Design Axiom 7 from Yves Béhar - Master of Design

Posted in Aldus, Command & Conquer, Fast Company, FreeHand, Game Design, Macromedia, Red Alert, Red Alert 2, Yves Béhar, by mskaggs on October 10th, 2007

One more bit of info that bears highlighting from the October 2007 article about Yves Béhar in Fast Company.

His 7th design axiom:

“Never ask the consumer about the future. You can ask them what their aspirations are, but you will not get an answer about what you should do. Design will bring those stories to life.”

I’ve seen so many focus group testing waste money because they centered around asking players what features they wanted in a game rather than their “aspirations” or the “fantasy they wanted to live out”. I think that game players are better able to articulate what they want to do, be, and see than they are at telling game developers exact features they would like to see in a game.

I mentioned “Aldus FreeHand” in a previous post. I actually first saw this design axiom used in practice there by the designers there. Similar to game players, graphic artists were much more able to articulate what they wanted to do rather than give the team a design or feature to accomplish that same goal.

In “Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2“, we focused on the “fantasy” first started in “C&C: Red Alert” about time travel and alternative history and science. We didn’t go to focus groups to ask them what type of weapons, units and buildings we should add to the game. I find it hard to believe that a player would have come up with a “giant mind controlled squid” that our designer Todd Owens did.