Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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16
Complex Decisions
The ancient wise man left his mountaintop monastery and traveled to New
York. There he made use of his enlightened wisdom. He soon became an
alcoholic short-order cook and died alone.
Decision Effects
WHEN WE MAKE DESIGN
decisions, we often have to think beyond the
effects of our decision on the game itself. For example, changing a pro-
tagonist's sex or ethnicity may benefit the game's story, but eliminate a
marketing opportunity. Rejecting a bad design idea from another devel-
oper may reduce workload in the short term, but degrade studio climate
and make it harder to retain developers. A feature might be cheap to imple-
ment, but costly to maintain over the long term. Another might be cheap
all around, but create a risk of critical failure in the design later on. To
make good decisions, we often have to consider these complex effects on
processes, people, businesses, and markets. Let's look at some of these
effects.
DESIGN EFFECTS are the effects of a decision on the game itself.
Design effects are everything about how the decision affects players.
Most of the topic has been about evaluating and predicting design effects.
IMPLEMENTATION COSTS are the resources required to execute a
decision.
It takes time to write code, make animations, record dialog, and
handle the countless other tasks that make a design work.
This category also includes the cost to fix everyday software bugs,
tune systems within foreseen parameters, and other easy-to-predict tasks
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