lol. it's so fitting because there no substance in his abilities and when put to the test an angry teenager could take him down I wonder what the world would look like if ideas would be valuable without follow through, and people as valuable as they believe
So very true! One of the first things I was told when I was considering to become either game designer or producer, is that "there's no idea guy position in the industry". Ideas are just ideas if they never being implemented in life. I believe being a game designer in different companies may vary, but quite often I had to do a forecast of all the content that might be required for the feature including sound, special effects (VFX), 3D and 2D assets, etc, not just set of rules and a number of parameters for the dev to implement. So being a game designer is not an easy job (just like it's not easy to be a dev, QA, or any other person who has to work for living). And this hard work can be rewarding if you see your game being shipped and people actually playing and liking it. Developing games is a rewarding experience on its own but in the end if no one sees it or plays it that doesn't sound like really something to be proud of (at least for me).
Yea even just as a modmaker, ive gotten all kinds of demands and strange suggestions from people who want to impose their playstyle on the experience im trying to create The vast majority are people who just want to cheat; they want invincible armor, one-hit weapons, permanent invisibility, insane stats, whatever. I try to teach them how to do that themselves, and explain that thats not how i want my mod- or the game- to feel, but it usually doesnt reach them. As an aspiring (serious) game designer, i feel its but a mere glimpse of whats to come
Don't get me wrong, I respect that they get something different out of the game, and I'm deeply fascinated by the different experiences different kinds of players have. I even had my own "cheating phase" as a kid where id have a hard time enjoying a game if I couldn't use cheats, so it'd be a bit hypocritical of me to think less of them for it.
You said an idea a lot of people never even had in their mind, sometimes even published designers - "the experience I'm trying to create". Maybe it's just a matter of different design principles, but we are trying to create an experience that is coherent and immersive, not just some random mechanics that are supposedly "fun".
Ok this is a rant on a tangent but I have friends like that and I regulary get into arguments with them because they tell me something cool they did and at some point usually I realize they used cheats or mods or even went through to install a cheat engine if there is no dev way to cheat. And I hate it! Everyone can enjoy games the way they like (maybe not competitave multiplayer) but I go mad when they try to pass things as ledgit that were cheated. It feels like they try to cheat ledgit Players out of their achievements. They want to talk the talk but not walk the walk and thats just unfair.
Hey Tim, great video! This video in particular resonated with me, and here's why: I'm the project lead for an FPS project with a small team, who started as a "seagull designer". I was not nearly specific enough with specifications. The core team understood most of the designs without them being too specific (small team, we've been friends for over a decade). However, that's really hurt us when we started expanding the team and hiring contractors. Without a specification on a lot of the designs, new people have a harder time putting out work that's cohesive with everything else, which results in me having to go in and make fixes myself. Not an efficient way to do things, lesson learned the hard way. TLDR: Write specifications for design ideas, even if you don't think you need to. You'll resolve a lot of issues before any work begins, and save yourself from a lot of headache later down the line.
First off, I just want to tell you that I absolutely love your content. I watch all your videos (at least I think I have) and I always look forward to the next one. I've always been into the idea of making a game ever since I was a kid, but your content has really inspired me to actually put some real thought into it and videos like this help me keep a level head about it all. Yours is the type of content I feel the world needs more of so thank you for giving us your time and insight. I know I really appreciate it and I'm sure some others do as well.
I know you didn't ask, but I highly recommend starting off by getting into making mods for a game you really like - preferably one that's very "moddable" like a Bethesda game. I started modding Battlefront 13 years ago and got into the industry 4 years after I started!
Really nice video ! My flatmate works in a small cooperative studio, i often bring up ideas when he talks about their project. I'll now do my best not to be just another annoying seagull. I think the "MMO with permadeath" idea is found altered in some survival games today. But it's not RPGs as there's generally no NPC's, no quests, no level-ups. Back in the 2000's this would have not worked out I think, but the multiplayer sandbox survival genre today though still niche has quite a big community and some good content creators. It started with moded Arma and Minecraft servers but became trendy with Rust, DayZ standalone, Ark and others. That's also a gameplay element we find in RP dedicated servers for sandbox games like GTA, but it's even more niche and the permadeath aspect is player enforced through server mods who can be bargained to avoid any accident and is not a proper game mechanic. The very fact this new genre emerged through mods of existing games shows it was too risky of an idea for any studio to build a game on, and only once the concept was proven popular with a suficient player base was it considered viable as a project. That being said i'd love to have some piece of your opinion about modding, as a professional designer. Have you ever modded games ? Have you played mods on games you worked on ? Maybe even some total conversions ? Do you think about modding impacts video game devellopment, and if yes, to what extent ?
It's kind of funny that I saw your channel and just went to it and subbed and thought of coming back to watch some videos in the future. Now I'm learning to make games myself and rediscovered your channel and you have a huge backlog of fantastic videos that inspires me to improve all I do. The experience you have of both good and bad situations is great to reflect on. There are few channels I view all videos on, but I know I will not only watch all your videos, but also rewatch many of them. Been a fan since Fallout came out, and I love learning from one of the people I consider to be at the top of the industry.
I never had any type of experience working or studying these things myself and oh yeah I can really relate to the "idea guy" problem. Really pays to know how to scale things down. Thanks for uploading this video!
Lol idea guys is what we used to call them in our little indie dev corner. They'd make 1 forum post about a groundbreaking idea they can't share, but they can't code, can't do art, but this idea will change the world. Their idea usually ended up being something like "Mario, but BLUE"
17:10 this is the second time I applauded a video. (First time was when Blade rounhouse kicked the cure on the boss in Blade 1, but that was sarcasm, but the whole cinema applauded with me) Well played sir, Tim, sir.
Great video. I'd recommend renaming it to "What is a game designer?", because this does a great job answering a question that most people don't think to really ask or try to understand.
I had an idea of what a great game would be. It'd cost 100 million dollars to develop, take 20 yrs to program, and require a supercomputer farm to run. I call it, Maniac Mansion 3.
Man I would have loved to have had you as a team leader or boss. You seem kind and easy to listen to. I'd rather take criticism from you than from most people. Very insightful and engaging. These are gems.
DayZ. Permadeath, 60 players. Not an MMO, but I enjoyed its permadeath implementation in a multiplayer setting. Comes recommended. Also, Tim (if you see this, food for thought), other than 'fun' being a primary design goal - what separates games design from requirements engineering (esp. the "requirements -> specification -> refinement" portion)? Sounds like a significant overlap. Was curious to why this comparison didn't come up.
hey man, I don't know how your videos keep getting recommended to me, maybe because I keep clicking on them when they do pop up and watch them all the way through? I've never even played fallout 1 or 2, but Fallout 3 and New Vegas we're my favorite games in highschool. It sounds like you didn't play and part in those games judging from the stories you've told in these videos, but I gotta say, I fucking love listening to your stories, even if I haven't played those games. Honestly, I hope you never run out of things to talk about, because I could listen to you forever. Thanks for these.
I understand the balance of making sure all characters are valid and can complete the game in some way. But I also can look at character creation as a evolutionary situation in that not all designs are viable. There should be paths to punch everything, kill everything, talk to everything, sneak pass everything, and out or under smart everything. There should be multiple ways to complete a mission. Because it sucks having spent all game long talking your way out of situations and suddenly be faced with a shootout in a building and you have no weapon or any idea how to use one against a SWAT team. A nonviable design would be a character you make as crippled as possible, and spec into stats that have no advantage to your current status. They say the art of flying is falling to the ground and failing. If you intentionally make a character to fail it should fail, or at the most be such a chore to play you would reconsider it.
As an experienced programmer and an amateur game developer, your channel is a godsend. There are few people who are experienced, optimistic, amd well spoken. Taking the ideas you have presented and writing them into a book/audio book would be wonderful.
This video is an amazing simultaneous inflicter and curer of impostor syndrome for designers - though I work in tabletop gaming and mostly solo (operating as my own writer, play tester, etc), the work you described as the work of a designer is the work I primarily do and am proud of.
I was worried I was just an "ideas guy" or how he put it "seagull designer" for my own project I was working on until Tim put out this video describing how the whole system works.
Reminds me when I was doing web design, everyone think they are a web designer because they use the internet everyday, yet strangely enough, no one thinks they are a plumber just because they use the toilet everyday.
When QA/QC department finds problems and other collegues are angry with it... Another classic. Confirming with my experience working in QA/QC. This is ridiculous and could be fun, but it's incredibly sad.
Another great video, Tim! I wanted to tell you that these lessons are also super useful for people like me developing software outside of games. I've done QA work (automation, manual testing, etc.) for a lot of big, constantly changing web apps and every so often I'll see features that developers will change because designs will be underspecified. Even worse, some junior designers will get steamrolled over by senior engineers that say they've been at a company longer. At it's best, some features I'll fail back because the core design wasn't met and the ticket will churn for a day or two. Which wastes money. At it's worst, some designers will rollover, accept new changes aaaaand it will break some other feature somewhere else or the businesses needs won't be met when we ship. Which - again - wastes a bunch of money.
the maddening recursive absurdity of making 'a whole video' on how you can make 'a whole video' on tons of topics is something i need in my life tim i need it, tim tim
Fun fact: Years ago I was watching Firefly, and I thought "oh man, they really should make a videogame RPG like that!" So, long story short, that's how I was the game designer of Outer Worlds!
Colony Ship has no encumbrance. To address the issue of the player drowning in items the game has a "scrap common items" feature that turns frequent loot into money. It's very satisfying not having to worry about inventory tetris. Anyway, thanks for making the videos, Tim. I re-installed Arcanum last week after watching your chat with Leonard. Still the best RPG ever.
I'm so glad that last producer isn't my DM 😂 even though I do play stuff like Call of Cthullhu or Dungeon Crawl Classics. If my character dies its because I did something wrong or dumb, not because my DM actually wants to kill them. Looks like he got his wish though, considering how popular games like Dark Souls are!
I get the impression from longtime Soulsborne afficionados (at least, those not in the "git gud" crowd) that the earlier games actually presented such a challenge and if you died it was, indeed, something you did yourself that brought about the result: you panicked; you dodged too soon; you dodged too late; you weren't properly prepared mentally or otherwise before going in; etc. Some even considered the earlier games therapeutic because they apparently required the player to stay calm and patient, study, stategize effectively, etc. The challenge, they say, was to learn the move sets and calmly, organically respond to them. As much as I personally dislike games that are exclusively combat-oriented or hard for the sake of being hard, I could see enjoying that myself, so I tried Elden Ring and probably should have started with DS1 (lol) because From is getting a little criticism for certain design decisions they're making these days and I hope they're listening while reveling in the deserved accolades because a few player reviews have pointed out some things that vindicated my own experience as a first-time player, which I initially thought must just be due to some failing of my own, to such an extent that I would say they're objective observations and trends From might want to seriously consider and put the quiatus on, especially if they're now trying to appeal to a larger audience. My number one issue was primarily with the late game. Suddenly, it seemed to require utterly inorganic, machine-like reflexes I most certainly don't possess myself. I haven't finished it; I've no desire to finish it; and never will finish it. Were I to allow my first impression of From's games to define the experience in perpetuity, however, I'd probably never play another From game in my life and possibly be doing myself a disservice. We'll see because I plan to play DS1 at some point to see if it's as "therapeutic" as some people say. :)
@InfiniteWarrior I absolutely understand where you're coming from, and for the record while I'm saying that's really not my idea of a fun time, I don't want to invalidate other people's enjoyment. I think personally for me, I enjoy a bit of a challenge but not to the extent I have to constantly reload my last checkpoint and keep trying time after time. I always found the older Resident Evil games, namely Nemesis, Code Veronica and 4, all get that balance right for me personally. If you do go back to DS1 I hope you have a fun time with it!
@@alexdoran527 What you're describing as not your idea of a fun time is not my idea of an enjoyable time, either. The point of my comment is that there are some objective truths about video games that can be arrived at. It's not like there's none at all and game development studios, designers and developers themselves would benefit immensely from listening to sincere criticisms that have nothing to do with one's simply liking or disliking something. It's not always just a matter of personal taste, in other words.
@@lrinfiI think the extra difficulty in Elden Ring is the result of From software upping the difficulty a bit to keep things interesting for the old fans of the series. There's also a case to be made for players deciding to not engage with new game mechanics just because they don't want to adapt, this last point was pretty obvious when Sekiro released some years ago
@@steeltarkus58 Thing is, what the reviewers are pointing out has nothing to do with difficulty and everything to do with design decisions From might want to reconsider when developing future games because community sentiment about them is pretty much universal among those who don't consider themselves merely better than other players, for example. ;)
Hey Tim, thanks for all these videos. All the work you did inspired me to get into video games programming. Not there yet, got a couple more years to go, but definitely going there !
Really enjoy your emphasis on differentiating between 'meeting the intended goal' and 'the goal is good'. I've played a number of games where I have plenty of gripes with it, but I'm so in awe of how successfully the game executes on its goals, but that nuance is frequently smothered in online discourse. Animal Crossing is my favourite example, but it's pretty common and should be more explicitly talked Editing to say: "hardcore"/"one life" MMO game modes are sort of in vogue currently, but the appeal is niche and mostly about the shared community experience. As the only mode, it works very poorly for all the reasons you describe.
Perma Death feature - clearly this works for a portion of the World of Warcraft Community with Hardcore. First the community made add-on in the iron man challenge, and now with the official HC servers. Would an MMO with only HC mode be fun for many or most players? I doubt it.
I only do art for amateur games, but I’ve run into way too many Idea Guys. I’ve asked for outlines for games or levels so I can get an idea of scope. I’ve gotten amateur movie scripts in return sometimes. The basics of interaction weren’t even discussed.
I tried working as a "freelance game dev" - coding games for hire. But 99% of people who would offer me a job would only have some very basic ideas of what the game is or how it's supposed to work. So I have to either design the whole game myself and then make it, or create some random features that aren't even connected by any logic. Even better when they think they can pay you some share of revenue. Revenue from a project they will never release.
Hi Tim, I know you wont read this, but I would like to say that your work and your openness to discuss your journey as a gamedev has given me so much inspiration to keep pushing with my own game development. To that end, I say thank you. People don't realise how much labour and experience is required to even make a game playable in the first place. Especially if you're an indie or single developer, We have the burden of planning, research, collaboration, financial considerations, recruitment, marketing etc. I'm glad im not going crazy and someone else pointed these issues.
Haha, I think my boon as a designer is I love talking to seagulls. I love egging people on to gush about their ideas while I read between the lines. That being said, since my role is usually a programmer, I'm hyper aware of when people refuse to engage with me because they assume I'm a seagull.
And you are totally right about balancing stuff, the more experience I have in gamedev, design, and just as a player myself, the more I understand that balance in games is actually the ultimate fun killer. Fallout does not have balance, Arcanum especially does not have it, but it is super fun and great to play and role play differently. There should be some unbalanced things to keep it fun. Of course, if we are not talking about cybergames strategies. But even there a little bit should be fun. Otherwise it would be absolutely the same math and formulas behind, strategies, tactics.
Who takes credit? That’s why when you’re giving the kudos internally, someone (probably a producer) takes the time to call out everyone who made a contribution to the feature. Yes, including the seagull.
1. First, sort of a joke. Designer that wants to kill the player - Souls-like games. 2. Thank you, Tim, for straightly saying that you don't care about 'balance' that much. I wholeheartedly agree with you. That's why Arcanum, Fallout (and others too!) are great. Some skills or abilities (Trap Disarm, really?) are intentionally bad. But it's interesting to play with those deficient skills picked. Your games are one of the only ones I know that feel they don't need to be balanced at all. Instead they feel like they have an advantage because they are imbalanced. Somehow, in them, the incentive to play the game with a handicap just to roleplay is inherent. The design manages to keep players playing with silly skills (or dumb dialogue) picked just to see what happens. Without a need to resort to recently wildly popular 'achievements'. An amazing feat almost no games have. 3. A little 'addition' and a question. I think that worst in an MMO with 'permadeath' is not even other players, but technical issues. Disconnection, power outage, crash. Anything of the sorts, really. That's why i have a technical question (I know you probably won't read it, but hell, why not?) about a statement 'when we load it - we delete it' in the ironman mode. It seemed you were talking about TOEE. What if the game crashes, PC hangs or power goes out? How was it handled? Thank you again for these wonderful videos.
Really this video should be titled "The Seagull Problem Designers Face". I feel like there must be dozens of other challengers game designers face that you haven't spoke about today. The people demand more!
I'm glad the whole "The designer/DM/etc's goal is to kill the player(s)" mentality seems to be going away. If my goal as a DM was to kill the players, that would be incredibly easy - there's a reason "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is a meme - but making the players face worthy challenges, risk death but feel like they had a real chance? That's harder. I have two memories of times in D&D campaigns where I ran into a goal being "kill the player," things worked out very differently. One, I was the player involved. DM said my character build was okay but that I would likely run into a point where the party would be turned against me. I was fine with that. What I WASN'T fine with was when the DM decided "okay you don't get to roll anymore you're just dead." Killed all motivation for me to play with that person as a DM ever again. Second time, I was the DM, and I had a player tell me that in the big final dungeon they were going to try to kill off their character, but they didn't want it to be an obvious or dumb SD, they wanted an epic confrontation to lead to their death. Now, I always play the rolls out fairly, so I set up a big final boss at the end of this dungeon who did everything in their power to kill her character. Only problem was... she was a 15th level barbarian in 5e. NOTHING I could do (fairly) within the set of abilities I had could actually kill her. She was fine with it in the end, the party had a big come-together around the character and all that stuff, but it was definitely one of those moments that show that, when you play everything by the rules, sometimes the person you want to die will still live. But it often ends up being a cooler story than if you just kill them.
I work quality control for medical devices. Too many manufacturing managers get angry when we discover faults. They don't like that our lowly crew is above them in that case.
Mass Effect 1 had infinite ammo (overheating mechanic) but that got retconned into ammo in 2, which was hilarious when they tried to explain it in lore
It was. The sad thing is that they thought about a hybrid system that made perfect sense lore-wise. You still had a limited amount of thermal clips, but they were only used whenever you overheated your weapon, so that you could choose between managing your clips shooting sparsely and overpowering your enemies. That would have fixed the issues with some classes running out of clips, you could have still been able to fight back but had to manage the heat. You can play with this system by editing one of the config file. I was doing a run with it last year and it seemed pretty cool and with little to no issues, but I then got busy with other stuff and never finished it. The only thing I had to change was the cooling rate of weapons, it was too high by default.
Very interesting. Mark Darrah also has a video that ties into this called "Ideas are Free - Rants", yours kind of elaborates on a different side of this topic.
Really enjoyed this video. I do want to say that WoW Classic added a hardcore mode to their MMO and it has been met with a large amount of positive feedback from those players. I don't think that every MMO should have permadeath nor should that be the only way to play, but it is interesting that 20 years after the game originally came out, this idea of permadeath in an MMO has been successful.
I had network administrator telling me once that my code sucks (and he'd do everything better) because "it had too many classes". It was a script parser that built tree of tokens and each token was a different subclass (for various reasons). Was it the best implementation? Absolutely not. But it worked, unlike his.
It's easy to look at the end result of someone's work and imagine yourself doing better It's probably how most of us felt when starting a project anyway
Your video reminded me of what I constantly see written on Reddit and RUclips videos about games that launched buggy the “Did QA even test this? How did they miss _____ bug?” Could you do a deep dive into why even if QA find bugs games are still shipped and if you’ve heard of some studios allowing games to ship because they know QA will be blamed by players and not them.
I have seen a lot of games that have a design of "it would be cool it add this mechanic" without considering interactions or the actual depth the mechanic could or should have.
Listen to the latest story. Tim seemed to be talking to Hidetaka Miyazaki, you know the guy who came up with Dark Souls. Yes, the very game, the task of killing the player in many of the most incredible ways. And the funny thing is, this type of game is incredibly popular right now. And then someone was ahead of his time, but he was not allowed to open up) Correction, in Darks Souls it's still not like that. But games like about a man in a pot with a pick, who climbs a mountain. Or the game i wanna be the boshy, that's just about killing the player)
Yelling is not a good idea. That can get you out of the job, at least that's what I experienced when a department head lost his job because all his staff escalated his behavior, lol. Maybe it's different in the US, but that's how it is in Germany. EDIT: I checked the internet for MMOs with permadeath, here are some: * Realm of the Mad God * Path of Exile Hardcore Mode * Wizardry Online
I feel that it can often also happen when it comes to UI in games. Not that the person requesting it can design the UI they want, but they want to just copy over UI from a different game, even though the aesthetic or functionality is completely different from how everything else in the game currently looks and/or works. UI can also influence gameplay in a lot of ways, for example if you have a add minimap in a stealth game and enemies are marked on it, it may mean players are now looking way less at the world, and just at the bottom left minimap, effectively removing any tension the game had.
I really wish Tim would default to the singular “they” when talking about a hypothetical person (for instance “that programmer has to understand what *they* need to do”)
That designer who just wants to kill the player is ludicrous lol. Like most industry's I imagine there are probably SOO many AMAZING potential game designers that just never get into the industry and we end up with people who have that kind of philosophy
Dark souls 2 thought that killing the player should be a design priority,my god they did so many things. the biggest problem is that when you realise that, your immersion just disappears. in a round about way the world treats the player as extra special, the opposite point to dark souls one, which wanted you to feel insignificant.
And brings the video to full stop out of outrage at the unnamed designer: “it’s the designer’s job to kill the player.” NO! I suspect Michael Cranford applied that in Bard’s Tale II, a game I have actually never played through, and certainly ran into enough live role-playing sessions where the game master seems to have thought that, or even Sierra On-Line’s philosophy of “learn by dying” (because there was no way in hell you could have ever survived that first encounter without the knowledge gained by dying). It’s the designer’s job to provide an interesting and fun challenge. I loved putting parties on the brink of extinction, and they get out all alive but breathing a sigh of relief. Any idiot can board-wipe a role-playing party! Which is not say that certain things shouldn’t be tough, but the goal is to provide a challenge, it is not you the designer vs. the players. It is not a contest for you to win by them losing. Jesus, Mary, and St. Wozniak on a pedestal! And while I’m raging, what idiot got mad at the testers for doing their job?!? Break it here before it gets broken in the real world! Good job! Atta’boy (girl, woman, etc.). I remember a whole batch of playtesters we hired after Disney laid them off were amazed when I encouraged them to provide suggestions on how to improve the game, issues that bothered them, things they felt were missing. “We we’re told at Disney to shut up and just find bugs at Disney.” Ahem. I suppose I might have something to say about design docs, and following through on suggestions (“Auto-mapping? Okay, sure, you tell me how and not have it take weeks to program and I’ll put it in the game!” Troy Miles on The Lord of the Rings (and yes, there is auto-mapping in the game, ‘cause I ain’t a seagull designer).
WOW the fact that a producer was mad qa found a bug says all i need to hear about the current state of the video game industry. i believe magicial games come from a group of people with a magical connection all sharing a common goal IN GOOD FAITH they all have to WANT to make a game most people now a days dont want to work they think its school show up and your good. i listen to so many people talk about getting a degree and doing that with no scope of what it actually takes. like its just so easy. like they dont understand you ACTUALLY have to be GOOD at somthing you have to develop a skill and more likly skills not go to college and get a degree
That designer that wanted to kill the player instantly made me imagine Bernard Black of Black Books. Even you mannerisms sounded a lot like how he'd say stuff in the show. :D
I mean there are MMO's with perma death, two of them it's optional such as Path Of Exiles, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. However for Wizardry Online I believe it's default, and you can argue whatever I guess for something like EVE Online. I think a few other MMO's have or had a mode or said feature as default, but it is rare. I honestly kinda like the idea, even more so if it's a Sand Box MMO.
Thanks Tim, interesting and educational as always! A lot of what you said might seem obvious, but having someone actually put all this into words and support it with personal anecdotes/examples is very helpful! I hope you don't mind if I pull a "seagull RUclipsr" and suggest a video topic for another time. ;) With all the hindsight, professional experience, and technology you now have, how would you change Arcanum in terms of balancing and systems design if you were to work on another Arcanum game today? I think a video like this would be both very interesting to the game's fans as well as educational to any aspiring game designers watching this channel. The reason I chose Arcanum in particular is because I feel like it's one of your most (if not the most) ambitious games in terms of game design but at the same time has some rough edges that provide room to elevate the game even further. That being said, if you choose to make this video, feel free to pick any other game you find appropriate, of course!
Flip side of this issue is that so many bad designers who can bs in interview and network really well become designer but they can't make spec, can't solve design problems, and the games they design just isn't fun. There are so many games with great art with functionally stable code, but the designer was a hack and the game just isn't fun. :/ A common red flag for me is usually when a designer just keep copy-pasting things from other games without ever thinking about how they fit together nor what the "goal" of any of the things are.
Had I not left the shack wearing my deathclaw piss animal repellant I very well might not have had a bear hug waiting for me at the Super Duper mart. We'll never know though because I did.
the permadeath mmo was a good example to support your point but unfortunately it's been done successfully in Realm of the Mad God which is still very popular and I wished you could have rebutted that counterpoint. Still very good video.
You would think fun would be top priority, but I think designers lose sight of it far more often than they should. Essentially any design decision should always circle back around to - does this make the game fun? Sometimes, even giving the player what they think they want would break that rule. Just like real life, everyone wants to be rich. But do you know what would happen if everyone in the world were suddenly disgustingly rich? The majority of us would immediately become bored out of our minds and struggle to find a reason to exist. Most humans find purpose in struggle and conflict, and video games are sort of evidence of this.
In other software development fields you get the exact same scenarios. Ideas and requirements from people above you who have no clue what their demands mean in reality.
I'm a professional artist and semi-professional programmer. And on a personal project I wear almost all the possible production hats. But there's always that imposter syndrome because..am I a real designer, or just a multi-talented idea guy? Unlike the other disciplines, Game Design is really hard to measure in terms of efficiency and quality. As an artist, I can make a visual thing. As a programmer, develop an algorithm, implement a feature. But as a designer? It's still just "idea guy"ing around, while rest of my "hats" figure out the scope, implementation, priorities, how it fits the larger goals, etc. As a result, always having strong imposter syndrome when it comes to game design. Hmm, perhaps you could do a video about Imposter Syndrome?
Well, since I hate encumbrance as well, I'll take the challenge and jump into the role of those people going "i can do your job" that annoy you so. You make everything stack. You don't put junk items in the game (hello BG3). You add an option to shift+click for sell all in a stack to make it so it's not a pain in a store (hi again BG3). You add sorting options that work at all times to auto-sort items (as opposed to sorting once and forcing the player to do it every time. I'm looking at you again, BG3) and you don't remove any of the sorting options in the sequel (this time I'm looking at Deadfire). Inventory problem solved. In fact, most of this stuff was done in Pillars. Didn't you work on that game? I also agree with that dude on infinite ammo. Managing ammo is just not fun. You should appreciate that as someone who says "fun trumps realism". Why would anyone use melee then? Plenty of reasons. Bows are not good when someone with melee weapon is rushing you. They can't be used with a shield. They don't scale with strength. There are tons of ways to distinguish them that don't involve unfun busywork. You yourself have invented some of them in Arcanum.
Day 2 of asking how the fallout 4 power armour compares to the idea and vision of power armour from fallout also day 2 of saying please keep this videos coming because they're great
Narrative design and writing also have the issue of everyone thinking they're all qualified to give professional pointers. Not implying equivalent quantity, but the issue is definitely present.
I appreciate these daily videos, Tim is just a cool guy.
He should have a cool guy cup
These videos are a great, somewhat rare, resource for people interested in the industry and the art of video games
Facts
My least favorite type of a seagull person: Steven Seagull.
marty stratton
lol. it's so fitting because there no substance in his abilities and when put to the test an angry teenager could take him down
I wonder what the world would look like if ideas would be valuable without follow through, and people as valuable as they believe
I'm not a huge fan of Jason Seagull
These stories are great. It kind of feels like a bunch of Game Design Lectures at school
So very true! One of the first things I was told when I was considering to become either game designer or producer, is that "there's no idea guy position in the industry". Ideas are just ideas if they never being implemented in life. I believe being a game designer in different companies may vary, but quite often I had to do a forecast of all the content that might be required for the feature including sound, special effects (VFX), 3D and 2D assets, etc, not just set of rules and a number of parameters for the dev to implement. So being a game designer is not an easy job (just like it's not easy to be a dev, QA, or any other person who has to work for living). And this hard work can be rewarding if you see your game being shipped and people actually playing and liking it. Developing games is a rewarding experience on its own but in the end if no one sees it or plays it that doesn't sound like really something to be proud of (at least for me).
Yea even just as a modmaker, ive gotten all kinds of demands and strange suggestions from people who want to impose their playstyle on the experience im trying to create
The vast majority are people who just want to cheat; they want invincible armor, one-hit weapons, permanent invisibility, insane stats, whatever. I try to teach them how to do that themselves, and explain that thats not how i want my mod- or the game- to feel, but it usually doesnt reach them.
As an aspiring (serious) game designer, i feel its but a mere glimpse of whats to come
Don't get me wrong, I respect that they get something different out of the game, and I'm deeply fascinated by the different experiences different kinds of players have.
I even had my own "cheating phase" as a kid where id have a hard time enjoying a game if I couldn't use cheats, so it'd be a bit hypocritical of me to think less of them for it.
You said an idea a lot of people never even had in their mind, sometimes even published designers - "the experience I'm trying to create". Maybe it's just a matter of different design principles, but we are trying to create an experience that is coherent and immersive, not just some random mechanics that are supposedly "fun".
Ok this is a rant on a tangent but I have friends like that and I regulary get into arguments with them because they tell me something cool they did and at some point usually I realize they used cheats or mods or even went through to install a cheat engine if there is no dev way to cheat.
And I hate it!
Everyone can enjoy games the way they like (maybe not competitave multiplayer) but I go mad when they try to pass things as ledgit that were cheated.
It feels like they try to cheat ledgit Players out of their achievements.
They want to talk the talk but not walk the walk and thats just unfair.
1:35 "come in, poop something, and fly off" killed me lol
Hey Tim, great video! This video in particular resonated with me, and here's why:
I'm the project lead for an FPS project with a small team, who started as a "seagull designer". I was not nearly specific enough with specifications. The core team understood most of the designs without them being too specific (small team, we've been friends for over a decade). However, that's really hurt us when we started expanding the team and hiring contractors. Without a specification on a lot of the designs, new people have a harder time putting out work that's cohesive with everything else, which results in me having to go in and make fixes myself. Not an efficient way to do things, lesson learned the hard way.
TLDR: Write specifications for design ideas, even if you don't think you need to. You'll resolve a lot of issues before any work begins, and save yourself from a lot of headache later down the line.
THANK YOU. We call these “ideas guys.” People who have no concept of implementation but love to dish out their half-baked ideas.
This video is really educational and critical in a good way
First off, I just want to tell you that I absolutely love your content. I watch all your videos (at least I think I have) and I always look forward to the next one.
I've always been into the idea of making a game ever since I was a kid, but your content has really inspired me to actually put some real thought into it and videos like this help me keep a level head about it all.
Yours is the type of content I feel the world needs more of so thank you for giving us your time and insight. I know I really appreciate it and I'm sure some others do as well.
I know you didn't ask, but I highly recommend starting off by getting into making mods for a game you really like - preferably one that's very "moddable" like a Bethesda game. I started modding Battlefront 13 years ago and got into the industry 4 years after I started!
Really nice video ! My flatmate works in a small cooperative studio, i often bring up ideas when he talks about their project. I'll now do my best not to be just another annoying seagull.
I think the "MMO with permadeath" idea is found altered in some survival games today. But it's not RPGs as there's generally no NPC's, no quests, no level-ups. Back in the 2000's this would have not worked out I think, but the multiplayer sandbox survival genre today though still niche has quite a big community and some good content creators. It started with moded Arma and Minecraft servers but became trendy with Rust, DayZ standalone, Ark and others.
That's also a gameplay element we find in RP dedicated servers for sandbox games like GTA, but it's even more niche and the permadeath aspect is player enforced through server mods who can be bargained to avoid any accident and is not a proper game mechanic.
The very fact this new genre emerged through mods of existing games shows it was too risky of an idea for any studio to build a game on, and only once the concept was proven popular with a suficient player base was it considered viable as a project.
That being said i'd love to have some piece of your opinion about modding, as a professional designer. Have you ever modded games ? Have you played mods on games you worked on ? Maybe even some total conversions ? Do you think about modding impacts video game devellopment, and if yes, to what extent ?
It's kind of funny that I saw your channel and just went to it and subbed and thought of coming back to watch some videos in the future. Now I'm learning to make games myself and rediscovered your channel and you have a huge backlog of fantastic videos that inspires me to improve all I do. The experience you have of both good and bad situations is great to reflect on. There are few channels I view all videos on, but I know I will not only watch all your videos, but also rewatch many of them. Been a fan since Fallout came out, and I love learning from one of the people I consider to be at the top of the industry.
I never had any type of experience working or studying these things myself and oh yeah I can really relate to the "idea guy" problem. Really pays to know how to scale things down. Thanks for uploading this video!
Lol idea guys is what we used to call them in our little indie dev corner. They'd make 1 forum post about a groundbreaking idea they can't share, but they can't code, can't do art, but this idea will change the world. Their idea usually ended up being something like "Mario, but BLUE"
I used to work as a QA tester. It was always interesting to see how conflicted the programmers would be whenever I found an issue
17:10 this is the second time I applauded a video. (First time was when Blade rounhouse kicked the cure on the boss in Blade 1, but that was sarcasm, but the whole cinema applauded with me) Well played sir, Tim, sir.
Great video. I'd recommend renaming it to "What is a game designer?", because this does a great job answering a question that most people don't think to really ask or try to understand.
I had an idea of what a great game would be. It'd cost 100 million dollars to develop, take 20 yrs to program, and require a supercomputer farm to run.
I call it, Maniac Mansion 3.
People say ideas aren't worth anything until someone tries to take credit for their idea.
Man I would have loved to have had you as a team leader or boss. You seem kind and easy to listen to. I'd rather take criticism from you than from most people. Very insightful and engaging. These are gems.
DayZ. Permadeath, 60 players. Not an MMO, but I enjoyed its permadeath implementation in a multiplayer setting. Comes recommended. Also, Tim (if you see this, food for thought), other than 'fun' being a primary design goal - what separates games design from requirements engineering (esp. the "requirements -> specification -> refinement" portion)? Sounds like a significant overlap. Was curious to why this comparison didn't come up.
hey man, I don't know how your videos keep getting recommended to me, maybe because I keep clicking on them when they do pop up and watch them all the way through? I've never even played fallout 1 or 2, but Fallout 3 and New Vegas we're my favorite games in highschool. It sounds like you didn't play and part in those games judging from the stories you've told in these videos, but I gotta say, I fucking love listening to your stories, even if I haven't played those games. Honestly, I hope you never run out of things to talk about, because I could listen to you forever. Thanks for these.
I understand the balance of making sure all characters are valid and can complete the game in some way. But I also can look at character creation as a evolutionary situation in that not all designs are viable. There should be paths to punch everything, kill everything, talk to everything, sneak pass everything, and out or under smart everything. There should be multiple ways to complete a mission. Because it sucks having spent all game long talking your way out of situations and suddenly be faced with a shootout in a building and you have no weapon or any idea how to use one against a SWAT team.
A nonviable design would be a character you make as crippled as possible, and spec into stats that have no advantage to your current status.
They say the art of flying is falling to the ground and failing. If you intentionally make a character to fail it should fail, or at the most be such a chore to play you would reconsider it.
My experiences being QA, I never felt more despised for doing my job well.
As an experienced programmer and an amateur game developer, your channel is a godsend. There are few people who are experienced, optimistic, amd well spoken. Taking the ideas you have presented and writing them into a book/audio book would be wonderful.
Your channel is golded, thanks you for everything.
This video is an amazing simultaneous inflicter and curer of impostor syndrome for designers - though I work in tabletop gaming and mostly solo (operating as my own writer, play tester, etc), the work you described as the work of a designer is the work I primarily do and am proud of.
I was worried I was just an "ideas guy" or how he put it "seagull designer" for my own project I was working on until Tim put out this video describing how the whole system works.
Reminds me when I was doing web design, everyone think they are a web designer because they use the internet everyday, yet strangely enough, no one thinks they are a plumber just because they use the toilet everyday.
When QA/QC department finds problems and other collegues are angry with it... Another classic. Confirming with my experience working in QA/QC. This is ridiculous and could be fun, but it's incredibly sad.
How dare you try to improve the game by doing your job?
Find an obvious failure and report it.
Your report gets marked as "working as intended".
Another great video, Tim! I wanted to tell you that these lessons are also super useful for people like me developing software outside of games.
I've done QA work (automation, manual testing, etc.) for a lot of big, constantly changing web apps and every so often I'll see features that developers will change because designs will be underspecified. Even worse, some junior designers will get steamrolled over by senior engineers that say they've been at a company longer.
At it's best, some features I'll fail back because the core design wasn't met and the ticket will churn for a day or two. Which wastes money. At it's worst, some designers will rollover, accept new changes aaaaand it will break some other feature somewhere else or the businesses needs won't be met when we ship. Which - again - wastes a bunch of money.
the maddening recursive absurdity of making 'a whole video' on how you can make 'a whole video' on tons of topics is something i need in my life
tim
i need it, tim
tim
Fun fact: Years ago I was watching Firefly, and I thought "oh man, they really should make a videogame RPG like that!"
So, long story short, that's how I was the game designer of Outer Worlds!
Colony Ship has no encumbrance. To address the issue of the player drowning in items the game has a "scrap common items" feature that turns frequent loot into money. It's very satisfying not having to worry about inventory tetris.
Anyway, thanks for making the videos, Tim. I re-installed Arcanum last week after watching your chat with Leonard. Still the best RPG ever.
Pillars of Eternity also did away with that crap with the stash, and that was very nice.
Wasteland 3 also, inventory management is boring.
I'm so glad that last producer isn't my DM 😂 even though I do play stuff like Call of Cthullhu or Dungeon Crawl Classics. If my character dies its because I did something wrong or dumb, not because my DM actually wants to kill them.
Looks like he got his wish though, considering how popular games like Dark Souls are!
I get the impression from longtime Soulsborne afficionados (at least, those not in the "git gud" crowd) that the earlier games actually presented such a challenge and if you died it was, indeed, something you did yourself that brought about the result: you panicked; you dodged too soon; you dodged too late; you weren't properly prepared mentally or otherwise before going in; etc. Some even considered the earlier games therapeutic because they apparently required the player to stay calm and patient, study, stategize effectively, etc. The challenge, they say, was to learn the move sets and calmly, organically respond to them. As much as I personally dislike games that are exclusively combat-oriented or hard for the sake of being hard, I could see enjoying that myself, so I tried Elden Ring and probably should have started with DS1 (lol) because From is getting a little criticism for certain design decisions they're making these days and I hope they're listening while reveling in the deserved accolades because a few player reviews have pointed out some things that vindicated my own experience as a first-time player, which I initially thought must just be due to some failing of my own, to such an extent that I would say they're objective observations and trends From might want to seriously consider and put the quiatus on, especially if they're now trying to appeal to a larger audience.
My number one issue was primarily with the late game. Suddenly, it seemed to require utterly inorganic, machine-like reflexes I most certainly don't possess myself. I haven't finished it; I've no desire to finish it; and never will finish it. Were I to allow my first impression of From's games to define the experience in perpetuity, however, I'd probably never play another From game in my life and possibly be doing myself a disservice. We'll see because I plan to play DS1 at some point to see if it's as "therapeutic" as some people say. :)
@InfiniteWarrior I absolutely understand where you're coming from, and for the record while I'm saying that's really not my idea of a fun time, I don't want to invalidate other people's enjoyment. I think personally for me, I enjoy a bit of a challenge but not to the extent I have to constantly reload my last checkpoint and keep trying time after time. I always found the older Resident Evil games, namely Nemesis, Code Veronica and 4, all get that balance right for me personally.
If you do go back to DS1 I hope you have a fun time with it!
@@alexdoran527 What you're describing as not your idea of a fun time is not my idea of an enjoyable time, either. The point of my comment is that there are some objective truths about video games that can be arrived at. It's not like there's none at all and game development studios, designers and developers themselves would benefit immensely from listening to sincere criticisms that have nothing to do with one's simply liking or disliking something.
It's not always just a matter of personal taste, in other words.
@@lrinfiI think the extra difficulty in Elden Ring is the result of From software upping the difficulty a bit to keep things interesting for the old fans of the series. There's also a case to be made for players deciding to not engage with new game mechanics just because they don't want to adapt, this last point was pretty obvious when Sekiro released some years ago
@@steeltarkus58 Thing is, what the reviewers are pointing out has nothing to do with difficulty and everything to do with design decisions From might want to reconsider when developing future games because community sentiment about them is pretty much universal among those who don't consider themselves merely better than other players, for example. ;)
1:33 what a good analogy lol
8:26 INFINITE CONTENT, I love it
Hey Tim, thanks for all these videos. All the work you did inspired me to get into video games programming. Not there yet, got a couple more years to go, but definitely going there !
Really enjoy your emphasis on differentiating between 'meeting the intended goal' and 'the goal is good'. I've played a number of games where I have plenty of gripes with it, but I'm so in awe of how successfully the game executes on its goals, but that nuance is frequently smothered in online discourse. Animal Crossing is my favourite example, but it's pretty common and should be more explicitly talked
Editing to say: "hardcore"/"one life" MMO game modes are sort of in vogue currently, but the appeal is niche and mostly about the shared community experience. As the only mode, it works very poorly for all the reasons you describe.
Perma Death feature - clearly this works for a portion of the World of Warcraft Community with Hardcore. First the community made add-on in the iron man challenge, and now with the official HC servers.
Would an MMO with only HC mode be fun for many or most players? I doubt it.
Thanks for doing these, Tim.
I only do art for amateur games, but I’ve run into way too many Idea Guys. I’ve asked for outlines for games or levels so I can get an idea of scope. I’ve gotten amateur movie scripts in return sometimes. The basics of interaction weren’t even discussed.
I tried working as a "freelance game dev" - coding games for hire. But 99% of people who would offer me a job would only have some very basic ideas of what the game is or how it's supposed to work. So I have to either design the whole game myself and then make it, or create some random features that aren't even connected by any logic. Even better when they think they can pay you some share of revenue. Revenue from a project they will never release.
Hi Tim, I know you wont read this, but I would like to say that your work and your openness to discuss your journey as a gamedev has given me so much inspiration to keep pushing with my own game development. To that end, I say thank you.
People don't realise how much labour and experience is required to even make a game playable in the first place. Especially if you're an indie or single developer, We have the burden of planning, research, collaboration, financial considerations, recruitment, marketing etc.
I'm glad im not going crazy and someone else pointed these issues.
Your vid’s are the best for my drive to work thank you!
Haha, I think my boon as a designer is I love talking to seagulls. I love egging people on to gush about their ideas while I read between the lines. That being said, since my role is usually a programmer, I'm hyper aware of when people refuse to engage with me because they assume I'm a seagull.
And you are totally right about balancing stuff, the more experience I have in gamedev, design, and just as a player myself, the more I understand that balance in games is actually the ultimate fun killer. Fallout does not have balance, Arcanum especially does not have it, but it is super fun and great to play and role play differently.
There should be some unbalanced things to keep it fun. Of course, if we are not talking about cybergames strategies. But even there a little bit should be fun. Otherwise it would be absolutely the same math and formulas behind, strategies, tactics.
"I could probably do a whole video about how I could do whole videos"
Indeed you could, and we'll be here to watch!
Benevolent seagull commenter here just to say "squawk! thanks!" ~flies away without pooping~
Who takes credit? That’s why when you’re giving the kudos internally, someone (probably a producer) takes the time to call out everyone who made a contribution to the feature. Yes, including the seagull.
I nearly lost it at 13:19. God damn. Boggles the mind. I adore these looks behind the curtain though.
Oh my goodness, I'm speechless for most of these
deary deary me
1. First, sort of a joke. Designer that wants to kill the player - Souls-like games.
2. Thank you, Tim, for straightly saying that you don't care about 'balance' that much. I wholeheartedly agree with you. That's why Arcanum, Fallout (and others too!) are great. Some skills or abilities (Trap Disarm, really?) are intentionally bad. But it's interesting to play with those deficient skills picked. Your games are one of the only ones I know that feel they don't need to be balanced at all. Instead they feel like they have an advantage because they are imbalanced. Somehow, in them, the incentive to play the game with a handicap just to roleplay is inherent. The design manages to keep players playing with silly skills (or dumb dialogue) picked just to see what happens. Without a need to resort to recently wildly popular 'achievements'. An amazing feat almost no games have.
3. A little 'addition' and a question. I think that worst in an MMO with 'permadeath' is not even other players, but technical issues. Disconnection, power outage, crash. Anything of the sorts, really. That's why i have a technical question (I know you probably won't read it, but hell, why not?) about a statement 'when we load it - we delete it' in the ironman mode. It seemed you were talking about TOEE. What if the game crashes, PC hangs or power goes out? How was it handled?
Thank you again for these wonderful videos.
Really this video should be titled "The Seagull Problem Designers Face". I feel like there must be dozens of other challengers game designers face that you haven't spoke about today. The people demand more!
I'm glad the whole "The designer/DM/etc's goal is to kill the player(s)" mentality seems to be going away. If my goal as a DM was to kill the players, that would be incredibly easy - there's a reason "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is a meme - but making the players face worthy challenges, risk death but feel like they had a real chance? That's harder.
I have two memories of times in D&D campaigns where I ran into a goal being "kill the player," things worked out very differently. One, I was the player involved. DM said my character build was okay but that I would likely run into a point where the party would be turned against me. I was fine with that. What I WASN'T fine with was when the DM decided "okay you don't get to roll anymore you're just dead." Killed all motivation for me to play with that person as a DM ever again.
Second time, I was the DM, and I had a player tell me that in the big final dungeon they were going to try to kill off their character, but they didn't want it to be an obvious or dumb SD, they wanted an epic confrontation to lead to their death. Now, I always play the rolls out fairly, so I set up a big final boss at the end of this dungeon who did everything in their power to kill her character. Only problem was... she was a 15th level barbarian in 5e. NOTHING I could do (fairly) within the set of abilities I had could actually kill her. She was fine with it in the end, the party had a big come-together around the character and all that stuff, but it was definitely one of those moments that show that, when you play everything by the rules, sometimes the person you want to die will still live. But it often ends up being a cooler story than if you just kill them.
Sounds like the designer's job is to weave the best ideas together into the best tapestry.
These daily videos are so awesome. Best part is no ads haha, just pop in my headphones and listen at work.
Tim, thank you for the daily uploads recently!
Yes! Make video about Fallout companions idea :) cant wait! ah...i so much enjoy your videos. Cheers
I work quality control for medical devices. Too many manufacturing managers get angry when we discover faults. They don't like that our lowly crew is above them in that case.
I once had a Creative Director at a game studio I was working at tell me that "Game Designer" is not a real job.
Mass Effect 1 had infinite ammo (overheating mechanic) but that got retconned into ammo in 2, which was hilarious when they tried to explain it in lore
It was. The sad thing is that they thought about a hybrid system that made perfect sense lore-wise. You still had a limited amount of thermal clips, but they were only used whenever you overheated your weapon, so that you could choose between managing your clips shooting sparsely and overpowering your enemies. That would have fixed the issues with some classes running out of clips, you could have still been able to fight back but had to manage the heat.
You can play with this system by editing one of the config file. I was doing a run with it last year and it seemed pretty cool and with little to no issues, but I then got busy with other stuff and never finished it. The only thing I had to change was the cooling rate of weapons, it was too high by default.
Did you just design a new D&D monster? Were-seagull, flies in poops all over the party and then flees.
> Designer says his job is to kill the player.
Me being the most unsurprised I have ever been in my life when you say he's a DM.
Very interesting. Mark Darrah also has a video that ties into this called "Ideas are Free - Rants", yours kind of elaborates on a different side of this topic.
Really enjoyed this video. I do want to say that WoW Classic added a hardcore mode to their MMO and it has been met with a large amount of positive feedback from those players. I don't think that every MMO should have permadeath nor should that be the only way to play, but it is interesting that 20 years after the game originally came out, this idea of permadeath in an MMO has been successful.
I had network administrator telling me once that my code sucks (and he'd do everything better) because "it had too many classes". It was a script parser that built tree of tokens and each token was a different subclass (for various reasons). Was it the best implementation? Absolutely not. But it worked, unlike his.
It's easy to look at the end result of someone's work and imagine yourself doing better
It's probably how most of us felt when starting a project anyway
Love your videos! I’m studying game design and watching your vids feels like I’ve got an extra professor! Thanks a ton!
Your video reminded me of what I constantly see written on Reddit and RUclips videos about games that launched buggy the
“Did QA even test this? How did they miss _____ bug?”
Could you do a deep dive into why even if QA find bugs games are still shipped and if you’ve heard of some studios allowing games to ship because they know QA will be blamed by players and not them.
I have seen a lot of games that have a design of "it would be cool it add this mechanic" without considering interactions or the actual depth the mechanic could or should have.
Yes companions! Please explain the process, plus all Seagulls scenarios included. :)
[you have potentially infinite ammo since our stacks are so large]
I see you haven't seen me play Fallout: New Vegas.
Listen to the latest story. Tim seemed to be talking to Hidetaka Miyazaki, you know the guy who came up with Dark Souls. Yes, the very game, the task of killing the player in many of the most incredible ways. And the funny thing is, this type of game is incredibly popular right now. And then someone was ahead of his time, but he was not allowed to open up) Correction, in Darks Souls it's still not like that. But games like about a man in a pot with a pick, who climbs a mountain. Or the game i wanna be the boshy, that's just about killing the player)
Yelling is not a good idea.
That can get you out of the job, at least that's what I experienced when a department head lost his job because all his staff escalated his behavior, lol.
Maybe it's different in the US, but that's how it is in Germany.
EDIT:
I checked the internet for MMOs with permadeath, here are some:
* Realm of the Mad God
* Path of Exile Hardcore Mode
* Wizardry Online
I feel that it can often also happen when it comes to UI in games. Not that the person requesting it can design the UI they want, but they want to just copy over UI from a different game, even though the aesthetic or functionality is completely different from how everything else in the game currently looks and/or works.
UI can also influence gameplay in a lot of ways, for example if you have a add minimap in a stealth game and enemies are marked on it, it may mean players are now looking way less at the world, and just at the bottom left minimap, effectively removing any tension the game had.
I really wish Tim would default to the singular “they” when talking about a hypothetical person (for instance “that programmer has to understand what *they* need to do”)
been watching these video daily, amazing stuff.
That designer who just wants to kill the player is ludicrous lol. Like most industry's I imagine there are probably SOO many AMAZING potential game designers that just never get into the industry and we end up with people who have that kind of philosophy
Dark souls 2 thought that killing the player should be a design priority,my god they did so many things.
the biggest problem is that when you realise that, your immersion just disappears. in a round about way the world treats the player as extra special, the opposite point to dark souls one, which wanted you to feel insignificant.
And brings the video to full stop out of outrage at the unnamed designer: “it’s the designer’s job to kill the player.” NO! I suspect Michael Cranford applied that in Bard’s Tale II, a game I have actually never played through, and certainly ran into enough live role-playing sessions where the game master seems to have thought that, or even Sierra On-Line’s philosophy of “learn by dying” (because there was no way in hell you could have ever survived that first encounter without the knowledge gained by dying). It’s the designer’s job to provide an interesting and fun challenge. I loved putting parties on the brink of extinction, and they get out all alive but breathing a sigh of relief. Any idiot can board-wipe a role-playing party! Which is not say that certain things shouldn’t be tough, but the goal is to provide a challenge, it is not you the designer vs. the players. It is not a contest for you to win by them losing. Jesus, Mary, and St. Wozniak on a pedestal!
And while I’m raging, what idiot got mad at the testers for doing their job?!? Break it here before it gets broken in the real world! Good job! Atta’boy (girl, woman, etc.). I remember a whole batch of playtesters we hired after Disney laid them off were amazed when I encouraged them to provide suggestions on how to improve the game, issues that bothered them, things they felt were missing. “We we’re told at Disney to shut up and just find bugs at Disney.”
Ahem. I suppose I might have something to say about design docs, and following through on suggestions (“Auto-mapping? Okay, sure, you tell me how and not have it take weeks to program and I’ll put it in the game!” Troy Miles on The Lord of the Rings (and yes, there is auto-mapping in the game, ‘cause I ain’t a seagull designer).
Ironman works though in some MMO's but those modes are then built on it, like in Runescape.
WOW the fact that a producer was mad qa found a bug says all i need to hear about the current state of the video game industry. i believe magicial games come from a group of people with a magical connection all sharing a common goal IN GOOD FAITH they all have to WANT to make a game most people now a days dont want to work they think its school show up and your good. i listen to so many people talk about getting a degree and doing that with no scope of what it actually takes. like its just so easy. like they dont understand you ACTUALLY have to be GOOD at somthing you have to develop a skill and more likly skills not go to college and get a degree
That designer that wanted to kill the player instantly made me imagine Bernard Black of Black Books. Even you mannerisms sounded a lot like how he'd say stuff in the show. :D
I mean there are MMO's with perma death, two of them it's optional such as Path Of Exiles, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. However for Wizardry Online I believe it's default, and you can argue whatever I guess for something like EVE Online. I think a few other MMO's have or had a mode or said feature as default, but it is rare. I honestly kinda like the idea, even more so if it's a Sand Box MMO.
Thanks Tim, interesting and educational as always! A lot of what you said might seem obvious, but having someone actually put all this into words and support it with personal anecdotes/examples is very helpful!
I hope you don't mind if I pull a "seagull RUclipsr" and suggest a video topic for another time. ;) With all the hindsight, professional experience, and technology you now have, how would you change Arcanum in terms of balancing and systems design if you were to work on another Arcanum game today? I think a video like this would be both very interesting to the game's fans as well as educational to any aspiring game designers watching this channel.
The reason I chose Arcanum in particular is because I feel like it's one of your most (if not the most) ambitious games in terms of game design but at the same time has some rough edges that provide room to elevate the game even further. That being said, if you choose to make this video, feel free to pick any other game you find appropriate, of course!
Flip side of this issue is that so many bad designers who can bs in interview and network really well become designer but they can't make spec, can't solve design problems, and the games they design just isn't fun. There are so many games with great art with functionally stable code, but the designer was a hack and the game just isn't fun. :/ A common red flag for me is usually when a designer just keep copy-pasting things from other games without ever thinking about how they fit together nor what the "goal" of any of the things are.
Had I not left the shack wearing my deathclaw piss animal repellant I very well might not have had a bear hug waiting for me at the Super Duper mart. We'll never know though because I did.
CONFIRMED: Tim Cain responsible for demise of Sierra after stopping development of world’s first survival MMO 😅
the permadeath mmo was a good example to support your point but unfortunately it's been done successfully in Realm of the Mad God which is still very popular and I wished you could have rebutted that counterpoint. Still very good video.
You would think fun would be top priority, but I think designers lose sight of it far more often than they should. Essentially any design decision should always circle back around to - does this make the game fun? Sometimes, even giving the player what they think they want would break that rule. Just like real life, everyone wants to be rich. But do you know what would happen if everyone in the world were suddenly disgustingly rich? The majority of us would immediately become bored out of our minds and struggle to find a reason to exist. Most humans find purpose in struggle and conflict, and video games are sort of evidence of this.
In other software development fields you get the exact same scenarios. Ideas and requirements from people above you who have no clue what their demands mean in reality.
I'm a professional artist and semi-professional programmer.
And on a personal project I wear almost all the possible production hats.
But there's always that imposter syndrome because..am I a real designer, or just a multi-talented idea guy?
Unlike the other disciplines, Game Design is really hard to measure in terms of efficiency and quality.
As an artist, I can make a visual thing.
As a programmer, develop an algorithm, implement a feature.
But as a designer? It's still just "idea guy"ing around, while rest of my "hats" figure out the scope, implementation, priorities, how it fits the larger goals, etc.
As a result, always having strong imposter syndrome when it comes to game design.
Hmm, perhaps you could do a video about Imposter Syndrome?
Well, since I hate encumbrance as well, I'll take the challenge and jump into the role of those people going "i can do your job" that annoy you so. You make everything stack. You don't put junk items in the game (hello BG3). You add an option to shift+click for sell all in a stack to make it so it's not a pain in a store (hi again BG3). You add sorting options that work at all times to auto-sort items (as opposed to sorting once and forcing the player to do it every time. I'm looking at you again, BG3) and you don't remove any of the sorting options in the sequel (this time I'm looking at Deadfire). Inventory problem solved. In fact, most of this stuff was done in Pillars. Didn't you work on that game?
I also agree with that dude on infinite ammo. Managing ammo is just not fun. You should appreciate that as someone who says "fun trumps realism". Why would anyone use melee then? Plenty of reasons. Bows are not good when someone with melee weapon is rushing you. They can't be used with a shield. They don't scale with strength. There are tons of ways to distinguish them that don't involve unfun busywork. You yourself have invented some of them in Arcanum.
very cool Timothy Cain 👍
Where were bows and arrows in fallout?
I thought that fallout was a tad quaint.
Cool. Keep on trucking.
Day 2 of asking how the fallout 4 power armour compares to the idea and vision of power armour from fallout also day 2 of saying please keep this videos coming because they're great
Id be afraid use a medic/healer class created by that designer who had the 'kill the player' mentality.
8:26 this recursion, though!
Its intresting to see how something like rs ironman can be so successful.
Now I want to play a seagull people rpg...
The mark of a master is to make something difficult look easy.
If people think your job is easy, it probably means you're pretty dang good at it 😄
I need to stop saying "Hi Tim" everytime a video starts.
Narrative design and writing also have the issue of everyone thinking they're all qualified to give professional pointers. Not implying equivalent quantity, but the issue is definitely present.