Post by Regolyth on Oct 13, 2010 8:59:14 GMT -5
The Fundamentals of Game Design
This is a really impressive article. I would suggest anyone who is a fan of good game design to read it. And the icing on the cake is that it was written by Raph Koster (the lead game designer for Ultima Online and creative director for Star Wars: Galaxies).
He really hit the nail on the head of what it takes to create a good, fun, successful game. More game developers should read this article. IMO
The first thing to understand is that games are made out of games. A large game is actually composed of minigames. Even a small game is built out of very very simple small games. The smallest games are ones that are so simple and stupid, you can’t lose. You can think of this as “game atoms,” if you like.
For example, in the classic puzzle game Tetris, the basic game is beating your high score. To beat that game, you have to master the game of forming lines. There’s actually multiple variants there, because you have to learn the games of placing all the different sorts of blocks. And finally, the simplest game is rotating a block, which is just a button and hard to screw up.
For example, in the classic puzzle game Tetris, the basic game is beating your high score. To beat that game, you have to master the game of forming lines. There’s actually multiple variants there, because you have to learn the games of placing all the different sorts of blocks. And finally, the simplest game is rotating a block, which is just a button and hard to screw up.
This is a really impressive article. I would suggest anyone who is a fan of good game design to read it. And the icing on the cake is that it was written by Raph Koster (the lead game designer for Ultima Online and creative director for Star Wars: Galaxies).
He really hit the nail on the head of what it takes to create a good, fun, successful game. More game developers should read this article. IMO
