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Design Utopia |
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Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Design Utopia In my design utopia, there are no buttons in the shell. In fact, there is no shell. The game itself knows what you want to play... Think the first generation of Tetris here, or possibly Tomb Raider if it was 20% more aware. If the shell isn't the interesting part, there should be as little of it as possible. In my utopia, All controls are painfully clear and intuitive. Need to move forward? Press forward. Need to open a door? Grab the doorknob and twist. Need to do a back flip triple Lutz to a sitting position? In my utopia it's painfully obvious to everyone sitting around how to do that. The interface is complex and powerful but completely intuitive, asking the player to focus on motions they don't usually make. The player can more or less do anything they can think about, within the confines of a game. In my little utopia, players are always juggling as much as they can really think about at once... roughly 5 or 6 things. All cinematics are both highly relevant and intensely emotional. Players never find themselves wandering around bored looking for the proper door to stick a key in. And they're never one-hit-killed in the back while trying to defend against twenty other random, different characters in the front. In my utopia, the world is surprisingly uncluttered. You never need to rummage through piles of trash to find the secret hidden key. If you need to get through a door in my utopia, you need a "door opening thing," not some random collection of items gathered by opening every drawer in the game. Everything may require thought, but it will never require walking up to every object in the world and pressing "talk." In my utopia, things wrap up satisfactorily after a time that real people can reach. After 20 hours the story is completely wrapped up in a deliciously satiating fashion. Maybe the player can enjoy 40 more hours of super-duper bonus levels, but they already know what happened. You're full. You're done. You can walk away and deal with your bills after just one weekend. - Chris 10:54 AM [+] Comments:
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