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14 years ago on June 15th Gamedev.net was first launched! We want to thank all of you for being part of our community and hope the best years are ahead of us. Happy birthday Gamedev.net!

#ActualBluefirehawk

Posted 20 September 2012 - 06:47 AM

Hi guys and girls

Inspired by the article on badly written plots (http://www.ansible.c...le/plotdev.html), I thought maybe we could come up with a guide to bad game design. Since making a "good" game is hard, even harder to describe why it is good, it's often very easy to say why a game is bad.
I hope that we can discuss bad design choices in the different categories of game design.

Since game design is such a broad word and games can be so distinct from each other, I suggest writing the genre and specific subsection (like Leveldesign), if it only applies to one. If you disagree or have suggestions, please respond.

I plan to keep a list of the bad design choices in this first post.


To get this rolling, I start with some bad design choices:

In general, try to punish the gamer regularly for absolutely no reason, just because you can.

Make the gamer collect an arbitrary amount of resources for no reward, just to make the game longer. Make the collection as trivial as possible. For the worst effect, let him collect resources serveral times during the game, always increasing the amount needed.

#2Bluefirehawk

Posted 20 September 2012 - 06:16 AM

Hi guys and girls

Inspired by the article on badly written plots (http://www.ansible.c...le/plotdev.html), I thought maybe we could come up with a guide to bad game design. Since making a "good" game is hard, even harder to describe why it is good, it's often very easy to say why a game is bad.
I hope that we can discuss bad design choices in the different categories of game design.

Since game design is such a broad word and games can be so distinct from each other, I suggest writing the genre and specific subsection (like Leveldesign), if it only applies to one. If you disagree or have suggestions, please respond.

I plan to keep a list of the bad design choices in this first post.


To get this rolling, I start with some bad design choices:

In general, try to punish the gamer regularly for absolutely no reason, just because you can.

Make the gamer collect an arbitrary amount of resources for no reward, just to make the game longer. Make the collection as trivial as possible. For the worst effect, let him collect resources serveral times during the game, always increasing the amount needed.


E: dammit, accidentally posted in the wrong forum, please push it to game desing.

#1Bluefirehawk

Posted 20 September 2012 - 06:13 AM

Hi guys and girls

Inspired by the article on badly written plots (http://www.ansible.c...le/plotdev.html), I thought maybe we could come up with a guide to bad game design. Since making a "good" game is hard, even harder to describe why it is good, it's often very easy to say why a game is bad.
I hope that we can discuss bad design choices in the different categories of game design.

Since game design is such a broad word and games can be so distinct from each other, I suggest writing the genre and specific subsection (like Leveldesign), if it only applies to one. If you disagree or have suggestions, please respond.

I plan to keep a list of the bad design choices in this first post.


To get this rolling, I start with some bad design choices:

In general, try to punish the gamer regularly for absolutely no reason, just because you can.

Make the gamer collect an arbitrary amount of resources for no reward, just to make the game longer. Make the collection as trivial as possible. For the worst effect, let him collect resources serveral times during the game, always increasing the amount needed.

PARTNERS