Good Game Designer - Have A Jammie Dodger!
October 21, 2007 4:02 PM | Simon Carless
You have likely heard of Ernest Adams' No Twinkie Database, based off his regular Gamasutra columns - but JC Barnett over at the Japanmanship blog has decided to switch things up with 'Good game designer! Have a Jammie Dodger!' - based on the awesome UK biccie.
Mr. Barnett explains: "Inspired by the “Good Ideas” series of posts on the Mainly About Games blog, I decided I too will actively try and look at some of the good design decisions that I wish more companies would pick up on (read: steal)." Some of the notables include 'Commentary', 'Full-power Replays', and, of course, 'Portal'.
One of the smartest ideas in there is 'Achievement Tracking': "Whereas most games simply say things like “win 1000 consecutive games on-line” or “play 100 hours straight without accessing the pause menu” so far I’ve only seen Test Drive [Unlimited] offer you a detailed overview of how far you’ve actually gone towards achieving these goals." I agree - would love to see this on a few more games - being a bit of an admitted Achievement junkie.
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3 Comments
Amongst all the other things that The Orange Box does well, it keeps track of achievements in this way. If you pause the game and go to view achievements it'll often have (x of y) ratings for any collectathon type of achievements. Sometimes these pop up in-game like if you're playing Portal and knocking down all the cameras, a little dialogue will pop up and say you are "X out of 30" of the way there. Nice little detail.
nowak | October 21, 2007 4:24 PM
Skate does a pretty good job at showing your progress insofar as all the stats are viewable - they just aren't all on the same page like they are in Orange Box.
Zack | October 22, 2007 1:47 PM
Battlefield 2142 is another game with extremely solid achievement tracking. Clicking on each pin, medal, ribbon, or badge will in the BFHQ section will tell you what the requirements are for the award, how may hours/kills/maps, etc. you have to go to reach the award, how many times you've earned a re-occurring award, etc. It's probably one of the most useful tracking systems I've ever seen.
Shadowcaster | October 23, 2007 6:24 PM