Re: spiral arm II

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 09:42:37 +0000

>>Possibly. Although that's something that's only going to come with practice,
and you're more likely to practice if you don't have to write the whole
thing (including the boring bits) before you can play with it. ;-)<<

I dont agree with that.  You can improve your game design skills with practice,
but the fundemental skills needed to design a good game can't be "learnt", they
are either talents you have, or not.

Interestingly (perhaps), the skills needed for different types of game vary
quite dramatically.

I consider myself a pretty good game designer for multiplayer adventure, where
the game needs a balance between players coming in at different levels.  When
it comes to a "resources" type game, I defer to my collegues, who are better at
that because their skills are more suited to it.

Wargames take a whole different skill set again.  Then when you start mixing
the types to get "war adventure" or "war resource management" it gets very
interesting indeed.

Some of my players are professional game designers in the arcade market, and
their skills for working on "live" games as opposed to turn-based ones are all
different again.

Steve T.

References

Re: spiral arm II
Paul Walker <usenet@blacksun.org.uk>
Mon, 26 Apr 2004 19:23:37 +0000