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[Paul Eres]

of course they're simplifications of real life, but so is what you study about real-life systems anyway (knowledge of a system in real life is always going to be a simplification of it)

And also - learning systems theory, just like reading design books, is not going to do any harm, and can only be beneficial. Unless you're Toni Zirbas who lives in a fictional world designed by continental philosophers where simulated realities such as design books can easily mislead seduce people into making bad games.

to be specific i wasn't saying to study "systems theory", or to study "models" of systems. i was saying that it's a good idea to be familiar with real systems. learn how the endocrine system works. learn how the monetary system works. learn how systems of grammar work. learn how the judicial system works. etc. etc. -- you don't need to know them in all their complexity or to model them on a computer, you just need to get a sense for / a familiarity with real systems

when you apply them to a game of course you wouldn't try to apply them directly as a simulation, you create a stylized simplification of them. example: real military battles deal with a lot of things that military battles in strategy games don't often have to deal with: lines of supply, morale, deserters, shell shock, etc., but reading about real military battles can still help you tremendously if you are coding a battle system for a strategy game

[mirosurabu]

True that.

Though endocrine system kind of confused me. What kind of game are you making if you have to understand endocrine system haha.

[Paul Eres]

in lots of ways. here's one example: let's say you are making a game where, when the player gets excited, you portray a heart beat sound effect. if you are coding that, it's worth knowing how that works: heart rate is controlled by adrenaline. it's worth knowing that it has a negative feedback loop with itself: that its duration is controlled because it inhibits its own synthesis (so in the game, like in real life, you wouldn't want the heart rate to be elevated for very long, but only for a short duration). it's also worth knowing that it increases glycolysis in the muscles, so you may want to make the player faster or stronger when their heart rate is higher. it's also worth knowing that heart rate increases at a faster rate than it decreases, so the curve is not going to be a smooth bell curve, but it'd go something like:

60 70 80 90 100 100 100 100 100 97 94 91 88 85 82.... 60

so the increase towards the maximum is much faster than going back to normal; it slows down slower than it speeds up. although this varies by how well trained someone is -- if someone is an athlete, their heart rate decrease after the increase may go faster; if you're out of shape, the heart rate decrease takes longer. but in both cases they're slower than the increase

of course not many players would notice these things if they are wrong, but these are pretty easy to implement and can make the game feel much more realistic, even if the effect is only unconscious, players would feel 'yeah, this is how heart rate feels' vs 'this feels off somehow'

[Archibald]

You are in a critical situation, you are already in an age to enter college and you have been making games for only 2 years. Also these games are not good at all (most below 2/5 and one 2.5/5). You have like 3 years left, then you will finish college and all your spare time will evaporate (unless you are in some unusual lucky situation). I don't know, you might still manage it somehow... Anyway, first you need A LOT of practice. And you need it fast. Do not worry about game design, go for math, it's much more useful especially since you are a programmer already.

[Hplus]

@archibald:
I'm actually already a junior in college, am pretty proud of the things I've made (although they don't belong on kongregate, for sure), and am rather uninterested in taking any more math.

[Paul Eres]

if you mean that your games don't even belong on kongregate, that's kind of a bad sign, since kongregate has some of the worst games i've ever played. could you link to them or post screenshots/videos of them, out of curiosity?

anyway i think archibald was mainly echoing what we were saying earlier. let me put it this way: theory is useful, classes are useful, but they are only a fraction as useful as making games and experience. so if you want to optimize your time, you should spend most of your time making games, and only some of your time (but not none) taking classes and learning about game design in the theoretical sense, with more time going to game development than studies. even when i was in college, i spent most of my time making games, even if it meant skipping classes (although i still did well in most of the classes, i'd only skip the ones that didn't take attendance or had most of the grade measured by the exams, since i'm very good at exams). my days in college would be perhaps 6-8 hours of working on my games, and 2-3 of studying or in classes, and i think that's a good ratio

because who would you take on to your indie game project: A) someone with 4 years of experience making games full time and 4 released games of good quality (some of which have moderate fan bases) but who didn't graduate college, and maybe read a book or article on game design here and there but didn't make a focus of it, or B) someone with no published games but who spent 4 years on a degree in game design, published a few papers in a game design journal, wrote a bunch of essays on game design, and maybe made a few game prototypes in his spare time, a few tetris clones or something, and they don't look very polished and were not actually released to the public

if i were choosing who to add to my team, i'd go with the former. that's not the say the latter person is not useful and could not contribute to the team, just that he's at a disadvantage in comparison. the latter person would be the better choice for a teaching position, though, and the latter might know more about the history of games and be able to suggest things that the former would not think of, but the former person would be able to implement those things much faster, and have the skills required to work on a commercial game

[Hplus]

Okay I think a lot of the confusion here is that by studies what I don't mean is "not actually making games." I mean like practical studies, where I am making games semi-scientifically or experimentally in order to better understand the medium. What I don't mean is, "how can I learn to make games without actually having to make them?" What I do mean is, "how should I go about structuring my time spent making games in order to better myself as a designer?"

And haha, I didn't mean they aren't even good enough for kong. I meant that my games don't belong there because they aren't designed for the audience (honestly, an audience mostly comprised of little shits, as far as I can tell). However, I do post them there, because the hosting is free (and I don't have a portfolio site yet), someday I might make some money from the ad revenue, and I see posting art games on kong as a kind of subversive activity. You can find my games here: http://www.kongregate.com/accounts/Hplus (this is where he got the 2.5/5 or less ratings) and here: http://www.itslikethiseveryday.com/

[Paul Eres]

just played most of them, they remind me of some of increpare's games. have you played his?

and i don't think the rating (the percent of people who like your games) matters so much as there being some section of them who like your games. that's not to say that you couldn't improve, but you should measure the improvement not by the rating, but more by the number of people who like your game and the intensity at which they like it (e.g. liking it enough to tell others about it or to send you fan mail)

also art games don't necessarily have bad scores / no audience on sites like kongregate. consider dys4ia by anna anthropy (it was newsgrounds rather than kongregate but the same thing applies): http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/591565 -- it has 200k+ views and lots of positive comments and reviews on various sites, and is about as experimental art game as they get. so i do think it's certainly possible for such games to be liked on those sites, since games like that show it's possible

[Hplus]

I love increpare's work.

I care very little what people on Kong think, luckily, or else I might not still be making games.

Newgrounds is surprisingly nicer of a community than Kong, from what I've seen.

[Paul Eres]

ah, that's possible. there were some positive (and some negative) comments on newsgrounds to my own art/experimental game: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/497769 (which i made for increpare's valentine's day contest back in 09). i'd like to make more games like that when i have more free time

anyway, another suggestion: i think there are things you can't learn about game design just from making short or experimental games -- i'd suggest making at least one big traditional game too, to round out your education/experience. it can still be innovative and original, by traditional i don't mean a clone game, but i mean something with stages, a title screen, an options menu, ending credits, bosses, those kinds of things. with a lot of things you don't realize how hard they are to code until you try them. even scrolling text letter by letter and having it wrap correctly around the edges (like in old snes rpg textboxes) can be a challenge

[Hplus]

Hmm, thank you. I think that's a really good idea. I'm a big fan of constantly making myself rethink my art, but traditional/conventional isn't really an angle I take, usually. I'll make sure to include something of that nature.

[DinofarmGames]

It is absolutely mandatory that any education in game design include an extensive amount of study of designer boardgames.  Games like Puerto Rico, Through the Desert, Agricola, Caylus, Battlestar Galactica, The Resistance, Yomi, should all be broken down and figured out completely.  Same with abstracts, like the Gipf games.  This should be the cornerstone of a game design program.

[Hplus]

It is absolutely mandatory that any education in game design include an extensive amount of study of designer boardgames.  Games like Puerto Rico, Through the Desert, Agricola, Caylus, Battlestar Galactica, The Resistance, Yomi, should all be broken down and figured out completely.  Same with abstracts, like the Gipf games.  This should be the cornerstone of a game design program.

Okay this sounds like a great idea. How, exactly, would you go about doing this kind of study if you were to do it on your own? Thanks

[DinofarmGames]

Honestly, the most awesome resource you have is www.boardgamegeek.com.  Just go down the list of games.  Over the course of a year, buy as MANY games as you can.  Learn them, play them, and unless you absolutely LOVE them, trade them away for something new.  BGG has a great trading system.

Also, check out boardgames on iOS.  It's honestly almost worth it to get an iPod Touch or iPad just to check out lots of boardgames for like Free/1.99/4.99 instead of 30/40/50 dollars.  Plus you can play versus bots.

Also, check out digital versions of boardgames.  Here's a good resource for that that I wrote up recently:  http://www.dinofarmgames.com/?p=668

Finally, read rules.  Most publishers have their rulebooks up for free download as PDFs.

After you've done that, intensely, for awhile, start designing your own.  I recommend getting into a habit of designing one quick, throwaway, silly board/card/dice game every single night.  Keep a pen and paper by the bed and just every night, come up with something before you go to sleep.

[Hplus]

So your advice is just to play them and make them? No advice on how to critically deconstruct them?