Game Design
Caramel Betty's post on gaming and gamers got me thinking and since I'd not updated this in a while, I decided to try and mould these thinkings into a post as a sort of 'I'm not dead yet' kind of thing.
I like open games. This needs to be said at the start. More often than not I will ignore 'campaign mode' in favour of 'sandbox mode' if there is a choice. I want to tell my own story in an RPG, not have one dictated to me. I want to build my own world/country/city/business in a construction simulation, not have my goals decided for me and have my reward be the game taking my work away from me and presenting me with a 'new challenge'.
This is why I love the Civilization games. Even after you 'win' you can still keep playing! I love that in a game. I love the Total War series of games too, because there's a lot of freedom to do as you please, build what you please, and make whatever tactical decisions you want.
For the same reasons I hate the Final Fantasy series. Every time I've played them they've always felt massively rigid, with a story being dictated to me while I tried to pretend I had a choice in what to do next. I never had a choice, and I never cared about the characters. They were never my characters, they were always someone else's. I didn't care if they died because the designers of the game didn't care what I wanted to do. Also, not being able to see my enemy before it jumped me always pissed me off no end.
So, what would I ideally want from a game? Well, one that cares what I want to do, what I am doing and which tries to foresee what I plan on doing. How would this manifest? Ideally if it's a Civilization-type game the tech trees shouldn't be so rigidly defined. I want the game to monitor what I'm building, and from me building them make me better at building them. Practice making perfect. So if I play as the Romans, there's an obvious path down a regimented, historical route where I focus on orgnaized infantry. But there's also options open where I could focus on breeding better horses, getting better cavalry, working on my bow technology and getting archers that make the rest of the world envious. What I'm getting at is that the tech trees should respond to what I actually do. So if I crush my citizens under my despotic boot, they should not develop things like printing presses - it shouldn't be an option if my society isn't free enough. Likewise, if I've never invested in training any horse units then the first mounted cavalry I make should suffer.
There should be things that the terrain of my cities changes too, so a nice river situated in a wide open plains area should be a different living experience for my citizens than a mountainous and rocky waste. My mountain-dwelling people should become hardier, while my river-side citizens should have and easier life and possibly become more wealthy and lazy as a result. If I prevent the free movement of my citizens then these should become more pronounced over time, while if I allow free movement then they should be very, very diluted features.
One thing that has bugged me for a long time about the Civ games, is that the cities stay as one square with two squares in each direction as their harvest zones. With improvements in transportation links the area from which a city can draw should become larger. Likewise an increase in population shoule be noticed in a spreading of the city from the square it started in. 10,000 poor, stone-age settlers shouldn't take up the same space as 10,000,000 industrial-era citizens. Of course, if these two features combined then there'd be no limit to city sizes, which there shouldn't be. Cities should grow and swallow nearby towns. It'd be awesome.
Anyway, I'm rabbiting. Jabber, jabber, jabber. :)
I like open games. This needs to be said at the start. More often than not I will ignore 'campaign mode' in favour of 'sandbox mode' if there is a choice. I want to tell my own story in an RPG, not have one dictated to me. I want to build my own world/country/city/business in a construction simulation, not have my goals decided for me and have my reward be the game taking my work away from me and presenting me with a 'new challenge'.
This is why I love the Civilization games. Even after you 'win' you can still keep playing! I love that in a game. I love the Total War series of games too, because there's a lot of freedom to do as you please, build what you please, and make whatever tactical decisions you want.
For the same reasons I hate the Final Fantasy series. Every time I've played them they've always felt massively rigid, with a story being dictated to me while I tried to pretend I had a choice in what to do next. I never had a choice, and I never cared about the characters. They were never my characters, they were always someone else's. I didn't care if they died because the designers of the game didn't care what I wanted to do. Also, not being able to see my enemy before it jumped me always pissed me off no end.
So, what would I ideally want from a game? Well, one that cares what I want to do, what I am doing and which tries to foresee what I plan on doing. How would this manifest? Ideally if it's a Civilization-type game the tech trees shouldn't be so rigidly defined. I want the game to monitor what I'm building, and from me building them make me better at building them. Practice making perfect. So if I play as the Romans, there's an obvious path down a regimented, historical route where I focus on orgnaized infantry. But there's also options open where I could focus on breeding better horses, getting better cavalry, working on my bow technology and getting archers that make the rest of the world envious. What I'm getting at is that the tech trees should respond to what I actually do. So if I crush my citizens under my despotic boot, they should not develop things like printing presses - it shouldn't be an option if my society isn't free enough. Likewise, if I've never invested in training any horse units then the first mounted cavalry I make should suffer.
There should be things that the terrain of my cities changes too, so a nice river situated in a wide open plains area should be a different living experience for my citizens than a mountainous and rocky waste. My mountain-dwelling people should become hardier, while my river-side citizens should have and easier life and possibly become more wealthy and lazy as a result. If I prevent the free movement of my citizens then these should become more pronounced over time, while if I allow free movement then they should be very, very diluted features.
One thing that has bugged me for a long time about the Civ games, is that the cities stay as one square with two squares in each direction as their harvest zones. With improvements in transportation links the area from which a city can draw should become larger. Likewise an increase in population shoule be noticed in a spreading of the city from the square it started in. 10,000 poor, stone-age settlers shouldn't take up the same space as 10,000,000 industrial-era citizens. Of course, if these two features combined then there'd be no limit to city sizes, which there shouldn't be. Cities should grow and swallow nearby towns. It'd be awesome.
Anyway, I'm rabbiting. Jabber, jabber, jabber. :)