game design – post 77
So I’m talking with my producer today regarding my favorite topic in game design: spoon feeding. Let me explain.
In every studio I’ve worked in (and just watching the game industry mostly) I’m constantly seeing game design get dumbed down because studio’s are afraid that if games are too hard then players won’t like them. It’s a constant trend of keeping games from being actually challenging by giving items and level ups to fake a sense of accomplishment for the player. We’re not really seeing to often a game where the player really has to push to succeed. What if the player can’t succeed? Then that’s bad. The player might go find something else to do. So dumb it down and let the player do cool things so they thing they’re all bad ass.
I can’t stand it.
Remember back in the day where you would rent a game for your NES, Genesis, SNES or what have you and you where actually challenged by it? You would have to rent it a second time to beat it probably because you wanted to beat it so badly. And it wasn’t due to the fact the game had 80 kajillion hours of game play it was because it was designed to actually challenge the player? Where are those games now?
Gamers of today aren’t being challenged by what they buy. The games are more of an game experience… like a movie. You’ll get to the end of the game eventually, just like a movie. That’s what the makers want. They don’t want to make you think to hard about the game you’re playing and to me is an insult of what they think of me.
I want challenge, I want to think about game play. I don’t want to be spoon feed my games.
I only have so much pull on the titles I work on being a art guy but I always make sure that the design decisions will lean towards accomplishment and rewards for the player. It’s a formula that works. Make the player work for things. Give them a sense of pride when they figure something out.
They paid for it after all.
Play Asia