Fatal Flaws in Game Design and Development

ZuluZuluZulu · 25-07-2009, 09:26 PM

This post shamelessly stolen from Gamasutra. My responses and applications to BF:BC2 in bold.

#1 You're Making a Game, Not a Homework Assignment
We live in a culture of being assigned a task, producing something that is asked of us, and being evaluated based on the level of quality of that product. We've spent at least a decade writing book reports, solving math equations, and analyzing the reasons behind the American Civil War.
Once we enter the real world, in most jobs, this mindset transfers over pretty well. Your boss gives you an assignment, you get it done, and the timeliness and level of quality is evaluated.
This doesn't cut it with making games. Your player only cares about how fun your game is, not the amount of work you put into it. They don't even necessarily care about its objective level of quality. The distinction is important. Rarely does a 7th grade teacher marked down a book report on account of it being too boring, but that’s the #1 potential failure that you now face. When making games, you must toss aside your lifelong training regarding what's important in a product.
There's a scenario I see time and time again – a game that's well-made, but simply not fun to play. Sponsors rarely offer significant money for them, and players rarely react well to them. Developers are often shocked, and respond to uninterested sponsors with, "But I spent X amount of time on this."
But we don't care how long you spent on it. It wasn't a homework assignment. We only care about whether your game is enjoyable to play. Whether it took one day or six months is irrelevant. Just as a great game isn’t penalized for being developed quickly, a poor one is not credited for being developed slowly. Not likely to be an issue, but very important to remember anyways.

#2 Ask the People Who Matter
If your sister told you one day that she had been studying Flash and she managed to put something together, odds are pretty good that you'd be legitimately impressed by her work regardless of how the game actually turned out.
We all look upon work more favorably if it's done by someone we know, care about, or can simply relate to. These are not the people you should be relying on for feedback for your game. No matter how bad a game is, it almost always has its fan group of friends and family beta testers. These people build up a developer's confidence about their game without ever conveying honest criticisms, intentionally or not.
Find people you don't know. Talk to other developers, or even just random people on a forum. Get them to play your game, and ask a million questions about their experience. Get a feel for their patience level. Your mom will carefully read the instructions to understand the counter-intuitive controls of your game, but the average player will not. This is both very important and very easy. You, DICE, have an incredible following of players who actively debate issues they care about in your games right here on these forums. Listen to those players. Do NOT, however, have staff come in and say "We hear about your concerns and are keeping that under consideration." To a community member, that pretty much translates to "We read your complaints, but this is our game not yours."

#3 "Controls, Controls, You Must Learn Controls" - Yoda (paraphrased)
No one reads instructions, ever. In fact, if someone somehow IS reading the instructions of your game, then it is likely because they are already confused and frustrated. Developers love to place the blame on players who don't read instructions – but it is the game that is being made for the sake of the player's enjoyment. The player does not "owe" the game anything.
Intuitive controls are critical. If movement is done with WASD, and the arrow keys are not being used for anything, why can the arrow keys not also be used for movement? Tinker with your interface to make something quick to pick up; merely providing instructions for a confusing control scheme is NOT an excuse.
If the player skips an optional tutorial and ignores the instructions, have a quick message flash on the screen with the buttons anyway. Have signs in the background that explain the game's controls. If the player picks up a new weapon, have a dialogue boss pop up with a BRIEF explanation of how to use that weapon.
The longer and more out of the way something is, the less likely the player is to read it. When long-winded instructions for counter-intuitive controls are tucked away on a menu screen, you're virtually guaranteeing that the player has a negative first impression with your game. Let players map out their own controls, let them assign every button however they choose. Every customer who would have gone back to whatever competitor they are used to is that much more likely to stay if they feel comfortable playing your game.

#4 Calling Your Game Art/Hardcore Is Not an Excuse
There is absolutely no reason for beautiful and artistic games to be mutually exclusive with fun and intuitive ones. It's a common defense that developers develop. If a player is confused by their game they’ll say, "Well, it's my artistic vision – I don't expect everyone to get it." Really? Since when is giving the player easy access to the control scheme compromising an artistic vision? What exactly about having user-friendly progress checkpoints and save files is less artistic than forcing the player to enter a password or restart the entire game upon death?
When you create a great game, you earn the right to call it art. When you create a poor game, calling it art does not earn you the right to excuse giving it another coat of polish and implementing common beta tester requests.
Additionally, making your game hard just for the sake of being hard does not automatically make you and your players hardcore. Anyone can take their game and give the player fewer lives, or less health, or less damage, etc., and make it more difficult. There is nothing hard about making a game hard – the difficulty comes from making your game actually fun.
There is a true art form to creating a game with a proper difficulty curve – a game that starts out simple, gets progressively more difficult, and makes the player feel challenged and rewarded without feeling frustrated (there is indeed a very significant distinction between challenge and frustration, and it all has to do with the player’s perception of fairness within the game’s rules, how much control they have over the situation, and how harshly they are punished for failing). Striking this balance is incredibly difficult, and no, "I'm hardcore" is not a free ticket out of having to do it.
There is a way to transcend this principle, however. If you make a game that’s incredibly good with extremely smooth controls and a very high SKILL component, then you can likely get away with making it stupidly difficult, but only if you’re quite sure that the player will feel rewarded from this difficulty. “N: The Way of the Ninja” is a game that pulls this off extremely well, but if the controls were any less tight, the experience would be miserable. Conversely, if a game has a very low skill component to progression (such as a traditional single-player RPG in which your character’s power is based more on experience points than on player input), then high difficulty is more likely to frustrate than to intrigue. Not likely to be an issue, but very important to remember anyways. Balance is important, it adds skill to every facet of the game, do not allow things to fall out of balance in BF:BC2

#5 Start from the Bottom Up, Not the Top Down
Why is anyone playing your game? They have Halo sitting a few feet away. So why are they playing your game instead?
The answer: because it's fun. And why is it fun? That's a question that needs to be answered BEFORE development has begun. Start with the fun, then add the graphics and music later – not the other way around.
Begin with your central idea – the hook to your game. Play around with it without any graphics. See if it's fun. If it's not, tweak it. Figure out what works and what doesn't, and build on that core mechanic. Don't start with the character artwork, the music, the level tilesets, etc. You can spend months doing this for a game that is ultimately simply not enjoyable to play. When that happens, you'll likely end up with is a game that would get an A+ as a homework assignment, but not such a stellar review from someone looking for actual entertainment. Figure out how players have fun in BF:BC, and what isn't fun. Build on the former and get rid of the latter. See point #2 for this, listening to the community if incredibly important!

#6 Focus on Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses – Don’t Try to do Everything
Final Fantasy X-2 director Motomu Toriyama once said that FFX-2 was packed with minigames because "if you bought FFX-2, you wouldn't need any other game." It’s a completely absurd idea.
We all loved the snowboarding minigame in Final Fantasy 7, but I don't think a single person on the planet loaded it up and immediately thought, "Sweet, now I don't need to buy SSX!"
But Toriyama's mindset is one that's incredibly common among game developers, even if they don't explicitly realize how they're thinking. Game developers want to be good at everything. They want to be the best at every genre. If there were a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, they'd want to be able to supply the cave-dwelling survivors with every type of game they'd ever want to play. They want to have true, diehard fans – people who will play their games and ONLY their games.
It's a flawed, inefficient mentality, and one that should be broken as soon as possible (sorry Dirge of Cerberus). If you're great at making shooter games but terrible at making platformers, then don't make platformers. Let other people make them – no one expects you to dip your talents into every imaginable genre.
Knowing your true strengths and weaknesses is one of the most important things you can learn about yourself. Figure out what you're good at, then do it. Don't waste time trying to be the Renaissance Man of game developers. Sure, if you keep releasing the same game over and over again, people will get tired of it, but that doesn't mean that your games can't share a common theme that highlights what you do best.
Just because you spend all your time making games of a similar genre doesn't mean that players have to spend all their time playing them. Don't develop tunnel vision with regard to the diversity of experiences that your player will be having across the entire industry.
Keep in mind, also, that even if you do create a successful game, this does not mean that you can do no wrong. At least 90% of your players will have absolutely no idea what your past games were. If you make a really successful shooter game, this does not mean that your next RPG project will also be automatically successful. It’s extremely common for developers to build something they’re good at, have a big success, get cocky, then do something completely different, only to be completely shocked that they’re still very much capable of failure. It is very important not to stray too far from home with a sequel like BF:BC2. BC was great, and a ton of players enjoyed it, so make sure you keep those things they enjoyed. Again, listen to the community as to what those were, and build on them.

#7 The Player Does What's Efficient, Not What's Fun
Your goal is to make a game that is fun. But somewhat contrary to intuition, having fun is NOT the goal of the player. The goal of the player is to conquer whatever the game throws at them. Fun is the expected byproduct of this endeavor. The player wants to have fun without having to seek it out.
The player will do what is most efficient and effective, short of doing what they perceive as cheating. Consider a side-scrolling brawler where the player has two attacks. The first attack causes the character to leap into the air, dive down onto an enemy, grab him, spin him around, then toss him into a group of other enemies, knocking them down. A developer could put quite a lot of time into tweaking this maneuver, and have lots of fun executing it during playtesting. The second attack is a simple punch.
But here's the problem – the simple punch deals five times the damage. Why would the player bother using the former attack when the punch is so effective? "Because it's so much fun!" the developer would interject. Then why are you not forcing the player to use it?
We've all played a game like this. We're having lots of fun using a bunch of really cool attacks, abilities, maneuvers, etc. Then we find the infinite ammo rocket launcher that kills everything onscreen instantly, and the game is suddenly less fun. But why? We could always choose to put the weapon away. The problem is that manually handicapping ourselves within the game's rule structure is not fun either.
When testing your game, play it to win. Don't play it to have fun. It's your job to make sure that the two overlap.
There are exceptions to this, of course, where players will just mess around with a game to have fun rather than to progress. But the players who reach this point of exception are the people who are already hooked into your game. It's the new players who need to be won over. Force them to have fun, whether they like it or not! For instance, abusing glitches such as the artillary glitch are hardly fun compared to the real game, but they are abused, because they are so effective! Don't let those things that are so effective be anything but the way the game is meant to be played.

#8 Show That You're Human
Humor and personality go a long, long way with [games]. Give the player something they can relate to, make them laugh, and make sure they know that you're an indie developer. Games like Button Hunt, Achievement Unlocked and Upgrade Complete were big hits on Kongregate purely for their humor element – the latter two games targeting their humor specifically at the over-achievement-ing of every game recently made, and the necessity for all [games] to be filled with copious upgrade screens.
What you CAN do is create something aesthetically pleasing and still relatable. "Sonny" is an RPG that strikes the perfect aesthetic balance of looking great, but still believable as something that was created by a single college student.
"World of Goo" is probably the greatest example of a success in this area. The game looks great, but it still retains a down-to-earth cartoony style. Plus, the game is completely overflowing with humor and personality – and it was all built on a core mechanic that’s fun just on its own, even without these things.
#9 The Final 10% is Most Important
When your game is technically done, there's a tremendous urge to release it immediately. It's like finishing a book report and not wanting to proofread it. It's done! I can turn it in! I can be finished! The light is here!
But resist it. The final 10% of polish is by far the most efficient use of your time, even if it's the most annoying and feels the least productive (since you're changing things rather than building them).
But its importance cannot be understated. Maybe the boss on level 1 has too much health, and 40% of the people who play your game give up at that point. Five minutes of tweaking a health number could have been the best five minutes of time you ever spent in your entire life.
Don’t forget to add the little things! Having a mute button (separate for sound and music) and an intuitive save system will go a long way in making players like your game (or, more accurately, in preventing them from hating it).
Play your game. Play it again and again and again. Get others to play it. Get their feedback. Tweak, tweak, tweak. Continue polishing and ironing out bugs. Don't be afraid to cut something out entirely if it's not beneficial to the game – yeah, I know, you already put the work into it, but the player doesn't care how much work you've put into it. If something is there that's not fun, it simply shouldn't be there. There is no advantage to your game being big and long purely for the sake of being big and long. Again, it's not a homework assignment. If you release a bug riddled mess, nobody will play it. If there are easily abused glitches, nobody will play it. If you ignore the product and do not provide continuing support, nobody will play it. Put out a public beta, or numerous ones, and you'll see your numbers rocket skyward. Let players get as much of a taste for the game as possible before its release, and you'll get incredible feedback (see #2 again) about your product.

Crimson_Engage · 26-07-2009, 12:21 AM

^^this.

Killzone_Kid · 26-07-2009, 12:28 AM

Wow this is the best post! I hope Gordon reads it

psn4lyf · 26-07-2009, 12:30 AM

5* thread tbh.

ScifiSpartan · 26-07-2009, 12:34 AM

The reason I like this forum is because DICE actually responds to us. Besides that, the post is correct.

Crimson_Engage · 26-07-2009, 12:38 AM

I strongly agree with #2.
We buy DICES games, therefore we pay there salaries. We have been asking to remove the Killcam, add prone and up the player count. Take the millions of $$$ you make and get it done.

They way i see it is we are paying you, therefore we are the boss. If the community makes a poll saying Remove Killcam YES/NO and it's 800 yes and 467 no and you see the poll then you need to lalalalaing take it out because it's obvious that it's not wanted.

Killzone_Kid · 26-07-2009, 12:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crimson_Engage

If the community makes a poll saying Remove Killcam YES/NO and it's 800 yes and 467 no and you see the poll then you need to lalalalaing take it out because it's obvious that it's not wanted.

Or if opinion on some other feature is split almost equally, make it optional to carter for everyone!

PS kill cam poll is 270 against /45 for... nuff said.

Eradicated · 26-07-2009, 01:00 AM

tl;dr.

Just kidding. Really good points there, well thought out, hopefully someone with influence in EA/DICE will read this.

skullfart · 26-07-2009, 01:32 AM

Good stuff.

KonyakZero · 26-07-2009, 02:51 AM

I basically agree with this, but to tell a company what to do is ridiculous. You should really put in "This is the communities suggestions." You're coming off as if you know everything and they don't know lalalala about video games. Not to say you're wrong, because I agree with basically everything, but the way you come off as a community is important also.

Seeker03 · 26-07-2009, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KonyakZero

I basically agree with this, but to tell a company what to do is ridiculous. You should really put in "This is the communities suggestions." You're coming off as if you know everything and they don't know lalalala about video games. Not to say you're wrong, because I agree with basically everything, but the way you come off as a community is important also.

He didn't say all of those

He stated above that those weren't his words.

ZuluZuluZulu · 26-07-2009, 05:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KonyakZero

I basically agree with this, but to tell a company what to do is ridiculous. You should really put in "This is the communities suggestions." You're coming off as if you know everything and they don't know lalalala about video games. Not to say you're wrong, because I agree with basically everything, but the way you come off as a community is important also.

I agree, the community can be lalalalala sometimes, but the game is FOR the community. DICE may make it, but we play it, we PAY for it, it is ultimately for us. We, then ought to decide what goes into it's development (to a degree).

ZuluZuluZulu · 26-07-2009, 05:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crimson_Engage

I strongly agree with #2.
We buy DICES games, therefore we pay there salaries. We have been asking to remove the Killcam, add prone and up the player count. Take the millions of $$$ you make and get it done.

They way i see it is we are paying you, therefore we are the boss. If the community makes a poll saying Remove Killcam YES/NO and it's 800 yes and 467 no and you see the poll then you need to lalalalaing take it out because it's obvious that it's not wanted.

Exactly. This is SO true. DICE needs to make bank, and WE are the ones through whom that will happen. We will buy their game if it is good, and we will not if it doesn't incorporate the changes we so easily made available to DICE's ears.

For instance, the community at large obviously doesn't want a kill cam. That will cost DICE loyal potential customers if they don't listen to their gripes.

Arcueid · 26-07-2009, 11:08 AM

Sure, we'll go with this. I like it. I even like the anti-kill cam part.

ZuluZuluZulu · 26-07-2009, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KonyakZero

I basically agree with this, but to tell a company what to do is ridiculous. You should really put in "This is the communities suggestions." You're coming off as if you know everything and they don't know lalalala about video games. Not to say you're wrong, because I agree with basically everything, but the way you come off as a community is important also.

This actually is a great point to add, that there are any number of issues on which the majority of the community might be wrong. I have seen any number of polls on the forums which I do not agree with, and have yet to encounter any reasonable argument to counter my concerns (Tanks with cannons and coax for instance...). There are always people with different opinions, but there are certain quality control assurances that must be made on the part of the developer, things like balance that community members seem to have very little regard for, but is important nonetheless.

TTeddy988 · 26-07-2009, 09:20 PM

Hmmm. I cannot wait for BC2 but it looks like this advice is telling DICE to do just that. I hope it is worth it. And I agree with the fact that just b/c it took a long time to make doesn't make it good.

ZuluZuluZulu · 28-07-2009, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TTeddy988

Hmmm. I cannot wait for BC2 but it looks like this advice is telling DICE to do just that. I hope it is worth it. And I agree with the fact that just b/c it took a long time to make doesn't make it good.

It would be a real shame to see the franchise fall out of the spotlight just because of one game where they seem to ignore all of the community's advice.

Vapo-KAAOS · 18-11-2009, 05:17 PM

Well I actually agree with Zulu here so it must be pretty impressive.

Well written & good points. 1 internetz for you OP.

BF_Fan_PC · 18-11-2009, 05:29 PM

zuluzulu, stop making lalalalain stupid posts, i love kill cam and it should stay, your job is not tell DICE what to do,if your that good go make a game yourself.

H_Lecter · 18-11-2009, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BF_Fan_PC

zuluzulu, stop making lalalalain stupid posts, i love kill cam and it should stay, your job is not tell DICE what to do,if your that good go make a game yourself.

Did you read your words before hitting the 'Submit Reply' button?

To be honest you look like a jerk when you say that your opinion is worth more than his. I'll enjoy BC2 with or without kill cam, but still I'd prefer to have none. I accept your point of view, will you accept mine?

KayODave · 18-11-2009, 05:50 PM

This may be a wall of text, but it is the BEST WALL OF TEXT EVER POSTED! DICE, read this ish, and take it straight to heart!

Quote:

Originally Posted by BF_Fan_PC

zuluzulu, stop making lalalalain stupid posts, i love kill cam and it should stay, your job is not tell DICE what to do,if your that good go make a game yourself.

You... are... an... idiot... these are not Zulu's words, he said so himself. I think anyone with the knowhow and the motivation could make a good game following these suggestions. And yes, as the consumer, it is his job, as well as yours and mine, and everyone else's, to tell DICE what they're doing right/wrong, and hope that DICE listens. so please... shut up.

Yustax · 18-11-2009, 05:52 PM

The funny thing, Zulu is that you didnt ever play the beta to make such claims. Probably this things will be in the final game or so, and you have several threads about the same thing...was really necessary to create another one?

Quote:

Originally Posted by KayODave

You... are... an... idiot... these are not Zulu's words, he said so himself. I think anyone with the knowhow and the motivation could make a good game following these suggestions. And yes, as the consumer, it is his job, as well as yours and mine, and everyone else's, to tell DICE what they're doing right/wrong, and hope that DICE listens. so please... shut up.

h8r

KayODave · 18-11-2009, 05:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yustax

h8r

Stop h8in on the h8 h8r

1Bryce1 · 18-11-2009, 05:58 PM

Um.....Zulu Made this post in JULY

nice one Vapo-KAAOS

Yustax · 18-11-2009, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KayODave

Stop h8in on the h8 h8r

I can h8in whoever I want to h8t, Im just paying you with the same coin

25-07-2009, 09:26 PM	#1 (permalink)
ZuluZuluZulu Forum Regular Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 971	Fatal Flaws in Game Design and Development This post shamelessly stolen from Gamasutra. My responses and applications to BF:BC2 in bold. #1 You're Making a Game, Not a Homework Assignment We live in a culture of being assigned a task, producing something that is asked of us, and being evaluated based on the level of quality of that product. We've spent at least a decade writing book reports, solving math equations, and analyzing the reasons behind the American Civil War. Once we enter the real world, in most jobs, this mindset transfers over pretty well. Your boss gives you an assignment, you get it done, and the timeliness and level of quality is evaluated. This doesn't cut it with making games. Your player only cares about how fun your game is, not the amount of work you put into it. They don't even necessarily care about its objective level of quality. The distinction is important. Rarely does a 7th grade teacher marked down a book report on account of it being too boring, but that’s the #1 potential failure that you now face. When making games, you must toss aside your lifelong training regarding what's important in a product. There's a scenario I see time and time again – a game that's well-made, but simply not fun to play. Sponsors rarely offer significant money for them, and players rarely react well to them. Developers are often shocked, and respond to uninterested sponsors with, "But I spent X amount of time on this." But we don't care how long you spent on it. It wasn't a homework assignment. We only care about whether your game is enjoyable to play. Whether it took one day or six months is irrelevant. Just as a great game isn’t penalized for being developed quickly, a poor one is not credited for being developed slowly. Not likely to be an issue, but very important to remember anyways. #2 Ask the People Who Matter If your sister told you one day that she had been studying Flash and she managed to put something together, odds are pretty good that you'd be legitimately impressed by her work regardless of how the game actually turned out. We all look upon work more favorably if it's done by someone we know, care about, or can simply relate to. These are not the people you should be relying on for feedback for your game. No matter how bad a game is, it almost always has its fan group of friends and family beta testers. These people build up a developer's confidence about their game without ever conveying honest criticisms, intentionally or not. Find people you don't know. Talk to other developers, or even just random people on a forum. Get them to play your game, and ask a million questions about their experience. Get a feel for their patience level. Your mom will carefully read the instructions to understand the counter-intuitive controls of your game, but the average player will not. This is both very important and very easy. You, DICE, have an incredible following of players who actively debate issues they care about in your games right here on these forums. Listen to those players. Do NOT, however, have staff come in and say "We hear about your concerns and are keeping that under consideration." To a community member, that pretty much translates to "We read your complaints, but this is our game not yours." #3 "Controls, Controls, You Must Learn Controls" - Yoda (paraphrased) No one reads instructions, ever. In fact, if someone somehow IS reading the instructions of your game, then it is likely because they are already confused and frustrated. Developers love to place the blame on players who don't read instructions – but it is the game that is being made for the sake of the player's enjoyment. The player does not "owe" the game anything. Intuitive controls are critical. If movement is done with WASD, and the arrow keys are not being used for anything, why can the arrow keys not also be used for movement? Tinker with your interface to make something quick to pick up; merely providing instructions for a confusing control scheme is NOT an excuse. If the player skips an optional tutorial and ignores the instructions, have a quick message flash on the screen with the buttons anyway. Have signs in the background that explain the game's controls. If the player picks up a new weapon, have a dialogue boss pop up with a BRIEF explanation of how to use that weapon. The longer and more out of the way something is, the less likely the player is to read it. When long-winded instructions for counter-intuitive controls are tucked away on a menu screen, you're virtually guaranteeing that the player has a negative first impression with your game. Let players map out their own controls, let them assign every button however they choose. Every customer who would have gone back to whatever competitor they are used to is that much more likely to stay if they feel comfortable playing your game. #4 Calling Your Game Art/Hardcore Is Not an Excuse There is absolutely no reason for beautiful and artistic games to be mutually exclusive with fun and intuitive ones. It's a common defense that developers develop. If a player is confused by their game they’ll say, "Well, it's my artistic vision – I don't expect everyone to get it." Really? Since when is giving the player easy access to the control scheme compromising an artistic vision? What exactly about having user-friendly progress checkpoints and save files is less artistic than forcing the player to enter a password or restart the entire game upon death? When you create a great game, you earn the right to call it art. When you create a poor game, calling it art does not earn you the right to excuse giving it another coat of polish and implementing common beta tester requests. Additionally, making your game hard just for the sake of being hard does not automatically make you and your players hardcore. Anyone can take their game and give the player fewer lives, or less health, or less damage, etc., and make it more difficult. There is nothing hard about making a game hard – the difficulty comes from making your game actually fun. There is a true art form to creating a game with a proper difficulty curve – a game that starts out simple, gets progressively more difficult, and makes the player feel challenged and rewarded without feeling frustrated (there is indeed a very significant distinction between challenge and frustration, and it all has to do with the player’s perception of fairness within the game’s rules, how much control they have over the situation, and how harshly they are punished for failing). Striking this balance is incredibly difficult, and no, "I'm hardcore" is not a free ticket out of having to do it. There is a way to transcend this principle, however. If you make a game that’s incredibly good with extremely smooth controls and a very high SKILL component, then you can likely get away with making it stupidly difficult, but only if you’re quite sure that the player will feel rewarded from this difficulty. “N: The Way of the Ninja” is a game that pulls this off extremely well, but if the controls were any less tight, the experience would be miserable. Conversely, if a game has a very low skill component to progression (such as a traditional single-player RPG in which your character’s power is based more on experience points than on player input), then high difficulty is more likely to frustrate than to intrigue. Not likely to be an issue, but very important to remember anyways. Balance is important, it adds skill to every facet of the game, do not allow things to fall out of balance in BF:BC2 #5 Start from the Bottom Up, Not the Top Down Why is anyone playing your game? They have Halo sitting a few feet away. So why are they playing your game instead? The answer: because it's fun. And why is it fun? That's a question that needs to be answered BEFORE development has begun. Start with the fun, then add the graphics and music later – not the other way around. Begin with your central idea – the hook to your game. Play around with it without any graphics. See if it's fun. If it's not, tweak it. Figure out what works and what doesn't, and build on that core mechanic. Don't start with the character artwork, the music, the level tilesets, etc. You can spend months doing this for a game that is ultimately simply not enjoyable to play. When that happens, you'll likely end up with is a game that would get an A+ as a homework assignment, but not such a stellar review from someone looking for actual entertainment. Figure out how players have fun in BF:BC, and what isn't fun. Build on the former and get rid of the latter. See point #2 for this, listening to the community if incredibly important! #6 Focus on Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses – Don’t Try to do Everything Final Fantasy X-2 director Motomu Toriyama once said that FFX-2 was packed with minigames because "if you bought FFX-2, you wouldn't need any other game." It’s a completely absurd idea. We all loved the snowboarding minigame in Final Fantasy 7, but I don't think a single person on the planet loaded it up and immediately thought, "Sweet, now I don't need to buy SSX!" But Toriyama's mindset is one that's incredibly common among game developers, even if they don't explicitly realize how they're thinking. Game developers want to be good at everything. They want to be the best at every genre. If there were a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, they'd want to be able to supply the cave-dwelling survivors with every type of game they'd ever want to play. They want to have true, diehard fans – people who will play their games and ONLY their games. It's a flawed, inefficient mentality, and one that should be broken as soon as possible (sorry Dirge of Cerberus). If you're great at making shooter games but terrible at making platformers, then don't make platformers. Let other people make them – no one expects you to dip your talents into every imaginable genre. Knowing your true strengths and weaknesses is one of the most important things you can learn about yourself. Figure out what you're good at, then do it. Don't waste time trying to be the Renaissance Man of game developers. Sure, if you keep releasing the same game over and over again, people will get tired of it, but that doesn't mean that your games can't share a common theme that highlights what you do best. Just because you spend all your time making games of a similar genre doesn't mean that players have to spend all their time playing them. Don't develop tunnel vision with regard to the diversity of experiences that your player will be having across the entire industry. Keep in mind, also, that even if you do create a successful game, this does not mean that you can do no wrong. At least 90% of your players will have absolutely no idea what your past games were. If you make a really successful shooter game, this does not mean that your next RPG project will also be automatically successful. It’s extremely common for developers to build something they’re good at, have a big success, get cocky, then do something completely different, only to be completely shocked that they’re still very much capable of failure. It is very important not to stray too far from home with a sequel like BF:BC2. BC was great, and a ton of players enjoyed it, so make sure you keep those things they enjoyed. Again, listen to the community as to what those were, and build on them. #7 The Player Does What's Efficient, Not What's Fun Your goal is to make a game that is fun. But somewhat contrary to intuition, having fun is NOT the goal of the player. The goal of the player is to conquer whatever the game throws at them. Fun is the expected byproduct of this endeavor. The player wants to have fun without having to seek it out. The player will do what is most efficient and effective, short of doing what they perceive as cheating. Consider a side-scrolling brawler where the player has two attacks. The first attack causes the character to leap into the air, dive down onto an enemy, grab him, spin him around, then toss him into a group of other enemies, knocking them down. A developer could put quite a lot of time into tweaking this maneuver, and have lots of fun executing it during playtesting. The second attack is a simple punch. But here's the problem – the simple punch deals five times the damage. Why would the player bother using the former attack when the punch is so effective? "Because it's so much fun!" the developer would interject. Then why are you not forcing the player to use it? We've all played a game like this. We're having lots of fun using a bunch of really cool attacks, abilities, maneuvers, etc. Then we find the infinite ammo rocket launcher that kills everything onscreen instantly, and the game is suddenly less fun. But why? We could always choose to put the weapon away. The problem is that manually handicapping ourselves within the game's rule structure is not fun either. When testing your game, play it to win. Don't play it to have fun. It's your job to make sure that the two overlap. There are exceptions to this, of course, where players will just mess around with a game to have fun rather than to progress. But the players who reach this point of exception are the people who are already hooked into your game. It's the new players who need to be won over. Force them to have fun, whether they like it or not! For instance, abusing glitches such as the artillary glitch are hardly fun compared to the real game, but they are abused, because they are so effective! Don't let those things that are so effective be anything but the way the game is meant to be played. #8 Show That You're Human Humor and personality go a long, long way with [games]. Give the player something they can relate to, make them laugh, and make sure they know that you're an indie developer. Games like Button Hunt, Achievement Unlocked and Upgrade Complete were big hits on Kongregate purely for their humor element – the latter two games targeting their humor specifically at the over-achievement-ing of every game recently made, and the necessity for all [games] to be filled with copious upgrade screens. What you CAN do is create something aesthetically pleasing and still relatable. "Sonny" is an RPG that strikes the perfect aesthetic balance of looking great, but still believable as something that was created by a single college student. "World of Goo" is probably the greatest example of a success in this area. The game looks great, but it still retains a down-to-earth cartoony style. Plus, the game is completely overflowing with humor and personality – and it was all built on a core mechanic that’s fun just on its own, even without these things. #9 The Final 10% is Most Important When your game is technically done, there's a tremendous urge to release it immediately. It's like finishing a book report and not wanting to proofread it. It's done! I can turn it in! I can be finished! The light is here! But resist it. The final 10% of polish is by far the most efficient use of your time, even if it's the most annoying and feels the least productive (since you're changing things rather than building them). But its importance cannot be understated. Maybe the boss on level 1 has too much health, and 40% of the people who play your game give up at that point. Five minutes of tweaking a health number could have been the best five minutes of time you ever spent in your entire life. Don’t forget to add the little things! Having a mute button (separate for sound and music) and an intuitive save system will go a long way in making players like your game (or, more accurately, in preventing them from hating it). Play your game. Play it again and again and again. Get others to play it. Get their feedback. Tweak, tweak, tweak. Continue polishing and ironing out bugs. Don't be afraid to cut something out entirely if it's not beneficial to the game – yeah, I know, you already put the work into it, but the player doesn't care how much work you've put into it. If something is there that's not fun, it simply shouldn't be there. There is no advantage to your game being big and long purely for the sake of being big and long. Again, it's not a homework assignment. If you release a bug riddled mess, nobody will play it. If there are easily abused glitches, nobody will play it. If you ignore the product and do not provide continuing support, nobody will play it. Put out a public beta, or numerous ones, and you'll see your numbers rocket skyward. Let players get as much of a taste for the game as possible before its release, and you'll get incredible feedback (see #2 again) about your product. __________________ Thanks for reading! Last edited by ZuluZuluZulu; 22-08-2009 at 04:48 PM..

26-07-2009, 12:21 AM	#2 (permalink)
Crimson_Engage Forum Regular Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: U.S.A Age: 23 Gender: Male Posts: 747	^^this. __________________

26-07-2009, 12:30 AM	#4 (permalink)
psn4lyf Forum Junkie Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 2,944	5* thread tbh. __________________ *Real talk* Psn Id: l_-T4D-PsN-_l T4D Co leader playing chopper maps constantly with an organised squad and not getting a skill level 2 is sad really.

26-07-2009, 12:34 AM	#5 (permalink)
ScifiSpartan Forum Regular Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: I am a gnome in your closet...fear me! Gender: Male Posts: 665	The reason I like this forum is because DICE actually responds to us. Besides that, the post is correct. __________________ Believe in Star Wars Battlefront III!!! No killcam in BF:BC 2, or some good reasons for having it!!!!!!!!!

26-07-2009, 12:38 AM	#6 (permalink)
Crimson_Engage Forum Regular Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: U.S.A Age: 23 Gender: Male Posts: 747	I strongly agree with #2. We buy DICES games, therefore we pay there salaries. We have been asking to remove the Killcam, add prone and up the player count. Take the millions of $$$ you make and get it done. They way i see it is we are paying you, therefore we are the boss. If the community makes a poll saying Remove Killcam YES/NO and it's 800 yes and 467 no and you see the poll then you need to lalalalaing take it out because it's obvious that it's not wanted. __________________

26-07-2009, 01:00 AM	#8 (permalink)
Eradicated Forum Junkie Join Date: May 2009 Location: London, United Kingdom Gender: Male Posts: 2,512	tl;dr. Just kidding. Really good points there, well thought out, hopefully someone with influence in EA/DICE will read this. __________________ Please EA, give us an Infraction Leaderboard.

26-07-2009, 01:32 AM	#9 (permalink)
skullfart Rookie Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: UK Gender: Male Posts: 249	Good stuff.

26-07-2009, 02:51 AM	#10 (permalink)
KonyakZero Rookie Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: NC Gender: Male Posts: 7	I basically agree with this, but to tell a company what to do is ridiculous. You should really put in "This is the communities suggestions." You're coming off as if you know everything and they don't know lalalala about video games. Not to say you're wrong, because I agree with basically everything, but the way you come off as a community is important also.

26-07-2009, 11:08 AM	#14 (permalink)
Arcueid Forum Regular Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Boston Age: 24 Posts: 622	Sure, we'll go with this. I like it. I even like the anti-kill cam part. __________________ I can't say it all went exactly the way I'd planned, but I was right about one thing: they were all better off dead. - John Smith, Last Man Standing

26-07-2009, 09:20 PM	#16 (permalink)
TTeddy988 Forum Guru Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: America's hat Gender: Male Posts: 1,983	Hmmm. I cannot wait for BC2 but it looks like this advice is telling DICE to do just that. I hope it is worth it. And I agree with the fact that just b/c it took a long time to make doesn't make it good. __________________

18-11-2009, 05:17 PM	#18 (permalink)
Vapo-KAAOS Forum Regular Join Date: Oct 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 551	Well I actually agree with Zulu here so it must be pretty impressive. Well written & good points. 1 internetz for you OP. __________________ Click it! It's linked. !!!!!!Assault Rifles For Medics!!!!!!!

18-11-2009, 05:29 PM	#19 (permalink)
BF_Fan_PC Rookie Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: An OP near your location!! Age: 21 Gender: Male Posts: 63	zuluzulu, stop making lalalalain stupid posts, i love kill cam and it should stay, your job is not tell DICE what to do,if your that good go make a game yourself.

18-11-2009, 05:58 PM	#24 (permalink)
1Bryce1 Forum Junkie Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: "SF Bay Area" San Jose, California Gender: Male Posts: 2,709	Um.....Zulu Made this post in JULY nice one Vapo-KAAOS __________________ PSN: x1BrYcE1x Join PS3 Beta Group