June 24, 2007

Three Hundred Mechanics

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2 comments:

daniel / sirleto said...

i think you brought this together pretty precisely, i just want to sum it up (again):
-game design is a long process, one shouldn't mix it with the collection of ideas.
-it's great to be able and to have a (as big as possible, but then necessarily categorized!) library of ideas at hand

i personally believe, that this kind of library keeping is somewhat that tools are (typical tools like a hammer, a screwdriver, etc.). any time you have a problem (in search for a solution to a gamedesign situation in which you need anything / something "more" or "better") you can try to find it from scratch. or simply use a tool to solve the problem. this probably is a poor example, because you don't fix a leaking pipe with sticking a hammer into the leak, but by using the hammer to fix the pipe. but typically gamedesign problems don't need a small chunk of detail to solve them, but a complete change in some mid-level range. i.e. you have a jump'n'run baseconcept, and you're not satisfied with your enemies. so you want to drop some of the enemie types and add new ones. and those should of course fit as good as possible to the main gamemechanic of jump'n'run.

here it is probably pretty clear that a library of ideas will help a lot.

i've got a not to small library of scrap-books, papers and a tiddlywiki full of ideas myself. but all texts there tend to be very loose. a very strange style needing to connect a lot of thoughts together and thus most often only understandable by myself. (and that also only after some thinking.)

what do you think: is it worth to take the time and write everything up in electronic form and try to write it detailed and understandable for other gamedesigners?

Krystian Majewski said...

Yes, most defiantly. By sharing the ideas and actually devoting the time to bring them to a presentable form, you automatically develop the ideas further... or expose their weaknesses, which might be just as useful.