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Game design is simple

raphkoster.com

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Re: Game design is simple

#151

Post by moduspol »

Agentlien wrote: post #65
jessetemp wrote: post #62

I hadn't heard of the author before this. I'll definitely read more of their stuff, but I thought the bottom line for part three was a little incomplete. > Bottom line: the more uncertainty, indeterminacy, ambiguity in your game, the more depth it will have. Sure, starting from 0%, adding uncertainty adds depth. But the player needs to maintain some influence over that uncertainty. If you crank the uncertainty up too…

There's been quite a few games in recent years where I notice some system and think "ugh, do I really need to bother with this, too?". Especially crafting or skill point systems which feel slapped on. Some games make them a fun and integral part of the gameplay, some seem to include them because it's trendy and it just adds friction and mental load with little payoff. I don't mind complexity, some of my favorite game…

My cynical take is that crafting systems are probably the most attractive on the ratio of "amount of dev effort required to implement" relative to "amount of play time added." They're also trivially tunable. You can add (or subtract) hours of play time just by changing the numbers required to craft things.

Unless they're an integral feature of the game (like in Minecraft), they always feel slapped on to me.

Re: Game design is simple

#152

Post by engeljohnb »

ninkendo wrote: post #20

My question: is there a concise theory of game design that properly explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid ? There are a lot of AAA games out there that very clearly seem like the developers wish they were directing a movie instead. Sure, there’s loads of cutscenes to show off some cool visuals. But then they seem to think “ok well we need to actually let the player play now”, but it’s still basically a cutscene,…

This isn't the first time I've seen this opinion, and while I share the disdain for quicktime events, and I agree many cutscenes in the most popular games don't work, I don't understand being against the whole concept of cutscenes.

What exactly is the right way to tell a good story though a game? The only other ways I've seen are:

1) Text boxes or Bethesda-style dialogue trees

2) Dark-souls style slow-drip storytelling.

Although they can both work, I don't think I prefer either one over cutscenes. (1) especially is more like something I'll forgive rather than like because I know cutscenes are difficult for smaller teams and limiting for games that emphasize player choice.

It's one of the reasons I liked Baldurs Gate 3 so much -- suddenly the cinematic cutscenes don't feel like a tradeoff for sacrificing choice.

Re: Game design is simple

#153

Post by onraglanroad »

cwillu wrote: post #130
EdwardDiego wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 asked Professor Quirrell why he'd laughed," the boy said evenly, "after he awarded Hermione those hundred points. And Professor Quirrell said, these aren't his exact words, but it's pretty much what he said, that he'd found it tremendously amusing that the great and good Albus Dumbledore had been sitting there doing nothing as this poor innocent girl begged for help, while he had been the one to defend her. And h…

I'm not quite sure what point quoting that was supposed to make.

Perhaps that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (that's what the hpmor at the end means) is such an appallingly written piece of... I hesitate to use the word literature... that you wanted to demonstrate how not to write?

Re: Game design is simple

#154

Post by rnoorda »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #84
EdwardDiego wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's definitely hard to do and since I haven't played those games much I can't really answer accurately, but does Larian (Baldur's Gate 3) do a better job? I think the main problem with Fable or Mass Effect was that the game wants to converge to one of a few endings, but definitely for ME there's a bajillion decisions you can make until you get there. I don't know if you can get rid of this "definite" ending thing pe…

I enjoy the way Baldur's Gate 3 implements this- choices tend to align more along character axes than good/evil. There are indications for many small dialogue choices that say "Karlach approves" or "Astarion disapproves" to give you a sense of each character's values and personality, and they each have their own motivations. Some are more traditionally good or evil, but they all have reasons for doing what they do.

Choices occasionally feel fairly binary good/evil, but more often all choices have their pros & cons, and it's more about story and narrative in making my decisions.

Re: Game design is simple

#155

Post by rstupek »

a13o wrote: post #106
PostOnce wrote: post #4

For reference Raph Koster wrote "the book" on game design, and was the lead designer for Ultima Online (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raph_Koster

I wouldn’t say A Theory of Fun is “the book.” It’s more a coffee table read. “The book” is Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design

What about old school Chris Crawford's book "The Art of Computer Game Design"?

Re: Game design is simple

#156

Post by teamonkey »

random9749832 wrote: post #142
teamonkey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What part of human psychology is being exploited here outside of progression from solving the puzzle which you would naturally always have? This and the other scenarios you mention are deliberately created to make the player have fun. They are all engineered to manipulate the player’s emotions, the intention is to trigger dopamine and other neurological reactions. As I said, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! You…

The difference I am highlighting isn't that it is wrong to think about how to make your game "fun" but the perspective you are thinking about it from. You can try to treat creating fun using a scientific or neurological framework or you can think about it from a more artistic standpoint. When Shenmue chose to make you start doing forklifting (and while I can't prove it) I am sure this was more of a artistic decision…

Being a classically-trained musician and understanding music theory - or even the physics of how sound waves are received by the ear and brain - doesn’t prevent you from composing works of art.

A framework like this does, however, help you make better artistic choices. It helps to identify why something isn’t having the impact you thought it should and gives you some insight on how to fix it. It also helps you to deconstruct other works and understand why they do or do not work.

Re: Game design is simple

#157

Post by zovirl »

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.

I agree there aren't very many. I can think of PuzzleScript, Unreal Blueprints, and Machinations (mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Perhaps this dearth is why Blueprints got so popular?

Honorable mentions might go to PICO-8's flavor of Lua (C-like but clearly designed to create a specific type of game and have a specific developer experience) and Excel (used for developing & balancing game mechanics, but usually replaced in the final product).

Re: Game design is simple

#158

Post by mawadev »

the_af wrote: post #118
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

For me... Assassins creed gives me fomo. I move 100m and I probably missed something... very unpleasant. I can't describe it. That world and activity doesnt fit in my head.

Re: Game design is simple

#159

Post by bavell »

sph wrote: post #108
a13o wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t say A Theory of Fun is “the book.” It’s more a coffee table read. “The book” is Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design

I've come across this kind of comment elsewhere, and the recommendation was that "the book" is Designing Games by Tynan Sylvester (the author of Rimworld) https://tynansylvester.com/book/ Haven't read it yet myself.

I can definitely recommend it!

Re: Game design is simple

#160

Post by bavell »

tekbruh9000 wrote: post #34
vkou wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was interesting/worked about it's design (and why did the players care?[1]) Was it resilient to the, uh, many, many well-documented problems that the genre pushes players/itself into? --- [1] There's a lot of ideas in this space that sound interesting on paper to nerds bikeshedding, but often fall flat in actual implementation. I'm curious as to what were the ones that worked.

Game was SWG, not SWTOR. Launched in 2003 and was sunset in 2011 when SWTOR launched. SWG set out to be something like Dwarf Fortress in terms of depth to the worlds physics; for example, gunsmiths could tinker on all parts of a gun and maybe get a lucky roll to unlock +N more damage or -N recoil. Same with land vehicles and bioengineered animals, droids. Parameters to noodle all the way down. Some under user control…

Loved the economy in SWG! Best part for sure. Played a little SWG emu as well at some point
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