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Game design is simple

raphkoster.com

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Re: Game design is simple

#111

Post by tgv »

Tade0 wrote: post #81
zwaps wrote: post #15

This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games. Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space. If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of salt. Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.

Personally what I find off-putting is throwing around the term "dopamine". Yeah, there's a link and all, but why include this bit? > Dopamine can release for 'richly interpretable' situations Ok, and? I mean, Oh, right. The dopamine. The dopamine for gamers, the dopamine chosen especially to entertain gamers, gamers' dopamine. That dopamine?

It's a gripe of mine too. There's a tenuous link at best, and it may not mean what is commonly assumed. If you want to say "it can give pleasure or joy," just say so. Don't invoke a rather indirect, pseudo-scientific, bullshit argument.

Re: Game design is simple

#112

Post by sph »

stefs wrote: post #99
jebarker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a decent definition of intelligence

I can get better by getting more experienced without getting more intelligent.

True, but one definition of intelligence is the ability to deal with a novel situation. You can't get more experienced if you're "too stupid" to learn and adapt to the challenge.

Re: Game design is simple

#113

Post by tgv »

threetwoonezero wrote: post #103

I’m not experienced game designer, but I definitely view games a bit differently from the author. I don’t like complexity much tbh, and I’m sure there are people like me who enjoy some clicker like experience without game forcing me to solve problems

Candy Crush was immensely popular. It's not exactly chess.

Re: Game design is simple

#114

Post by Razengan »

One thing that gets me is how there hasn't really been a language made solely for gameplay logic..

Almost every other domain has its specialized language: SQL, Julia, even HTML/CSS/JS.. but game developers still have to trundle on with general purpose languages invented 500 years ago by people who had nothing to do with games.

Re: Game design is simple

#115

Post by Razengan »

zwaps wrote: post #15

This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games. Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space. If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of salt. Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.

Yeah, imagine playing the same level in a single player game 100 times just to get 1 piece of loot..unless it's a roguelike :')

Re: Game design is simple

#116

Post by krapp »

Razengan wrote: post #114

One thing that gets me is how there hasn't really been a language made solely for gameplay logic.. Almost every other domain has its specialized language: SQL, Julia, even HTML/CSS/JS.. but game developers still have to trundle on with general purpose languages invented 500 years ago by people who had nothing to do with games.

Game development and game design are completely separate domains.

Game development can be generalized to algorithms and languages targeted to specific processors and architectures because it's a subset of programming and computer science. You can't have a DSL for design because the domain is the human mind. The design of a game like Undertale has absolutely nothing to do with the language used to develop it.

Unless you're talking about things like modelling and UV unwrapping and the like, but even then I don't see what benefit a separate language would provide.

Re: Game design is simple

#117

Post by astrobe_ »

zwaps wrote: post #15

This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games. Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space. If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of salt. Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.

That "Fun" is a de gustibus sort of thing is the important point. I wonder if there is something like relationships between the various flavors of fun, or if one can infer good "collateral fun" activities from the main genre.

For instance, I think that puzzles are ok in Mass Effect, but the many mini-games in Final Fantasy 7 are borderline annoying.

Re: Game design is simple

#118

Post by the_af »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #83
zwaps wrote: post #15

This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games. Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space. If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of salt. Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.

If you look at most games, they're all repeated challenges, but some are so good that you don't see or experience them as such. Others are very obvious though; MMORPGs are the obvious answer and they often don't even have an interesting story or reward to go with the grind, because the reward is a gamble. Ubisoft games are another example, ever since the first Assassin's Creed their games have generally been the same…

Some pushback to this: I understand MMORPGS are addictive, but for some reason I was never hooked, so their "repetitive" aspect is a negative to me.

For Assassin's Creed, it was so repetitive even within the same game (the first one) I couldn't even finish it once I noticed the grind. It drove me nuts.

A lot of games then followed that pattern (e.g. Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max, and I'm sure countless others -- I just mention the ones I tried). I find some of their mechanics interesting but once the grind kicks in (which is fairly soon, since these sandbox games are all grind-based) I despair and abandon them.

They feel like repetitive work rather than entertaining to me.

But hear this: Papers, Please, a game that is literally a bureaucracy simulator, engages me in a way Assassin's Creed never could. I wonder why! (Random guess: I think it's because PP, for all its repetitiveness, feels like a small game, while Assassin's Creed and its like feel like endless games you could spend your life within... and I have better things to do with my life).

Re: Game design is simple

#119

Post by crabmusket »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #74
zwaps wrote: post #15

This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games. Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space. If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of salt. Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.

> And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun. Stories are obviously fun, otherwise no-one would read books, but a story that you interact with meaningfully, that you can change significantly, really hard to do well. Like every game where you can do good thing or bad thing, and the game punishes you for doing bad thing. It's really hard to write a comp…

I remember being quite impressed at the way Alpha Protocol handles player agency, but it has been a long time so I couldn't give you specifics.

Re: Game design is simple

#120

Post by jebarker »

meheleventyone wrote: post #94
jebarker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a decent definition of intelligence

I think for both contexts its far too simplistic to be more than a generalization and certainly for fun its a very local definition to serve Raph's ideas about what constitutes a game rather than encompassing enough to define it fully. For intelligence for example you could have a PID controller where there is automatic tuning which would fit the definition of learning and application. But I don't think we'd call it…

A PID doesn’t get better at learning and applying predictions. I’d argue that to do that essentially indefinitely requires intelligence.
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