No Time To Play

Well-known game developer Raph Koster starts 2012 with a 6-point guide to making cheaper games, to which the Rampant Coyote responds thoughtfully as ever. Here at No Time To Play, we are definitely interested in this particular topic, though we prefer to frame it as making games faster instead. Since time is money, that’s the same thing in the end: both come down to making games with less work. That’s especially important nowadays, as development times/costs are skyrocketing towards unsustainable levels (as Shamus Young points out at every turn).

But how can you do that? Let me add my own two cents first.

On reusing engines and libraries: absolutely. Even if that means you need to work within certain creative constraints. But there is such a thing as a bad engine, and you’re definitely better off rolling your own than trying to hammer one of those into shape. Moreover, you’ll want to make your own toy engines anyway, in order to understand the issues involved.

On aesthetics as opposed to bleeding edge graphics: well, yeah. 8-bit videogame stars such as Mario and Dizzy are iconic despite the fact that they were a few pixels tall. Or perhaps because of that: technical constraints forced their creators to make them look striking, and it shows. Come to think of it, Tetris blocks and Space Invaders aliens are commonly used decorations, so much so that Taito reportedly started asserting a trademark in the latter. (Luckily, the former are too generic for such a treatment.)

On tools: I keep hearing people say that “good craftsmen don’t care about their tools”, probably in the sense that they can do a good job with whatever is available. But I say, you try making a replica of Michelangelo’s David with nothing but a blunt pickax, then we’ll talk. So yes, I’m with Mr. Koster and Mr. Barnson here.

On procedural content: what do you mean, “you can’t make your whole game with it”? Diablo, anyone? Minecraft? Hellooo… Sure, there are games that can’t really do without hand-crafted content, such as adventure games and story-oriented RPGs. But some games clearly can be purely procedural.

On systemic game design: well, d’oh! We have a whole history of games (*cough* chess *cough*) based on nothing but systems, which are still played after thousands of years. Is it hard to design them? Just ask a boardgame developer. Is it worth the effort? Just ask the guy who created Settlers of Catan…

On prototyping: its importance can’t be stressed enough. It’s way too easy to put nonsense on paper, as many a writer has discovered when fans of their books caught them. But at least a work of fiction can survive a plot hole or two; a faulty game design can be outright unimplementable.

There are two ways to make games with less work: one is to mind the return-on-investment curve and avoid work that doesn’t pay. The other is to work smarter.

(Illustration: Monopoly Money by John Morgan; CC-BY)

Want cheaper games? Work less! by Felix Pleșoianu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.