[7] Attractive/Stylish Graphics
[6] A Good Soundtrack
[5] Interesting Storyline
[10] Good Level Design
[10] Innovative Concept
[6] Challenge & Longevity
[2] Online Features
[2] Price
[1] Open Source
That would be my way of ranking those...
But...
I found that funny that the part you don't find interesting is the one about your market. Being game designer is all about knowing who plays your game. Knowing your market is knowing your players and knowing your players is knowing how to make the game good.
Also, I feel like the approach taken with this top ten thing feels more like a marketing strategy for common products, like cereal boxes or cat litter, rather than for video games. I'm not saying that its essentialy bad, it just that taking this approach, in my opinion, ends up with games without soul and that have design focuses such as "violence sells" or "sex sells" instead of gameplay elements.
Personaly, I'd rather take an approach using game styles and their markets. Like evalutaing the market of rpg then evaluate which titles sold the most and why. Then, study what is missing in this market and make a game that have the good sides of those who sold and elements missing in these same titles. Basicaly, just like when you look at a game and say "why didn't they design it this way, it woul've been alot more fun". I think it's a more design-oriented method. The market you are evaluting could also be about innovative games, like how well did games that did not follow a known genre sold and what are the chances of piercing the market with a new and innovative concept.
Personaly, that's what I do when we start a new project at work. I look at the market, I look at what we have in our catalog of games then establish what kind of game we could develop. Then we establish what titles are the cannon of this style and study why they are so good and popular. Then we start the development.
Perhaps I'm simply over reacting or I have completly misunderstood the point of the exercise but I feel like the top thingy you have to do just lists all the things that make a game fantastic and, when you develop, you should aim have all those elements, whatever the game you are doing. I mean, a game that has stylish and beautiful graphics, a great soundtrack, an interesting storyline, excellent level design, innovatice concepts, has online features, with a good price as well as providing open source code for mods and stuff, like that would be a close to perfect game.
It just feels to me like the guys who created that program just followed the basic rules of marketing and evaluated that video games are a growing market, took a basic course like "how to sell plants" and slapped a video game tag on it without first asking themselves what is a good video game and why people play them as well as how they are created.
Yes, I think I'm just over reacting... It's just that I really don't like when games are focusing on marketing than on gameplay. It's really not because of you at all Terry, it's attitude of the people who train others into working in the field of video game that kind of tick me off. I don't want to offend you, I'm really venting off more than anything else. Sorry if I missed the point
Later and good luck with the course!
Developer
