Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
feel as if it's about anything in particular. The best games are expressions of the
designer's vision, which makes them stand out from other 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 convinced
that his own creative instincts are superior to anyone else's. This approach ignores
the benefits of play-testing or other people's collective wisdom, and the result is
usually a botched game.
Daikatana
is an often-cited example.
Many publishers commission games to exploit a
license
: a particular intellectual
property such as a book (
The Lord of the Rings
), movie (
Die Hard
), or sports trade-
mark (NHL Hockey). These can be enormously lucrative. As a designer, you work
creatively with characters and a world that already exists, and you make a contribution
to the canon of materials about that world. 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. The owners of the license insist on the right
to approve your game before it ships, as well as the right to demand that you change
things they don't like. In addition, there is always a risk of complacency. A great
license alone is not enough to guarantee success. The game must be just as good as
if it didn't have a license.
A
technology-driven
game is designed to show off a particular technological achieve-
ment, most often something to do with graphics or a piece of hardware. For example,
in addition to entertaining the player, Crytek's game
Crysis
is intended to show off
Crytek's 3D graphics engine and encourage other developers to use it. Console
manufacturers often write technology-driven games when they release a new plat-
form to show everyone the features of their machine. 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 success.
Art-driven
games are comparatively rare. An art-driven game exists to show off
someone's artwork and aesthetic sensibilities. Although such games are visually
innovative, they're seldom very good because the designer has spent more time
thinking about ways to present his material than about the player's experience of
the game. A game must have enjoyable gameplay as well as great visuals.
Myst
is a
game that got this right; it is an art-driven game with strong gameplay.
Integrating for Entertainment
When one particular motivation drives the development of a game, the result is
often a substandard product. A good designer seeks not to maximize one character-
istic at the expense of others but to integrate them all in support of a higher goal:
entertaining the player.
