Game planning: Four Misunderstandings in Game Design

35 years ago, when time-sharing operation systems and printing terminals appeared on mainframes, people started to write computer games. The gaming industry emerged about the next five years, if we had included early mainframe games. In the next thirty years, we have been wandering on some strange roads, and have entered some dead ends. We have also witnessed the development of new entertainment media. We are also slowly developing a dogma about this type of entertainment-a set of methods for people who think about the game itself and those who think about it. After years of attempts, errors, and filtering by taking advantage of the market's natural elimination rules, most of the knowledge involved here has been refined. For example, we now know that simply having beautiful graphics won't ensure that a game is successful-a few games that violate the dogma cannot survive, it is never known again. But some bad ideas are still being adopted. Maybe this is because they are not fatal enough to destroy the companies that rely on them. In this article, I will discuss four fairly common mistakes about games and game design that continue to be tapped. If we can drive these ideas out of the inherited gene pool, we can certainly do better.
Myth 1: We are our own Support Group
The ideas we accurately present to all our game fans are actually the basis of every game and gameplay belief that our developers have mastered. Because we know what we like, we also think we know what those fans like. After all, we are not just game developers, but we are also playing games ~ This is wrong in China. It is hard to believe, but there are indeed many game developers in China who do not play games at all, we are confident that this provides us with an insight that allows us to understand every player in every place-and all potential players.
How many design discussions have you attended ...... "Is a sentence used as an opening remark to criticize a certain idea? If you have ever stayed in this industry, you should have heard the answer for at least dozens of times. (Sorry: I have to admit that the author is indeed experienced in the industry :). No one cares about history (because most of the games are set in the direction of science fiction or fantasy world, the long history of the East determines that the success of games with many historical themes is largely dependent on those with historical themes ). No one cares about actions (because actions in most games are annoying ). No one cares about the story and everyone will press it (because the story is ordinary and the game content is also poorly written ). Girls do not play games (because few people play games that interest girls as well ). This list can be written continuously. There is actually only a small part of the evidence we use as evidence of these broad statements. This belief is that "I Am a game developer, so I know what players want. "This belief is the same.
This logic is flawed. We also play games on our own, but we are a special type of game players; we are just game developers. We cannot represent those who don't want to make a game; none of us are of this type. We cannot assume that the parts we are interested in will be the same as those of them.
For many people, in this type of entertainment media, video games are the only motivation that drives them to do the job. Most people will want to visit the open-air market, but they will not want to manage the carousel. However, some people who are playing video games and want to make video games, their quantity is amazing. Why? This is because the games they are playing are all specifically designed for those who are interested in making games-that is, they are designed by developers and specifically designed for developers, or they are at least designed specifically for potential developers.
In my experience, research into the hungry market in this industry is often better than just a joke-the company I used to stay with is one of the most successful publishers in the industry. In this way, I can only agree to a small part of it. Sometimes someone collects the reply cards sent by all consumers and reads their voices, but any decent statistician will laugh at it. Because the reply card sent back only comes from a small number of consumers who make their choice. All they can tell you is what this type of thinking is represented by people who send back-to-back cards. This is not a random sample. Well, we only have some central groups, but what groups do we invite? Experienced players-especially those who love to spend a night sprees on publishers. Once stated, they are not actually a very representative group. In addition, most of the market research I have seen is based on a certain category of key points, outdated wisdom, and misunderstandings 1.
Even worse, people from another team are totally ignored: those who do not play games at all. Now, our developers are suffering the same hardships. Every game is given a mission to compete with other games on the shelf and sell to players in the same market, we hope to sell more such games of the same type. But in fact, the real opportunity is to sell the game to those who do not play the game yet, but once they find a game they like, they may start playing it. These "prototype game players (proto-gamer)" are the potential customers we should develop and the customers we should try to create dedicated games for them. But we do not know anything about them. All we know is that they will not buy any of the games we have made today-the one we like.
There are a certain number of children, mostly boys. Every one or two weeks, they will go to the game sales store to look around and buy a game worth $40. They are the target group of our traditional sales market. However, there are quite a large number of people, mostly adults, and many women, who like to work between work or household chores, it takes several minutes to play a light, interesting, and simple game that requires only a little money. Who will sell it to these people? Most of us won't be. This is the only one that can be affirmed.
When I remove this opinion from developers, especially to those young developers, I usually get a bad face and a blunt rejection: "I won't create any game that I don't even want to play. "Sometimes they will add some careful thinking results." If I don't have any feelings for the game, I'm afraid I can't do the job well. "(Summary: Haha, I don't know how many times I 've said it .) I also have a deep understanding of this idea-I share the same idea with those people who have been playing a game for the first time in about five minutes, I am also part of them, but in the end, this is a short-sighted approach. It may be an excellent masterpiece of art, but it will also be a terrible sell of goods. It will allow you to create games exclusively for game developers, which is already an overly crowded market. When it takes less than three weeks for a game to be played on a vending shelf in the store, your passion will be hard to maintain.
Let's take a look at the Barbie fashion designer game. Barbie fashion designer is not a game conceived by a ten-year-old girl. I didn't mean to offend a ten-year-old girl, but none of them should have enough money to create an entertainment software that can be realized in the consumer market. Barbie fashion designer is developed by a group of adults who do not like such games. Despite this, they still completed a very good job and made a lot of money for themselves and their company. I cannot clearly understand every developer, so I can only assume that they rely not on the enthusiasm for playing games, but on the different abilities of the other professional technology, then they asked themselves to do the job for this reason. Of course, this work has also achieved great success. (TIPS: every game developer should have a deep understanding of this section)
The method to overcome Myth 1 is to make the product that I rarely see in this game industry: what your customers want to make your decisions. Do not assume that you are about to sell to some of the boring and crowded markets, or that you really know what they want. Instead, you must define your customer group and acknowledge your ignorance of them. Find these people and ask them what they like to play, where they want to play, and how they want to play. Who knows. Maybe you may develop a huge market that has been ignored for the past 30 years. This is like accumulating bonuses.
Myth 2: Is authenticity always the main design goal?
What are the main design objectives? Next, I want to tell you how to find it. Create a list and write all the things you want to achieve in the game. These goals can be creative, technical, or costly. Everything can be done. If you want to use your game to change players' thoughts or feelings, you need to know that they can be highly knowledgeable, emotionally fragile, or lofty and pure people. They may even be interested in politics or social networking, so if you really want to do so, I think you need to make your game change the world.
Now, sort your list from the most important targets to the least important ones. Then, start from the top, and navigate down the entire list and ask yourself for each target. "If we fail to reach this goal, will we think this game fails? "When you know something, you will stop saying" Yes. "This is, your attitude will begin from" this goal is necessary. This is great, but it is not necessary. "Then draw a line across the list on this idea.
All the goals above the line you just painted are your main design goals. They are the things you must complete. The goal under that line ranks second, that is, you can include it, but you don't think you must do it, in addition, this method does not affect other targets in this list compared to the above section. The secondary goal can make any sacrifice for the primary goal.
If you have watched many hype games-print ads, TV ads, and press releases-you will soon be able to get an impression that no matter what the game is, authenticity is one of the most important features. The publisher's marketing department and PR department will constantly talk to you on this topic, and if you are paying attention to this kind of things, then you may begin to believe this. Never. This is myth 2.
Authenticity is very important in some game designs. It is part of the game and is also the main design goal in the game. High-order flight games or competition simulation games require authenticity. However, other games seldom need to use it. Some games, if they focus on this aspect, will actually cause harm to it. Games need to be set in a symbolic world of human beings, and they should be. Patent Rights do not actually do much in buying real assets, and if you want to put these details (taxes, insurance, inspection, termite ......) This will also cause a lot of damage to the game.
The main source of this myth is quite obvious: This is our history. Since the writing of the first computer, the development of sound, images, and machine capabilities has been continuously refined, today's games are much more realistic than previous games. More importantly, games made with every clip in our history are more real than general games. We are at the top of a steady rising curve, and we have always been so.
Of course, these improvements seem quite good. It sounds like they can also be used to help demonstrate the capabilities and Development of game technologies. But these improvements will automatically happen, as long as your development team can make full use of the advantages of the target hardware. Remember: The main design goals are those that you will sacrifice for them, if necessary. If authenticity is a major design goal, what are you going to sacrifice for it?
Sometimes the answer is playability. Spectrum holobyte F-16 Falcon is an extremely real flight simulation game, and when you are playing this game, you will understand why the vast majority of people cannot become fighter pilots. It is really difficult to manipulate. Authenticity is the requirement of F-16 Falcon for its reputation for fame. It has reasons for its existence, so it is particularly suitable for regard authenticity as a major design goal, even if it sacrifices playability. But this is not suitable for most other types of games.
The old birds in the industry no longer need to explain this to them. Those who need to know this are some cainiao who have joined the industry from all over the world, whether they are young people who have just graduated from college or new people who have switched from other majors. In fact, these people are the second source of this myth: their university professors will teach them that correct module production is very important in software engineering, if they are from a position in another industry, they will probably feel the same way. There is a 3do development team that was brought into ea and became their leader. He is a physical doctor, he insisted that "real" physics should be used in the john madeen football game corresponding to the 3do game instrument host. Unfortunately, when we knew that we had changed his mind, this had long been a hard time getting the game to play. Because athletes in Sports Games use a very simple game controller to operate, you must adjust the physical nature to fill this part, but he does not understand this. At that time, I was also the designer of the Madden game. I had a tutorial-style designer. When they had a dispute with the top boss, they had to repeat the mantra: "This doesn't need to be 'right'. It should be right if it looks good and can be quite good. "Finally, we finally convinced him.
At that time, a guy who was staying in atari told me a legend that occurred during the early days of Atari's development. When the battlezone, a classic game on the mainframe, was created, the US Army sent some people to Atari, we hope to know how Atari made this tank simulation game with less than a few thousands of dollars, because in contrast, they needed hundreds of dollars to make it. The meeting was attended by senior officers with hats on the table, while on the other side was a bunch of programmers with long hair, T-shirts, and smoke. Army officers want to know how they make such precision accurate on this low-level joystick. Programmers shrugged. "We cannot. "They said. Officers continue to insist. "In this case, if an enemy did not actually concentrate on your tank when shooting, but after the calculation result, he hit ...... "," Players lose, "said the programmer. "Nothing remarkable. Players do not know this, do they? "So Army officers decided to keep their own simulators.
Like most legends, the precise and small details are not necessarily true, but they already contain the relevant main information, in addition, it can directly elaborate on my central idea of Myth 2. For the army, authenticity is a major design goal-a matter of fact, a matter of life and death-so they have sacrificed a lot of money to achieve this. For Atari, interest and production costs define their main goals. Here, authenticity is far from the second place. However, battlezone is still a great game. This is an entertainment business, and do not fall into this kind of unessential authenticity.
Myth 3: You can imitate a best-selling game and create another best-selling game.
Businessmen tend to trust this myth more than designers. Designers usually want to innovate rather than imitate. Even so, if you look at the display shelves in the store, you will find a lot of imitation games are still in production. The reason for this is that the publisher's marketing staff and sales staff noticed that the same competitor already has a popular product, so they will persuade the management class, if developers develop games of this type, they will certainly sell well. They are the victims of Myth 3: You can use the idea of imitating a best-selling game to create another best-selling game.
I'm sure all of us have seen this myth at work. If someone makes a great new game, it will become a crazy selling product at Christmas, and at the next E3 exhibition, we can see four or five other people are making imitation games. They will never look as good as the original, because the opportunity they want to seize is quite short! Because they need to enter the market faster so that they can access the original light. Second, they cannot sell as well as the original, because that "Wow! "Elements have disappeared.
But why do a group of people follow suit? Well, if you don't have self-esteem or creative power, you can use this method to make a little money. However, in my experience, the companies that will do this are the ones who will never be able to really stand out and the second-stream teams. One more thing is that if the management class sticks it to some developers in violation of their wishes, they are constantly abandoning the talents they own. They asked their people to construct these cheap counterfeits, but they were not allowed to create innovative and brand-new products. No creative developer can afford to keep himself from building such games for a long time. They will leave the company, and the company will have to find someone who can replace them and will not care about making cheap copies. This is not a good way to build and maintain a good team.
It is strange that this will happen in a single company. It will happen when the marketing team strongly asks developers to make a sequel to a game that was not originally intended to be produced. Sometimes a game is best-selling mainly because the development team burns itself thoroughly and puts everything they own into a game. If you ask them to create another game, just like the first game, then you are likely to get a poor set of products-they have not left anything to contribute. With the current emphasis on themes, we usually prefer planning for manufacturing and production instead of using that approach. But this still happens, especially in games where we don't expect them to succeed.
This does not imply that you should not learn the advantages of other games. I am a strong believer in how to learn the advantages of others' games. It is very important to know others' strengths in learning everything. For creative Mills, they are all cereals that can be used to grind powder. However, there is a very important difference between focusing on competition and exploiting them. The latter rarely succeeds. Our goal should be to win this competition to create our own. "Wow! "For a moment, this will be much better than a ride to someone's creativity.
Myth 4: A good idea can make you rich
There will always be several times a year. I will receive emails from people who have good game ideas, but I don't know how to use them to face the reality. They want me to teach them everything about game development and marketing, but they are usually very cautious about what their ideas are and don't want to say it-they are afraid that I will steal these ideas and make a lot of money for them. Sorry, they are all tempted by Myth 4: the idea that a good idea can make you rich. This myth can be said to be a classic between young and inexperienced game designers. Therefore, this section specifically targets these people.
One part of the reason why people believe in myth 4 is that we have been taught in the evolution of new inventions. Most of what people will tell us is that it does not contain the entire story, just like "James Watt invented the steam engine ". In the world where marathon was the main vehicle of transportation at that time, this remark gave everyone an impression that James Watt was shaking the lid of his hungry teapot slightly, suddenly, map came into being. In fact, Watt is only part of a very huge development process, and his real invention is actually only a technological improvement to an existing and non-dynamic steam engine. He did not invent the railway either. He was a man called George Stevenson who constructed the world's first steam locomotive-(of course, those successes he had already done with watt.
The example I mentioned does not mean that a good idea will never make someone rich. Sometimes it is also an exception. Many people prefer the Tetris game as a perfect example. The problem is that games like tetris that really have good ideas are extremely rare. There are tens of thousands of ideas that seem good but cannot be implemented on the surface. A winning prize coupon can also make you rich, but if you are very serious about making money, it is not a feasible and good method.
Another example that people will use as a good idea to get rich is "doom )". Everyone should remember that at that time, "Destroyer" was different from other games that they had previously watched, it does allow both John cramack and John Romero to buy a Ferrari in the grid ). However, the "Destroyer" game cannot be an unexpected good idea. In fact, it should be the best example of how to create a wealth of wealth in the gaming industry.
The central idea of "Destroyer"-to run around in the first-person manner and shooting various things-is not novel. As early as 1983, a multiplayer game called mazewars on the Xerox Alto processor had already done so, and there may even be an earlier example. The main display method in "Destroyer", a technology called raycasting, is also not innovative. The reason for the success of "Destroyer" is not because it is a good new idea, but because it is an outstanding product that combines existing ideas. Raycasting may not be a new technology, but "Destroyer" is better at using Germany than other games. The game is so simple and concise, so even today it still has many fans who love it. I 've seen it transplanted to a variety of strange devices, even LCD monitors with a digital camera.
In the gaming industry, this is what we need to know. There is nothing wrong with having good ideas, but it is a mistake to regard them as a necessary procedure for getting rich. What really makes us make money is not an outstanding idea, but the quality of the finished product. First-class, best, grade-a finished product. The only way to achieve this is to rely on your forehead sweat.
If you want to sell your good ideas to publishers in the form of ideas, your chances will soon disappear. In the past, publishers may be willing to buy good ideas, but at least they will not do this anymore. Today's publishing companies are full of people with their own good ideas. No one will be willing to pay for it unless your idea has the talent to win the coupon. (Publishers don't want ideas, but people who can create products, especially those who can create products with what I call quality standards .)
But if you still believe that your ideas are some good ideas that can indeed win the coupons, How do you protect them? Next is an article about intellectual property for any beginners who need it. In the United States, there are three methods that can be legally used to protect your job success: copyright, registered trademark, and patent rights.
〔............ It is unrealistic to skip the three paragraphs in the middle ............ 〕
From the above perspective, I seem to think that the focus is not on innovation. It seems that excellent ideas are quite worthless, but they are not. Excellent ideas are very good, but you need to thoroughly understand their values under consideration. No single idea can have the value of getting rich overnight, therefore, instead of focusing on it as a diamond, it is better to let us continue to produce more new ideas: learning, thinking, dream, and creation, it is an eight-character rumor that I give to readers.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit a Swedish company called hidden dinghuur. Michael stenmark, founder of the company, presented me with a draft book about the projects they are currently developing. If I say I'm surprised, then I cannot properly express my feelings-it's closer to my feelings. The scenes, characters, creatures, objects, and materials on one page after another are all things I have never seen. What you see does not include the elf, samurai, or space fleet. Everything is fascinating and brand new, and every day he will go out and continue to add more new things to it. He often traveled around for inspiration and never stopped. He does not assume that an idea is sufficient. These things are like the rainbow of Nicaragua, pouring out from his pen. He always maintains a correct attitude towards the idea: the more the better.
If you have a very good idea, use it to train your skills. Learn how to develop it. If you want to be a programmer, you have to learn how to write it into a program. If you want to become an artist, then you should learn how to draw it out. If you want to become a writer, then try to write it down-and you can apply for copyright for all the materials you have created. In this way, your efforts will at least be protected. Although you cannot get rich, if you are willing to work hard for it, your enthusiasm for it will gradually show up. Then you can take them out during a job interview and use them to prove your talents. Do not worry about confidentiality. In fact, what we need to do is to discuss it with those who are willing to listen. If it is really great, they will be more impressed with your imagination, and they will be more inclined to hire you.
Conclusion
As I said, these four misunderstandings are not fatal changes. Believe that they will not destroy your business or your company, but they are like flaws in the code at the beginning, they cannot do anything, they do more harm than they do, and they continue to pass on to the next generation, which we don't want to see. By constantly participating in and correcting them, we may also be able to make small correction contributions to this fast-growing industry.