GameSetNetwork: End Of Week Round-Up
We're all finished for the week in terms of 'big stories', so time to round up the remainder of the notable features, interviews and write-ups from big sister site Gamasutra and other Think Services sites - particularly Jill Duffy's excellent Game Career Guide, which has a 'women in games' special this week.
Also hanging out in here - a v.interesting Paul Hyman piece on how developers are using outsourcing nowadays, a BioShock interview with Chris Kline, what's working (and not) from Braid and XBLA thanks to Jon Blow, and more from GCG's Game Design Challenge.
Dude, where's my links?:
Gamasutra Features
Thinking BioShock: From Tech to Philosophy
"Chris Kline is BioShock's technical mastermind, and Gamasutra sat down with 2K Boston's tech director to discuss game engines, the PC market, multithreading, and even BioShock-like Wii experiences."
An Examination of Outsourcing: The Developer Angle
"Outsourcing is a vital, but sometimes underdiscussed part of today's game biz - and Gamasutra talks to Wideload, Kuju Entertainment and THQ to understand the controversy, process, and state of game outsourcing."
Other Featured Articles
Blow: 'Unnecessary' XBLA Hurdles Hurt Game Quality
"As his IGF award-winning Braid debuts on Xbox Live Arcade, indepedent designer Jonathan Blow says unnecessary certification requirements got in the way of the final game's quality -- and he also explains why Braid won't have a sequel anytime soon. [UPDATE: Blow also explains positives of XBLA deal.]"
Results from the Game Design Challenge: Player Aid
"In a recent game design challenge, you were asked to design a player aid, a kind of cheat sheet or quick reference guide of rules, for the board game Risk. Here, we present the three best designs, two honorable mentions, and a few notes on what made the winning entries stand out." Also see: GameCareerGuide.com’s Game Design Challenge: Hero.
Valve's Faliszek: Playtesters Aren't Idiots, It's You
"Talking to Gamasutra, Left 4 Dead's Chet Faliszek [pictured - OK, it's the game, not Chet] has explained why thinking "we got idiots for playtesters" won't make your game any better - sharing stories from the game and Half-Life 2 and concluding of the advantages of frequent external playtesting that it's "just proof to you"."
GCG Opinion: 'Women in Games: Who Cares?'
"Industry veteran (Wizardry/Jagged Alliance) and game design teacher Brenda Brathwaite is tired of being asked what it means to be a ‘woman in games.’ She aired her grievances today in a new opinion piece on GameCareerGuide.com, which has been running a series of articles this week on the theme of women and games."
Comments
Playtesting makes sense for useability/UI stuff, but using it to drive changes to the actual game seems a bit wrong.
Like.. imagine if musicians took the same approach when figuring out arrangements/mixing of their in-production album. Except for boy-bands who probably DO do that.
Posted by: raigan | August 11, 2008 7:34 AM
Raigan, I absolutely think that things like difficulty should be playtested externally.
Having worked as a designer myself, I found that I got so good at games I was working on, I had no objective concept of how tricky it was.
I agree that you don't want to focus test stuff in the horrific 'you must change the ending of the movie' style, but there's probably a happy medium.
Posted by: simonc | August 11, 2008 9:13 AM
Mayyyyybe, I don't know, it seems like too much of a slippery slope. Definitely we're guilty of making things too difficult , but at the same time _we_ like it, and isn't that all we can really go on?
I wonder how much analogous testing authors or architects do.
It just seems like doing user-based testing makes the focus of game development on appealing to the user, which totally undermines the game itself and/or authorship.
Posted by: raigan | August 11, 2008 11:52 AM