Game Design

Graphics and sounds effects aside, lets focus on a games Design

So what is it? Well Game Design covers a lot of aspects such as; the players interaction in the game, the general story and characters, the players connection to it/them and various challenges which the player has to overcome to continue on their quest!

So yeah quite a lot

The process usually starts from initial ideas, or developments from existing concepts, which will then be expanded and developed under 1 or more of the many gaming genres.

Game Design incorporates so much of the final product, that it seems fair to say the best design team are the ones which are most successful , selling most copies (seeing as its all about the money right?) and by this logic Treyarch are that team releasing black ops becoming the bestselling game, EVAR!

This however looking at a single game, but the most successful company overall is… Infinity Ward

What? Great… Call of Duty isn’t that good! Well I guess its all down to opinion, and hype.

Infinity Wards development team working on Modern Warfare 2 (cough its shit, what?) would have been fairly large, and nowadays the number of people working on a game can be anywhere from 20 to 200 depending on the scale and demands of the game.

Although back in the days when video games became a viable in the commercial market during the 1970s, a single programmer could design and develop a full game. Its only nowadays where games demand much more time and money meaning the task cannot be undertaken by one single person.

Well it could but they’d have to be a very talented individual willing to sacrifice a lot of their life to meet the modern industry standards.

I guess to some extent all game genres follow the same design principles, as they all have to consider the same general elements which make up a game.

And if you think that most games are based on something, that has been inspired by something else from the beginning of gaming history, then all titles are deviations of the same thing (if that makes sense? Does in my brain, kinda)

Although I’m not sure if a games genre is decided before release in the early stages, or after so designers can have more freedom when developing the game?

When deciding to fork out money for games, I do appreciate titles that have a strong single player component, preferably something that has multiple replay value through the solo campaign. But overall I ultimately sold on the games multiplayer component, as that’s where I tend to spend most of my time. It’s just nice to have a solid single player as well.

I prefer the player to player side rather than interacting with NPC’s, they're just not real and kinda freaks me out a little bit. Driving at stupid mph round the Nurburgring In Forza 3, id rather race against real people in another country rather than a car which has been programmed to go round a track.

The same goes for FPS games, shooting wave after wave of AI isn’t as satisfying as earning a kill online where it has an impact to someone. The human element side to the game makes it kinda feel more real.