LIFE EXPERIENCES INTO GAME DESIGN

Out of all the ideas that we have seen in class there is one that called most of my attention, and that is: Can the experiences that I have had in my life help me with future designs that I want to make for games?

The problem with finding a quick solution for this question is that most people will say yes, but that is not fully correct from my point of view, thanks to what we have learned in class. Actually it is not the experience that helps, it is the analysis that we can make of the experience. For example let’s look at an example represented by hardcore gamers:
By definition a hardcore gamer is the person that plays games the most of the time (maybe less than a pro gamer), so if we think about the statement and think about the experience this players have, hardcore gamers must have the best ideas in game design , but as we all know it is false to make that generalization. The idea that the more games we make gives us the most amount of experience to create games is wrong and according to what we saw in class Ill analyze what else is needed besides playing a lot of games.

If we look at the Toolbox project and what we saw in the first class part of game design is not taking ideas from other games and putting it in our game, basically just because we say we are a game designer and make a game like some game we have played doesn’t mean we are good game designers, it just means that we can rip off another person’s idea really easy. Game designers ideas should always come from personal ideas, not from other persons perfective, this meaning that even if we have an idea that looks like a game that already exist we should make it our idea and our perspective of how the game should be to end up being successful and especially fun.

Another point to add to the previous idea is about using or point of view to create games, even if we have played many games and we think we know what fun is, it is guaranteed that we will be wrong, and that is because times change, what kids want nowadays is not what they wanted 15 years ago. An example of this is if we remember a really fun game from years ago we can think in Mario Bros, this was a game that innovated all side scrolling games and made a character that everybody ended up loving. Now what happens if we come up with a side scrolling game with a cute character, we come up with another of those games that think that if you take the formula from a winning game and create anything it will work and an example of this is that we have side scrollers like Mario with characters like the Tiny Toons, Sonic, movie characters and a lot more, and none of their success compares to what Mario was in the 80s.

So what can we do to create a winning formula? According to this, one word that comes up to my head is innovation, people don’t like to play the same thing multiple times, so if we create a game that nobody has ever seen people will be curious about it and maybe they will play it, that’s a start to make a good game.
So going back to what we say that playing games makes you a great designer, the point of this entire essay is that the playing is not what makes you a good game designer, is the learning you get from them, and I don’t mean learning like I still remember the fatalities from Mortal Kombat. Learning from a game means, take it apart, and be able to find why is it fun for me and find out why is it fun for my neighbor, for my sister, for my best friend, but most important find out why is it boring for some people.

In conclusion it doesn’t matter how many games have you played in your life, a big number doesn’t mean you know a lot about game design, it means you had a lot of free time probably and that you like games a lot. But the important aspects of this is that we can take all the games even to the point when we were kids and are able to find the formula for fun, which we will probably never find, but it’s important to get the closest we can because not only that will mean sales in our games, but personally what I expect from my games is that people come back to me and tell me they enjoyed the experience .