There’s no I in game design… (well there is, but you get the point).


Role-playing survival game is willing to take risks

Told you I was going to make an entry on that line. One of the biggest leaps from just thinking about game design to designing games is to get away from your own sense of ego as it were. To say that I come up with game ideas constantly is an understatement, I think in my life time I’ve either hit or come close to 100 game ideas I would like to make. With that said I can say with utmost certaintiy that I’ve put the majority of them in the scrap pile.

I can’t say for certain if they were absolute crap, or the greatest game ideas that never were. The tipping point was the fact that I really couldn’t see anyone enjoying them except for me. The gameplay could have been so obtused that only the person who designed it (IE me) would understand and like it, or the story so disturbing or esoteric that it would turn everyone away from the game .

Here’s an example of the latter, one idea I had, was player controlling someone who would go through several stages of insanity, which would lead to violent actions by the character including canniblism . Each stage would alter the person’s abilites and tactics available, and it would require the player to make hard choices to go from one stage to another. I don’t need to go further as I doubt no one would be listening at that point and would be ready to form an angry mob against me.

One of the core elements of a game designer is the ability to look outside their own little world with their ideas. A game has to be able to be enjoyed by other people for it to be a game, if not then you have a product that just wasted miliions of dollars. There has to be some element to the game that will attract fans or newcomers to it.The other aspect to this is that the games industry is in fact a business. Yes it can be fun and creative, but it is still a business. For any business to succeed you need to have products that the consumers will want to buy. You can’t just make a game that you and 3 friends will enjoy. There is a difference however in making some something generic that it hits the bargain bins fast, and making something unique and never before seen that sells well.

You can still be creative with your ideas, but you need to make them so that someone other then yourself would be able to enjoy them. Whether that means toning down some of the complexity or creating a UI that a novice can understand. Sometimes it could just mean telling an engaging story and damm the interesting and unique gameplay. I don’t know the magic recipe for amazing games, and I doubt anyone does. Just remember when your creating that game, that your not the only one who’s going to play it.

Josh