How to create fun Real Time Strategy games in the field of game balance?
Real Time Strategy games, the key word there is strategy. What strategy is in my view is basically the fused essence of possibility, known and unknown, determined and undetermined, logic, plannings, organization and finally balance. Out of those memebers, balance is perhaps my favourite. A strategy game without a balance, or a balance point let's say is a game that will easily tip to one strategy no matter the initial choice thus making the choice in the game not really a choice but a proven road that guarantee victory or guarantee loss.
More to come.
January 21, 2013
January 12, 2013
The Role of a Game Designer
Hello, great to be back to my blog finally. I view it as a cottage for get away from the noisy urban settings where I reside. What partially boosted me to come back to visit my blog and write this new entry is the recent visit I had on two other blogs. They were not on game designer, but excellent blogs. Excellent in the following category or due to the following: neat pages, information entries, clean layouts.
What is the role of a game designer, I asked myself earlier. In brief, I view game designers for a game as screenwriters for a movie. Games, too have now become commercialized, so they are products, like movies. Movies have directors and screenwriters. In most cases, if we look back in history all the great movies had at least an excellent director and some good writers. The role of the writers in making of a movie similars to the role of a game designer for a game in these aspects: the game designer draws the layout, the "scenes" in the game; the director does the camera work, that is left to the director, much like how the programming part is done by the programmers, not the game designers. It's important to separate the two jobs and have them both in a company. Both of these works take (drains) great deal of memory capacity, which implies one who does both can walk in a lot of memory problems sorting out which work is what - trying to maintain proficiency in both rather than constantly improving one's abilities.
In other words, the role of a game designer is like the role of a screenwriter for a movie - to provide the content for a game and form a great team with the programmers. In movie-making, the director does the main camera setup, the cutting and pasting of films, special effects managements etc., which are the technical aspect of movie-making. What makes a game great is much similar to what make a great movie great - the content and how it's delivered. I believe the director handles the technical aspect of it, and if no screenwriter is there, then many movies would just be shots of random scenaries without the Jurrasic Park or storylines.
What is the role of a game designer, I asked myself earlier. In brief, I view game designers for a game as screenwriters for a movie. Games, too have now become commercialized, so they are products, like movies. Movies have directors and screenwriters. In most cases, if we look back in history all the great movies had at least an excellent director and some good writers. The role of the writers in making of a movie similars to the role of a game designer for a game in these aspects: the game designer draws the layout, the "scenes" in the game; the director does the camera work, that is left to the director, much like how the programming part is done by the programmers, not the game designers. It's important to separate the two jobs and have them both in a company. Both of these works take (drains) great deal of memory capacity, which implies one who does both can walk in a lot of memory problems sorting out which work is what - trying to maintain proficiency in both rather than constantly improving one's abilities.
In other words, the role of a game designer is like the role of a screenwriter for a movie - to provide the content for a game and form a great team with the programmers. In movie-making, the director does the main camera setup, the cutting and pasting of films, special effects managements etc., which are the technical aspect of movie-making. What makes a game great is much similar to what make a great movie great - the content and how it's delivered. I believe the director handles the technical aspect of it, and if no screenwriter is there, then many movies would just be shots of random scenaries without the Jurrasic Park or storylines.
April 11, 2012
A Thing to Avoid in Large Game Design Company
One thing to watch out for in a large game design company is: never let people not care about the project and just let them focus on "their" part of the work. This leads to UI artists over-emphasizing their part, the programmers making the game overcomplicated, the modellers over model their art. This may seem good, but when game put together, all the components will try to over-compete with each other. It makes the game seem very noisy. Going back would be hard, since the artists would likely be like: oh but.. that's fine. If I make it more grey, it looks bad.
When the parts of a project are good examined individually and then put together, the project is likely worse. (100% of the time) It is like how when you have 6 delicious plates of food, all very vibrant, all very delicious. We put these plates on a dinner table together, they suddenly don't look very appetizing. It is also like how when you put 5 top opera singer together and sing, the show would be hard to bare. A law can be derived from these examples, which is :there should maximum be 1 leader per group. Even if the the group members are all previously leaders. In order for this to happen, the other leaders need to change their behaviour a bit. So, when we apply this law to running a large game design company, it is importnat to make sure certain artwork actually look mediocre, so the true leader can shine. And shine, and shine!
When the parts of a project are good examined individually and then put together, the project is likely worse. (100% of the time) It is like how when you have 6 delicious plates of food, all very vibrant, all very delicious. We put these plates on a dinner table together, they suddenly don't look very appetizing. It is also like how when you put 5 top opera singer together and sing, the show would be hard to bare. A law can be derived from these examples, which is :there should maximum be 1 leader per group. Even if the the group members are all previously leaders. In order for this to happen, the other leaders need to change their behaviour a bit. So, when we apply this law to running a large game design company, it is importnat to make sure certain artwork actually look mediocre, so the true leader can shine. And shine, and shine!
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