21st Century Game Design

[Crispy]

Why is game design often overlooked as an important factor contributing to game sales? Perhaps because when most people in development companies talk about “good game design,” they mean “game design that produced a game I really like.” This sort of subjective validation of game design is of no use in business, which thrives on repeatable methods based around capturing a target audience—the market. Unable to see the profit resulting from “good design”— especially since many allegedly well-designed games fail commercially— most businessmen ignore design entirely.

We're not businessmen, but as Modders we do take a lot of our cues from the Games Industry. Sometimes we do this when we should be going our own way, but a lot of the time brief insights into the realm beyond can help us better understand the intricacies of creating a game. In a feature this week, Gamasutra has taken excerpts from 21st Century Game Design, a book that seems to be echoing the general feeling of late in the Modding world, that better designed games sell more copies. The article is based more about marketing than games design, but anyone interested in getting into the games industry might find it insightful.

 

[[eXp]Grey]

hm its interesting, but in my opinion mods have to go exactly the other way.

i think mods who show the creators mind are much more magnitude ... otherwise we would have never seen mods like Half-Quake ... only thousands of CS clones :O
Becouse mods dont have to be selled, the whole article doesn't matter to any mod. In fact mods are only for "hardcore gamers" couse the main spread plattform is the internet and sites like this one ... which are visitied by "hardcore gamers" only (or mostly ... you wont see a "family gamer" here anyway)

so modders dont have to care about such things like gamer groups ... sure, they have to release a overall GOOD product and they should work accurate. But they dont have to care about the mass market.

 

[Pajari]

Modding is a hobby, not business. If anything, it's the duty of mod makers to be more creative and experimental, because they have such phenomenal tools to work with and no commercial restraints.

And I'm a firm believer that creativity should never be subject to business concerns, whatever the market or the medium.

 

[[eXp]Grey]

thats what i wanted to say, thx

 

[Pesmerga]

"An audience model used by EA."

Wow, you guys over at EA sure are trying valiantly.

 

[CookieCuttah]

But you have to realize- if your game fails and you are a young company, you wont be able to make anymore games.
This doesn't apply to EA though they're just a bunch of greedy A-holes.

 

[Crispy]

I'd say that Mods are aimed more at Hardcore gamers initially. Hardcore gamers will spread the word if your Mod is good (or even just original).

However lots of Mods are aiming to reach both the Hardcore and Cool gamer groups by deliberately establishing a larger community, which will inevitably mean a larger playerbase come release and a wider pool of feedback.

I think that there are some things from this article that can be applied to Modding, but not many. I agree that Modding should be going in the other direction in respect to concepts. Games studios can't afford to plow money into 'risky' ideas. We're doing it for free so we have nothing to lose if we do end up with something that doesn't really work that well - we've still learnt how to map/model/code/write/draw/edit/lead better. There's also a chance that we stumble upon the next Counter-Strike and create an idea that will be mimicked for years to come by our peers.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

To be honest, I think a large portion of mods that were originally concepted by the public (usually by people with no skill) were aimed at the mass market. In the beginning stages, just before HL2 was released, it was all about popularity - hence the huge number of announced CS clones back in '03 and '04. Thankfully, most of those mods are now dead, which leaves us with those aiming at the specialist gamers.

-Angry Lawyer