Slashdot Mirror
How To Play Like a Game Designer
jillduffy writes "The GameCareerGuide site has up an article on playing to learn. Folks who make games play them differently than you or I; they're looking at the mechanics from a first-hand perspective. James Portnow's article attempts to relay some of the essence of that experience, to allow us to play with a more critical eye: 'Playing games in order to study them is not what most people would consider "fun." This doesn't mean it isn't fun at all; it just means you have to think a different way. You have to find joy in discovering mechanics and watching their emergent properties unfold. You have to be willing to endure a certain amount of tedium in order to glean clues about the inner workings of a game. Most of all, you have to be able to enjoy playing bad games as well as good.'"
1. Find neat mimic-able game
2. Copy game design
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
That sounds more like reverse engineering to me. I used to write games, but I don't play games in order to go, "hmmm, how can I do this in my game?" Usually I think, "why does this game suck and how can I make games that don't suck in the ways that this game sucks?"
stuff |
I find it a little like watching movies. I enjoy the movie, and for the most part I am immersed in the movie's story, yet at the same time there is a part of my brain that is viewing the movie itself with detachment, as an example of *craft*, and admiring the lighting and cinematography, etc.
It is the same with games. Most of myself engages fully in playing and enjoying the game, but there is this parallel track in my brain that is examining the mechanics and the decisions made by the designer. After 20 years of playing video games, I unconsciously seek out the boundaries of the state space. I will usually recognize the techniques the designers are using the shape my gameplay experience, even at the same time as I willingly suspend disbelief and enjoy said experience.
People with "Explorer" tendencies according to Bartle's Four might already play like this, too. And even game designers sometimes like to turn off their brain and just shoot stuff. But even when not consciously studying the game's mechanics, there is a part of my brain that is continually teasing them apart while I play.
You need to fiddle with the controller intently, then tell your mom you're going to tighten up the graphics on level 3.
In the command line for put -console. Then after loading press ~
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Personally, I think this would be the right way, not the other way around. I don't care how a designer "wants" me to play a game. I'd prefer him to design a game I want to play. Maybe then we won't get the millionth sequel of a game nobody wanted to play in the first place, with fewer tedious missions that do increase play time but at the expense of everyone wanting to get it past him so he can get to more interesting ones.
Why is it that in every damn RTS game you have this stupid mission where you have to take a bunch of your critters through a lenghty, winding corridor? Is there anyone who really enjoys those missions? Nobody I talked to does. Everyone wanted to play RTS games to harvest resources, spend them on an army and drown the enemy in a mass battle. Does anyone really like those "I have only 10 infantery men and need to bring them home safe" missions?
Why is it that in every damn FPS game you have this mission where you need to find something hidden inside a twisted maze with corridors, all looking alike? No enemies to speak of, just running for an hour or two. Anyone here really liking that?
It's like it was in MUD times. Every MUD I know contained at the very least one maze. Wizards just loved to make them. Players just hated to play them. Every "new wizard guide" I read contained at the very least the "do not create mazes, for people loathe them" clause. And yet, we still get them. With graphics. And blackjack and hookers. Ok, no blackjack or hookers, that would maybe make them interesting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hate to break this to the submitter, but if you don't consider what you're doing to be fun then that does mean it isn't fun. That's pretty much the definition of "isn't fun".
http://twitter.com/onion2k
So you can discover the mechanics... Well congrats to you. Likely you'll find that from game to game in the same genre, like from MMO to MMO or FPS to FPS, the mechanics are generally THE SAME ACROSS THE GENRE. In FPS games you get armor, you get damage, you get running, jumping, crouching, rolling, you get modifiers to the damage or mitigation you have. You get modifiers to your aim through calming down your natural sway from breathing. Great, now you know the 'inner workings'. Congratufuckinglations.
What makes a game good, a game well designed, is that the mechanics are used and interchanged in interesting ways that create depth and the ability for a person to feel unique in the game and yet still powerful or useful. And also how the art direction melds with those mechanics. And how polished they are. And the story.
Using the mechanics that way is a creative art. You can go play other games and see the mechanics, but if you aren't creative yourself the best you can do is copy them. And how is that going to get you ahead of the game? You're going to regurgitate and retexture something that is already out there, and the likely case is that yours will quite quickly fall behind that which you copied because, to put it bluntly, you are a copying, plagiarisng, asshole.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
The submitter is talking about what most other people consider not fun. He's saying it might still be fun for you, but only if you approach it with an open mind. If it's not for you, then that's fine. Not everybody can or should be a game designer. Designing games that are actually fun to play is like directing movies that are actually fun to watch---a lot harder than most armchair directors (or armchair designers) realize.
Actually, it seems to me like it's simply about what Bartle used to call "explorers". Just to summarize it (badly) for whoever didn't read the paper, basically he looked at what players are doing in a MUD and came up with 4 categories, by what a player's main activity and drive seems to be. (Bear in mind that all people do more than one thing, though not always to the same extent.)
- socializers: their primary goal is to interact with people, make friends, chat, etc
- achievers: the folks who play it for the high score and bragging rights, basically. They work dilligently at achieving the highest level, having the top tier equipment set, having the biggest castle if the game allows that, etc.
- explorers: the folks who like to discover where everything is, and how everything works. These folks, yes, get their jollies by reverse-engineering your game.
- killers: the folks who like to harass, annoy, and hopefully drive someone completely off your game. (I.e., perma-kill them off the game, hence the name.)
That's, of course, just one way to split players into categories. You also have crafters vs adventurers, twitch gamers vs strategists, roleplayers vs munchkins, etc, etc, etc. The fun part is that most are orthogonal too, so it's really a very multi-dimensional universe.
I guess, I can see how someone could end up a game designer if they're in the explorer category.
But personally, I'd have an even bigger... well, not "advice", but "request" really, to game designers: don't assume that everyone else is a clone of yourself. E.g., if you play to reverse-engineer a game, don't assume that every single player out there is wired _exactly_ the same as you are. It may seem obvious, but smarter people have built whole theories -- or rather, hypotheses -- on the assumption that everyone else is ticking exactly the same. (Plus, it's the stuff fanboy flamewars are made of.)
Aiming to not have your game suck is a noble goal, and you have my thanks and respect for that already. But, really, "sucking" is a very subjective thing. It just means that in that multidimensional space of player goals, aspirations, personalities, play-styles, etc, your personality falls far enough from the volume covered by the game. E.g., if the game caters mostly to achievers with twitch-reflexes, and you're an explorer/strategist type, you'll think it sucks.
So one way to make it suck less -- or rather, suck for less people -- is to make sure that more than one type of players can pursue their own path and goals through it. It'll never be possible, nor often desirable, to make _everyone_ happy, but it's often possible to enlarge the space covered quite a bit.
Also, please try to avoid intersections where you should be doing unions. A game where it's possible to play as, say, a diplomat _or_ a gunner, tends to cover the tastes of more people than a game where you have to be a diplomat _and_ a gunner. The first is a union of people sets, the latter is an intersection, and much smaller than either set at that. A lot of games ended up sucking for more people because they failed to understand that: when trying to cater to more than one audience, they ended up catering to the intersection instead of the union.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Actually, TFA isn't just advising you to look at (and copy) the mechanics of games. Like TFA's title says, it's about "Playing to Learn."
In addition to the mechanics of the game, TFA advises paying attention to:
--Start Screen and Options. Do they help you get a feel for the game before you even start playing? Are they creatively and consistently done?
--The opening scene. How does it establish the world of the game? How does it segue into the gameplay?
--Basic movement.
--Camera control.
--Pacing and interest curve. Does the game ramp up the intensity and interest in a good way?
--"Math." This is a bit confusing, but I think the author is talking about thing like AI decision paths.
--Backstory. How is the game affected by the constraints of the system its running on? How is it affected by its development history?
In other words, TFA is actually agreeing with your point that "What makes a game good, a game well designed, is that the mechanics are used and interchanged in interesting ways that create depth and the ability for a person to feel unique in the game and yet still powerful or useful. And also how the art direction melds with those mechanics. And how polished they are. And the story."
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
I'd rather play like this was the first game I'd ever seen in my life.
Knowing how things work takes all the fun out of them.
Just because I've played computer games since they were words on a green CRT doesn't mean any game designer or company wants my opinion of how a game should be designed or executed. I voice my opinion by purchasing and playing what they do well, and beta-testing and ignoring what they do poorly.
Besides I'm not an all-around gamer, so I have a limited scope. I'm sure many fit into this category as well. I only have a limited amount of time for gaming, so I pick and choose carefully how I spend that time playing. No time/money/interest in consoles, no interest in FPS and no desire for any game that involves head-to-head against a person (PvP).
If they want my opinion on the evolution (and saturation) of the fantasy RPG since 1980, I'll gladly share it.
Honestly, I would think it's just like learning film theory, or seriously studying literature. You have to think about the construction of the content, not the narrative being presented.
When you study film, you're constantly being asked not, "why did this character do this," but, "why did the director, cinematographer, and editor choose to construct this scene in this way?" Approaching gaming in much the same way can be very revealing. And in terms of learning to think that waylll once again, Portal proves to be one of the best examples of the year. It's easy to approach both internally and externally and great to think about.
It's analysis, not exploring. The goal isn't to figure out the entire map, or find every little Easter Egg, or even to do funky things at the edge of the game. Analyzing a game means looking at the final product and trying to reconstruct A. what it is trying to do, B. how effective it is at doing it, and C. how it got to the state it is at. Then you can spin off the little mechanical issues, and art design choices.
As for making a game suck less, well the problem has always been that developers started out because they really like games. Most of them end up doing stuff they may enjoy, but it's not making the games they really wanted to make. And those who end up making the games they really wanted to make, well, they get developer conceit, where their idea is so sacred, and so cool, that they will fight for it, even when evidence mounts to show that it doesn't work.
The most eye-opening experience can be watching how someone else uses your software. 20 years ago, we would send videotapes of testing back to the development house, and they'd be shocked by the kinds of things we did. Now, playtesting is standard practice in most places, and some houses (Valve, for one) have turned it into an art.
That you'd have to play the game like I watched other game designers and myself do it in 1999 and 2000... Basically we called the boring grind finished the moment we could "buff" our avatars through each level of the game and really didn't even "test" or play the first 25-30 days of play time in the game. We just went straight to the finish of the game and played in God Mode for two years. - True Story
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Indeed, I didn't mean exclusive or, nor see much benefit in going XOR about it. Thanks for the clarification.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The thing that bugs me about games is the same thing that bugs me about software in general. 99% of the time they reinvent the wheel. Which means we, as gamers, get to explore their quirky rendition of what really is by and large a standard thing.
I play FPS myself. After years of playing them I still marvel at the idiocy that is clipping. I mean in real life I'm pretty sure if I hit my foot on a 1/4 inch raised piece of tile I won't stop dead in my tracks. If I brush against a frame I don't become immobile, reflexively, I move.
Movement (like a lot of other things) in games is remarkably 2-D.
If you think about it a game is like a lot of other things. Naturally, many things about each game will be unique and lend to the overall experience. Buy not fucking everything. Standards are good and useful and they provide a way to collect (intelligible) feedback and to make improvements.
Gameplay should be evolving and because it's not we, the consumers, are losing out.
Quack, quack.
I think valve is ahead of this one, given that their commentary bubbles are essentially that in action. However this gamer/designer distinction is becoming way too polarizing. Sure it's a hard industry to get into that involves skills that aren't developed solely by playing games, but the idea that gamers are somehow innately not designers or have some alternate mindset that must be completely reengineered in order to become effective designers is patronizing. I think a better way to get at this playing games != making games thing is more of a coming of age thing. Filmmakers have a saying that once you become a filmmaker you never look at films the same way again. That's more the issue. The different way of looking at games is more a side effect of having designed them, not a catalyst for learning designing techniques. Bottom line, playing them to death would prolly work, but be less effective than looking at the source code/models/behind-the-scenes
I are winner