quote:Original post by Trigomaq
Commercial Designer: Don''t care about quality, wants quantity sales. Ultimate purpose is to brain-wash millions of casual gamers world-wide and partially responsible for many kids in the American culture to be more violent.

Either you´re trying to start an argument or you don´t have a clue what you´re talking about. Most commercial designers work themselves up a very, very long way before being able to do what they like on a grand scale. You don´t desing big games if you´re not loving it, for that the hours are too bad and the pay is too unspectacular.
A commercial designer has to be able to do many things, and of course making a game that´s fun for the biggest possible audience is one of these. Making games costs money, a really, really big amount of money. And if you want your company to be there next year you have to make sure that the game sells, and ultimately the best-selling games are those that can be enjoyed by the largest possible audience. And how exactly is that a bad thing?
I´m not defending the number of crap games out there, there certainly is a lot of room for improvement. But these improvements have nothing to do with brainwashing or violent children - I´m not going to start that debate all over again.


Now, "Mr. Weird Designer going to revolutionise the industry", exactly what are your experiences with game designers so far? I know no commercial game designer who isn´t in it for the love, and all of those have lovely unique ideas they would love to see realised.
Unfortunately it´s not about what the game designer wants, that´s the difficult part of the job - you have to be able to look at what´s required, look at what resources you´ve got and make the best game possible from that.

So, in response to the original post: destruction and mayhem, if correctly done, can be loads of fun - sure it´s an easy way but if it fits the game then go for it! And eye candy, no matter how the self-proclaimed hardcore gamers seem to pick on it, is a very important factor for a game of today. You don´t necessarily have to be the best of the best, but if your games optics fall below a certain threshhold then a large portion of your audience won´t even bother to look at it.

The most important requisite for a game designer is a very solid connection to reality - that applies to things like your audience or your resources, but also the fact that sometimes you have to see that your ideas and theories were not as good as you thought them to be, and that the radical new design you´re trying to implement has flaws that might eventually kill the whole product. Sure, sometimes it´s difficult to kick several hundred pages of design into the bin but that´s how life goes. If you can´t do that you won´t be a happy designer.

well said

You left out the most important type of game programmer.

The Pragmatic Game Programmer.

The programmer who knows when to write commercial games, and when to concentrate on personal idealistic projects.

Highly satisfying and pays the bills. :D

Its not the commerical game designer that doesn''t care about they game, believe me they do. What screws over games are the suits that push the products out the doors when they''re not ready, because the suits are concerned about one thing, getting a return on their investment of at least equal or greater value. They have formulas that predict this, and the very though of losing any money appalls them.

Perfect example of this is electronic arts. The biggest hellhole of gaming in the world. Industry controlling jerks.
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Now to the destruction and mayhem bit. Yes Destruction and mayhem do sell a lot of games, yes there often is more clever game design than that; but none of these things are what makes a game great.

Great games come from solid story with recurring elements that make the player feel as though they are actually in the game world.

Case in point, the plant monster in half life, the man in the suit, the marines. Half life is a brilliant example of good game design because of its story. Granted the game goes to poop once you hit the alien worlds; but aside from that its got decent overall design. The plant, the helicopter lots of little touches. PLUS destruction and mayhem. Its just an example of how great story elements really set a game appart and make it that much better.

quote:Original post by Bennettovia
Its not the commerical game designer that doesn''t care about they game, believe me they do. What screws over games are the suits that push the products out the doors when they''re not ready, because the suits are concerned about one thing, getting a return on their investment of at least equal or greater value. They have formulas that predict this, and the very though of losing any money appalls them.

*cough*millions spent on Daikatana*cough*
It''s tempting to think that "designers know best", but at the end of the day, they''re spending someone else''s money, and don''t always come up with the goods even when they are given as much time as they want. So there has to be a limit somewhere. Some of it is the fault of development teams who are unable to set out and stick to an accurate timescale.

quote:Great games come from solid story with recurring elements that make the player feel as though they are actually in the game world.

You obviously have a very narrow idea of what makes games great.

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okay, not all designers know best, thats a valid point. But they do care the most about the quality of their games, or at least they should. Basically what I''m saying is designer guy at EA doesn''t want his product to suck and has more design to it than one might think, he''s not necessarily out for the bottom dollar.

As for Romero, well its a shame because Deus Ex and Anachronox were great games, yet he pushed daikatana.......

SUPERFLY!!!

quote:

Great games come from solid story with recurring elements that make the player feel as though they are actually in the game world.

You obviously have a very narrow idea of what makes games great.


whoops, I also omited premise (a-la civilization etc), that also doesn''t apply to multiplayer either per say.

Bsically once a genres established to make a great game you need to have either killer story or a killer new premise to the genre (or even a ressurected killer premise).

Take for example serious sam. Story, whatever. Genre: First Person shooter. The FPS genre is well established, just running around killing stuff doesn''t cut it. Take SOF2 for example, completely linear, the only cutting edge factor is its gore. Now with serious same, the ressurected the killer premise of legions upon legions upon legions of bad guys, and they had the screaming headless guys. Thats what made that game work.

Civilization. Genre: Turned Based Strategy, a well established genre, but the premise of building a civilization to stand the test of time rules, and the game is phenomenal.

The list goes on and on; but you will find the trend that all great games either have an amazing premise, amazing story, or forged a new genre. Those are the primary elements of a great game. Call it narrow, thats fine cite me an example of a great game that does not have one of those three traits.