(some people may disagree with this post… feel free to criticize me and correct me)
note
this post is a little bit professional and a it’s also a bit of a joke but not really if that makes sense
You’ve seen topics about how to make a good game. But have you seen one about how to not make a bad one?
Wouldn’t it be easier to make a game and just avoid some game design choices? It’s probably better. But I ain’t no game designer.
In this post, I’m highlighting 5 (and one bonus) bad game-design choices made by your average scummy developer.
“Well, how do you know that these are bad design choices?”
Well, this isn’t really much about general design choices such as bad UI placement or whatever.
No, no, no; this is something different. This is about scummy game-design tactics to avoid. I really wasn’t lying when I said:
Alright, where were we…? Oh yeah, I remember now; we’re going from mild to the worst of the worst.
#5 - “Add to Favorites” Spam
In my opinion, this is probably the least-worst feature out of everything on this list.
It’s okay if you have add it once but more than that is kinda annoying. It’s ESPECIALLY annoying if it’s during something intense.
Like what if you were playing Fe2 on mobile…
(and I mean Flood Escape 2 not the chemical symbol for Iron with a random 2)
…and then you get a random friend request. Great, it’s blocking the jump button. Then you lose your chance at finally beating a Crazy, great.
You could just decline the friend request but it might take you a while to do so.
That’s what I’d equalize the “add to favorites” spam with. And that’s really it for this section. There’s a bunch more to read so just uh get ready for that.
#4 - Lying
When a game be lying like having some really cool action packed thumbnails. And then when you join, none of that is actually apart of the game.
There’s other stuff games could do too to just straight up lie to yall but that’s the most basic example I could think of right now. And again, this is not really about scams so that’s why it’s kinda low.
It would be ranked higher but it’s one of those things where i could be like, “that’s not too big of a deal by itself”. Like okay maybe they’re lying that there’s a really cool rocket ship with some really cool VFX. But the at the end of the day, up to your interpretation and I’m just giving my insight.
#3 - Stay in Game For X Minutes for an **OP** PRIZE!
Ah, those present systems. Stay in game and you’ll get more prizes. Sounds okay right? Yeah I mean they do help keep players engaged for longer.
But what’s concerning is when a game has something that says something along the lines of: “Play for 60 minutes and get an **OP PET**”.
You get a pet with 3500 strength (or whatever you want to imagine). But, the game dev has added another “main” reward system that gives a better pet in let’s say uh 25 minutes guaranteed.
Now the other pet is useless. And the dev gets away with at least 60 Robux (if it was a premium player). 1 Robux per minute of Premium Playtime btw.
#2 - Annoying Gamepasses
Professional bad-game developers like to be really, really annoying by shoving gamepasses in their players’ faces.
You ever play a game and there’s some tools in your inventory hotbar? Probably a lot, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
Im talking about the games with tools that they put in your inventory that you have to pay for. Sound familiar?
Now you’re probably asking:
Now why would a game do that? That’s pretty annoying.
And you’d be right. I don’t know if it’s clear but this is done to get players to become more exposed to their gamepasses… therefore, more sales are made (
)
How can you avoid this? All you’ve gotta do is just not be money hungry. That’s literally all you need to do, it’s not that hard.
Dishonorable Mention - “DON’T LEAVE” Alarm
This is a brand new tactic usually utilized by game developers that are trying to absolutely milk premium payouts (or just to have their retention stats go 
).
If you aren’t aware, this tactic is used when the player enters the Roblox Escape Menu (when you click the Roblox icon in the top left).
It will then play a really annoying (and loud) siren noise and display bold red text (obviously it is kinda hard to read because of the Roblox menu in the way but well…).
To summarize, it’s stupid and is just really scummy. If you wanna be known as that type of person, then go ahead and do this. But if you actually want to be respected, just doing do this (you’ll also save headphone users)
#1 - P2W
side note
def NOT sneak dissing a certain game
This is just terrible. Just imagine this scenario:
You’re playing this new game and have been grinding it for days, and days. Then, your rich friend joins and just surpasses you and gets 10x richer than you in that game.
All that hard work, just to get embarrassed. Imagine showing up to school the next day after that situation (just kidding, no one actually will do anything irl because of something as petty as this… right?)
That scenario is pretty unrealistic. But you get the point. Anybody can just pay and get to the top easily.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t add monetization or something to help advance purchasers. But just don’t overdo it for the sake of making as much money as possible.
Are ya still confused about what bad games on Roblox contain? You can experience them first hand by just searching “glass bridge” on Roblox (99.999% of those games are bad).
Can’t get on Roblox for whatever reason? Here’s a video by me:
(before watching the video, you should probably take off your headphones if you have any on)
I heavily compressed this video with: freeconvert. Sorry for the bad quality lol (there’s a 10mb upload limit)
how did I do, y’all?
- good
- bad
- ok
- idk
0 voters
So now you know… what to avoid when making a game! Yeah and feel free to share your games (experiences) made with these tips. Oh, and leave suggestions on what I should add to this post.
(are my explanations bad? lmk what I should change + quote the paragraph with the mistake)
