About Game Design

Working in the german games industry has its quirks. The market here is quite specific, with the PC still standig relatively strong. A lot of german “hardcore” gamers play their games almost exclusively on the platform and they prefer titles of certain complexity – and severity of punishment!

At work, I do one joke all the time. Well, it’s not really a joke but rather an observation I find funny. There was a german game (I truly don’t remember which one, may have been “Patrician” by Ascaron, although I am not 100% positive) that would not only display the word “Bankrupt” if you mismanaged your comapny but would display a skull behind the text. What’s funny is that the word Bankrupt did not suffice, it seems like. There had to be the extra bit of humiliating punishment. The only thing missing was the computer exclaiming “Loser! Loser! Loser!” and laughing hysterically.

To me, this is a perfect example of old school german video game design that still is in practice with a lot of german people. That of course has its reasons. Mainly: The people who play these games, make these games. I vivdly remember a german animator, arguing that what we, the designers, did on a certain game was “for pussies” and that he was “disgusted” by what we had designed.  That was the time when I thought that you should not – under any circumstance – frustrate the player. My mind has changed, and here is why.

1. Jonathan Blow gave an eye-opening speech at GDC that was about why games are deeply conflicted. One of his reasons was that games do in fact try to tell a story, which always is a linear progression and on the other hand we try to challenge the player and thus working counter to the linear progression of the story. We’re undermining it as we play the game. What was really interesting about this, was his clear position on difficulty or more so challenge. He stated that modern games not really are challenging and that they presented the player with what he called “faux-challenge”. By that he meant that it LOOKS like the player has a hard time, due to great staging and cinematic elements, but in truth the player is always in total control and hardly challenged. The reason why he obstructed to this was that challenge is the one thing games as a medium have exclusively. No other medium can provide such a challenge – so why watering down what defines our medium?

2. I have played Demon’s Souls. Demon’s Souls is such a hard game, it will relentlesly kick your ass. It will break you down, make you scream and cry and I still loved it. Why? Now, here comes a realization I made very late (yeah, i stand by that!). It’s totally okay to be hard if you remain readable to the player. In Demon’s Souls I can almost always (there are some instances when this won’t work) understand why I died! I can absolutely see what I have done wrong. Also I always know what is at stake. If I die, I know where I will respawn and how much progress I will lose. I can work with that. Almost calculate that risk. It’s perfecty clear.

So, if you remain clear about readability and consequences, making a very punishing game is legitamate. And reward comes automatically with beating that tough S.O.B.