Skip to main content

What does a good game consist of? (part 7)

"The way it's meant to be played"

This is something I've been wondering about a lot lately. It is a trademark from Nvidia company which created Geforce. You have probably seen it in the Unreal Tournament 2004 intro.

Most people see it, but just take it for granted. To me it is an interesting pattern as I love to see details consciously and this one is the most interesting one to me as it provokes so many thoughts about the topic I'm writing about, which is how to make better games.

So what do you think it means? Fair play? By the rules(no cheating)? Unreal is a good game to play? Perhaps a thrilling challenge at hardest difficulties?

I think all of the above would be a good example of directions for a better game: fair play means a healthy competition while respecting opponents and teammates. By the rules means no cheating. I think I find cheating bad for the gaming atmosphere. A thrilling challenge can be a great.

But most important one is a "a good game to play". I think Unreal Tournament is an awesome game.
I learned a lot in it about real life. But what precisely makes it a good game? Answers are everywhere but all partial.

Personally I think "the way it's meant to played" signals passion and the game was made by gamers.

What is a good game then? I don't have the exact definition. But I can tell all the games created so far could have by far better game design, coding, story, music, quests and levels design.

My mission is to figure it out even though the definition might not be as a mathematical formula.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Level design basics, part 2

An arch level design is hard, as it doesn't involve only polygon boxes, but also also three dimensional curve lines. If you ever played. Americas army 1, you'll know how hard it is to make a curve building, like the famous over played bridge crossing map. The point is to start. With one curve. Curve is not a straight line, but it's still a line. Means it is possible to apply lines into a three dimensional level. arch 0 0 1 0
Post a Comment
Read more

Level design basics, part 7

Meta files Meta means in between. Wild hard ware and soft ware connection. A game design level document is just documentation; it is normal text. Actual level files however are en coded. Not normal text, in other words; which is why they are a lot harder to make. Forests for example are hard to put into a text file. Trees are real world eco systems that are the source of nature and life. It is one thing to put a real world object into a game, what is even a LOT harder is putting one, for example a tree into a text file. Source code is just sofware, it is nothing but encoded writing, which is why to put it into soft ware is not exactly easy, but has been done many times before. However, putting source code directly into hard ware is a completely different thing. That's where meta files come in handy. Meta files are clay ware. They work very similiar to a human brain. Like a connection between software and hardware. A meta file contains level game design documentation and level code....
Post a Comment
Read more

Coding

I find it extremely hard to code a game. It gets worse than that. I also have to do the game design, UI design, level design and the story. Basically lots of bugs, lots to learn, lots to design. The good news is I have a teammate and she works on level design and story. Helps a lot regardless there is tons of work to be done before even first of the three Trix games gets published. I sometimes work even 12 hours a day. Yikes!
Post a Comment
Read more