Developing a New Major

several big mistakes

- don’t obsess about cosmetics unless they add to the central game play – lots of games have realistic blood, but it doens’t add anything – the blood isn’t slippery for instance. same with big piles of bodies – they look cool – but if the enemy can just walk thru them with no effort, then they don’t add anything to the gameplay. Adding to/moving the gameplay forward = only reason to do cosmetic stuff (sound, music, video. Don’t need pretty pictures for their own sake. Turns out sometimes less is more in visuals – think partially clad woman versus stark naked – need some mystery

- interesting idea – “you can’t use realistic violence in mass entertainment. You can suggest it with realistic imagery, turning the camera away at the moment of violence. Or you can reduce the graphic realism and retain the violence.” (p. 113 – after a discussion of violence in realistic vs cartoon movies) – cartoons get away with more direct violence because not real looking. Better if we imagine the violence

2nd big mistake – adding on to existing design – making it more complex (like the board games with all their resoruce management?) – he calls it accretive design – says it’s kind of lazy on the part of designers. And it makes it too hard for new players to pick up the game – they don’t know the original game as well as the designer so they won’t be able to pick it up as fast – here’s where the less is more comes in again – strip out unnecessary design – he suggests Civilization as  an excellent example of a less is more game – to the point of historical inaccuracies but excellent example of parsimonious design

3rd big mistake – don’t focus on the topic of your game or the genre or the 1st/3rd person or hte graphics – focus on teh gameplay, on the challenge, on how the player will interact with the gameon what the player is gonna do “(the core design problem” (p. 117))

- story boards are bad in games – story boards imply linear story, linear game play, linear development. better in game design to have pile of screen layouts. Storyboards take away player choice

don’t become overreliant on tools – they limit your design ideas – he points to reliance on level editors – faster to develop big levels than to put in new kinds of weapons or develop new monsters

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Design, Game design, Gameplay, Video game