Just because you have a good idea doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to implement it. Sometimes a good idea isn’t completely cohesive with the core focus of the game. Sometimes a good idea is very difficult and time-consuming to implement, and that time would be better spent on other things. Sometimes a good idea is cohesive and may not necessarily take forever to implement on its own, but preexisting systems would not mesh very well with it. Whatever the case may be, just because someone has a good idea does not mean it should be or even can be implemented. Remember, when someone who can make calls does not include your good idea in a game, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea or that they simply don’t like it; there are usually other reasons that it doesn’t get implemented.

A good idea stands on its own. It doesn’t matter where a good idea comes from, it’s still a good idea. Let go of your ego and learn to identify a good idea no matter where it comes from, even it’s from a non-designer, player, or even your mortal enemy. I’ve had a few good ideas in my life (I like to think, anyway), but the total number of good ideas I’ve heard from other people dwarfs the number of good ideas I’ve ever had myself. Learn to get over yourself and recognize good ideas when you see them.

I already mentioned a talk given by Gordon Walton at AGDC, but there’s another good one that I’ve read the write-ups for. This one was also by a BioWare Austin guy and was called The Zen of Online Game Design. It’s a good talk that discusses what Damion Schubert calls the Three Rs: Recruitment (of potential players), Retention (of existing players), and Reduction (of costs). There are great write-ups on Raph’s website, Slashdot, and Next Generation. Keep an eye on the Zen of Design blog for more in-depth articles on each of those Three Rs. As I catch other good write-ups from AGDC, I’ll link them here (and don’t hesitate to direct my attention to other goods ones yourself).

I’ve played a lot of massively multiplayer games. I think my MMORPG play count is somewhere in the mid dozens at this point, ever creeping toward triple digits. Back in the day, I was willing and able to max characters out–I had the time and dedication to do so. I was willing to get through all of the mid levels and soldier to the end game. But, you know what? At this point in my life, I’m only playing through those levels if they don’t suck. Continue Reading »

It’s better to start with a great shell than a jumbled mass of crap. Okay, that wasn’t articulated well, but the point is this: If you are outlining a system or some content or whatever it is, don’t mash a bunch of random ideas together and hope they will work out. Instead, create a notes document in which you jot down all of your random ideas for whatever you are creating, then write a structured and cohesive document as the document. You will thank yourself later, because trying to revise a jumbled mess is even harder than writing something completely new (I tend to just wipe things clean and start over if I don’t have the notes doc).

Make decisions. Sometimes it’s better just to make a decision on something you’ve been thinking about for a long period of time and go with it. You’ll discover pretty quickly if that decision was the wrong one, and you can, in fact, change your mind on decisions you made before. It is not a crime to delete what you wrote down for System X and start it over–in the end, your game is better for it, because you know WHY the original System X isn’t as good as the new one. Note: Don’t go live with said decision until you know it is the right one.

What on Earth is genre reset? Quite simply, it is technology (or something else) resetting a genre to the point that it has to be partially reconstructed or even rebuilt from scratch. Oftentimes, this means that it becomes much more difficult to do what was considered normal in the genre previously with the new technology. I’m going to take a look at the traditional fantasy gaming realm rather briefly, starting from the present and diving toward the past. Continue Reading »

Richard Bartle is one of those industry luminaries who appears and disappears pretty randomly in the limelight. He’s in it right now. He did an awesome interview with Guardian Unlimited. While everyone keeps focusing on his comment about closing WoW for the sake of everyone else, my favorite answer of his was: “MUD has little that today’s virtual worlds don’t, but it lacks something they do have which makes it worth looking at: baggage.” He goes on to explain something that is all too true: designers need to learn WHY things are the way they are instead of mimicking norms because they are norms. E.G. Games have Classes for a good reason, and you need to understand that reason as a designer and decide if you want them, not just include Classes in a game because it’s the norm. Elsewhere: Bartle | Lum | Psychochild

Have you ever played an MMO in which it was apparently determined to be okay to scatter rats, snakes, bears, boars, and wolves throughout every level range of the game? Perhaps the better question is, have you ever played a fantasy MMO in your entire life? If you have, then you know exactly what I’m talking about, and you may very well be as tired of this crap as I am. Continue Reading »

I love quests. When they don’t suck. Unfortunately for people like me who like quests that don’t suck, most quests in MMOs totally suck. They are uncreative and are only worth doing because they break up a little bit of the monotony of grinding the same mobs over and over, even though the quests specifically task you to grind the same mobs over and over for only a tiny amount more experience than you’d get by grinding them without the quest. Continue Reading »