Author Archive for Andre Beccu

20
Mar
10

Dying for immersion

By Andre Beccu Leave a Comment
Categories: 8. How to handle in-game death
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

First of all, I’d like to distinguish between “I died”, as in “Mario ran into a funny turtle and did a crazy animation and fell off the screen”, and “I died” as in “an alien with twelve rows of teeth sucked out my brain and then bit my head off”.

In the first case, I failed and most likely my flow was broken, but everything that happened was well within the boundaries of the Mario universe. My experience was disrupted a bit, but the immersion wasn’t broken. There’s little to fix here.
In the second case, immersion has just taken a severe hit. I DIED! How horrible! I guess I should be shaken. Oh, wait – I didn’t. I just re-spawned at the latest checkpoint. Sooo… why was it necessary to decapitate my avatar again?

Continue reading ‘Dying for immersion’

21
Feb
10

Shot your dinner lately?

By Andre Beccu 9 Comments
Categories: 7. Reward and Punishment
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Do you hunt and grow your own food? If you don’t, you DO cut your own fire wood, right? Or at least you shift gears manually in your car, because, let’s face it: Super-markets, electricity, and automatic transmission are for sissies.

Oh my, you ARE one of those guys, aren’t you! You like doing things the easy way, taking the path of least resistance. I bet you also play games on beginners’ mode, then!

Continue reading ‘Shot your dinner lately?’

24
Jan
10

Super Return of the Coop!

By Andre Beccu 1 Comment
Categories: 6. Predictions for 2010
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Since my crystal ball is in the repair shop this week, the following is based more on a gut feeling: My prediction for 2010 is that video games developers around the world will better understand how non-hardcore gamers tick! Well, either that, or they’ll skip out on or waste some money.

Continue reading ‘Super Return of the Coop!’

21
Dec
09

The surest way to design a crappy game…

By Andre Beccu Leave a Comment
Categories: 5. Designing controller input
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

…is to release it on X360, PC and DS. Why?

When you are designing a game, it will be interactive to some degree. The means of interaction are going to be an integral part of the experience of the game that you are creating.
That means is usually “using a controller” (e.g. a Wiimote) on the player’s side of the interaction, which has two aspects:
The first one is the actual hardware of the controller (e.g. a piece of plastic); the second is the game’s reaction to a certain controller input (e.g. “Jump”). In order to provide the best experience possible, it is necessary for those two aspects and the rest of the game to be as consistent as possible.

Continue reading ‘The surest way to design a crappy game…’

06
Dec
09

Of Apes and Men

By Andre Beccu 4 Comments
Categories: 4. Iterative Design
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Let’s take a look at an approach to creating a successful Triple-A game.

1.Write Design Document
2.Give Design Document to Coder
3.Triple-A Success

It didn’t work out for you like that? Don’t worry, it didn’t for most of those Triple-A studios out there, either.
So how did they do it, if creating a great game from scratch is so difficult? Well, creating Man from a puddle of proteins is even more difficult, yet somehow Evolution happened. The secret sauce is “Iteration”.
Continue reading ‘Of Apes and Men’

17
Nov
09

Out of the frying pan…

By Andre Beccu 3 Comments
Categories: 3. Designing social games
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I don’t know what you think, but for me, a social game, as opposed to an anti-social one, is one that requires a significant portion of the skills that I am pouring into the game to be of social nature, e.g. friendship, empathy, and loyalty, to name a few. From that point of view, a purely competitive game, e.g. deathmatch, would be anti-social, so we’re not simply talking multi-player games here.

Whenever there is more than one person around (to a lesser degree, this includes NPCs), there is potential for some kind of social relationship. The problem is that the thing most dangerous for any such fledging social relationship is the game itself, or rather its rules. To be exact, it is the win/loss conditions, even if there aren’t any explicit ones: Perceived ones will do just fine.

Continue reading ‘Out of the frying pan…’

03
Nov
09

A Call for Understanding

By Andre Beccu 6 Comments
Categories: 2. Social responsibility of Game Designers
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Usually, when one thinks “Social Responsibility”, things like “Moral” and thus “right & wrong” come into mind. I’d like to have a look at “Social Responsibility” from a more abstract point of view. In fact I’m thinking more “actions & consequences”. While that might look a bit too cold-hearted, the advantage is that right & wrong tend to differ more or less depending on your culture etc., but consequences simply ARE.

Continue reading ‘A Call for Understanding’

18
Oct
09

What he said.

By Andre Beccu 5 Comments
Categories: 1. Can a good game designer design any type of game?
Tags: , , , , , ,

To be able to properly answer the question if a good designer can design any type of game, I’d like to have a look at the two important parts to that question:

“What is a ‘good designer’” and “what is ‘any type of game’”.

Concerning the former, I think EA’s Gordon Walton hit the nail on the head with his GDC 2009 talk, where he stated a good designer should bring the following to a team (short version):

Continue reading ‘What he said.’

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.