How Soon Is Now?
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- Details
- Category: Game Design
- Published on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 17:11
- Written by RB
- Hits: 48
Had a very interesting discussion with a friend of mine today, who is also a budding designer and avid gamer. What if, in the course of developing your new, fresh, "take the world by storm" game, you come up with the kind of idea that adds to the quality and enjoyment exponentially? Do you owe it to yourself, your game and your potential audience to prototype it and possibly rewrite significant portions of your content with a view to fitting it into your game?
His argument was that you should try to take the risk, that it might be worth the effort if it holds the potential to turn a good game into something truly cult and classic.
I can certainly see his point, but it left me wondering how far you let your ideas and development get and interfere with what you already have before you HAVE to lock it down and stick with a rigid, defined plan? From my perspective, I can see a series of problems that affect the ability to experiment with concepts built upon something you have already produced a balanced design on.
The most significant is that in both of our cases, we're one-man teams. Any first release of mine would be with "borrowed" visual and audio assets. I imagine for him, the visuals would be placeholders and the audio would be non-existent.
The work either of us would have to do to re-balance the game by adding a new item, technique or style of play could potentially be dramatic - stage redesigns, additional areas, altered combat systems. It's not such a big problem for a team of 50-100 who have unspeakable eye for detail re-tweaking and balancing the game at every turn - things in the design can be relatively easily tuned and changed.
Additionally, if you've already formulated an idea strong enough that you want to take it as a serious route into games development, adding your next big idea into the mix to sit alongside it will probably end up diluting both. Clever, co-ordinated ideas CAN work well together - Zelda is pretty good proof of that - but they are definitely the exception rather than the rule. The idea of basing your game on a unique hook should give it more than enough ammunition to prop up any weaker elements that aren't quite turning out the way you would've wanted.
There should be a distinction here between gameplay tweaks and the incorporation of new concepts, however. Something simpler, e.g. rewriting your battle system, is something that only changes a smaller portion of an RPG. Likewise, changing the handling model of your racing game doesn't mean you have to design all new tracks or opponent AI to cope with it. The last thing you want to do, however, is start stepping on the toes of the game's other elements. To again use Zelda as an example, imagine if they had added the hook-shot 70% or 80% into development? It would require a whole new quest to find it, a complete revision in dungeon design on where and how it could be used, how you might be able to use it in the field to find new locations, and very possibly a new dungeon/training area to teach you how to use it effectively. That's a lot of work for a singular addition.
As I see it, the rule of what you have written on paper is the law, although being sure of the concept before you write the law is of paramount importance. How you or I would get to that point is an entirely different matter and may differ from developer to developer. I personally intend to solidify the routines of my game's major features and test each of them individually in a much smaller game environment. Once you have formulated a few solid ideas to build a game on, fleshing those out is the absolutely priority, and designing the objects or interface to fit with those views is secondary.
At this point specifically, I'd start to look at designing my maps and dungeons. This is where I would start locking down my design. Not because I would be adverse to change at this stage, but because I would want to ultimately deliver a product that I knew others would enjoy. Allowing me that flexibility to alter things past this stage in a dramatic way may have the opposite of intended effect - a long, drawn out development process delivering a game with a hodge-podge of experiments and very little core substance.
That, of course, is the worst possible scenario of how things could play out and for certain there are exceptions; some late additions are probably sitting in games you know well and love. But it stands to reason that if an idea is that amazing and you’re already deep into your development, keep it fresh for your next project. If you feel your game is already good, it can stand on its own two feet without risking and potentially wasting a unique new concept. If you feel your game is bad, you probably aren't going to be able to save it by shoehorning your revolutionary idea into your long since established design.
And if nothing else, it will give you the impetus to build a game around that new idea and keep you beavering away on the next generation of games, and to me, that can only be a good thing.