internal play

[hallsofvallhalla]

Hwhen designing games how often do you put yourself as the player, or do you only think of the customer. In other words do you go for trends or features even if you dont like them or do you design games around what you want to play?

[SpiritWebb]

The current one my team and I are working on, we are building it based on what we would play, and a simple poll we took. So I guess, both what we would play and what other people would play!

[Noctrine]

Yes and no.

[hallsofvallhalla]

oh so no explanation? Damn you damn dirty apes! Damn you to hell!

[kyraneth]

When making a game (trying might be better suited), i always get faced with this dilemna. if i make a game the public wants to play, i would get a good community and some kind of motivation, but eventually, i will run out of steam because i am not entirely convinced by my ongoing creation.

On the other hand, if i make the game I want to play, this will give the push to create this dream game of mine, but the lack of public enthusiam will probably get me to put the project on hold.

It's often not as extreme as the case i just described, but finding the balance to put all your creativity in use in your game AND make it what the public wants is real hard - and what distinguishes a great dev from the crowd.

I hope i made sense, i am in serious lack of sleeping

[Jackolantern]

I honestly do not play MMORPGs anymore outside of doing some study, which is usually checking out the core mechanics in a free trial and then reading about higher-level content from the official website, game FAQs, strategy guides, game forums, and user blogs. In many ways, I feel that this has unclouded my views on a lot of the design decisions I had thought of in the past, because I am no longer so emotionally invested in a game. I found that I was wanting to incorporate portions of other MMOs based mostly on my fond memories of playing those games, and not based on the merit of their design. Now I try to approach it much more logically and implement a healthy balance between play mechanics designed to suit a specific breed of MMO player, rather than trying to create some kind of frankendesign, sewn together from happy memories of my own play experience (most of which are horribly outdated by today's standards).

[towcar]

I just think of a vision that I see myself loving. No point making a game I won't play eh?
So I wouldn't care if my game fails, no one loves it. As long as I think its awesome i'll play non-stop.

[hallsofvallhalla]

thats the comments i was looking for and I have to agree with many of them. I still believe they are only two types of developers. Those who do it for the passion, and those that do it for the game.



some of you might say "oh there is a third type, the type that think they want to make a game but realize they can't"....those aren't developers now are they?

[Jackolantern]

I just think of a vision that I see myself loving. No point making a game I won't play eh?
So I wouldn't care if my game fails, no one loves it. As long as I think its awesome i'll play non-stop.

Game designers never end up playing their own games for anything outside of play testing. You can never look at your own project the same way a player would. After the mystery, excitement and new experiences are stripped from the gameplay (all of which will never exist to you in a game you designed), what is left to keep a player invested?

[Noctrine]

I agree with the above. Knowing everything that happens really kills the joy of playing the game for me.