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[eclectocrat]

I think accessibility is overrated...

Seriously? ... uuumm ... wow.

[C.A. Sinner]

I think accessibility is overrated...

Seriously? ... uuumm ... wow.

I'm glad that you are amazed by my unique insights on the fine art of game design.

But no, think about it. All accessibility does is make the game easier to pick up. Once you've familiarized yourself with the mechanics and controls it all but stops mattering. How accessible a game is does not factor into my enjoyment of it as a player in the long run (hint: I play Dwarf Fortress).  

I do think that from a design standpoint it's a good idea to make your game as accessible as possible, but what annoys me is the recent trend towards "accessibility at all costs", where it's become commonplace to compromise a game's depth to make it more accessible and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

[eclectocrat]

I think accessibility is overrated...

Seriously? ... uuumm ... wow.

I'm glad that you are amazed by my unique insights on the fine art of game design.

But no, think about it. All accessibility does is make the game easier to pick up. Once you've familiarized yourself with the mechanics and controls it all but stops mattering. How accessible a game is does not factor into my enjoyment of it as a player in the long run (hint: I play Dwarf Fortress).  

I do think that from a design standpoint it's a good idea to make your game as accessible as possible, but what annoys me is the recent trend towards "accessibility at all costs", where it's become commonplace to compromise a game's depth to make it more accessible and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Ok, I totally agree with that. But I really was surprised with your viewpoint, which is natural considering accessibility/interface has been an obsession of mine for many years! I really need others opinions on it, cus being insulated in your own viewpoint too long isn't healthy.

I think you may disagree with this, and many other people too, but I start with an interface and build gameplay up. I don't think it's any less valid than working from gameplay down, as at some point they have to meet and agree anyways. I think Nintendo does this well, but recently I find it going a bit too far and they "compromise a games" TOO MUCH "depth to make it more accessible". There is always SOME compromise (conscious or not), but it needs to be done methodically (IMHO).

Going back to the thread topic: while we can agree to disagree about GAME design as a science, INTERFACE design and accessibility definitely have rules, and interfaces are measurable, and hence amenable to scientific investigation.

[Paul Eres]

just want to add that chris crawford's book on game design is also my favorite of this type; not only because he knows what hes talking about (he's made a lot of games) but also because he doesn't do much of 'this is how to make games', it's descriptive rather than prescriptive.

i think it's a good point that books like this are more useful for AAA game designers than indies, because they teach you basically how to make AAA games (games as composed of mechanical parts and fitting a standard formula) but i think that's all the more reason to avoid these books (except the exceptions like crawford's).

this thread sort of makes me consider writing another book on game design, but one for indies, and one that does it right. but it'd be more like a workbook than a textbook (a collection of exercises) since i do think that self-training is the way to go, and that you learn a thousand times more from making and releasing even a simple game than you'd learn from an academic game design theory book.

i also agree that accessibility is overrated; a lot of my favorite games are utterly inaccessible (alpha centauri for instance has an abysmal interface design). i think accessibility is important for popularity and sales (although not always; see: minecraft. less accessible than most indie games, and far more popular), but not really that important for how much fun the people who are playing it have. sort of how a mac being more accessible than a windows pc is great, but meaningless when it comes to the actual performance of the computer or how you use it after you've learned their respective interfaces.

chris crawford as an aside wrote a very good book on interface design as well (it's less known than his game design book, but still excellent)

[simono]

'game design chemistry' and such is probably the worst of them i've seen.

Yes, that is one of the few things danc wrote which i think should be read different from how he intented them but he does explain very well the mechanics of jump&runs.

[Draknek]

this thread sort of makes me consider writing another book on game design, but one for indies, and one that does it right. but it'd be more like a workbook than a textbook (a collection of exercises) since i do think that self-training is the way to go, and that you learn a thousand times more from making and releasing even a simple game than you'd learn from an academic game design theory book.

Why make it a book? If you think you could do a good job with a workshop-style teaching method why not start up a thread here with exercises and suchlike?

There was a similar thing started for level design a few months back, it's not still going but I found it useful at the time and would be very interested in other similar projects.

[Destral]

this thread sort of makes me consider writing another book on game design, but one for indies, and one that does it right. but it'd be more like a workbook than a textbook (a collection of exercises) since i do think that self-training is the way to go, and that you learn a thousand times more from making and releasing even a simple game than you'd learn from an academic game design theory book.

Why make it a book? If you think you could do a good job with a workshop-style teaching method why not start up a thread here with exercises and suchlike?

There was a similar thing started for level design a few months back, it's not still going but I found it useful at the time and would be very interested in other similar projects.

I'm sure a lot of people on this forum would appreciate a resource like this.

[Danc]

As a small note, Jesse runs Schell Games on the side in addition to his teaching job.  You can see some of the games they've worked on here: http://www.schellgames.com/projects/

I second the appreciation for Chris Crawford's early writings.  The PDF of The Art of Computer Game Design is available for free here: http://library.vancouver.wsu.edu/sites/library.vancouver.wsu.edu/files/ACGD.pdf

All the best,
Danc.

[Muz]

I'd agree with what people in the thread say about game design being an art rather than a science. I've worked with hardcore engineering, artistic engineering (emotions in voice), and just plain art.

To me, a science is something simple enough that can be accurately explained by laws. Even the most advanced sciences are still simple enough to be broken down into parts.

Art is something that's so complicated that you can't explain them with rules. You can only explain patterns, which patterns work and which don't. Creativity is simply having so much experience with the patterns that you can spot on sight what a good pattern is.


Trying to turn game design into an art would give it similar success to other entertainment medium. Fully analyzed game design would produce something like classical music. You can synthesize a work of beauty from it, but highly theoretical. And the results would be the same too - it would appeal to a group of people, but not everyone. A classical musician may shun garage rock bands, pop, and auto-tuners, but the fact is that the ones played by instinct have larger audiences.

However, theory is not all useless. The indie guitarists who were trained classically can create some amazing metal, since he knows some musical patterns that work. Same goes for an indie game designer with theoretical knowledge.

On the other hand, the movie industry has a formula, sticks to it, and churns out good movies often enough that there's little risk. It's not impossible to get a good formula for art.

I'm not sure where game design lies compared to other entertainment mediums but it's somewhere around there.

[C.A. Sinner]

I don't really know a lot about individual indie devs' knowledge of game design theory. It'd be interesting to do some "research" on some of my faves in that respect and find out what percentage of them has formally studied game design.

[DecapitatedOrk]

Bookmarked!

[Paul Eres]

As a small note, Jesse runs Schell Games on the side in addition to his teaching job.  You can see some of the games they've worked on here: http://www.schellgames.com/projects/

thanks, good to see he's not flying completely blind. still, according to that he'd been making games only for three years before he wrote a book on it, and even less before he started teaching it in a university. if this were any other subject but game design, wouldn't that feel a bit weird? would you want to learn chemistry from a university professor who had only been a chemist for three years? and that's an actual science.

my intent isn't to personally attack everyone who writes books on game design though, it's just to recognize that, with rare exceptions, most of them have very little experience making games. they probably don't know much more about game design than the average person on this forum does, yet they say claim to be able to teach it to others. i just wish they were more humble about it, and not write in such a way as if they felt they had all the answers (coming up with rules and so on).

Why make it a book? If you think you could do a good job with a workshop-style teaching method why not start up a thread here with exercises and suchlike?

There was a similar thing started for level design a few months back, it's not still going but I found it useful at the time and would be very interested in other similar projects.

the main reason to make it a book would be to compete with all the other terrible books and hopefully displace them with something more reasonable and useful to beginning developers than the gobblygook they're being fed. but there's no reason we can't do it on the forum too, sure. but we already sort of do that with contests: ludum dare, tigsource contests, and all the other thematic small contests are basically exactly what i would recommend the beginning game designer do anyway.

it's just that, in the game design classroom, they *don't* do the kind of helpful stuff people on this forum generally do. likewise with the 14-year-old who sees a game design book in the store and reads it; he doesn't know how to start making games at all, and has no experience programming, and is far more likely to be misled by these books than people with game design experience are. so i think a book would help reduce all the 14-year-olds out there who fill their heads with ideas about what game design "should" be like even before they've made one.

[C.A. Sinner]

DO IT!

[Paul Eres]

i might, but not yet; i don't have much time right now as i'm still working on making my own games popular/profitable enough to survive as an indie. but after i've reached a comfortable level (where i can live just off the games i make), which will probably be some years away, i'd try to turn that experience into opportunity for others.

it's like, if i took the other route and started promoting books and teaching people (even if it's just recommending ways that someone can self-teach themselves) without being a well-known game developer i'd be just as bad as all the people who do do that, even if i do have more experience than average (making games for 15 years and all).

so maybe in another 15 years? 30 years of experience feels like a lot more teachable experience than 15 years. even now i'm uncomfortable answering questions from people (e.g. formspring, i get a lot of questions about what people should do when making games, when they should decide to sell games, how they should form teams, whether they should use engines or pure programming, and other stuff) and i often feel too unqualified to answer, even though my answers are probably better for them than most they'd get from these types of books.

or, if i did it sooner, it'd be as a collaboration with others, since collective experience is usually better than individual experience. it'd be great to see a book that asks basic game design questions / topics and gives various indies' thoughts on those subjects (increpare, cactus, etc.). something like that would be fun to edit or set up.

[bateleur]

I don't really know a lot about individual indie devs' knowledge of game design theory. It'd be interesting to do some "research" on some of my faves in that respect and find out what percentage of them has formally studied game design.

"Formally"? That seems like a curious thing to care about.

I've been "studying" game design for over twenty years, but never in a formal way because it happens to be the case that the best sources of game design ideas are not formal courses. Even books are arguably not a good medium for game design ideas, because good ideas are small and books are big.

The other factor is that there isn't much consensus over who the great designers really are. Reiner Knizia might seem like an uncontroversial choice, but his games are all quite similar in style. Richard Garfield is highly regarded, but is little known except to Magic the Gathering players. Shigeru Miyamoto is often namechecked as a great designer, but I'm not sure if he might not be better classified as a great producer. In reality, most of this generation's best designers work for games corporations and we don't know their names.

The best designer I've ever spoken to is a guy called Richard Halliwell. Do you know who he is without looking him up? I doubt it. He's my hero as a designer. He made great games and refused to stop doing so. So Games Workshop basically sacked him for it!