...but does anybody else here feel that the conceptualization(?) of games is underrated? I sure do...I know for a fact that people all over the net have much better ideas than professional game designers, but 90% of them will most likely not become a game designer because the designing aspect is so underrated...or something to that effect. Eh, I just put my thoughts on, er...the forum. I guess I''ll just wait and see what you all have to say.

I''m sure the game designers at major companies have great ideas as well. Im sure they have a ton of great ideas that never make it into the game. You have to remember that alot of great ideas arent (currently) feasible to program whether it be due to computing power, time it would take to implement it, or what have you.


"I pity the fool, thug, or soul who tries to take over the world, then goes home crying to his momma."
- Mr. T

This is not a flame!

I note that you have been with GameDev for only a week (I've been here only a few myself), and therefore it is forgivable that you have fallen prey to the number one message board sin:

you didn't read previous posts .

There have been excellent discussions on what is lacking, or underemphasized, in games in general, often at very high levels that consider the human psyche and abstracts such as wants, needs, "tension" and the desire for relief. I encourage you to take some time to read through the posts, particularly in this forum (Game Design). Some classic threads include this one, this one and this one, and those are just in the last week!

Enjoy.

Edited by - Oluseyi on June 12, 2001 11:19:58 PM

I only frequent the help board, pretty much...out of the many times I''ve registered and re-registered for about 2 years I''ve come hoping to find somebody who would be interested in helping me out, but that never really happens.

And in regards to some parts of games being ''not feasible'' to implement, there are lots of examples I could give; Diablo II, before even releasing a beta, had a working guild system where a player could purchase and build a guildhall with a vault for storage, ''trophy'' case (''Prized'' items on display), and character registry, but it was omitted from the final game. Perhaps because they had clan/guild symbols limited to colours and designs from a menu rather than making your own, or something like that, but they omitted it from the final game. I thought, at first, before I even bought it, that something like that would be cool, albeit hard to create, but I was astounded when I found out that it was removed from the game after initially having been done.
That''s a single example...maybe not a very good one, I guess. But a programmer can do a lot more than you would think...I know that they must have ideas, but if they don''t use them, why not listen to the people who play the games and see what they have to say, or offer? I guess I''m ranting too much.

Millions of people have good ideas.

Only a small proportion of those people are able to put them into practice.

If you truly believe that the majority of people have better ideas than professional game designers, then you''re deluded.

The fact is, ideas on their own are worth nothing, and implementations are worth everything. You can''t play an idea. ncsu121978 is right on. Designers come up with weird and wonderful ideas all the time, but the problem is that a lot of them are unprogrammable/not going to sell/too expensive to develop and so on. It is certainly not because they are bad designers, and that most people on the net could do better! Most people on the net wouldn''t have a clue about what it really takes to design a game, and simply coming up with a few good ideas is not it.

Sorry, but I think your post is uninformed and naive.

You''re probably right.
I made it when I was just thinking right then and there, "how WOULD somebody be a professional game designer?"...well, a bit more in-depth thinking than that, but you probably get the gist.
Consider the thread unofficially closed

Basically Kylotan said it all, but as I´ve been working as a (professional) game designer for a while now I´ll just add my thoughts:

Don´t assume that because a cool feature is not in a game they didnt think of it. About 95% of all the cool stuff designers come up with gets chopped for the final design, either for technical or financial reasons, or because they don´t fit for the intended audience. And as the gaming market is becoming increasingly competitive (and game development more and more expensive) a publisher rarely wants to make a game that is intended for a very specific audience. The casual gamer is the "new" target, that means that games have to be rather simple, easy to get into and able to give the player a rewarding experience in under 20 minutes of play.

And yes, form is everything. Design is not "underrated", there´s tons of young people who want to become designers, but most of them don´t have a clue what game design is all about. THat´s why most companies don´t even reply if you mail them about becoming a "designer".
If you want to be a game designer you have to be able to put together a well-structured, well readable design doc of at least a hundred pages... and you have to be clear about your idea, you must be able to give reasons for every desing choice you make (impact on gameflow, impact on audience ... ). ANd the best way to get into design is still by the way of QA. If you´re serious about it, try and get a job as tester (probably you´ll start out as a betatester who gets nothing but free coke and a t-shirt, but once you make it to tester you have the chance of proving that you are able to have, formulate and present good ideas). Then you can move up in the testing ranks....