Playing Like a Designer - II: How to Analyze Game Design - Extra Credits
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- All types of games offer value and learning for beginner and experienced game designers. But analyzing these games requires some familiarity with concepts and terms that will help you go beyond describing a game as "good" or "bad."
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(Original air date: February 9, 2011)
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♪ Intro Music: "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM
bit.ly/1eIHTDS
♪ Outro Music: "Morning, Thinker" by DragonAvenger, Mattias Häggström Gerdt
ocremix.org/rem...
"Son, are you...are you... playing farmville?"
"GODDAMMIT MOM I'M PLAYING IT AS A DESIGNER"
Kid designer?
also mom:*yells for father* HONEY get the shotgun
I love how he says, "were running out of time" or "I better get moving on" because it gives the video more a discussion/relaxed feel instead of a very scripted monologue feel.
never noticed that. Smart.
holy shit
The first thing you said goes for many things.
For example: If you want to be a serious musician, you must listen to many different genres of music. You can't shut certain things out because they're "too mainstream" or "annoying" or "old". There's always something to learn if you really look.
That depressing moment where you see amazing depth to a system in a game, but the world isn't worth exploring because they didn't spend any time on fleshing out the actual playing field...
yume nikki
@Carlos Matos rengoku 2
when you started on technical break points my computer crashed and i had to reboot, i call that lesson learned
You mentioned learning philosophy as being a helpful topic to learn in your 'making your first game' video. I think it really is tremendously useful. Learning to examine things like you recommend is really opened up by learning philosophy. People, by their nature, don't question the things they believe. They accept them as true, and see picking them apart as a waste of time. They don't actually try to explain, even to themselves, why murder is wrong. They hear about a society that practices cannibalism and dismiss it out of hand, with no desire whatsoever to understand their thinking (let alone recognizing that had they lived in the same society they would accept cannibalism just as easily as they accepted opposition to it). Most people really do believe, on a very fundamental and personal level, that their reactions to things are absolute consequences of the essential nature of the thing, not something that can be changed or controlled or even understood. They don't see their emotions as being the outcome of their personal experiences and thinking. If something is 'good' or 'bad' or 'offensive', etc, they really do believe they feel that way because that is How It Is.
there is a theory that these deep set beliefs exist because of the way your brain physically grows as you learn, meaning beliefs such as murder is wrong are hardwired and very hard to change.
Dook Leeto hey, do you have a link to somewhere I can read this theory? It would really help me with a project I'm doing!
Matheus Pimentel I dont sorry, it might be in an old tv series called 'the brain' but I dont remember where I heard it, or if its even true :P
You know, I could honestly see why philosophy has a lot to do with game design. It's a very untapped medium and has the advantage of having a part of the story missing, you.
Dear EC-Team. The thing about your vids is that they're amazing. Engaging. Educating. Better than lessons and teachers in my school. So please, STOP SAYING YOU'RE OUT OF TIME EVERY 5 SECONDS. I only bring this up because I love this show. Seriously it would be no problem, if your vids would be 20 min. long, I would love to see that.
I agree that pointing out a time limit does ruin things, but if they don't keep the videos to a certain time, that's all the more drawings that have to be made and increased time to produce these vids regularly.
They say it a few times, not every five seconds...and to me that's almost their gimmick in a way. Again, to me, I think it show their dedication. They have so much they want to say but they have to stick on the one subject due to time and it's nice to know they do have so much stuff they want to talk about. Rather than, UGGGGHHHH we still have five minutes left. I'd prefer, we're running out of time to tell us about everything rather than running out of things to say and waiting for time to run out.
It seems their main constraint is the amount of work for their artist Allison increases dramatically if they make the show even 2 minutes longer than their 6:30 average or something. Imagine if you have a steady job and can competently do the workload but every 3 weeks your boss gives you 160% the normal workload and no extra time to finish it in. Now it starts eating into your personal time and requires you to make sacrifices that are getting a bit unreasonable. Wouldn't you be pissed?
I suggest that for issues that really demand further discussion but you don't want to tax Allison overly you allow her to update the frames half as often. Thus you can halve her workload per minute of video and stretch out the length of the clips at the cost of the quality of the visuals. You wouldn't do this frivolously so you can consider each week whether the matter you're discussing is important enough to grant extra time to but not so much as to create multiple episodes for that you're prepared to reduce visual quality. If they articulate this to us, the viewers, I believe we'd be fair minded about it not to whine about a drop in aesthetic quality.
Aha! I know what James was playing! That is Tradewinds! I hate taking notes in games but this forced one me to do so because of the varying prices among the trading posts and how they get influenced by the changing months. Great game :D.
The Metal Gear Solid's Codec was like the silent hill limitation. With all the cinematics, they couldnt afford more, and there was a lot of story to tell, so they decided to make the codec.
When you got to the bugs I remembered when I was playing Rune Factory 4 and Bado, one of the villagers, was walking on a lamp post. He was just doing his regular walk animation but in place and part on him was a lamp post. Though the whole game is solid and it's probably my favorite game ever, so instead of complaining or anything like that I just thought it was hilarious and made up a story to go along with it. See Bado is a dwarf always trying to sell and make the most cost efficient things he can, no matter how useless they actually are, so I just made up the story that he made some flying shoes but they didn't work so well and not he can't get off the lamp post. While my character just sat there laughing. I love RF4 a lot.
I love you guys for using thinker as the outro
My freaking jaw dropped when I realized that you used thinker
It's nice to see ac pilots once in while
My gamedev professor is making us play FarmVille for an assignment, and I feel called out by 0:35
Original build of DotA: "I sure hope noone figures out that you can kill allied creeps to deny enemies experience and gold."
DotA community today: "Denying is not an exploit, it's a feature!"
What you’re talking about is something called POU, or Philosophy Of Use. In short, the concept that a given piece of equipment will be highly effective in a given situation than others.
However, a POU denotes a given strategy, and some of those strategies are more difficult to pull off. Ever stop to wonder why so many people like to just find a corner and camp in some FPS games? I think it's safe to say that camping is a FOO.
Hope that helped.
I found rather shocking that 1h is enough, or at least suggested, for most games :O
but this also explains many many things - i have been playing "design-ish" for a long while and one of the issues i have encountered, and that i hoped to see resolved on these videos - is stress. Sometimes it can even take the joy out of a game!
For example, pokémon red sucks on so many levels, but still i had a blast playing it as a children! And still to this day i rerun it in different ways! If i focus on it i can see the good stuff, but i see also the bad stuff and it makes me enjoy less a product, even if it has way more good stuff than bad stuff.
This makes the 1h limit far more reasonable, not only timewise but pleasure/resource wise, and probably i have to develop a mental switch to swap from a way to play to an other.
+Enrico Boccardi I'm sure that most things u hate now about Pokemon Red are the same ones that annoyed you as a kid. The difference is that now you understand why they are irritating. Not analyzing a game you play doesn't mean you don't notice the flaws.
However, if you love a game you recognize and accept its flaws, especially if it's that old. You just play while having the limitations in mind. I'm looking at you boxes and inventory.
I've been doing that bit about examining all the menus and pushing all the buttons since I was in second grade. And that was when I first wanted to be a designer and long before I even opened RUclips
I CAN'T STOP PLAYING LIKE A DESIGNER HELP ME
+Ethan Garen HAVE YOU TRIED HAVING FUN YET?
Zadamanim I TRIED, ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT WAS *WHY* I WAS HAVING FUN
Quo Vadis BECAUSE SHOUTING IS BETTER THAN TALKING NORMALLY BECAUSE ITS EASIER TO HEAR, AT THE COST OF DEAFENING PEOPLE, BUT HEY IF WE DEAFEN THEM THEY WONT HEAR *_THE SCREAMS OF THE LONG FORGOTTEN_* ANYMORE SO THATS PRETTY COOL I GUESS
+Ethan Garen HEY I HAVE AN IDEA!TRY MAKING UP A REALLY HARD CHALLENGE THAT REQUIRES MONITORING OR FOCUS THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO FOCUS ON THE CHALLENGE!!!
YELLING NOISES
"A FOO strategy can completely break a single-player or co-op game." For some reason, this brought back the seldom-recalled memory of a time I tried to create a puzzle book as a child. The older boy who was helping me was telling me the maze I'd attempted to put together was a bore because, to quote him, "It's just, blah, blah, blah, blah, DONE." Seems to sum up what you had to say nicely.
4:25 had me laughing hysterically for reasons that I can't quite put to words.
Really happy to hear one of my absolute favourite oc remixes in the outro. Also, awesome video
I am glad you make videos like this. showing the world of game designers how to think. in a better perspective. when getting into the field of work.
I thoroughly enjoy learning from the videos on this channel. Even though I only play games, not make them, I still find these videos engaging and interesting. Good work. :).
I'm looking the guide to be a good game designer and found your channel that contains a lot of useful information here. Love this guide so much! Thanks!
"If you want to take apart a cat to see how it works, the first thing you have is a non-working cat."
Battlefield 3 and getting sniped from across map with a god damn pistol is much more rage inducing than noob tubes.
these are excellent videos, I really wanna get into game-developing. These videos makes it more clear what my weaknesses are and what I need to improve.
5:57 Who wouldn’t react like that if that started coming out of the tv. lol
**Sees ICO case**
Critical hit right in the feels.
Id love a part 3! These videos are addicting.
(5:27) When I grind in Final Fantasy I, its usually for money, not XP. I like to play with a Warrior (so my party isn't wiped out in one turn), and all three mages (so I have two life casters and two barrages of magic attacks). This setup requires me to grind for money, and the XP just sort of comes naturally. When I ran into a Warmech at level 33ish and lived, I was surprised to find that people usually run into a Warmech at level 25ish, around when I was still in the Ice Cave.
"...or first person shooters.."
*Displays a third-person shooter*
Small thing, but i noticed it.
This doesn't just apply to games for me. I was using "Word Perfect" in school to write a paragraph for French, and my friend opened the dictionary (built in) on his computer. The close button was at the bottom right instead of the top right corner like it usually is. Just design decisions for any computer program or game gets me thinking. Things like that are helpful when I see other people and how they react to a design decision, That way it helps me know how best to design.
I remember in Zelda Twilight Princess there was a fixed camera inside the city so they didn't have to render it... but you had control over your camera in every other part of the game, so it always jarred like hell to have that taken away.
When I create levels in some games for my mom, I need to set difficulty to peaceful :)
Lol, this is so funny the review criteria I have I created like in 2007 taking aspects from film to relate to gaming. With the video game genres it was even earlier because when I had an account on GameSpot it would baffle me that they compare - and still do - games not in the genre in a review and thus distorting a GOTY awards. Now watching this by definition I have been playing video games my whole life as a designer and didn't realize it. So I went from theatre, poetry class, science, to programming where everything clicks.
I think I learned more about me than you teaching me how to look at games, lol, now that's funny.
I saw King's Bounty, awesome game!
Watching this today. Your advice still holds up. Thank you :D
He was an indie dev, of all things. Check out the Chzo Mythos series (Five Days a Stranger, Seven Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes, Six Days a Sacrifice) was produced by him, and they're damn nice horror games.
Look up The Chzo Mythos, he did an entire series.
Also recently he made a metroidvania-style game: Poacher. It's pretty fun.
An episode that needs to be done is one for the Devs to play their games as a new player with little to no knowledge. Like What will a new player know at the beginning of the game? Or will the grind the devs put in drive off new players? That sort of stuff. Most MMOs out there now have devs that only play with dev abilities or play with their intimate knowledge and not how a regular casual player would play.
Makes sense. If players need to learn to play like designers it is vitally important to do the reverse if a designers wants to make a better game, even Call Of Duty manages this fairly well.
That's why I'm going to have my family play test my games. They literally have no experience with any video games (other than my brother, who introduced me to video games) other than stuff like FarmVille and whatnot. Great chance to see if what I have works for literally the noobiest of noobs
This is actually my favorite outro song in the whole series.
Even with Subsistence, the camera had a weird disconnect between where you were looking and how the gun aimed, making it really feel kind of broken. At least when compared to something like Splinter Cell, where the camera and the aiming were one in the same.
And written books. And made "Let's Play"'s. And he's got that show,
the best example of the bug thing is Portal 2. so many glitches that are really useful for everything
The outro song is amazing!
When he said game bugs that we can leave in, my first thought: Nuclear Ghandi
I think the early C&C games where very educational in the whole rulies.ini moding thing....
that really gave me a good idea of how the game engine worked.
The money system could be balanced by looking at the cash the player has at that point vs. the amount he should have and then setting a modifier for the enemy drops. Ratchet and Clank does that so even if you skip most enemies you will get close to the bolt count needed at the "gates".
yeah i know one in ninja gaiden black, not sure if it counts since it is so hard anyway, but you can use a jump sword move that will nearly instantly kill an enemy or put it to half health. but later you come across ninjas that will not only get out of the way, but hit you twice as you recover from the move, and they kill you at full heath in 3 hits...
Ohhh. That make sense and I can already picture examples of it in games I've played. Thank you! :)
Spawn, die... sounds like Battlefront :'D
+Patrick Weibel That's exactly what I thought.
wow i'm not sure how i'm supposed to find all these problems in the games, but i'm gonna try
Thx that you made this series, learning alot of it!
I've always quite enjoyed the Mirrors Edge choice of perspective..
would have been better with the oculas rift (get on it EA)
Likewise, but it did cause issues at times - still a great game
i always wanted to try it out
boardguy2 would actually made you puke after 5 minutes of play... best try and avoid games with a lot of camera movement and fast movements when playing VR. this game has quit a bit of both.
For some very intuitive design ideas and mechanics, check out Undertale. It is an amazing game that will not leave you disappointed.
+Ender Shane It seems like opinions tend to fall either on the view of "it's the best!" or "it's terrible", which really is rather odd. It's not personally my thing, though that's largely due to the encounter mechanics and visual aesthetics(also a bit due to some deliberately hard to find endings and that it has a bit of an "against the player" attitude, from my understanding).
It seems like something that could be better.
It does have some interesting aspects, which could prove interesting, at least if other games experiment with them, such as the combat systems or certain story elements though(and visual preferences change from person to person, so what's a downside to me can prove a plus to others).
Ryu is SF's FOO. He's given a fireball and an uppercut, one controls horizontal space one that controls vertical space (uppercut can be replaced with st.hk). It's all the tools you need to experience a lot of the depth of SF, which is largely a game about controlling space.
you guys are amazing! love the material! thank you!
just met james portland at 4 today at pax east, dudes awesome haha - if u read this james i was the kid sitting down
Hey, I wonder if you could do an episode on games like Skylanders and Disney Infinity and how the use of physical toys being integrated into their respective games may add to the experience.
Great videos, giving perspective vastly covered by logical cognition and previous expierience makes entertaining and quality views! +1
pro tip
this is where services like gamefly or other game rental services shine, it makes exp many games for short amounts of time
much less expensive
IS THAT ARMORED CORE 4 MUSIC AT THE END?! Never thought to hear that here...
LoL
I'm watching this vid while AFK mining in EVE. Now I want to know all the "neat little production tricks" they didn't have time to mention in this episode!
4:11 valve in a nutshell
Lol
The whole "drowning in money" scenario seems to happen a lot in RPGs in general. Even when equipment is prohibitively expensive for much of the game, there always seems to be a point where you eventually acquire so much that you can buy the best stuff money can buy all at once and still have plenty left over. Of course, these games sort of balance that out by making the best stuff have to be earned instead of just bought.
I shot down a few MMO games to play with my gaming group, because there were things that I didn't totally like. With this video in mind, I'm going to tackle those games!
After all, they could help me make better games. :)
7:27 Dark Souls and Dark Souls III
The five nights at Freddy's is a perfect example it has bugs and loop holes that were purposely implemented into the game so that you can get to the end of the game. Doing this makes players think " if I do this and then I go here and jump through this part of the wall" in short it makes a virtual puzzle that you can't tell that its their until you explore the game thoroughly.
Gianni Alagna It also handles foo strategies nicely. It allows you to use them, so you can find yourself more or less comfortable. But a certain time after - it makes them absolutely unusable.
for example: I will just do nothing and I'll be okay - this might work out for the first night. But then you fail.
Or maybe I wont look at cameras, i'll just look around with lights - okay... until Foxy is introduced.
Silent Line, but STILL good to see Armored Core getting some love!
And this also is the way professional videogame reviewers play games (except for the 1-hour thing).
one of the best F.O.O strategies i know is the dead ringer from tf2, it allows players who are new at spy learn how to better survive.
n example of an accidental FOO strategy I found was in a sort of tower defense game called lochs quest, where you build a base out of walls gates and turrets but I found an AI exploit where all the AIs would aim for the gates so I would build something incredibly simple as a base and just line up the most powerful turrets in the game in a sort of hallway that even destroyed the final boss in a matter of seconds. There was never any reason to deviate from this, so I kept using it over and over until I beat the game.
+TheQuestsquad or systemic break
I think the picking apart of games is useful for reviewers as well as designers
Well gotta keep in mind with FF they do make things cost a bit more and they actually have an attack in a few games to use that excess of gil to cause damage. Generally I've noticed if you see the move "Gil Toss" money is going to be easy to get in that specific FF game. If it's not in there it's either harder to get or cost for items is balanced enough for it to not cause massive mountains unless you excessively grind.
I personally found Minecraft to be a very good example and guide for budding game designers. Gain a basic level of understanding of Javascript, then look at the source code for the much earlier versions, and see how Notch implemented the basic graphics or basic mechanics.
"javascript" ....did you know java and javascript are 2 completely différents thing?
VintageLJ As a programmer, java is a hell of a more complicated than javascript for a good reason. you can do a lot more things that you simply are limited to in javascript. And not just that, but programming a 3d rendering engine as in Minecraft, requires knowledge in calculus and linear algerbra, stuff you learn in a comp science major.
VintageLJ Speaking of it, you can learn from the gameplay itself. How does it make you find something certain?
For example: how does it make a player go mining? It shows you coal on surface, which makes you dig for more,which makes you find iron, which gives you an idea that you could use it, which gives you a goal...
you get the idea.
I try to make games that mean something in life, that have a message
I thought I read a body massage XD
If it's a game that has a message, you can either do it consciously, or unconsciously.
Conscious morals tend to be that "and that is why we never do this" kind of moral, which few good designers, book writers, etc. actually do. However, a lot of persons do it subconsciously, which resonates with the gamer, reader, etc. This is usually far more effective that conscious morals
An example of unconscious morals being displayed is the bias the player gains against a foe. In the Legend of Zelda series, for instance, we tend to go with Link against Ganondorf (in a lot of the games, anyway). Why? Because he and his followers openly attack you. People openly attack their enemies, however in the games. If Nintendo had us play as Ganon instead of Link, however, we would have biases against Link too. I have digressed here, but I hope to have made my point (it was the quickest analogy I could think of). In our scenario, if the morale you wanted to portray was to save money, you could make a game that had a side quest where the player could deposit the some of their currency into a sort of bank. After a certain amount of time, the player can get a huge amount back or something like that.
I know I'm late, but both the facts that no one else has replied and the fact that I just got here have permitted this tattered of a reply to come. I just hope it helps :)
Liked for the Foo. Good Foo.
I agree. And MGS 3: Substistence has a good camera, Snake Eater, the original version, is the version that has a bad camera.
Woo! Part two!
That is such a cute F.O.O. strategy!
Best outdo song yet :p
Ironically, I did this myself before even watching the two-part video. This can be done for hacked games as well.
Nice tips :3
I will try working on these. Some of them I already do myself everytime I aquire new games or play old ones :D
I hope that I can improve on myself, though :D
A good example - play L.A. Noire and notice how many people have really short hair, or are bald - it's basically everyone! A practical solution, but I couldn't not think of it once I noticed it. Do you know how hard it is to make hair realistic? They had to spend so much time on the faces alone, let alone the hair.
Understanding the concept of F.O.O. made me have more respect for Meta Knight in Super Smash Bros. Brawl! :P
You can usually rent some games, or play at your friend's house. As a last resort, you can always engage in educational piracy. You can also try to start with flash games and sorta work your way up from that.
I'd really like so see episodes of specific games like an episode about eve online or zelda (riddles 2d/3d)
This may have originated from Ocarina of Time. In retrospect, it's now clear to me that the camera angles are fixed in the alleys and rotate in the fountain on the main square due to limitations. They needed a nighttime, daytime AND a "zombie" version of the city; only making storefronts instead of whole buildings saved space on the limited cartridge, while the other towns was fully rendered.
Rather than limited, I think that TP tried to create the nostalgic feel from ZOoT.
there is 2 ways to a JRPG that I know its a way to beat it
1 overpower type whick its grind to a set level and just flatten the enemy
2 drag out the enemy using healing->skill->attack->item grind through the enemy
3 chug item and attack
using money to lessen grind is also a choice.
5:48 not impossible. If you look at it from another perspective though, it would look weird.that piece that makes it "impossible"? attached to the back of the board it look like it's behind. Then another, smaller piece is in the front on one side so it looks legit.
Why would you say Mirrors Edge has camera issues? First person parkour is what makes the game unique, and they actually started working on it as a third person game before eventually changing it.
The game may have been Tradewinds, a game i remember playing a while ago, not sure though, since i havent played it in... ever.
I'm really shocked you didn’t talk about the Binding of Isaac. Litterally everything you said in this video could have been linked to it with interesting point of views!
he did a few adventure games on Windows awhile back. you can find them on his Blogspot page.
Actually, when playing Final Fantasy XI (personal all time favorite game) I often find that I'm grinding for gold to afford things just as often as I'm grinding for levels. At least, in areas that have shopkeepers to buy useful gear and items from. I'm a very defensive player a lot of the time, and I like to be as thoroughly prepared as possible for the coming boss, or the next area. So as a result, I will spend a massive amount of time grinding in order to get all of the upgrades I can, or enough items to make me feel comfortable. Not to mention the inordinate amount of time I devote purely to the Chocobo Mini Games! As a result, I'm often slightly over-leveled by the time I get to the next area or dungeon.
Please also make a video 'For Designers: How to play a game like a Player.' ( I got way too much analytical dialogue going on in my head while I'm trying to enjoy a game. ) :/
+Martian Games try weed while playing games perhaps....
Just turn off your head, stop thinking and try to remember back when you didn´t overthinked everything there.
I think these limitations of design give some concrete reasons why a remastered game does not automatically mean "better in every way."
Return to Arkham has a very confused community response where some praise the visuals while others don't.
The unreal engine 3's ability to produce light was often un b elievably harsh. When looking at Return to Arkham it is pretty clear what the intention was... to bridge the Arkham Trilogy into a more unified look.
The Arkham Asylum appears more blue rather than green and Arkham City appears more green rather than blue.
But going further, the intention to develop a better more realistic game highlights some of the games visuals.
By utilizing the harsh lighting feature of UE3 the Arkham games ran with the dark creased and greasy and dynamic side of cartoon villainy. It explains why many of the character models looked so strikingly different. And by removing this harsh lighting its made these less complex character models actually appear more flat and devoid of character while having an opposite effect on the enviroments where heavy mods have been put in play creating a disjointed visual experience.
This unifying approach to the visual style creates a clear departure from the special qualities of those games where limitations were used to develop mood, and it will be very interesting to see how this might play out.
You should do a video on the steps you should take to become a game designer.
omg I love you I agree with every word you sayyyy
thank youuu
1:35- ..Heh, that's odd.. I always seem to check out the options and stuff in a game before I actually play it.. And that's *before* I watched this series.. O_O