The stylish side of game design.


Role-playing survival game is willing to take risks

So last week I picked up Guitar Hero 3 (well it was more for the guitar to tell the truth), for those not in the know Guitar Hero 3 is the first one in the series not created by the original designer Harmonix who have gone onto Rock Band. I’ve played the hell out of Guitar Hero 1 and 2 and upon starting up the game I could tell within seconds that this was not the same as those titles, something felt off. This feeling that something wasn’t right got me thinking about the different styles we all have and how it applies to designing. We all have our own way of doing things, from being organized to what we’re good with, so it goes without saying that this could also be applied to game design. Playing Guitar Hero 3 after playing Rock Band and previous Guitar Heroes you can just see the difference in style. Graphically Guitar Hero 3 looks last gen against Rock Band, and in terms of game play the note charts in Guitar Hero 3 feel very mechanical and designed to punish rather then entertain.

Moving away from Guitar Hero to the industry you can see these differences from the various gaming gods and expert design houses. Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima are friends and two legendary designers, and yet the games they design and challenges within couldn’t be further apart. When you start playing a Mario game you can just feel the craftsmen like touch applied to the level design from Miyamoto, or the cinematic style of Kojima in the Metal Gear series. I believe that it is this style that defines some of the best games of our time and the designers behind them.

With the recent discussions about whether voice actors should receive royalties for their contributions to games, I’m all for people getting a bigger cut of the profits but to me voice actors are on the bottom of the totem pole for royalties. Creating a game requires the cooperation of everyone , from the designers to the artists and of course the programmers and they should be rewarded for their hard work above everyone else. Game designers ( or creative directors what ever the official title is) are really the celebrities of our industry, we all know who Sid Meier is, or Brian Reynolds and each one of these people put some of their style into the games they design. Imagine for a second if the next big budget Mario Game was created by Hideo Kojima without any involvement from Miyamoto and the next Metal Gear game was created by Miyamoto without any involvement from Kojima, do you think each game would be the same style as the previous ones in the series? I’m not asking if they would be good or bad, but I bet that something would feel different when playing them.

I bet that once I become a game designer at some point I would have my own style for my games, and that I hope it will be a welcome touch added to any games I get my hands on.

Josh