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A Brief Essay.
Good and Bad Game Design. There was a time when discussions about gameplay were non-existent. When gameplay was everything. The graphics sucked, the sound was worse and the whole thing had to fit in 16k! Witness the current explosion in emulator popularity. This is not just misty-eyed nostalgia. These games are a good alternative to today's monster installs, and escalating system requirements. The hardcore gamers, once the target market for developers, now find themselves being left behind all too often in the quest for market share. With new users adopting gaming everyday, with lower expectations, it should come as no surprise at the spread of sequelitis and 'me-too' clones. And so it falls to a constantly changing core of developers to come up with the goods. An august group, they include Bungie, Lionhead, Shiny, DMA and a few others. These developers capture the imagination of the jaded hardcore gamers and let them spread the word. Their attempts meet with varying degrees of success of course, but they keep trying. The milestones in computer gaming are set in stone. Doom, Civilisation, Populous, X-Wing; hell even Tetris! Another gameplay lesson for those who will listen. It's not your engine, it's not the actors in your FMV, it's not the number of CD's, it's not the packaging, it's not multi-player capabilities, it's the Game. |