game design questions

S

Starseeker

Vault Senior Citizen
Here is a question I'll put to the NMA at large: Should game be made by software developers or (product) designers?

This question came about when I was reading this month's Fast Company. This month's feature is the design industry with a special article on John Maeda.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/129/the-double-vision-of-john-maeda.html

A game is an incredibly technical thing to design and produce, so that is probably why we have a lot of IT/technical guys running the show at the top. How are computer skills differ from drawing skills or writing skills? It's a tough question. What is a game? A simulated world/reality where one can enjoy a story(of some sort)/experience that one normally wouldn't be able to. You can come up with your own descriptions/explanations on this.

If one goes through most of the human history, that particular field was mostly occupied by books, plays, toys, and paintings(and later on, TV, photos, movies, etc). It's probably safe to say that games(software) should fit this criteria.

But a lot of games today seem to made by technical people with the focus on only one aspect of story. There are a lot of single focused, cold blooded and autistic elements in some of the modern game designs. You can't exactly play C++ or AutoCAD(and those things have their own uses). So what happened to the human elements? You know, immersion, interaction, choices, fun? An extremely competitive, meritocratic system where people show off how much stuff they can horde, with the shiniest bling possible doesn't sound like fun, it sounds like work. (In fact, I avoid a lot of games today because they feel like work, and are meant for <16 with no real jobs)

My point is that shouldn't game design belong in a design/arts school(instead of animation/computer science) where they actually teach you how to make things from the ground up?

While the corporate world is obsessed with the idea of design thinking -- which relies on data and process for inspiration -- Maeda is skeptical. "Design thinking is basically about being able to make good PowerPoint slides -- the quad-chart slide, the stakeholder slide. I get that. I think it's important. But at the same time, you hear whispers, even at Stanford, that people aren't making things anymore." Scott Klinker, head of the 3-D design program at Cranbrook Academy of Art, who defended the intuitive, qualitative approach to design at this year's Industrial Designers Society of America conference, agrees: "The proponents of the strategy-based approach say, 'Don't worry about form. We'll save you with design thinking.' I think that's crap. Design has always been a complex synthesis of analytical and intuitive processes."
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Another memorable paragraph:

The Nature Lab at RISD is a relic of a kinder, gentler, analoger time. The 71-year-old facility, with more than 80,000 stuffed and mounted moose heads, human skeletons, and dung beetles, is a treasured artifact in an institution that celebrates its history like some schools flaunt their juiced-up sports stadiums or slick computer labs. Freshman drawing classes are held here, and you can check out an armadillo or a tarantula for your homework.

"When something dies on the road, people call up to see if RISD wants to taxidermize it," says Maeda, roaming the room, pointing out bones and shells. "It's like the Hogwarts School of Art and Design."

Maeda loves the lab -- its history, its tactility, its randomness. For a guy who has spent most of his career in front of a computer screen, the sheer physicality of the place is exhilarating. "I've been an IT guy in a sensorially deprived space," he says. "All these things can't be replicated so easily. This is our basic competitive advantage. If this were all Googleable, it wouldn't matter so much."
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Well, :falloutonline: aside, I was hoping for some commends from some of the game developers/designers/modders to provide some insight. Seriously, originality is risky so we make sequels/blends of old games, but a lot of people also make crap in the guise of originality. So if you have the money/talents require to make any game you like, what would you make?
 
A turn-based cRPG with Fallout-style dialogues and C&C , JA2-style combat/character development system and avernum tech-level of graphics.
 
I brought back my old thread after reading all the discussions in the FO3 forum.

In terms of game design, what is good? What could be considered to be "RPGs"?

Given all the arguments back and forth in the FO 3 forum, no matter how intellectual or analytical it gets, it seems to boil down to a generational gap.

Are we, as an older generation, as digital migrants, have entirely different expectations for game designs than the current generation?

Live action = more realism
immersion = FP perspective
faster pace = shooters

Bigger guns, hand holding level design, straight forward answers, incoherent/twittered plots, and big "happy" endings seem to permeate the pores of a lot of games lately. The idea of self-censorship or inability to trust the players to make their own decisions also bugs me. Are we just market study sheep to these companies?

Is game making turning into fast food making?

It's like saying the Italian invented the pasta or when FF7 came out.

Maybe I am getting too old.
 
Wooz said:
Games should be made by the Trix bunny.
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But then things don't change! We would still be left with a product made by someone who doesn't understand us. If our steady resolve has taught us anything, its that Trixs are for kids.
 
Games should be concieved and designed by government comittees with subservient staffs of technical experts. The purpose of games should be to promote the courage and benevolence of government comittees, as well as the absolute need for their continued existence.
 
Let product designers make a game, and you end up with Mirror's edge. Pretty game and interesting concept, but not very functional.
 
A capable team of programmers overseen by people who have experience in arts. Prefferably programmers too, so that they know what's impossible.
 
I think there are bridging programmer/art degrees. Hire two or three of those people to oversee two teams, one composed of programmers and the other of art designers.
 
It makes some sense to have games (and other programs, really) planned by designers, rather than regular coders. Analogously, an architect can make better plans for a house than a bricklayer can. But architects who don't have to live in houses they built tend to make buildings like MIT's Stata Center (i.e. 'innovative', hideously ugly, and seriously flawed). So the designer should also be a gamer and preferably a playtester in order to appreciate if the game is any good or not. Interplay had the right idea with their "by gamers, for gamers" motto. If you want ideas for a new game, don't ask marketing droids what they think will sell; ask the gamers what they want to play.
 
You're going to think I'm foolish for saying this but you need a team, not one head but three, IT, Project Management, and Arts/Design.

IT tells Project Management and Arts that something can or can't be done or how long something would take to doing ('cause any IT guy worth his salt can do anything given enough time.)

Arts/Design tells the Project Management and IT what they think would be cool/innovative/enjoyable in the current type of game.

Project Management tells IT and Arts that both sides may meet but how long will it take in order to keep it in scope of the overall project.

It's too much for one guy to handle, most indie projects are just three guys normally with maybe a guy or two under IT and Arts to help do the volume of code / pictures, however each of the three has a main say in the project.

When you get just a designer you wind up with pretty but piss-poor in quality of gameplay.

When you have just an IT guy, you wind up with functional but not fun or ugly as sin.

And if you have just a Project Manager you wind up with a half-assed game that really doesn't push any boundaries or even be more than a 'casual game'.

So to get a proper balance to make a good game you need all three heads to work together and brainstorm what needs to be done, then get a legion of lackeys to implement them! :D :P
 
I believe its a delicate balance between being an artistic endeavor and a technical one. You need people with creative ideas, and in turn you need people with the technical skills to achieve those ideas, to put them into form. So really, its both.

Developing games now is more in line with a sort of "stock" set of game design. Like cars its primarily meant to sell for everyone.

Shitty as hell when you figure out that the originality is lost, and most of these "new" ideas people keep ranting about are either old tried and true methods or just simply rehased ideas.

There are exceptions to the rule.

Its strange because there are people out there that just generally dislike a specific genre, so to make almost every genre seem viable to everyone seems quite useless in the long run when games are saturated with first person shooters and third person action adventures.
 
When you have creative people with no real talent in the technical aspect you get people like Peter Molyneux.
Unless you mean the designers know the reins of ambition so they don't completely flood the development team with stupid ideas, the ideal designer is far more technically and fundamentally aware of the intricacies of development than he is of the "artistic" side, whatever that means, I'm certain the word you're looking for is just creativity.
 
it has been my experience as a modder for many years that the BEST games are done by people who truely love games. you think portal was invented by some super scientist? really the idea probably came from some kid who had a shit load of fun making maps for half life 1 using worldcraft. i mean seriously, when that product came out i was like "wow, i was playing with portals in mapping for years, thats awesome that they made a game with it in real time!"

however, you really tend to notice the type of game produced by the type of team. the "truist gamers" tend to produce simple but innovative titles like portal(and what was that other great simple title for hl1? it was like a fusion between tron 2.0 disk fighting and the light cycle race...), and then you get the people who love games but are very serious and professional. with people like that you tend to get games like red orchestra that are very well thought out and carefully managed. you also get the obsessed lovers(like me) that take FOREVER but tend to put in things that you wouldn't ever think about. its actually one of the things the bethesda team does well, working on a room enough that it seems like a real room, and not something in a video game. of course you got the "rushers" whom tend to care about money and fame then anything else. they usually produce the crap out there like medal of honor and the thousands of horrific mods there are in the world.
 
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