Rules of the Game: Five Techniques from Quite Inventive Designers

In this 2016 GDC microtalk session, designers Michael de Plater, Liz England, George Fan, Lee Perry, Richard Rouse III and Emily Short share key personal design philosophies that help shape the games they work on.
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[@Gnurklesquimp]

The talk about enemy variety covers some of the most important ways of looking at enemies, he even went over interesting prioritization that REALLY helps to make a single enemy translate interestingly to various contexts, stopping you from falling in patterns of seeing enemy x and doing y. I hope people hear this one, this is the thing I spend by far the most of my time on, the enemies, their traits, their ai, the way multiple enemies combine, all in a space that itself has meaning through your and the enemies' mechanics. I highly recommend just throwing together random levels and discovering how much more there is to your selection of enemies etc. than you though. The level will probably suck, but you end up seeing partial solutions to unbeatable encounters, and a little bit of fun that just needs some conflict in the trivial ones etc. etc. Basically, do what Jonathan Blow does, poke at your system and be perceptive of what happens and how you can harness that.

[@liraco_mx]

Good stuff. Favorite talk: 28:00 on real enemy variety. Honorable mention @ 5:25 on "pizazz".

[@jankovalsky3074]

*jazz hands*

[@simpson6700]

this is the complete opposite of what i heard i should do. i heard i should wait to put in these really fun special effects and work with programmer art for as long as i can and make the game fun before adding these things, that way the game is even more fun in the end. however what no one told me is that this makes developing the game a lot less fun for you, the dev and less fun slows down development. i might try giving my games a bit of polish early on, maybe this way i wont get depressed and give up halfway through.

[@xensakura595]

It's a balance. The base gameplay has to be fun, but if you just have a game that's all style, no substance, that won't work either.

[@wiaf8937]

at first i was like "what a weird concept", so glad i didnt click away. binging these hard. 10minutes really cooks out an interesting essential message on which one can build.

[@puladebili]

george's talk was simple, comprehensive and very informative. loved it!

[@MGHOoL5]

I think I'm a George fan..

[@handlol]

pvz is a legendary game. I knew my man would give a banger talk

[@fishyfinthing8854]

Of all GDC talks, George's is my most memorable.

[@xylvnking]

this talk is literally "A man can get lost in the sauce, but the same man. can be lost without the sauce." -Gucci Mane

[@VirakNgauv]

I really liked the documentation talk!

[@CptnHammer1]

The documentation talk was great!

[@gilless429]

Quite liked the Lee Perry talk, currently watching the Emily Short one and I'm liking it even more. This is a lot of fun to watch, and very interesting/informative.

[@leeperry7068]

Thanks BTW! Glad you dug it :)

[@fabiboiii]

I never believed the Nemesis system would make me feel taunted and played through the game and barely died ever. Then I farmed some Runes and suddenly met a captain with ridiculous immunities, he easily killed me and I went back to avenge my death and I died again and he got became Warlord soon after! I was REALLY scared of this guy and used every trick in the game to trap, face and defeat him and his army in a 50min faceoff at the fortress with cliffs always going back and forth! Never would've thought this game could trigger this feeling in me and other than the story ending it's a masterpiece in most ways! Now even more disappointing and downright aggravating that the successor is turning out to be a shitshow we have to boycott

[@ZoidbergForPresident]

Agreed, with everything. WOuldn't call it a masterpiece though, but the nemesis system is great.

[@CharalamposKoundourakis]

Hope you changed your mind cause the sequel is even better.

[@StephenYuan]

Fabian Roland maybe you could try it now that they've taken out the micro transactions.

[@Scy]

I totally agree about the game triggering such feelings. It got me hooked even though I kept dying a lot at first.

[@lizardlegend42]

It is downright criminal the nemesis system got copyrighted. It could've rippled throughout the industry but know nobody's willing to piss off Warner Bros.

[@judgeomega]

the talk on documentation was surprisingly informative

[@arthurllorens172]

nice pun there

[@sayamqazi]

The game that really hit me hard with a cnosequence of my actions was "dishonored". Due to some choices a certain character dies. I go to the place where he/she dies and crouch on the corpse and press interact (which is used to examine) and the prompt just said "you discovered nothing". Don't know why but it hit me hard.

[@DanielDroegeShow]

That talk on the nemesis system took me back to being a kid watching the race to break the home run record. It all seems like pro wrestling to me now though.

[@Gnurklesquimp]

50:40 Ohh, no, it applies. Trust me. I have a habit to have a sort of ''master document'' where I go over everything that goes into everything, because I want to be reminded of how all the things that would otherwise be scattered over multiple docs come into play, only recently have I at least started to make more focused docs to supplement them, with ability to reference master doc at any time.

[@SamFreelancePolice]

This is a really fantastic talk overall

[@SamFreelancePolice]

The Pizzazz talk was really interesting and helpful

[@chrismorris2969]

I agree, its amazing how different feedback makes something feel

[@tzisorey]

"Where do your ideas come from?" Through a melding of eldritch arts and perverted dark science I have managed to imprison a muse within a contraption that allows me to syphon inspiration from her like a hellish ichor. It's the easiest way.

[@TheAsylumSociety]

Lee Perry's little segment was just great.

[@Funkopedia]

I loved Lee Perry's work on the Jamaican port of the E.T. game

[@MeRenegade]

What is the best software to make flow charts ? And they should be easy to modify too. Any suggestions would greatly help.

[@TheDerekSaenz]

I just use google sheets (Merge and Center two cells, full border around that, then use a single border to connect the "boxes" that you've made)

[@MeRenegade]

@@TheDerekSaenz aha, I see but my ain issue arises that when game design changes, I need to move those blocks around a lot, and that isn't doable here. I sually end up using the walls of my office, and writing, erasing and rewriting things around as stuff changes. But that is cumbersome, anyone can delete it anytime and is not presentable at all

[@Dergeick]

Lee Perry's talk was really illuminating!

[@sub-jec-tiv]

Mapping sports to Orc society worked very well, he says. That tracks. 😂

[@DanielDroegeShow]

Wait, you guys use code to pallet swap?

[@SlayPlenty]

29:26 naturally our player has a brain. next slide or does he?

[@simonchen6698]

Great talk overall. I watched all of them except the last one, though. For some reason it felt like a presentation that just talked about "What makes this game cool" instead of giving defined, actionable guidance like all the talks before it.

[@davedaddy101]

George Fan was great. The others were too.

[@skurai]

This is awesome

[@SYLin-rs8ob]

I love how george made plants vs zombies, probably the greatest phone game of the early 2010s, and instead chose to talk about mario 😂😂

[@ezni1520]

还不错~希望出更多。

[@viceroy___]

Lol, the humour is great.

[@gneelcostello511]

Emily dipped out with the quickness.

[@kylegriffin8783]

You could tell she was just anxious on stage. She had really good points though

[@axelkusanagi4139]

The Witcher 3 used the visualization of their database to fix bugs and glitches. Yes, it could have been worse.

[@kylegriffin8783]

Yeah it could have been cyberpunk

[@nintendude794]

The Witcher 3: Wild Bugs

[@brianlong9100]

Plant and fireball differ too because plant has linear movement and fireball has non-linear movement.

[@jamesrivettcarnac]

Fireball always moves. Plant stops if you are right next to the pipe.

[@neveryoumind5743]

@@jamesrivettcarnac this is the main difference, plants dont actually require timing at all, just get close and wait for them to go down, take your time. Now if he had used the giant plants from giant world in Mario 3, it would fit, but that's a little obscure especially since most probably whistle past and never play that world

[@troyhayder6986]

I came up with a cool one myself that I haven't seen anywhere else... You can use dynamic movable lights on actors to "light up" when they get hit... Looks really sweet... Its not performance heavy either... I'm on a five year old rig... Over 30fps...

[@gabe135]

31:40 Lol

[@RFC3514]

0:31 - It's "a dime a dozen" (i.e., you get a dozen for a dime). Not "a dime *_or_* a dozen".

[@xthebumpx]

Well that confirmed I'm too susceptible to motion sickness to ever play VR games.

[@Bl4cKeN1nG]

Motion sickness comes from a lack of control or control not syncing (e.g. head motion latency). For example, its possible to get motion sickness in a car as a passenger, but almost impossible when driving. Looking out and pretending to drive will likely remove motion sickness. Watching a playthrough of a video does nothing to confirm whether VR will make you sick or not.

[@Skyhex]

Emerlald: it's alwys one step ath a i tim that allo thiws kinf comple viow o game development

[@mage3690]

"Our player has a brain." Questionable. In fact, I would argue the average player doesn't, and that that fact explains the success of modern AAA titles. Also remember: no matter how robust you make your system, the universe will always create a bigger idiot who is smart enough to defeat it and dumb enough to try.

[@splatsmash5003]

13:10 Maybe im getting too old, this doesn't sound or look like fun at all

[@lx122]

Shadow Of Mordors ideas i hear here were so good but as i played it... when i failed i closed and reloaded the game failure did not equal drama i wanted to overcome it meant i had to do the same fkin thing again now with harder enemys so i hated it.In the end you barely ever died so the orcs blended into one and if any of them came back youve had killed 20+ There were so many nemesis orcs you just couldent possibly care to keep track of them all even in one fight there were more then 7 .its like in mario every coopa was a nemesis... who the fuck cares about em all. it was exhausting hearing all the fkin cutscenes all the time when youd killem 5min after and never see them again.

[@x1c3x]

Being unable to skip orc intros made me uninstall the first Mordor game and not play the second one.

[@retrx4236]

Why do we care about people xD

[@forposterity4031]

I dunno, fun is a pretty specific descriptor word. Maybe that's why a lot of games suck, devs don't like the word fun.

[@PrimatoFortunato]

When I heard the reasons why WH40K space marines have “motorized swords”, they were sth like armor is very good, but there’s some unobtanium that can go through armour, but it’s so scarce that you cannot make bullets out of it....but honestly? Because it’s FUN. Nailed it

[@judgeomega]

novel ideas and fun are the essence of good games. if you just make something that works, it is just a brainless soulless factory made clone... and i dont care much about those, or more precisely, i actively hate them.

[@rosejuliette9180]

I enjoy this talk but that opener still grates on me and the MC is very much impeding the speakers with his rushing on of speakers and negative weighted commentary between speakers. Even just in his first talking points you see him pushing pretty to bitter attitudes. If good ideas are so prolific then how come bad ideas continue to reach publication. How come the same ideas are being rehashed to the point of stagnation. The reality is that there is often dismissive attitudes toward people who have particularly ambitious or risky ideas. That's fair enough if someone is looking for a budget but at some point we need people to take those risks. The fact that indie devs continue to be the pioneers in creating new genres and new styles of play shows to me that this "ideas are easy" attitude is just industry talk to undermine creatives. Yes implementation is the hardest part but that is such a general term that covers 90% of the process of development. Implementation includes designing, coding, debugging, play testing, animating etc. If you divide development into catagories of conception Vs implementation then no wonder you will see that one is a larger project. So yeah I don't know if the MC is a nice person so I'm not judging him as a person but I hope he has improved his MC skills because I shouldn't be here thinking about that when so many of the speakers had such thoughtful opinions they were expressing.

[@Sapiensiate]

"We don't like the word fun very much" - probably why so many games suck these days.

[@gamongames]

try using that objectively to game design.

[@Sapiensiate]

Yeah it would be like trying to use the word "funny" to objectively design a comedy wouldn't it?

[@gamongames]

It seems clear youre not a game design or a comedian.

[@Sapiensiate]

I'm not. But I do have a degree in neuroscience, and we learnt quite clearly the neurochemistry behind fun. We know what people find fun, and we know what they don't. We know the neurotransmitters and the parts of the brain that are involved. So yes "objectively" I do know what people find fun. The problem is that game designers are so ignorant of the behaviour of their own customer base that they deny that fun can even be objectively measured. Sure, not everyone will find something fun in the same way that another person will. But that's exactly like comedy where some people will find something funny and others won't. But you never see a comedian talking about creating a routine, sketch, or script, and then not talking about what people find funny. They know the rules of what people tend to find funny and what they do not. And they use these rules to create things that are good. The games designer here, however, is so ignorant of the science of human behaviour that in order to defend his own ignorance he denies that fun is even a thing! And so do you. Look at the great talk by the games designer for the Stanley Parable and you can see that he understands the rules of comedy so well he even parodies himself talking about the rules of comedy (in much the same way that his game does). There are rules of fun as well. People find it fun to use their skills under pressure. They find it fun to learn new things. They find it fun to work as a team. They find it fun to win when there is a sense of challenge behind the victory. These things are well known and objectively true. Stop wallowing in your ignorance and take a course on human behaviour. You might even find it fun.

[@gamongames]

"game designers are so ignorant of the behaviour of their own customer base that they deny that fun can even be objectively measured. Sure, not everyone will find something fun in the same way that another person will." So, they don't teach basic interpretation at neuroscience college or you didn't even think this was a contradiction? Science also knows about the neurochemical basis for "love" and you still wont bother to go tell movie writers theyre stupid because they couldnt objectively define love and use it to write romantic comedies. I'm torn between thinking your problem is being too positivist to realize having scientific explanations for stuff ≠ having absolute objective definitions or just being an condescending asshole.

[@whade62000]

43:00 Um, so, what do you, um, do with a game, right? Um, well, and, um, you play it right? Um. Jesus, practice talking in front of a mirror

[@warpzone8421]

WTF? "Feedback is Pizzazz?" Feedback is FEEDBACK. You don't need to make up another term to describe its importance. Have you ever played a game where there's NO feedback when you take damage? Feedback is how your player knows that a thing happened. It's not polish, and it's not "pizzazz." Pizzazz is an extra layer of art direction over the top of feedback. Feedback tells you what happened, EXACTLY when it happened, ideally a little bit about WHY it happened, and its scale should reflect its importance. Don't just throw a bunch of unnecessary particle effects on the screen for the hell of it.When the thing that matters happens, make it LOOK like it happened and like it mattered! That's literally what feedback is. Without feedback, the player doesn't even push buttons because the first time they pushed them, nothing happened!

[@spacenerve9654]

hmm sounds like you missed the point.

[@terraint3697]

Seems flawed since the concept is based around a limited time to develop not "make the funnest game you can". This is why there are few good games that last these days.

[@gdwikum]

Kudos on not showing gay sports

[@shytut]

They don't like to talk about fun - it's no wonder they don't make anything substantial. Fun isn't abstract concept, and it's objective. But I understand why they would think this way. It's just sad that this kind of knowledge is widespread in the game development industry.

[@pepsuber5345]

Define fun.

[@gordo6908]

@@pepsuber5345 not to be presumptuous, though most attempts ive seen combine flow and need satisfaction through autonomy, competency, and community (believe the last speaker touched on this briefly) . the topic is fascinating and id be grateful for other positions or links

[@21coute]

You are so full of shit. There's no such thing as an objectively fun game - if there were, then that game would literally have made all the money. Who wouldn't want to experience something that is guaranteed to entertain you? The word of mouth would be crazy. Even the most successful games in history have players that just don't think they're fun. That's why it's subjective. I can't believe there's someone trying to claim that everyone has the same idea of what's fun and what's not fun. I spent hours shooting the shit in Skyrim, just collecting butterfly wings and random herbs like a hoarder crack addict. I found it fun. Would you find that fun? I highly doubt it. I can almost guarantee that if you made a game where the only purpose is to hoard random shit you will not make money.

[@spacenerve9654]

from software games are fun to some and football games are fun to others. The term 'fun' is therefore subjective. To designers fun is too broad thats why they dont like it. They need details and distinctions to design a game not just "fun".

[@viceroy___]

Lol, the humour is great.