Very often my head pop up game ideas, or nice changes to an existing game. These ideas might be good or bad. I don't know, because it is not that easy to put the ideas into a product these days. What is a good game, or bad? What is good elements in a game, and what is the bad? How do you actually analyse a game? I guess that by analysing a game, I could be able to see much better what makes up a good game or not...

You could look at game review websites (like gametunnel.com which I write reviews for) to see what the reviewers pick out as good and bad features of games. Of course the criteria differ a lot for different types of games, so you should focus on whatever type you're interested in making.

Generally I would say a good game is one people enjoy playing, and good elements are those that work together to create that fun gameplay exprience.

The best way to analyze a game is to play many many games with varying quality. You then compare and contrast those games. You have to decide what you feel are important aspects of a game. you should also query your friends on the subject as well.

should also point out that sometimes the idea may not be whats bad, but teh implementation of the idea or even just teh timing. I mean everyone raves about half-lfie2 and it physics based puzzles. however its VERY far from the first game to have done extensive realtime physics. There was a game in the mid ninties called Trespasser based on jurrasic park that had a great realtime physics engine. unfortunatly pcs at the time were too slow and few met the system requirments. Furthermore the game had to scacrifice some of the physics quality to run on those pentium2 266mhz pcs with voodoo2s. If perhaps they had waited a bit longer, the game would have been a smash hit. It just was WAY ahead of its time.

One of the important things to keep in mind when analyzing a game, is that Analysis is relative, its more about what your view of the Ideal is more than anything else. One review could be completely different from another, it depends on the person doing the review. So when analyzing a game, look at things that you like/disklike. So going with those game idea's and interesting changes to existing games is the right way to go, you simply have to expand on them.

[Edited by - Gyrthok on January 10, 2005 4:49:46 AM]

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Original post by Anonymous Poster The best way to analyze a game is to play many many games with varying quality. You then compare and contrast those games.

Indeed. Look for patterns, things that crop up repeatedly in good or bad games. Try and reduce the game to tokens and processes, and see which arrangements of tokens and processes are 'fun' and which are not.

Playing games is essential, of course, but I'd also recommend books. Certain books like Chris Crawford on Game Design provide an excellent source of ideas and inspiration. Then, if you really want to analyze how games are composed, and real a lot of game design theory, I also recommend Rules of Play. It's pretty unfocused at times, but it covers a lot of theory and ways of analyzing gameplay; I recently analysed one of my own games after reading the book, and found a few very interesting things I could improve, such as formalizing positive and negative feedback loops. (If the concepts aren't familiar: just read the book. ;))

Most of the time all game design is common sense. The problem is just getting one's eyes opened to see the issue at hand.