Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
have a large number of subgoals. In fact, we simply had a set number of goals per mission
that needed to be accomplished to clear the mission and move on in the game.
Sometimes, in this style of game, it feels like you need to craft many goals in order
to keep the player entertained throughout the missions. There’s nothing immediately
wrong about directing player actions with goals. In fact, most players gain a sense of
comfort in knowing where they should direct their actions.
It’s all a matter of balance. Many game-play decisions come down to balance scenarios.
Your ally in making such decisions is combined player feedback. In this example,
what started to evolve based on player feedback was the idea that players liked
the action elements of the game the most. They still wanted to utilize strategy in executing
their actions, but the action itself was key to their enjoyment. In short, they
didn’t appear to need an elaborate goal system. They didn’t want extended mission
briefings. This is partly due to the fact that the RTS genre is abundantly more popular
on the PC, and this console title tried to capture that enthusiasm while boosting the
action elements.
Knowing this to be true, we didn’t add any new goals, and in fact we got rid of a few
and focused our final efforts on the part of the game people seemed to like the most: the
team-oriented action elements. We didn’t lose the strategy side at all. We still had basic
fundamental strategy concepts employed in every mission. We just tipped the balance
of the game toward refining action items, like creating several new flavors of radius
projectile weapons and enhancing our team-based combo attacks.
Another big negative for our team was the “pain” involved in making changes to
our levels. Our tools were unstable, and we had a convoluted process for editing levels,
rebuilding them in the game code, and then checking our results. I can’t stress the
power of tools enough. Bad, buggy, or poorly planned tools can literally kill a game
before it has a chance to live.
I NTERVIEW WITH JOHN KRENG
John Kreng was born the son of the Cambodian Ambassador to the United States and is fluent in
Chinese, Vietnamese, and English. He has been training in the martial arts since he was a child and
holds 3rd Degree Black Belts in Tang Soo Do and Te-Katana Jujitsu. For two years, John was the
#3-rated tournament fighter in the United States, and was a member of the U.S. Professional Karate
Team that toured South America. He has also graced the covers of Inside Karate and Karate
Review magazines.
In stunt work and fighting for film, John has worked with Steven Spielberg, Debbie Allen, and such
Hong Kong luminaries as Tsui Hark, Jet Li, and legendary wire-fighting master Yuen Cheung Yan. John
has served as stunt coordinator/fight choreographer for the films Enter the Grill Master, A Party
Called Earth, Hard As Nails, The Haunting of Slaughter Studios, Shakedown, and an LA Times
profile commercial featuring Yuen Cheung Yan.