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Original post by Anonymous Poster what Argus2 said is quite true, most designers never create thier dream game. but this is why i like indie game dev. because you have a chance. the only problem is with todays technology one person can't create a full GOOD looking and WELL programmed game with complete vo's, good physics, and other many many things. i know, i'm just a graphics designer and game designer whos dream is to create a Silent Hill type game, however i myself can't create this. i need a team, and just being a game designer does not allow you to make a good game. a game is a combining of multiple talents to create one workable interactive experience that if done right will be fun. If you want to be the best (like you think you are) siolis you need to deversify your talents. learn some programming, learn more about game design, learn graphics, character design. just knowing what makes a good game deson't mean crap, you need to learn about all of the elements of a game. and untill i register here i will simply use this name-Jarrod1937

Ok Mr Assjack, didnt ever say i was no1 at game designing, i know C++, C, C# and VB as well as stuff like Direct X and have built my own game engine, am doing a collage project on computer game character design in RPG's and finally i have read and know every word from "Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX, Second Edition" and have made demos from the information (i have read several other books just i think that ones the best and im at collage right now) and i am designing my game so i can then build it! Dont think you know me cus you know shit.

You are right however that to make a AAA game these days dose require a team of people. I agree.

Siolis

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Original post by Argus2 For starters, all that rubbish about memes is mostly conjecture - even accepting that materialism is true (which you imply), we can't point to the brain as a computational device anymore than we could a potato. And it's fairly simple to show that the recombining memes theory of game design doesn't necessarily (or even mostly) imply good games. Take the population of game players - it's fair to say that effectively all of them have a favourite/preferred game, which is to say that they all have a reference to a game that they consider "good". So "in theory" they could all make exactly the same claim that you make - that they recognise a game's good qualities and can therefore create a good game. Yet we know for a fact that some of them cannot design a good game (if you don't believe me, just download the demo of Coliseum). So it's trivial to say that you recognise the 'good' qualities in games, because every game player can say that. And so basically you're just saying that you are a good designer of games. You might well be, or you might be like the designer of Coliseum - chances are no one will ever know, because few game designers actually create their dream game.

Could you at least try to read my posts before replying? o0

What I mean by quality of a game is the measure of how good or bad it is, yes everyone has their own opinion and yes they are welcome to it BUT my point is that if a lot of people liked game feature X then if you include game feature X in your game and do so well and maybe even improve upon it then people will then in theory like game feature X in your game. Wash, rinse and repeat with Y and Z and the rest of the alpha bet with your own designs and your game will, in theory, based on my last statement, be successful!!!

Do you get it now, to you understand or should I pull out the sock puppets?

Siolis

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Original post by Anonymous Poster i get your point, but when you release your game i don't think i would want to play it. Because your game will simply be a clone among many other good games that you took ideas from. you're mising the point as far as real-game deisgn goes.-Jarrod1937

Again, my own original and unique ideas + last argument theory = game you in theory would like.

You would like because it would have several improved parts from other games you liked plus new ideas which at present time you have no knowledge of.

Dose any of this make any sense at all?

Siolis

Well, I am only new in this computer game design, but I have designed, realised and played about two dozen game systems I created in the past six years. Does that count?

Anyway.

I am currently in the process of producing a design document, and content, of course, for a multiplayer RolePlaying Game, but I need a new coder. The project I am currently working on started from the previous coder, but due to Real Life problems (heavier workload than he can manage and kep his sanity and couple safe) He has decided to withdraw or postpone. And I think that, in computer games development, postponing equals deleting.

Actually, 90% of the game is designed, so far, and, about 6 months worth of evolving content is created in two languages. But I still need someone who could actually bring this ONLINE. I can only work on the content while waiting for some help or his decision to come back on the project. And I hate depending on someone else to do something.

Well, it says it all, really.

Designing games is all very well, but at some point, designing requires a part in which the game is played, because if not, it means that it remains a pretty idea. In my group of roleplayers, we have devised a saying :" the trouble with games is players". They generally don't want to go the way you set for them. They always want to do things you never thought of, or maybe not in the way you thought they would. I the end, it all falls back on the GM to solve the problems on the fly. And only the very best GMs are able to do that without you even noticing they had to take some time to think a way out of it.

The same goes for games. Devising a story is the easy part. Devising a system to play through your story is a slightly more difficult part of the designing process. But even that can be done by anyone with enough culture of the medium you are trying to reach. The next step in designing is called "balancing". You have to make sure your system can't be easily abused, and that it won't make things too difficult either. And lastly, the ultimate step before game creation is making sure your players either won't want to derail from the set story, or that they won't be able to spot a gap in the edges, and want to go astray. Or that they won't see you hedging them towards the road you had previewed for them.

And once you have done that, "bravo", you have designed a game. And that is still VERY far from CREATING a game. Before creating your game, you'll want to decide if it is worth the effort put in it, and find out if OTHER people may find it enjoyable. You'll then have to find people willing to work on it. And money to produce it. Or at least to buy you time to take it out.

Designing games is not as easy at I made it sound, though. As was stated before you have to have a "holistic view" of the result. You can't possibly say, "I want the socializing system of "the Sims" and the balanced gameplay of "starcraft" and the graphics of HalfLife2, and a storyline just as compelling as that of ChronoTrigger." This just won't work, in most cases, because you don't know WHY "The Sims" has a good socializing system, or WHY StarCraft has a good and well balanced gameplay. Or if your story will sound as exciting to others as that of ChronoTrigger. Before designing games, you should play, and learn how to play. And learn how to analyse what it is you're doing. Because once you can decompose everything you do in simple tasks, you'll be able to create a model of what you're doing, and tell the rest of the world why you devised it that way, according to what laws you have created, and so on.

It is easy to create a RPG system in which levels and HP progression are completely absent. I know because I did it. Simple. I is not very complicated, with some tweaking and experimentation, to create a TBS well balanced, and then, with some more work and tweaking, transform it into a RTS. But before you attempt such things, you need a DEEP knowledge of the GENRE, not of the three games you have previously played. And you also want a DEEPER understanding of OTHER FORMS of games exploring that genre. And you'll also want an EVEN DEEPER understanding of players reactions. Being a player yourself doesn't suffice, most of the time. You have to have looked at the way a great number of OTHER PLAYERS react towards other games, and think for a while how they WOULD react to your game, taking away the wishful thinking...

Well, that is only a small aspect of Game Design, in my humble opinion. But it is a small aspect of game design that happens to work for me, so...

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Original post by Siolis I mean you don’t write a book based entirely on other peoples ideas because a well read person would take one look and notice it straight off. I'm not saying however that it cant be done but Sean is right that the audience will become jaded to your work in the end however if you take your own ideas and add other successful ones from other games your game will benefit from it to some extent if the idea has not been over done.

But what, exactly, should you consider taking from other games? How do you decide what would work in the context of your own game? Playing these other games won't necessarily help you there, since you're only going to see those game elements in their _existing_ contexts.

What you need to do is understand why people play games, what makes a game fun, and _why_ a specific element in a game helps or hinders that aim.

There's no reason to believe playing games will necessarily make you a better designer.

I used to play games before I started making my own. I made my own _not_ because I loved playing games, but because I loved _making_ them. The two activities are very different to my mind. One is a projective process; the other -- making games -- is a process of construction. (I don't think it's a coincidence that I've always been fascinated by engineering.)

The problem is that, once you know how the trick is done, it becomes that much harder to suspend your disbelief and avoid seeing the illusion for what it is. In other words, you find it much, much easier to 'see the strings' behind the illusion. Once I started making games, I found I was no longer playing as much.

The upshot is that, in the last four years, I've only bought three games.

From my discussions with novelists and people in other media, this isn't a rare occurrence: quite a few filmmakers have trouble watching a film objectively. Nobody ever watches a film, reads a book or plays a game alone: your past experiences are always there with you.

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My own game is based on improved sub games, such as mining, which are given the same design attention as the RPG components of my game. As well as being a Warrior or a Mage for example the player will also have the option to be a Miner in the same degree of game play, as in they could spend 10 hours hunting monsters and then 10 hours mining and enjoy in-depth game play during both equally. I’ve never herd of a game which did an in-depth mining game let alone hybrid it with other games in this fashion and yes I will be incorporating other peoples design ideas into both my RPG system and Mining system but it will still be unique.

So basically, it's a World Of Warcraft clone, but with other, non-violent options? (I think I've seen your related thread.) It's a change from the usual focus on Orc-bashing, but you do realise computers are finite, right? There's a limit to how much care and attention you can lavish on features that market research suggests would have only limited appeal. The Law Of Diminishing Returns applies here and I suspect you may find it will come back to haunt you. At some point, _you_ will have to decide which subgames to include and which ones aren't worth the effort.

Still, I have no reason to advise you _not_ to do this. It's your time; your investment.

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Also just to make it clear, I make generalizations!!! I know for a fact that the majority of writers read a hell of a lot, not each and every one, but most ergo I also assume most game designers do in fact play games. It only makes sense that they do really...(snip stereotype argument)

Ah, but in my own experience, there's no such thing as a 'stereotypical' writer or game designer. The creative process varies quite wildly from person to person. I know for a factoid that my own experiences aren't necessarily applicable to all game designers, but I am fully aware that there are writers who write like people possessed, cranking out entire novels over a few short weeks, while others will set themselves a target of, say, 2000 words a day and spend the rest of it pottering about, reading, jotting down notes or just doing chat shows.

The same is undoubtedly true of other creative artists.


Hmmm. I'm sure I had a point to make, but I forget what it was.

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

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BUT my point is that if a lot of people liked game feature X then if you include game feature X in your game and do so well and maybe even improve upon it then people will then in theory like game feature X in your game. Wash, rinse and repeat with Y and Z and the rest of the alpha bet with your own designs and your game will, in theory, based on my last statement, be successful!!!

Problem is, a game is more than just the sum of its sub-games. And people get tired of the same sub-games.

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My own game is based on improved sub games, such as mining, which are given the same design attention as the RPG components of my game. As well as being a Warrior or a Mage for example the player will also have the option to be a Miner in the same degree of game play, as in they could spend 10 hours hunting monsters and then 10 hours mining and enjoy in-depth game play during both equally.

AKA "Why not make a game where you can do *anything*?" The problem here is that in the real world, we have resource limitations. Creating games costs time and money. Do you actually think that Blizzard designers are just too inept to design a detailed and engaging mining system? Or could it be that the monetary value of creating such a system is lower than the development and maintenance costs required to implement it?

I really cant agree with the idea of "It worked super good in all these other games! LETS REHASH IT!"

Think of the games like The Getaway. They took all thee great elements from GTA3 and borrowed some from other games, but it didnt mix well andthe game played like shit.

They did what you're trying to say would make an amazingly successfull game, and they failed.

Now, look at games like Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2. These alot of elements in these games from games like Legend of Zelda, Diablo 2, and Sim City, and mixed those elements in harmony. They took these fundamental aspects of gameplay and tweaked them to compliment eachother as the player seemlessly switches gameplay style many many times throughout the game.

To me, this is proof that the follow isnt true:

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if a lot of people liked game feature X then if you include game feature X in your game and do so well and maybe even improve upon it then people will then in theory like game feature X in your game. Wash, rinse and repeat with Y and Z and the rest of the alpha bet with your own designs and your game will, in theory, based on my last statement, be successful!!!

Like everyone has been saying: THERE IS MORE TO GAME DESIGN THAN KNOWING WHAT SELLS.

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Original post by Siolis ...I posted it in a incorrect manner for the rest of you, I not understood most of the time by others anyway.

By definition, then, you suck at writing.

Re Mimetics:

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In 2005, Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission ceased publication and published a set of 'obituaries' for memetics. This was not intended to suggest that there can be no further work on memetics, but that the exciting childhood of memetics, which began in 1996, is finally drawing to a close, and that memetics will have to survive or become extinct in terms of the results it can generate for the field of cultural evolution. Memetics as a social, internet-fueled popular scientific movement is now probably over. Many of the original proponents have moved away from it. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have both expressed some reservations as to its applicability, Susan Blackmore has left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer found the academic world of the north of England to be unsympatethic to his ideas, and gave up to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still publishes the odd memetics article from time to time. Richard Brodie is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. Aaron Lynch disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book).

A lot of what you stated on memes is conjecture and highly disputed. FYI.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster "Like everyone has been saying: THERE IS MORE TO GAME DESIGN THAN KNOWING WHAT SELLS." exactly! Siolis, i would like it to see a demo of a game that you've made that shows off your amazing design skills. just a small demo will do.

I'd settle with a design document focusing on gameplay.

I don't know why some people here have been focusing on gameplay through combining "features of games that have sold well", since that's a much weaker version of gameplay through combining "features of games that are generally recognized as well designed". That's the real argument. Not all popular games are well designed, and not all well designed games are popular.

And I agree this debate would be more interesting if Siolis were to post a design doc for some constructive criticism.