Everyone, Here''s a question I really want some opinions on. When designing a game, of course one has the player''s entertainment and convenience in mind; otherwise it''s just not a fun game. One attempts to create a sufficiently powerful engine, rigorous code, good gameplay, lovely graphics, et cetera. My question is: in attempting to "sell" a game to a prospective consumer, are features sometimes included that make people more inclined to buy the game, but don''t really add to overall gameplay? And do these features take away too much time and effort from the "core game"? And does attempting to create a marketable game lead people to discard features which although innovative are untried and may make a game harder to sell? In sum, do monetary considerations sometimes override good game design? --------------------------------------------------- -SpittingTrashcan You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

quote: Original post by SpittingTrashcan
My question is: in attempting to "sell" a game to a prospective consumer, are features sometimes included that make people more inclined to buy the game, but don''t really add to overall gameplay?

Yes.

quote: ...do these features take away too much time and effort from the "core game"?

Possibly.

quote: ...does attempting to create a marketable game lead people to discard features which although innovative are untried and may make a game harder to sell?

Definitely. See management.

quote: In sum, do monetary considerations sometimes override good game design?

Absolutely. Making games is a business, and the objective is primarily profit. While, just like movies, a studio may occasionally disregard all fiscal signs because it believes so much in the gameplay/design appeal of a title, but I guarantee you that such naivete will not persist after the first title brings huge losses.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Whoops!

Oluseyi: So far I agree with you completely, in principle... I guess my last question would be: are there exceptions to this rule, games that not only sold well but were innovative, fun, and not lacking in good gameplay?

I cite Blizzard as an apparent example: their games have been by all accounts clever, well-designed, fun, and immensely profitable. They''re not perfect, granted, but they''ve set a pretty high standard of quality and met it consistently.

Any other examples/counterexamples?

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

I pretty much agree with everything Oluseyi said, although I''ve been wondering about his last comment on games being a business. The simple and sad fact is that he is right. Although many people on a game project team may like to consider themselves "artists", the hard truth is it takes lots of bucks to create an amazing game that can compete with other artistic mediums.

A painter just needs a canvas and paint. A writer just needs a pen and paper. A musician just needs his instrument. A dancer just needs to be healthy Other than movies which is also a concerted joint effort and also takes a large amount of money, almost no other artistic medium has the same monetary requirements as does making a game.

But, what about independent creators? I think this is the best hope of true artistic freedom for gaming. In the movie industry, there is such a huge audience (how many people in America don''t like watching at least some genre of movies?) that filmmakers and studios are willing to back some more wild and less mainstream ideas. In the gaming industry, this falls mostly to the garage gamers and independent creators (and I don''t just mean Mod creators). The computer games industry is still in its infancy, and I think that in many ways, it is still hampered by a perceived "adolescent" image much as comics are.

It''s kind of sad really, because I think many brilliant game ideas and designs will never see the light of day because of the managements perception that it will never sell. I made a comment about this in another thread about the bankruptcy of Marvel comics. Up until the mid-90''s, it was Marvel and not DC that was known for its intriguing storylines. But they had gone public in the early 90''s, and the corporate suits in charge quickly told the editors of the creative talent what "ideas" they should be making in their comics. These corporate suits had no clue what the fanbase really wanted, and as a result, there became a large exodus of Marvel''s finest artists and writers. Because management stifled these artists creative license, they formed their own little independent studios (some of which still exist, Top Cow for example) and many that don''t. Nevertheless, the comics industry fared much better with their independence than did the gaming industry (with GOD games for example).

I really think that the games industry is still too immature yet, and not helping this is the mainstream''s public ideas that PC gaming is still too adolescent and violent (when was the last time you heard something positive about gaming in the mainstream news?) Hopefully this will change, but it''s a vicious circle. It won''t change until game designers put out material that is substantially different, but they won''t have a chance to do this until the big business gives them the license to do so. But there''s hope at least, with games like The Sims, and Black and White. Maybe it will just take some time until the game world can strike a better balance between creativity and mainstream appeal.

In the postmortem for Poptop''s "Tropico" , they had a great way of describing this effect:

quote: 3. Fun factor versus gee-whiz factor. Because we started with an existing engine, one of the errors that we made during development was to see how far we could push the envelope with the engine, working on "gee whiz" enhancements that would improve the look and the technology of the game instead of features that would enhance gameplay.

The biggest example of this was what we dubbed "Zoom 0." As the graphics in Tropico were much more detailed than RT2''s, we looked for ways to show off these gorgeous images in the game. Allowing the engine to zoom in one level closer than it had previously been able to (Zoom 1) was one of the ways that we did this. In Tropico, players can zoom in very close and get very detailed views of the people and the buildings.

Unfortunately, Zoom 0 is not very useful for gameplay, as it is almost impossible to see enough of the map at that zoom level to get a feeling for how you should play. The majority of players tend to stay zoomed out about two levels, occasionally zooming in or out one level as the situation warrants.

O.K., so we added a feature that allowed us to show off the graphics even if it didn''t help gameplay. What''s the big deal? The deal is that we pre-scaled all of the images for the various zooms beforehand and stored them in the data file, so these high-resolution close-up graphics ate up as much space as all the other zoom levels'' graphics combined. We spent a full 50 percent of our graphics budget on this one feature. As we got deep into the project, it became apparent that memory and CD file space budgets were going to be tight, but we had invested too much into this feature to be comfortable with cutting it. Ultimately, we had to cut other features to create space, features which would have improved the game. Rotatable buildings, more unit animations, and repeating animations on the buildings (such as blinking lights and moving machinery) all had to be cut to make room.

Looking back, it is apparent that tossing out Zoom 0 and putting in more gameplay-friendly features would have been a big net improvement to the overall game.

I think this is the sort of thing we are talking about here.

The full postmortem is here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011010/smith_01.htm

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development

Your questions seem to already be answered. But you can find out more info on the subject by reading some postmortems. You can find them here, on Game Dev, and there are also some on Gamasutra. Check them out, the are very informative.

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Make it work.
Make it fast.

"Commmmpuuuuterrrr.." --Scotty Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home

Some examples of fairly well-designed games:

- A lot of games by Shiny were quite good, and they don't do sequels AT ALL (not counting EWJ2, they were just a start-up at the time, so they didn't have much choice), they try to create an original game every time around and IMHO they've succeeded a number of times. And of course Shiny games sell good enough to be called top titles.

- Startopia. The creators claim it's a great game (haven't played it yet) but just because in their enthousiasm they 'forgot' to do clever marketing the game didn't really sell. They believed the game was so great that gamers would know it and buy it for that. Read more about this in their postmortem at Gamasutra.

- Blizzard. As mentioned before, Blizzard has made some decent games which sold well.

As for features which are added to sell the game but which don't add to the gameplay value: FMV and certain other graphic wonders. A lot of games have shaders, flares and whatnot when they're not really needed or add to the gameplay. Of course some games, for example Soldier of Fortune really DO require as much realism as possible since part of the fun comes from the realism, but I think most games are just as fun with lesser graphics.

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Allow me to clear my head for once...
Stop polluting the air!

Edited by - Airhead Zoom on January 23, 2002 2:57:43 PM

Well crafted games are not necessarily financially successful, and the opposite is also true. If you head on over to the newbie area at IGDA.org, you''ll see some comments by Scott Miller, CEO of 3DRealms (Duke Nukem, Max Payne, etc.). He points out the great importance of understanding how to reach people, based on principles of marketing that have to be considered from the beginning of your development. The business side of game development is often ignored, to the detriment of a project''s success.

As with most artistic media, the truly innovative work is usually done on the fringes by people with the resources and willingness to take a chance. Those are rarely the big studios or big names. In film, it''s only recently (within the last few years) that ''indie'' films have become profitable. Books are not as good an example, because even though they only require a ''pen and paper'' to create, they also require big financial backing from publishers. In fact, the book industry and the games industry have a lot in common, almost more than the games industry and the film industry.

Just some thoughts.

R.

The same can be said for the music world. The best quality is usually not the most popular and vice versa. That is what gives us the Matchbox Dolls and Goo Goo 20. Catchy? Yes... the first 50 times you hear it. Musically accomplished?

Anyway, the point being, the masses don''t flock toward the fringes. They are quite content bunching up at the middle of the bell curve. Therein lies the secret to Burger King, Chevy Cavaliers, and the 70% of software that is within one standard deviation of "middle of the road".

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development

Popular and good are not mutually exclusive.

To be popular, your game must have broad appeal. For example, compare The Sims to Startopia. Clearly the Sims appeals to a broader audience.

To be popular, your game must be easy to get into. It must have some initial draw.

None of these indicates a lack of quality. But if you make a game where you write java code to control robots that battle with ascii graphics, don''t expect it to do well.

The N64 Zelda games are great and they kicked ass sales-wise. Same with most Mario games, some of the ResEvil series, etc etc.

They (sales and quality) are not mutually exclusive, nor are they related either for the most part. The very top selling games usually *are* good games, after that it is a crap shoot.