Game Design Insights: John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite | Hacker News Reader

Game Design Insights: John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite

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43 pointsd-lectable7 comments

"Ultimately, games are trying to deal with the human desire to clean things up." That's a fascinating way of looking at things.

In games like Quake, the "cleaning up" is eliminating opponents. But even in educational trivia, one could say the "cleaning up" is getting as many correct answers as possible. Our instinctual desires to organize, i.e. "clean".

I prefer Raph Koster's way of putting it, that good games are really just "satisfying work".

True, in fact, having played World of Warcraft and having observed other players, I think the satisfaction "pay-off moments" can be interleaved with huge stretches of monotonous activity (essentially waiting) - people show surprising reserves of patience for some games. In other words, the happiness of playing that kind of game comes from optimistic waiting, not the "pay-off" itself.

Interesting. I've worked on two games that include a "clean up" mechanic - one where you tap buildings to collect taxes every few minutes, and another where trash collects on the map and you have to tap to clean it.

The users loved the tax mechanic and hated the trash mechanic, even if they earned the same amount of coins for the same clicks. One felt like getting a reward, while the other felt like doing drudgework.

Has Romero done anything worthwhile since touching Quake? and who is Brenda Braithwaite? Maybe I am out of date...

I'd take it all with a pinch of salt - but then I am a game programmer talking about game designers - so take me with a pinch as well. :)

I think Valve have the right idea on game design from what they have shared. For one thing they actually ship consistently good games - for another they take a very scientific and reproducable approach. No confusing, unsubstantiated theories floating around, or guesses based on vague psychology... just iteration based on experiment.

Its a shame more developers don't share more with their crazy NDA happy approaches. I think it would be good if game design was considered more seriously as a field, but its not going to happen when academia and industry are far apart and the industry is keeping all of its knowledge of the field locked away behind NDAs.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_...

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2006/GDC2006_HL2De...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/147512/interviewslookin...

Brenda Brathwaite is the responsible for the Wizardry videogame series, if you're old enough to have played them. She also has done extensive work in teaching game design, you might like Challenges for Game Designers, which she co-authored with Ian Schreiber. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Brathwaite

"the human desire to clean things up."

I'm not sure I like where popular game-design seems to be headed. Core game mechanics driven by completing tasks, leveling up, reducing entropy, and competing with friends certainly have their place, and you probably couldn't dissect 'mafia wars' any other way. But it irks me that this is a trend, and that they're trying to hack through the average gamer's mental framework.

I've played at least 20 games that've mesmerized me and gotten me addicted purely through their graphics, characters, soundtrack, ambience and game world. My experience with the Final Fantasy series early on, was memorable despite the core gameplay mechanics. I was mostly drawn in by the vivid, dreamy environments and the interesting/quirky characters.

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