Game design in 2013, should The Bore have a next gen survey?

[Damian79]

Games have changed over the years and todays games are nothing like games 20 years ago.  So what should games be like today?  Specifically on what exactly you guys think makes a game hard, fun, stupid and just bad design?

Sample questions i thought about(add more so we can compile them in the end):

Are levels based on memorising stuff bad design?

Are bosses based on patterns instead of randomness bad design?

Are standard enemies that require too many hits to kill bad design?

How hard should a game test your reflexes, ie how long should a window of response from you be to not get hit etc?

[brob]

I don't really care about "bad design" outside of UI. People who talk about bad design in mechanics and gameplay (loops!) are often the people who think a game being addictive is good design.

[Rufus]

Eh. Eh.

Bad design is definitely a thing, in all types of games. Levels, challenges, AI, difficulty, maps, balance, pointless repetition, simple mechanics stretched too far, pointless complexity (where many abilities go unused), variety. Not all of these areas have to be met to the highest standards and not every game benefits equally from improvements in these areas, but I think they're always important to some extent.

For me personally it always boils down to time and convenience. If a level for instance isn't as clever as it could be (naturally guiding your eyes to the objectives, well but not obscurely hidden goodies, playing with perspective, complex geometry, verticality, etc.) I will forgive it so long as it doesn't waste my time or the challenges it presents in forms of enemies or puzzles make up for it. Escort levels are an exception in that they are almost always shite.

Graphics and QA are peripheral and you can throw money at them to solve them. UI less so. Game design can be put through a lot of testing as well, but you need people who know what they're doing to run the tests and interpret the results intelligently.

[brob]

A game and it's elements can be critiqued, but when "bad design" gets trotted out it's usually in a sweeping sense. In a "this is never good" type of way. Is obfuscation and trial & error bad design? In Half Life, probably. In Demon's Souls, probably not.

I dislike random elements in games, particularly in reward systems. But reward systems with randomized rewards are much better at player retention than skill check reward systems. Does that mean the former is "better design" than the latter? If the goal is player retention, yes. And most testing doesn't really test for ''enjoyment''.

[Stoney Mason]

Assassin's Creed 3 was a badly designed game. Whether that was due to lack of skill or lack of time or a combination of both is debatable. This is my contribution.

Design is so variable that its very hard to make blanket suggestions about good design. Some things I think that are terribly designed others find very engaging. And vice versa.

[thisismyusername]

Sample questions i thought about(add more so we can compile them in the end):

Are levels based on memorising stuff bad design?

No. But they can be annoying. "Go here to open the door at the other side of the map and then go here." But games are almost always about memorization so this isn't exclusively a design thing.

Are bosses based on patterns instead of randomness bad design?

No. They're actually a good thing. See: Metal Gear Rising: Revengence's DLC-1 Boss/Armstrong. Armstrong is WAYYYYYY more random than he was in the base game to where you dunno where the attacks are going to be until it's possibly too late. Add in "no-damage"/not getting hit as a requirement and it becomes pretty frustrating to have to half-guess his next attack and then eat an attack for guessing wrong. That's kinda bad design.

Are standard enemies that require too many hits to kill bad design?

Depends on killspeed and the player. For me, it doesn't bother me too much unless it's like Halo 3's multiplayer where you dump an assault rifle magazine into someone, have their shields pop but no "physical" damage to where you have to go for a 1-3 melee attack to win the gun battle. Ultra stupid design decisions there for the sake of "oh you have super armor that can protect you from normal/human bullets!"

How hard should a game test your reflexes, ie how long should a window of response from you be to not get hit etc?

Eh, I'd say a 1-2second window would work, but I think that'd be "too open" for most things and break some games that are based on reactions. I think having a reasonable "millisecond" slider for older people in offline titles to use would be a good thing within reason. Don't want the window to be so open that it doesn't challenge them but not challenge them to the point where they can't rise to the occasion because they don't have the timing window reaction speed to get to it.

[Human Snorenado]

Bad design is ABSOLUTELY a thing.  It's an objective thing, too... although it can be hard to figure out.

You basically have to grade every game (if you want to be objective, anyway- if you just want to C- Ninja Gaiden go ahead and troll) on a curve BASED ON WHAT THAT GAME IS TRYING TO ACHIEVE.  Once you make that concession you can start figuring out what's bad design and what's not, regardless of your personal tastes.

Example- I really hate QTEs on a personal level.  I find them boring and stupid.  But, QTEs were the correct design choice for a lot of what The Last of Us was trying accomplish, at least from the tools Naughty Dog had available to them.  (There's gotta be a better way, but what that is I don't know)

Conversely, the way BioShock Infinite handles player interaction with the environment once everything goes to hell and you have to start with the killing is, imo, shitty design.  The game at first glance appears to be trying to offer a more unique experience in interaction when you get to Comstock's flying city, but nope!  Murder fest!  I generally like killing a bunch of dudes more than I do QTEs, but feel BioShock Infinite made poor design choices and TLoU made smarter ones for what they were trying (or should have been trying) to accomplish.

Another good recent example- the Auction Houses in Diablo 3.  On balance they're a poor design choice (tied into the shitty item reward system) because the game should be about killing monsters to get awesome loot.

[Rufus]

A game and it's elements can be critiqued, but when "bad design" gets trotted out it's usually in a sweeping sense. In a "this is never good" type of way. Is obfuscation and trial & error bad design? In Half Life, probably. In Demon's Souls, probably not.

I dislike random elements in games, particularly in reward systems. But reward systems with randomized rewards are much better at player retention than skill check reward systems. Does that mean the former is "better design" than the latter? If the goal is player retention, yes. And most testing doesn't really test for ''enjoyment''.

Yeah. Different people, different values. Sometimes "bad design" is just what suits someone's preferences most.
The last time the term really stuck out to me in how it was used was in regard to Demon's Souls actually. It came from Matt Chandronait (formerly of 1UP) on CO-OP, their ill-fated follow up to the 1UP show. He got genuinely angry as he was discussing the game and poor Ray Barnholt and Kat Bailey, who both like the game, looked incredulous but didn't even try to rebut what he was saying.

I would love to see how developers test their games. I have a feeling they're incredibly badly set up and their methodology horribly unscientific. I don't have much to go on besides general pessimism, since all we ever hear about is "watching testers play".

[Stoney Mason]

A game and it's elements can be critiqued, but when "bad design" gets trotted out it's usually in a sweeping sense. In a "this is never good" type of way. Is obfuscation and trial & error bad design? In Half Life, probably. In Demon's Souls, probably not.

I dislike random elements in games, particularly in reward systems. But reward systems with randomized rewards are much better at player retention than skill check reward systems. Does that mean the former is "better design" than the latter? If the goal is player retention, yes. And most testing doesn't really test for ''enjoyment''.

Yeah. Different people, different values. Sometimes "bad design" is just what suits someone's preferences most.
The last time the term really stuck out to me in how it was used was in regard to Demon's Souls actually. It came from Matt Chandronait (formerly of 1UP) on CO-OP, their ill-fated follow up to the 1UP show. He got genuinely angry as he was discussing the game and poor Ray Barnholt and Kat Bailey, who both like the game, looked incredulous but didn't even try to rebut what he was saying.

I would love to see how developers test their games. I have a feeling they're incredibly badly set up and their methodology horribly unscientific. I don't have much to go on besides general pessimism, since all we ever hear about is "watching testers play".

It depends on the dev. The very small indie devs that people are in love with at the moment go alot by feel along with whatever design principles they've picked along the way of playing games along with generally letting their friends and co-workers be the baseline.

Bigger publishers use metrics/focus testing etc but it varies based on lots of things.

It also depends somewhat on the genre.

[Rufus]

I know about focus testing and metrics, but that doesn't tell me much besides to suggest what data they're collecting and how they're collecting it. I want to know what assumptions they have about the data they're seeing, if and how they're changing the game in response, etc.
One Life Left had the founders of a testing company on their show once and all they seemed to provide to the devs was data on galvanic skin response, i.e. how much the testers were sweating. I assume the interpretation was left up to the developers, but they didn't go into that bit.

[Stoney Mason]

I know about focus testing and metrics, but that doesn't tell me much besides to suggest what data they're collecting and how they're collecting it. I want to know what assumptions they have about the data they're seeing, if and how they're changing the game in response, etc.
One Life Left had the founders of a testing company on their show once and all they seemed to provide to the devs was data on galvanic skin response, i.e. how much the testers were sweating. I assume the interpretation was left up to the developers, but they didn't go into that bit.

There are some devs that give you all the information in their process. You just have to look up post mortems and dev blogs and websites or some game dev books. The majority don't give out the information however because most assume rightly the general audience doesn't care or its part of their development process so why hand out secrets to the competition.

[Rufus]

Only post mortems I ever looked at were the ones on Gamasutra. Don't remember much testing talk from those. So, which dev, dev blog, websites, etc.?

Actually, that reminds me, the entire run of the GD mag has been released in PDF format: http://www.gdcvault.com/gdmag Not quite searchable, but nonetheless...

[Cerveza mas fina]

Another good recent example- the Auction Houses in Diablo 3.  On balance they're a poor design choice (tied into the shitty item reward system) because the game should be about killing monsters to get awesome loot.

Wow really