Game Design Reflections

Some small notes I wrote to myself as I was developing games some time ago.

Creativity and follow through. Those are two key traits of successful creators. I like associating with people who have both and I get frustrated around those who have the former, but not the latter. The ground is strewn with the remains of wonderful projects that never saw the light of day because creative people couldn't get their act together. It's also a very good idea not to allow that type to be in charge - nothing will ever be completed.

Part of the steampunk experience that game needs to capture correctly is "class." Part of the veneer of the Victorian era was a certain high brow feeling to it. For a video game, that means interesting visuals. For a table-top RPG, that means words. Vocabulary is exceptionally important to create the right atmosphere. If you're trying to paint a 10-dollar scene with nickel words, it creates cognitive dissonance.

That feeling when you come up with a much cooler name for something than you originally had.

On race design: I like to take a page from TF2 and make sure each race has a different silhouette than the others. That is, seeing nothing but their outline, you can identify them. Too many humanoids gets repetitive. I think most players appreciate when developers put extra work into making really original races to play as rather than "generic orc #64289."

Don't create a "combat system" (an RPG mainly for fighting). Pathfinder and D&D do that already and are much more popular. Go for the people tired of combat after combat and want something else to bite into.

I am tempted to call explosives in my game "Badda Booms." I'm not going to, but the temptation is SO STRONG.

Crafting systems and how to implement them. You can go for realism and have it be slow, or you can go a more flashy, anime route. I haven't seen the latter done (and I think it'll be cool), so that's how my game will go with it. Super engineering indistinguishable from magic. All of the cool factor while still being rooted in scientific laws.

The benefit of creating a game on your own is also the downside: all the mistakes are yours. And it's up to you to fix it.

One benefit of creating a game of my own is the only mistakes in design will be mine. If prior experience is any indicator, that will be a welcome decrease in uncorrected errors. I have had so many experiences with spotting mistakes, pointing them out, and then being ignored only to end up proven right in the end. It was a running gag eventually where we'd tally up how often a suggestion made months or a year prior and rejected offhand would later turn out to have been the optimal solution all along. Now I just have to be sure to take my own advice.