to those displayed by cooperating or competing group members. Therefore, if the tit-for-tat strategy begins with cooperation, then cooperation ensues. On the other hand, if the other party competes, then the tit-for-tat strategy will lead the alternate party to compete as well. Ultimately, each action by the other member is countered with a matching response, competition with competition and cooperation with cooperation.

In the case of conflict resolution, the tit-for-tat strategy is effective for several reasons: the technique is recognized as clear, nice, provocable, and forgiving. Firstly, it is a clear and recognizable strategy. Those using it quickly recognize its contingencies and adjust their behavior accordingly. Moreover, it is considered to be nice as it begins with cooperation and only defects in response to competition. The strategy is also provocable because it provides immediate retaliation for those who compete. Finally, it is forgiving as it immediately produces cooperation should the competitor make a cooperative move.

The implications of the tit-for-tat strategy have been of relevance to conflict research, resolution and many aspects of applied social science.

Explaining reciprocal altruism in animal communities

Studies in the prosocial behaviour of animals have led many ethologists and evolutionary psychologists to apply tit-for-tat strategies to explain why altruism evolves in many animal communities. Evolutionary game theory, derived from the mathematical theories formalised by von Neumann and Morgenstern (1953), was first devised by Maynard Smith (1972) and explored further in bird behaviour by Robert Hinde. Their application of game theory to the evolution of animal strategies launched an entirely new way of analysing animal behaviour.

Reciprocal altruism works in animal communities where the cost to the benefactor in any transaction of food, mating rights, nesting or territory is less than the gains to the beneficiary. The theory also holds that the act of altruism should be reciprocated if the balance of needs reverse. Mechanisms to identify and punish “cheaters” who fail to reciprocate, in effect a form of tit for tat, are important to regulate reciprocal altruism. For example, tit-for-tat is suggested to be the mechanism of cooperative predator inspection behavior in guppies.