Community Created Game Design

Posted in Community Design, David Perry, Game Design, Shiny Entertainment, by mskaggs on December 2nd, 2007

I’ve always had an interest in what a large organized group of game developers could accomplish.

Dave Perry, long standing industry vet (Shiny Entertainment) and super creative mind, has created “Project Top Secret” to build the “first professional community video game in history”. Good stuff!

Check in with is project at “videogameteam.com“.

Mario Galaxy

Posted in Game Design, Mario Galaxy, The Matrix, Wii, by mskaggs on November 29th, 2007

Anyone else enjoying this game as much as I am?

Who would have figured the right handed joystick skills I developed on Mario64 could translate so easily to my left hand on the Wii?

In all seriousness, I’m finding the game enjoyable, interesting, not particularly challenging (yet), but very reminiscent of the experience I enjoyed while playing Mario64.

As a game developer, the things I find most interesting in the game design are:

1. How tossing in falling “star bits” can instantly liven up the game experience in areas where the game play might get a bit slow

2. The ability to have a second player collect star bits, stun enemies and in general help out the main player. Perfect way for the younger ones to get some great play time with an older brother or mom and dad.

3. How the new controller for the Wii takes the classic experience a step forward and then how “going upside down” takes it even a further step forward. There have been games that have done similar “upside down tricks” before, but in Mario Galaxy, it just seems natural. Bet it was fun for the designers to be thinking in all the directions 3D can provide.

4. Fun, light and bright levels that don’t draw on violence, nightmarish fears or shock to involve a player. The bee levels and the bubble level are great examples of content that feels fresh even though similar things have been done before.

I want to make a special note about the “upside down play” aspect of the game. It’s long been said that we “create worlds” when we make video games. Most worlds so far though are digital mockups of worlds fairly similar to our real world, especially in terms of things like gravity and time. The “Matrix” broke the barrier to freeing us from “regular time” by using “bullet time” and games followed suit. Mario helps break the barrier of “normal gravity” of platformers by introducing their new “relative gravity” concept. Very cool. Imagine what the future holds when more of these traditional type of constraints are broken….

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.

Game Design - “Creativity is a scare, delicate and precious resource”

Posted in Aldus, Fast Company, FreeHand, Game Design, Games, Macromedia, TPS Reports, Yves Béhar, by mskaggs on October 10th, 2007

The October 2007 issue of “Fast Company” has an over-title of “Masters of Design” and features an article about “Yves Béhar“. For those of you who can’t match the name, think of innovative designs ranging from Jawbone Bluetooth headset, to Leaf LED lamps, to the $100 laptop, etc. etc. etc. Very innovative and this is his second time as “Master of Design” in “Fast Company”(see his first here).

His quote on page 99, “Design in Silicon Valley is consensus-driven,” Béhar says, “and that isn’ t the best way for strong ideas to come out.”

I agree. In my experience “consensus-driven design” tends to generate a good, and seemingly generic game design ideas that would rate about an 75 or 80 in reviews. It also seems to be the norm in companies where every group outside of the game development team wants to add their own set of features or does not believe in the development team’s ability to make a great game.

The strongest game design ideas I’ve seen were created by a single strong designer, with a vision or insight that came from experience, especially past experience of doing game design in that genre or a previous version of the current game.

I’ve also see this type of “strong ideas” come from the designers who worked on Aldus FreeHand (now Macromedia FreeHand) while I was on that team so many years ago.

It became clear to me in late 2004/early 2005 that “Creativity is a scarce, delicate and precious resource, all too often crushed by ‘committee’ or ‘TPS reports’ or other ‘benefits’ of large corporate office spaces.”