Game Design: Creating Games that People will want to Play

Games evolve just like everything else in this world. If i can recall back in time about 20 years ago, deeply immersed in my world of Ultima and trying to figure out ways on how to beat the crap out of the invincible Lord British on the cumbersome gigantic thick screen CGA/EGA monitor, who would have imagined that today i can climb on top of the highest building in Assasin's Creed overlooking the entire city of Jerusalem almost as good as the real thing itself or sneaking long the beaches in Crysis that feels as good as me having a stroll at the beach.

Lets face it and i'm sure everybody agrees that quality of video games today have come to a point of awesomeness (as Po the Panda would say) that games and movies are starting to overlap each other in terms of realism. Games of yesterday were nowhere near the vicinity of realism seen today. But one thing that they do make up for it is their quality in content. Their storyline and concept were something that hardly any games today can come close to. Don't get me wrong as i love the games of today but I'm a real great fan of great titles in the past.

The 1980s and 1990s were the times when games, i felt, left the greatest impression on me. RPG games like Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Ultima, Darklands all have something in common. With their great and immersive storylines, players were drawn into the world simply without the need of any special effects or graphics. Truth is, if i play any games today, i'm not sure if i can remember any special moments 10 or 20 years down the road.

I can still vividly remember the hilarious swordfighting scenes from the Secret of Monkey Island I; easily recite all the 8 virtues and characters representing the Avatar in the Ultima series not to mention their simple yet crazily addictive music score. Speaking of music, Loom by Lucasarts was a masterpiece by incorporating just a simple few notes of music as a concept. Last but not least, who can ever forget the Wing Commander series with its ever intriguing fighting plot between the Humans and the Kilrathis.

The games of 1980s and 1990s were the times when most genres were created and pioneers were recognised. Think about RPGs - Wizardry, Ultima, Bard's Tale,etc. Think about space simulations - Wing Commander, X-Wing vs TIE fighter, etc. Think about God-like simluation games - Simcity. Now Simcity is a game that every gamer needs to know. Again, who would have thought that the idea of playing with boxes of "C" "I" "R" in the Simcity would really generate so much fun that seriously not a single city building simulation game today can bring that kind of feeling back to me - in my opinion. Think about RTS games and what comes to your mind? Teens under 20 will have thought of Warcraft or Starcraft. Possibly for us who have lived the 1990s would thought of Dune II. I know some may argue that there are earlier titles but Dune II was the one that really brought the classification of RTS category into video games.

Another rare and not so much remembered was this title known as Superhero League of Hoboken which have brought me great amounts of laughter through their silly content. Its about a bunch of heroes with super powers so silly that really makes you laugh. Consider raising the cholesterol level of the enemies as one of the powers. It may sound stupid but i thought its stupidly fun in a good taste actually. In my opinion it's a brave effort, not tried and tested but able to succeed in earning a spot in people's fragment of mind years down the road.

One of the most important game of all in the history of video games is Doom. Developers of this game led by a genius (you can find out more about him yourself) came along and changed the course of direction for video games. Almost instantly, Doom raised the bar so high in the computer industry for hardware, software and peripherals that i really believe without Id Software, games will never be what it is today. Not only it has shaken or broken new grounds but a new genre was created as well (First Person Shooting). And soon after that, tonnes of games appear which what i like to name as Doom Clones. From the year of 1994 onwards, you can really see all kinds of similar stuffs so much so that quality in story telling began to disappear. It seemingly dissipated into thin air with the release of no brainer bash-em-up and shoot-em-down games. Some would have tried to throw in a simple plot with storyline as thin as a wafer thinking that might do the trick but failed miserably from the point of a gamer's view like myself.

It was also the time of great consolidations of game companies that many smaller companies were bought over. It was really disappointing to see most of my favourite game companies getting bought over by bigger ones and churning out really badly developed games. Those in that era will know what i am talking about.

At the end, there's always good and bad out of anything that happens. The good is that games today as a result became insanely realistic thanks to the revolution of computer 3D hardware and the bad is that games of great plot and story is hardly seen anymore although i'm starting to see a few lately which i will mention over the next topic.

I'm sure most of those out there would really miss the great games of the past. You can find most of them over at sites such as abandonia.

Just think of any word to describe today's games and I'm sure of one that most of us can think of has to be "Realism". In fact, some games today are so crazy and insanely real that 2 graphics card running in parallel and almost as thick as a dictionary are needed to drive the rendering. The question is, do we, as gamers really need all that? I guess we'll tackle this debatable question on upcoming topics.

Crysis, Call of Duty, Assasin's Creed, GTA4, MGS4 all have nothing but everything that looked so seemingly real. Bullets with shells falling out and guns recoiling backwards. Coupled with great technology and breakneck internet speed, multiple players can participate together and start killing off each other virtually in the game, resulting in anger and frustration. Just do a search on youtube and you can really see all sorts of angry gamers around caught in action (some real, some fake.)

Another word i can think about is "Repetitive" I wonder how many of you are nodding your heads and smiling right now? Are you sick of climbing towers high up and looking at the horizon for the 1204th time? Are you sick of doing quests in games that ask you to kill 150 monsters, return and ask you to kill another 150? How about those postman's quest that ask you to go around places touching waypoints taking half a day to complete by doing just that? I don't know about you but i get sick sometimes and wonder why can't more effort be spent on creating a greater content gameplay experience.

To some extend, games today have so much influence on people that families break up because of it. I'm sure you would have heard of how this game World of Warcraft got many couples to break up and some even appear on TV. I was once a member of the Alliance for a good 2 over years before i decided to quit. Must say its hell of an addictive game because of the multiplayer elements.

I guess we can call it the evolution of human society together with technology that make what games are today. In the past, games were pretty much about cooperative efforts. Just think about Pong in which 2 players have to keep the game going cooperatively yet competitively. Consider Double Dragon and Gauntlet in which both players gotta beat up stuffs together. Today, its all about killing, sniping, camping, sending mass armies to crush the other side and massive war. Generally people used to get upset and frustrated over computers with monsters too tough to kill together. Now they get angry with each other and physically bash each other up over wins and losses.

Just sitting on the fence and thinking about the history and now is pretty interesting isn't it? Computer games have evolved and came a long way. Don't get me wrong as i'm not taking sides on which era has the best games although i'm not afraid to admit i'm a fan of RPG games and in my most humble opinions, i do miss the incredible RPG games created way back in time. As a game designer, it is important to understand how games were yesterday, where they are today in order plan a great game for tomorrow, which brings us to the next topic...

I am very sure when you are asked to design a game, there's a lot of ideas going through your mind and you roughly know the kind of games you'd like to come up with. All of us have our so-call dream games. The truth is, unless we're doing it for ourselves as a hobby, most likely a main reason is in it for business. And for that, it is no longer you or ourselves. Its not about what we like to develop but what the people out there likes to play.

Empathy
Very often, one of the common pitfalls that game designers can fall into is to somehow lose track along the way and start to think about what they like to develop. It is essential to keep reminding yourself that coming up with a game that nobody plays is really just a waste of time. The empathy for the player is crucial and game designers need to develop the ability to put themselves in the shoes of the player.

Be Different
Be very clear on what you want to achieve. Is your content suitable for the RPG genre, RTS genre or better still, invent a new genre. In simple terms, having foresight. Imagine right now you have a chance to shape the future of the gaming industry by coming up with a design. What would that be? Challenge yourself by not doing something that is currently available. Making a game currently in the market is a definite no-no for any serious decent game designer. Look at the number of clones out there today. Would you like to open a shop next to another one selling the same thing? Instead why not design something and let others be the clone instead. If someone sees a game and says "that looks like a Tetris clone" would probably be the biggest insult to any designer. Nobody wants to have that.

The Experience
"The Experience" is a lump sum of attention grabbing, interest, excitement, immersiveness all in one description. Ideally a game that gives a continuous stream of experience to a player is a successful game. How can we achieve that? To be fair, everyone of us are unique and have different traits such as attention span but it shouldn't stop us from generally trying to give the players a good gaming experience.

Game designers have to understand that players have the option to just close the application at any time and we can't let that happen. And this means giving the player a constant stream of fun, excitement and interactivity. That also means the design of the game mechanics should be such that tedious activities need to be limited and repetitiveness is another no-no. Never make the players travel back and forth across to another side of the map for no obvious reasons. If the game world is too large, make some portal or transportation devices. The players will thank you for it.

The truth is there are far more factors to be discussed and shared. A game or any game for that matter is easy to design and thought of but difficult to develop to perfection. I'll be continuing more to share more experiences as i go along. There's a project on hand currently and as much as i wished to do a case study, it is still under wraps and i'll make one once i'm allowed to.

This is going to be a very debatable subject as I'm sure action fans are bound to disagree! While i do not deny the fact that they have their reasons and interests but i happen to belong to the school of thought that nothing matters more in a game than its storyline. Here's the thing, and see if you agree with me.

The degree of a buggyness in a game determines how much a player hates the game while the degree of the strength of storyline determines how much a player is going to love and remember the game.

You can have a nice smooth flowing game with a thin plot. While nobody is going to hate the game, they will not love it either. No doubt there are cases when storyline does not matter such as the appearance of Tetris. Those are the games that broke new boundaries with creativity hence unless your game has something like that, a good storyline and plot is a great way to support your game

Before the action fans start to reload their BFG9000 and empty the whole load on me, take a look at the following poll which forms as a basis to support my point. This was retrieved from gamefaqs.com which i thought is pretty interesting.



I have been to conferences and attended talks that game developers support their claims with research showing that people generally like to blow up stuffs, throw some grenades and watch explosions fly. I'm not too sure about the credibility seriously.

A good storyline in a game is what drives people to remember it for years to come, to get people to look forward for the sequel. Think about Assasin's Creed, Witcher, etc. Playing the game and experiencing the plot unfolds is as good as watching a movie in itself, except that I'm playing it. Despite some cons, afterall its really hard to make a perfect game, i do appreciate the storyline and a fragment of it will always stay in my mind.

When was the last time you watch a movie and you thought "this movie is as dumb as hell with actions and no story". That's exactly the same concept going for games. Think about why Final Fantasy series really drive the players and fans going mad. Was it their game mechanics? Maybe. Was it the fun of watching those effects during the fight scenes? Perhaps so, but it gets monotonous after a while watching the same thing over and over again. For me it's definitely the whole story, plot, coupled with distinctive character designs (another topic i'll touch on in the future) with songs that tie in always at the right moment that always makes the whole thing work.

Check out the recent gaming trends. Try out other games like Crysis, Call of Duty 4, World in Conflict and you see what i mean. Great story had been written into them and you can really see efforts were made in how they tell a story in their own style and technique. Game players are very smart. They know immediately if a storyline is crappy and flimsy probably thrown in at the last minute to cover up loopholes so as to market it as a whole package and there's something for them to write at the back of the box.

If you think storyline only applies to action, adventure and RPG games, think again. Check out Puzzle Quest, another highly successful yet simple game from the casual, puzzle game genre. It's not about the genre or style but more of the skills and techniques involved in how to unfold a story. Imagine if you are telling a story to your grandsons and granddaughters, are you going to keep to the same tone? There has got to be some technique isn't it? Back to games, and consider that if you like to do an introduction, are you going to put up a whole page of words with still graphics and expect players to enjoy it? I'm not saying it is not the right thing to do, but if there's some form of creativity in really making a style out of it with something different by all means.

Remember from my article above that one element of a successful game is to constantly keep the player immerse in the world. Storyline is one avenue which you can bring this across.

Everyone has a story to tell
Now don't you have one you like to tell to the whole world? Get up and start writing one for your game and for your players to remember down the road to come.