Through the Lens: Video Games - Game Design Theory - page 111

At the other end of the spectrum we have games like Mutant League
Football , Crash 'n the Boys , and Super Dodge Ball . hese games take an
existing game and flex it, bend it, and change it into whatever form they
want. The end product sometimes only remotely resembles the original
game. And of course, you've got some games in between these extremes:
NBA Jam takes the TV-style basketball game and puts a crazy super-
power spin on it (the NFL Blitz and NBA Street series do a similar thing).
And then you have more down-to-earth games like the NES games Ice
Hockey and Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64, which change their games
in subtle ways to make better video games.
Free Yourself from the Sport
If you want to make a simulation, then go for it, of course, but this is
not a book on how to make simulators. If you want to make a game, you
should commit to that. Committing to making a great game means not
caring about whether your system is 100%, 50%, or 0% similar to a par-
ticular sport, whether it's being played in real life, on TV, or in a house.
Sports were designed for a very specific set of controls: the human body
moving in real space. You aren't working with those controls. Your con-
trols are probably buttons, or touch screens, or something else. So it only
makes sense that your game's rules would be different—and quite pos-
sibly very different—than those of the real sport.
Here's the good news: by freeing yourself from the guidelines of the
real sport, you're free to make a game that's even better than the original
sport ! Even more good news: because we've never had a very strong phi-
losophy of game design before, it's actually not incredibly hard to make a
game that's better, as a game, than most sports. If you look at the history
of US football, you'll see that we're really still shooting in the dark about
what the sport even is. You can have a principled, strong design, right
out of the gate—an opportunity that real football will never have.
Consider Perspective
OK, so you're going to make a soccer game. But from whose perspective?
Putting a player in the role of a forward is going to make for an extremely
different game than if he or she is playing as a goalie. In most sports
games, you control all of the players, but maybe in your game you just
control one. Maybe you aren't a player at all, maybe you're just a coach—
playing as the coach could still be a very interesting game, particularly
one that emulates US football with its plays system (it would be a bit
like real-time, phase-based chess or Robo Rally ). Or maybe you're none
of these roles, maybe you're the manager (as in the Football Manager