Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

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iterate on the balance, distribution, and use of all of those elements. The bigger a game gets, the more
there is to follow and probably fix, so we need to make excellent tools to facilitate doing so in a timely
and organized fashion. In more mundane terms, if you have 10 people in your community, you can
remember all of their names and phone numbers. If you have 50–100, you need a pen and a
notepad. If you have 1,000,000, you need a phone book, directory assistance, and a way to organize
operators to facilitate your calls.
TM: What aspects excite you about the near future of gaming?
BR: Both what we can do as game designers and acceptance of the game industry as a mainstream
form of entertainment are constantly on the rise, and there are no indicators that these are trends that
are going to slow anytime in the near future. As this generation grows up, they are likely to consider
PC and console games as much a part of their culture as past generations viewed art, literature,
music, television, and movies. This means that there will be an increasing interest in games. There will
continue to be a need for talented, dedicated developers who have a passion for making great games,
and more and more people will be exposed to the great fun to be had. The systems we create and
play those games on will continue to get more powerful, and the player’s experience will just keep
getting better and better. The best part is, in five years, we will probably be creating things that right
now we could only dream about.
TM: For most game projects, how far away from the original game concept does the game travel
by completion?
BR: The two opposing, but supportive, forces in game design are maintaining your persistence of
vision while being able to let go of ideas. Once you have set the vision of your project—meaning the
main goals, feel, gameplay mechanics, and so forth—you need to always keep them in mind as you
design out the game. Although there will be innumerable changes, both grand and small, to your initial
design, you must keep the concept of the game in the forefront of your discussions.
During the creative process of designing a game, you will come up with thousands of great ideas
and also a lot of not-so-great ideas. Sometimes you come up with an idea that is destined to be a truly
amazing and groundbreaking concept. Occasionally, these ideas simply don’t work out. Regardless of
the reason, you realize that these ideas need to be changed or even set aside. This can be a simple
matter when you finally try out the idea in the game and immediately realize that it is just not fun.
Other times, this can be an extremely difficult decision because you can see how it might work and
are willing to try and find ways to keep the idea alive.
In either case, dumping an idea that you have conceived, fostered, and perhaps even implemented
is a painful but necessary process. Not everything works out as planned, and it is a difficult thing to
admit when that gameplay mechanic you thought would revolutionize the industry turns out to be
an adventure into tedium. When you are faced with the need to pull the plug on something in the
game—no matter what the cause—you have to do so as quickly and painlessly as possible. Do not be
afraid to scrap ideas, because many times you will replace them with something far better or simply
find that there does not need to be anything there at all.
Keeping your eye on the overall vision for the project will allow you to make major changes to even
key elements of the game with the knowledge that you will end up with a cohesive and fun game
design. This is where these two forces meet and actually work together, as long as you recognize they
are there and are willing to accept them both as tools to use.
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Getting Started in Game Development