Speaking as a industry veteran, a games designer of some years, I now understand what I've been doing wrong all these years. Fun. Damnit! Why didn't I think of that before?
This observation is, of course, like unto a thing made entirely of poo. I find it particularly offensive coming from the Redmond crowd, whom I've had some dealings with. I am no longer inclined to take advice from a bunch of middle-aged cardigan-wearing preppy types who know everything about project management and zip about gameplay, other than what's been fed them by their Usability department focus-testers.
MS Usability have a lot of influence over people who are commissioning. They have their act honed and appear to be doing their best to reduce gameplay to a science - to quantify fun. I've been through some of their reports and it's not easy reading. It sums up their attitude to games: clinical, rationalized, objectified, sanitized, blah. They think too hard about it.
What a difference it is talking to Nintendo. Right from the off they tell you gameplay is king. Everything comes back to the control system. They pound this into you again and again, but it's good. Because they have not made this a science; they treat games design as an artform and know how subjective a thing it is. They understand fun. They know their stuff.
At Kuju Entertainment we did this a few years ago with a game called Halcyon Sun. This was some four hours of realtime cinema cut scenes interleaved with about 30 kickass space combat missions.
The interesting part was that the game was initially released for free, using a TV model. We designed the game as ten TV episodes, and you could download the story/game piece by piece. With zipping the episodes were under 5 Mb each (though they were bigger if you added the voice.wavs).
The publisher went belly-up in the dotcom crash, (after all, free games means advertiser income only) but Halcyon Sun still survives as a budget PC title.
Please excuse me: this was my baby and I'm still proud of it. It was a great game and story and those people who managed to get through to the end really seemed to enjoy it.
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Speaking as a industry veteran, a games designer of some years, I now understand what I've been doing wrong all these years. Fun. Damnit! Why didn't I think of that before?
This observation is, of course, like unto a thing made entirely of poo. I find it particularly offensive coming from the Redmond crowd, whom I've had some dealings with. I am no longer inclined to take advice from a bunch of middle-aged cardigan-wearing preppy types who know everything about project management and zip about gameplay, other than what's been fed them by their Usability department focus-testers.
MS Usability have a lot of influence over people who are commissioning. They have their act honed and appear to be doing their best to reduce gameplay to a science - to quantify fun. I've been through some of their reports and it's not easy reading. It sums up their attitude to games: clinical, rationalized, objectified, sanitized, blah. They think too hard about it.
What a difference it is talking to Nintendo. Right from the off they tell you gameplay is king. Everything comes back to the control system. They pound this into you again and again, but it's good. Because they have not made this a science; they treat games design as an artform and know how subjective a thing it is. They understand fun. They know their stuff.
At Kuju Entertainment we did this a few years ago with a game called Halcyon Sun. This was some four hours of realtime cinema cut scenes interleaved with about 30 kickass space combat missions. The interesting part was that the game was initially released for free, using a TV model. We designed the game as ten TV episodes, and you could download the story/game piece by piece. With zipping the episodes were under 5 Mb each (though they were bigger if you added the voice .wavs).
The publisher went belly-up in the dotcom crash, (after all, free games means advertiser income only) but Halcyon Sun still survives as a budget PC title.
Please excuse me: this was my baby and I'm still proud of it. It was a great game and story and those people who managed to get through to the end really seemed to enjoy it.