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.'"

Comments

Play like a designer

[techpawn]

1. Find neat mimic-able game
2. Copy game design
3. ???
4. PROFIT!

How about "designing like a player"?

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:How about "designing like a player"?

[Other Than That...]

Ok, I obviously realize that this is a rant, and I agree with parts of it, especially the maze complaint, but this quote:

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

while heartfelt, unfortunately comes off as elitist and ignorant of many of the realities of game creation.

First, if you want a game created that you want to play, you'll have to try creating it. Emphasis on try. Lots of people, including professional designers, have awesome ideas that have hundreds of tiny - and a few large - "gotchas" inherent in their designs, or due to the limitations of technology/funding. Most of these don't surface until you're already well into making the game. There's a HUGE difference between describing the game you want to play and making the game you want to play.

Second, if there's a millionth sequel, then people (not you of course) did actually want to play it in the first place, because they've bought every iteration up until this point. People whine vocally about original gameplay, but when it comes down to getting paid, highly polished versions of the-same-old-stuff are where the money usually is.

Don't get me wrong, I look for original concepts all the time, and some of them can be highly successful as well, but to say that no-one wants to play COD4, Halo 3, or even the next Pokemon title is essentially trying to assert that you are the only target market game designers should have, instead of one of many.

Actually, it's what Bartle called "explorers"

[Moraelin]

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.