this is quite interesting actually.

I took my level designs to my friends house for him to test for me.
it was quite funny watching him going round my level and every time he was having problems he would shout my name as though I was directly inside the game manipulating it.

What bothers me about this thread is that you're all referring to generally excellent games. The real problem I see isn't in the differences between the many triple-A titles, it's in the huge pile of stinking awful games.

I know most of you haven't played very many sucky games. Neither have I, and I generally make a point not to. But every once in a while I run into a game that's simply awful, something I've never heard of and usually based on a franchise I never wanted to know existed. It just makes you wonder, what poor saps are in charge of designing these things? Even worse is when the production values in general are actually quite high, just sometimes the game seems to be designed by someone who just absolutely couldn't care less.

There's something to be said for brilliant and innovative game designers, but not everyone can be a Jordan Mechner. Sometimes enthusiasm for the product is more important than importing the best of the business, and I can tell when someone really enjoyed making a game, just like I can see when a painter is interested in his subject or a musician is involved in his music. Just, sometimes games totally lack that, and it's a really huge disappointment.

I get the impression that game design jobs are acquired much like GameStop employment. It seems like they entice poor young fools into working for them with the promise of getting to work with videogames, and force them to jump through hoops just to show that they'll bend to any whim of the manager, and when they finally hire them they put them through so much ridiculous mistreatment and abuse because there's so many other fools lining up to take the job. I imagine in a lot of smaller divisions of large studios it's like that, am I very far off?

Quote:Original post by Portugal Stew
I get the impression that game design jobs are acquired much like GameStop employment. It seems like they entice poor young fools into working for them with the promise of getting to work with videogames, and force them to jump through hoops just to show that they'll bend to any whim of the manager, and when they finally hire them they put them through so much ridiculous mistreatment and abuse because there's so many other fools lining up to take the job. I imagine in a lot of smaller divisions of large studios it's like that, am I very far off?

Games are complex software products that are expensive to make, and worse still, there are no proven metrics for guaranteeing either software quality or game quality. If you look at it that way it's actually a surprise that any of them are any good. Nobody sets out to make a crap game. But often mistakes are made and limitations are reached. Eventually the game has to be shipped even if it's not as good as people dreamed, because all these workers are human beings with bills to pay. Yes, even management are human, mostly. It's nothing to do with anybody ignoring designers or mistreating them, just the facts of working in a relatively new and growing industry that has to mix creative endeavour with economic reality. Can things be better? Yes. Is this because nobody cares about design or deliberately neglects parts of the process? Not at all.

So yes, you are quite far off...

This may not add that much to the conversation, but something worthy to note is the amount of politics involved in a lot of games.

I'm making some general assumptions here, but you have quite a few people putting in their 2 cents when a game is in development. You also have quite a few limitations, especially time/money. On top of all that, publishers can easily change how a game will be presented (among many other things).


I wouldn't doubt if most teams had unlimited resources with a limited number of decision makers.. I'd be at home playing something right now instead of posting here and/or trying to design games myself.

Although, I definitely believe that games have had less and less quality in design over the last 10 years or so. At the same time, however, games I was addicted to 5-10 years ago, I can barely stand to play ten minutes in anymore.

Quote:Original post by tremault
when you use abbreviations, please un-abbreviate the first instance so people know what you're talking about.
thanks.

WoW is pretty well know, but I had to do a google search for SotC.

My bad, sorry. I think Shadow of the Colossus was one of the games mentioned earlier in the thread. Also, I (perhaps foolishly) assumed that the abbreviation would be instantly familiar since it features so heavily in a lot of the discussions I have about games which are considered to have "good" design but "poor" sales.

Quote:Original post by Tom Sloper
OH!!! Is THAT what "SotC" stands for???
Why didn't the first guy who mentioned it say so in the first place?

do you mean me?
sorry about that.
I did try a couple of times, but each time I tried to say the full name in there, I thought my post seemed aggressive.