Ooops i missed that bit about the CABAL design philosophy. Is that a term they made up or was it something else? In the sence of the word cabal?

A designer doesnt need to know everything about code, they just have to have an appreciation for its limitations and how those limitations affect features they may wish to include in their design. - Drew

Interesting post, Paul. I prefer to see conception as part of the design process. A good concept without good design is practically worthless. A good designer armed with a good concept, on the other hand, has immense potential. I''ll go even further and state that concepts are essential to design.

In my opinion the best thing a designer can do is to treat everything as one would treat a brand new concept. For instance, instead of expanding upon Red Alert when designing a new war game, do some research on everything war related and approach it anew. It might not result in anything revolutionary, but the end result is likely to be more harmonious than what is achieved through mere augmentation.

I''d like to add that I favor the egoistic approach to game design, at least during the process of developing a game''s foundation (design foundation, that is). Once the foundation is in place suggestions become less of a threat to the game''s essence.

Ok, I see your point Wavinator, and I agree with you that a game''s company having one person with the job title of Conceptualist is wrong. The person with the role of conceptualist changes from game to game, and is the person who "came up with the FULL idea in the first place" and is therefore not just a theorist and as I said before should have more input to the production process than just the ideas and the concept. I emphasise the word FULL in the pervious sentence for a good reason, as Wavinator said, every man and his dog can have an idea, but whether that idea can then be translated (without additional big ideas) to a game or not is another matter.

Also (as I said b4) there is nothing to stop other people coming up with ideas to add to the game, but you DO need just ONE person (or maybe in some cases 2 people), who we are calling the conceptualist, to fit these ideas together into a cohesive idea, otherwise the game concepts just becomes a mess (how big a mess depends upon how well the team "thinks together").



NightWraith

Only one game designer per game, but ideas are from all the team making the game.
The Game Designer role is to come up with the idea of the game, write the original design, and lead the creation process.
That doesn''t mean that only his ideas are put in the game, but rather than he chooses the ideas to be added and the way to add them.

Don''t forget you''re working in team and that each team member want to contribute to the game, which is perfectly understandable.

I think too many of you are not involved in real project and such lack ''on field'' experience.

I heard that most firm have a Lead Game Designer that write the design and sometimes ''give'' it to another Designer which will lead the creation part.
I also heard that firms have story writers and game designers, however I don''t know how they work together.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Well then why aren''t we getting the original concepts for games any more. Is it becuase the boss always has to let there feeling towards what type of game to be made towards the game designer thus the big dark shadow hanging over us all. But not every company would be as conservative surely. Its obvious that creative freedom and discent is being supressed in this industry at the moment. Maybe its the hardware that''s to blame, maybe everythings just gotten so complicated that the creative types are being shun away due to the over technicalization of the industry.

A designer doesnt need to know everything about code, they just have to have an appreciation for its limitations and how those limitations affect features they may wish to include in their design. - Drew

Paul, I think you''re overlooking economics. The sheer reason why games are not as creative as before has to do with the market. We whine about lack of creativity, yet we pickup and play Diablo II or Red Alert 2 or --fill in the blank II-- anyway. If we did not buy, they would not make.

Most of what the industry releases is a failure. Creativity is rarely rewarded apparently because the audience has become more conservative. The number of gamers who want something new is outweighed by those that are happy with updated graphics.

The thing that we''ve wanted for years-- more widespread acceptance of the hobby-- has been our undoing. Now we expect multimillion dollar budgets, eye-popping graphics, and dialog by professional actors. By and large, we spurn titles with dated engines or substandard effects, even if it has superior gameplay.

We judge the book by the cover, and the publishers know this. They want to stay in business, so they keep giving us what we want.

Our games are less creative because the majority doesn''t mind that it is this way.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Part of the reason there''s less originality than there could be is simply that augmentation seems easier and less risky than starting from scratch. We assign categories to games (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and guide ourselves by favorite examples of these. When we use other games as direct examples for our own designs we become little more than conformists. This is not to say that emulation has no place in game design, but rather that design benefits from a less explicit approach to emulation.

I have many ideas that I think are pretty cool, but I would never think about selling them. I don''t think that anything save an entire welll written game plan (similiar to movie script) that is just as long as a movie script or actually longer and has everythign planned out in detail, and not some story or something written in 10 pages, would sell. Even then it wuold have to be one helluva a terrific idea. You think you have an interested idea then go and learn to code or draw or something, get a team together, be the leader, and have them create ur vision. Simply trying to sell it is (no offense) laziness.

I think that team projects need one person that runs the show in terms of story/concept/etc but that person must also be willing to listen to ideas, not only because he can''t possisibly know everything, but for the sake of team morale as well. People want to see they are appreciated.