It’s fantastic how well the N64-controller suited Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And the triggers on the 360-controller works really well for shooting in FPS and for stepping on the gas driving games.
It’s by no means a coincidence and you can always look at a controller and see how it’s meant to be used.
But what if that wasn’t the case?
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.
A Game Designer cannot design every kind of game without getting used to the new genre. Continue reading ‘Designing for different genres: mastering both sides of the force.’
I am a game designer. And I have a glaring weakness: math. I am also a trained musician.
Continue reading ‘Game Design – Designing the same old, same old’
Arcade
Arshak Ardeshir
Gustav Ziolkowski
Severin Brettmeister
Andre Beccu
