Hello everyone! Today I want to share with yall the most important part of the games - their design.
But whats so special about it? Why do you need it?
Since its just an “Intro in to a Game Design” i will review some of the important concepts of the game design. So new developers could learn something new.
What do we call “Games”
First of all, lets arrange some concepts:
being a Game Designer - Its about providing a unique experience.
Games itself - Its about solving a problems in a game manner.
“What?! Solving problems? Never thought about that.” - You might thinking right now.
Don’t worry, I will explain.
If you think about it hard enough, every game have a problems that needs to be solved, for example: “How do i save a princess?”, “How do i defeat this boss?”, “How can i make my character stronger?”, even Tic Tac Toe has a problem - “How do i arrange my Crosses/Noughts to win?”.
People is build around solving problems. This “programmed” in our minds, because, lets be honest, there is no man on earth that feels sad after solving a problem.
Its a fact that problems can be solved in various ways, Game Designer’s job its to provide players unique solutions to these problems. Lets review the Space Invaders game, surely its a well known game, but whats so special about that? Back in that time it was a hit.
Advice 1: Set the problems while making a game, it makes game more interesting
Space Invaders
Interesting fact: Did you know that the first game concept was quite different from what we have now, it was about being an alien and taking over the Earth, developers found that too violent, so they changed it to saving the Earth without touching a game name.
Game problem sounds something like that: “How do i save Earth from aliens?”
But that is not the only one problem there, these problems are adding on the way.
For example when you are killing aliens to earn points a new problem occurs: “How to get highest result?”, “Can i beat my own record?” and so on. Ass you can see, some of these problems are player generated, it means that player have control over them, he doesn’t really need to beat his own record or get the highest score, its just about setting own goals to feed the demand.
Player’s Psychology
Before making a game, you need to think about why you are making it and for who. Its the most important questions there, because, surely you wont make a game about Building a PC for 6 years old kid, but you want to make games about flying a space ship for kids that are over 12 and so on.
You actually want to know how player will play your game. What risks would he take, what rewards he is expecting after clearing a mission and so on.
Advice 2: Know your audience, Make games for ppl that actually want to play it.
Balancing and Keeping Player in the Flow
Lets take for example a very common beginner’s mistake: “You have 5 pistols in your inventory, 1 of them is dealing more damage than others”. Lets see what so special about that. Obviously, player would pick a gun that deals more damage to make his gameplay easier, making other guns meaningless - thats called a dominant strategy, if your game has it, you should fix that ASAP.
There is many solutions to that problem, for example: Make enemies stronger so difficulty doesn’t feel changes or add negative stats to the gun, for example decreased clip size or slow fire-rate (Team Fortress 2 does a great job at balancing weapons)
Advice 3: Always keep the player in the flow
You can interpolate this image in something like this:
If a high skilled player requires to solve an easy task, he would feel bored
If a low skilled player requires to solve a hard problem, he would feel anxious
You can always read about it more there
Conclusion
Thats everything i wanted to tell you, thank you so much for paying attention to this article, hope you learned something new even if it seemed too obvious.
Remember to follow these advices and remember that skilled game designer its a guarantee of success.