Motivations That Influence Design


Why build a computer game? The answer probably seems obvious: because it's a fun thing to do, to sell the game for money, or both. That's why most people get into the game industry ”and probably why you are reading this book. But, in fact, there are a variety of reasons for building a game, and motivation has a powerful effect on the way a game is designed. Sometimes a game is built for several different reasons at once, and they're not always compatible with one another. Different motivations tend to pull the design of the game in different directions, which requires someone (usually the designer or the producer) to make a decision about which reason is most important.

Market-Driven Games

Most of the computer games in the world are built for sale. The publishing company wants to sell as many copies as it can. However, no one knows exactly what makes a game a hit, and unexpected hits such as The Sims continue to prove a lot of the conventional wisdom dead wrong. Still, certain genres and elements of games are generally thought to be popular with particular markets. Scantily clad women, big guns, and spectacular explosions, for example, are considered popular with teenage boys. Games with interesting characters , rich plots, and clever puzzles are thought to be popular with girls and women. These are, of course, stereotypes, but they are commonly held in the game industry. When a company chooses to build a game specifically for a particular market and to include certain elements in its design specifically to increase sales within that market, that game is said to be market-driven .

You might think that if publishers want to maximize sales, any game made for sale should be market-driven. Experience shows, however, that most market-driven games aren't very good. They do make a fair amount of money, but seldom enough to qualify as blockbuster hits. For one thing, the best games are expressions of the designer's vision and carry the designer's personal stamp, which makes them stand out from other games. Market-driven games do not reflect anyone 's vision; instead, they reflect what the publishing company thinks the market wants. "Everybody knows" that boys like big explosions, so the publisher insists that the game include big explosions, whether they're really part of the designer's vision or not. As a result, market-driven games all tend to look alike because they're all designed according to the same stereotypes about the market. This results in a row of clone games on the store shelves . Because there isn't any particular reason to choose one over another, none of them becomes a blockbuster hit.

Another reason most market-driven games aren't very good is that they lack harmony, a concept that we discuss in more detail in Chapter 3. You can't make a brilliant game by simply throwing in all the popular elements you can think of. If you try, you get a game that doesn't feel as if it's about anything in particular. It doesn't hang together; it's merely a collection of pieces. Games don't sell only because they contain the "right" pieces; they also sell because the pieces fit together synergistically to make a coherent whole.

Finally, because market-driven games are designed to appeal to a stereotypical kind of gamer, they won't appeal to anyone who doesn't match the stereotype. If you make a game that is explicitly intended for teenage boys, you will not only turn off most girls who might otherwise like to play your game, but you'll also turn off any teenage boys who don't fit your stereotype. And if your stereotype happens to be wrong, you could end up making a game that appeals to nobody at all.

As a designer, you will, of course, make decisions with your players in mind. You will try to include elements that they will enjoy and avoid elements that they won't. That's entirely appropriate, and generally it's what your publisher wants you to do. But those elements must be consistent with your own vision of the game. If you include extraneous elements purely to boost sales but that don't really feel as if they belong there, you could end up doing your game more harm than good.

Designer-Driven Games

The opposite of a market-driven game is a designer-driven game. In designer-driven games, the designer retains all creative control and takes a personal role in every creative decision, no matter how small. Usually he does this because he's absolutely certain that his own creative instincts are the only right ones for the game and that his vision must rule supreme.

Relatively few games are designed this way. Few major publishers will grant a designer this much power unless he can claim a strong track record; there's too much money at stake to allow a single person to dictate everything. In practice, the design of most games is a collaborative process. The design includes not only the work of the lead designer, but also the input of others on the team. Producers, level designers, programmers, artists , and sometimes testers play a role in shaping the game. On the other hand, a good many small self-published games are designer-driven. Designer-driven games tend to be rather idiosyncratic. This might be harmful or it might be helpful; it depends on whether the designer's instincts are good ones.

The main problem with designer-driven games is that they're usually designed according to the designer's own notions of what constitutes a fun game, regardless of what play-testing shows. The designer invests too much of his own ego in his creation to allow other people to change it, even if changes would be an improvement. Also, when the designer insists on personal control over every decision, he often becomes a bottleneck in the development process. Other people on the team end up waiting around for the designer to make decisions for them, which wastes time and money.

A very small number of game designers ”Will Wright and Sid Meier among them ”have years of experience and proven track records, and can sell games on the strength of their names alone. They frequently turn out blockbusters even if the marketing department doesn't like or understand the idea. But even they are usually good at delegating. Micromanaging control freaks seldom make great designers. They're too busy cultivating one tree while the rest of the forest dies around them.

License Exploitation

Another reason that people make games is to exploit a particular intellectual property, a license. These games, often tie-ins with movies or books that have a highly recognizable brand name , can be enormously lucrative. Which do you think will sell better, a game about a suave, well-dressed British spy, or a game about James Bond? A game about a brilliant young star pilot, or a game about Luke Skywalker?

Working on a licensed game can be a lot of fun. As a designer, you will get to work creatively with characters and a world that you might already know and particularly like, and you'll be making a contribution to the canon of materials in that world. You might even get to meet some of the famous writers, directors, or actors who have brought that world to life in other media. When you say, "I designed a Star Wars game," people will be a lot more impressed than if you say, "I designed a game about a brilliant young star pilot."

One downside of designing licensed games is that you don't have as much creative freedom as you do designing a game entirely from your own imagination . You have to use the characters and settings provided by the license ”but, more important, you have to conform to certain rules laid down by the original owners. They're usually very anxious to make sure their intellectual property isn't used in ways that conflict with their own marketing strategy or that would present their property in a negative light. The owners will almost certainly insist on the right to approve your game before it ships and to demand that you change things they don't like. If you had a license from the Walt Disney Corporation to make a Winnie the Pooh game, for example, Disney would never allow you to give Winnie the Pooh a machine gun. It would be a dumb thing to do, but it would also completely violate Disney's notions of what Winnie the Pooh is about ”not to mention all the expectations buyers have when they see Winnie the Pooh on the box. Some intellectual property owners are lenient and don't really care what you do; most, however, are extremely strict and specify details right down to the precise vocabulary that you may use.

Licensed sports games have their own peculiarities . Usually, such games will have a license from the major league of the sport they are simulating ”for example, Major League Baseball or the National Football League. These licenses will allow you to use the names and logos of teams in the league; they will also require you to display them properly and in the correct colors. The personal publicity rights of the players further complicate matters; some leagues do not have the right to license the players' names and images. We discuss these issues in more detail in Chapter 12, "Sports Games."

A great license doesn't guarantee success, however. A bad game with a famous license is still a bad game. The word will get around, and the players won't buy it. The most infamous example of this is the ill-fated E.T. game produced for the Atari 2600 machine during the summer of 1982. Atari manufactured millions and millions of cartridges in anticipation of huge sales, intending to take advantage of the success of the movie E.T. The Extraterrestrial . Unfortunately, it was a poor game, few people bought it, and, in the end Atari ”which had paid an unheard-of $22 million for the license ”ended up burying most of the cartridges in a landfill to take a tax write-off.

In short, designing a game with a license is a somewhat different experience from designing a game from scratch. You'll have both the original owners of the intellectual property and your own marketing department looking closely over your shoulder. Your publisher will probably put a lot of money into development and, having spent a lot to get the license, will want to make sure the game is good enough to earn it back. Of course, this means there's more at risk. If you do well and the brand is a popular one, your company stands to make a fortune . If you do a poor job and turn out a bad game, the owner of the license might refuse to renew it and will give it to some other developer instead. You will have cost your company millions in potential future revenue and put that money in your competitor's pockets.

Technology-Driven Games

A technology-driven game is one that is designed to show off a particular technological achievement, most often something to do with graphics. The original Quake was a technology-driven game. There wasn't much game there, but it helped to sell the Quake game engine to other developers. Sometimes the achievement is a piece of hardware instead of an algorithm. Console manufacturers often write technology-driven games when they release a new platform, to show everyone the features of their hardware.

Technology-driven games tend to sell well to hard- core gamers because those gamers are often technology-oriented themselves . Casual gamers can still recognize a big jump in image quality even though they're less impressed by performance statistics, and that will encourage them to buy a technology-driven game, too.

The main risk in designing a technology-driven game is that you'll spend too much time concentrating on the technology and not enough on making sure your game is really enjoyable. As with a hot license, a hot technology alone is not enough to guarantee a hit. If you're the first to market with the new technique and it really is spectacular, you could well have a meteoric success in the first few months. To last longer than that, your game has to be really fun to play as well. After the novelty of the technology has worn off, the gameplay will continue to sell the game.

Art-Driven Games

Art-driven games are comparatively rare. Just as a technology-driven game exists to show off a technical feature or achievement, an art-driven game exists to show off someone's artwork. These games are often designed by artists who have a strong visual sense but are new to the game industry. Although such games are visually innovative, they're seldom very good because the designer has spent more time thinking about ways to show off his artwork than about the player's experience of the game. If you want to design games to showcase your artwork, you must be aware that you need enjoyable gameplay as well as great visuals. Myst is an example of a game that got this right; it is an art-driven game with strong gameplay.

Entertainment and Integration

As we have shown, when a particular factor drives the development of a game, the result is often a substandard product. A good designer seeks not to optimize one characteristic at the expense of others, but to integrate them all in support of a higher goal: entertainment.

  • A game must sell well, so the designer must consider the audience's preferences.

  • A game must present an imaginative, coherent experience, so the designer must have a vision.

  • A game with a license must pay back the license's cost, so the designer must understand what benefits it brings and exploit them to his best advantage.

  • A game must offer an intelligent challenge and a smooth, seamless experience, so the designer must understand the technology.

  • A game must be attractive, so the designer must think about the aesthetic style.

In designing an entertaining game, every element and every feature are tested against the standard: Does this contribute to the player's enjoyment? Does it entertain him? If so, it stays; if not, it should be looked at closely. There are reasons for including features that don't directly entertain : They might be necessary to make other parts of the game work or might be required by the licensor . But you should regard them with great suspicion and do your best to minimize their impact on the player.

Game Concept Worksheet

To turn your game idea into a fully fledged game concept, you need to think about and answer for yourself the following questions. You don't have to be precise or detailed, but you should have a general answer for all of them.

  1. What is the nature of the gameplay? That is, what challenges will the player face? What actions will the player take to overcome them?

  2. What is the victory condition for the game, if any? What is the player trying to achieve?

  3. What is the player's role? Is the player pretending to be someone or something, and if so, what? How does the player's role help to define the gameplay?

  4. What is the game's setting? Where does it take place?

  5. What is the player's interaction model? Omnipresent? Through an avatar? Something else? Some combination?

  6. What is the game's primary perspective? How will the player view the game's world on the screen? Will there be more than one perspective?

  7. What is the general structure of the game? What is going on in each mode, and what function does each mode fulfill?

  8. Is the game competitive, cooperative, team-based, or single-player? If multiple players are allowed, are they using the same machine with separate controls or different machines over a network?

  9. Does the game have a narrative or story as it goes along? Summarize the plot in a sentence or two.

  10. Does the game fall into an existing genre ? If so, which one?

  11. Why would anyone want to play this game? What sort of people would be attracted to this game?



Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
ISBN: 1592730019
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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