Playing games to making them – how perspectives change

Once long, long ago, I was just a gamer and I simply consumed the digital entertainment provided by others. Explosions? Awesome. New guns? Sweet! At that time I put most of my energy into thinking about how great the experience was, and that I wanted more of it.

After a time I became curious though... was this the best that could be made? Those little areas that irritated me, could they be improved? If I had unlimited time and incredible skills, what could I make myself? What would be the perfect game?

The answer this would change on a daily basis depending on what I was doing at the time. Warcraft II made me convinced that the “perfect” game was a real time strategy. Shadowbane determined that the true path lay in an MMO. Mount and Blade led me to believing that the future lay in medieval simulations. Now I am sure that this is not an experience unique to me – I’ll bet that many other gamers will spend the rainy days at the office dreaming of their perfect game. Playing scenarios through their head of each awesome scene, shaped always by their own experiences.

My version of Warcraft II had no unit caps and a more expansive tech tree. Gareth’s Shadowbane, removed the money farming grind, and replaced it with automated farms and peasants who provided an hourly income. Battlefield 1943 introduced factories and an upgrade tree for unlocking new items and tanks.

I then started working as a game designer, first for the Mount and Blade mod, Prophesy of Pendor, and then later as the lead designer of my own studio, Zatobo, and now most recently as a freelance game design contractor.

This collective experience changed everything.

Just playing games changed my perspective of imagining my perfect game to analysing those products and working out precisely what I liked and disliked about them as I played. I took them to pieces in my mind, bemoaning bad design decisions (I cannot play Diablo III anymore, its core design simply ticks me off too much now), working out how they solved problems, and rarely getting excited by clever mechanics. Some games left me wondering about the future of the industry (the aforementioned Diablo III), and declaring its imminent demise, while others left me with a sense of wonder at what they had achieved (Mount and Blade).

Over the weekend I had something of a unique opportunity. I found myself playing “Game Dev Tycoon” by Greenheart Games, with some friends. While the game itself is good fun, it isn’t revolutionary, nor does it do much that is truly innovative but its subject matter is fascinating. A game about making games (with an achievement for making the game, in the game...).

This made my think about my own process of making games – how did I do it? Why did I do it this way? What had I learned during my three years as a part of the industry?

Well this is a subject for next time. Stay tuned! 

Image courtesy of; deborahtindle - http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/change%20perspective

Game Dev Tycoon - http://www.greenheartgames.com/