Before we start: I'm not here to be an advocate of going outside and
socialising, or doing research or blah blah blah. You do what you will
with your own spare time. I can't force you into doing something you
don't want to do.
I hate being informed. I hate seeing things in such a brilliant way. The
reason I hate this knowledge so much is that nothing good has come of
it yet; it makes me even more jealous of the people around me, and super
critical of many others. It's not healthy, and it reflects poorly on
myself. I'm not sure if there's anyway to right this.
I have no motivation to make some practice games because I lack the
skills I need to make the games, which is the reason I lack the
motivation in the first place. That's why I so easily slip into my
imagination. I can see trailers for my game, interviews, concepts, art,
stories...I can envision this entire massive thing, and yet I'm taking
no steps forward to achieve it.
I know that down the track I'll straighten up, find the patience and
motivation and make some semi-decent or better games, but right now I'm
in this rut of simply distracting myself because it's too easy to just
imagine fame and glory over try and achieve something greater; educate
even a few people in some kind of meaningful way through video games.
That said, even though I can't do it through video games at this very
moment, maybe I can change somebody's opinion for the better right now.
There's been a conflict brewing in the background for sometime now. I'm
not going to mention names, but it's basically regarding game design.
There's these two opposing forces between design and programming. One
side wants to make something more realistic and personal, the other side
wants to make something massive, distant and related to LEGO.
Let's disregard skill. Let's disregard money, copyright, people, time
and everything else, and let's focus on the key problem here. It's a
problem that far too many developers have coming into the industry, and
it's something that upsets me a lot.
As a player, we don't really see the game as a game. We know we're
playing a game, but once we're inside, we start to blend into the
experience. Even when the thing becomes a buggy piece of trash, we're
never really thinking about all the hundreds of systems, the thousands
of assets or the people that went into putting that experience in front
of you. Instead, you take notice of specific sounds, of the graphics, of
the story, of summary gameplay (not an intensive look into how gameplay
works, just understanding what actions you need to perform to succeed
in a certain challenge). Just as you don't need to be a chef to eat a
meal, you don't need to be a designer to play a game.
That's not a problem. The problem starts when long-time gamers, those
brought up in and through games, feel they are so confident with what
makes the games they enjoy work, that they can pull off the same.
They won't.
The problem isn't the scope. It's not the lack of training. It's the
fact that instead of trying to build an understanding of why they like
the games they like and why they're successful, they simply start
ripping elements from these games and sticking them together. See, a
human mind is made up of the various connections of patterns it learns
through life. The problem with gamers is that they spend so much time in
these virtual worlds, that they ultimately end up with the same
patterns as everybody else because there's little variety. They changes
they make in order to claim their game is "new" are minimal at best,
because they themselves don't understand how or why you can/should
change the game in a meaningful way.
So many gamers will say "Oh, my story is unique!" or "Oh, X feature has
never been done before!", not realising that these are just surface
level modifications, that only serve to create the background noise that
allow original titles to stand up in front of.
I like to think all of the best designers daydream. It's said that lazy
people are the smartest, since because they don't do much, they don't
take in many new patterns, which means they spend a lot of time
connecting patterns in new and obscure ways. It's a very healthy,
important process to imagine. Unfortunately, sometimes we become too
attached.
See, it's not just that these gamers essentially reuse the same ideas
passed onto us by their limited libraries. The more they think about
something and start to see it shape, the more they feel it's possible,
regardless of all the "minor" details. They can see the finished
product. How hard is it to achieve, right? They obsess over these ideas,
and to them they there can be now flaws because it works inside their
head. And because our head is a safe playground to experiment, the ideas
become more bloated and infeasible. But you can't tell them that,
because the idea is perfect.
"An empty mind is a Devil's workshop."
To me, the lack of skill, a team, money, time, scope or other
feasibility problems are no longer the true issue plaguing places like
Kickstarter. A gamers' worst enemy is him/herself. So wrapped in
experiences, many forget that what they set-out to achieve is
essentially what they're playing, minus their name in the credits.
I know exactly what it's like to be that stubborn. Because of it, I can
tell a good story from a bad story in a heartbeat, and the exact same
can be said for a game design. Real game designers aren't just players
making "cool s***" to impress a lot of people and make fat stacks of
cash. They're making games because those games mean something to them.
They're making games because they want to try and bring people an
experience they've never had before, least of all the person creating
it.
The true beauty of game design is in the fact that it itself is a game.
Why bother playing a game you already know the answer to, aside from to
get some shallow feeling of achievement?
