What's the most important thing a wargame designer can do during the design process? No top 10 lists, no "it depends"... give us something that should be an absolute axiom of game design. GO!
By: Brant
06 April 2011
GameTalk - Wargame Design 101
What's the most important thing a wargame designer can do during the design process? No top 10 lists, no "it depends"... give us something that should be an absolute axiom of game design. GO!
By: Brant
Simplify!
ReplyDeletey'know - as I was writing this query, and I was thinking "I'm pretty sure I know what Brian's going say..." But to be be fair, I thought you'd say it more words than that :-D
ReplyDeleteWell, you did say you wanted an absolute axiom. And that's as concise as I wanna be.
ReplyDeleteHow about: "REDUCTIVE SYNTHESIS"?
By which I mean, many if not most designers start with a big pile of stuff in mind, based on the research they've done on whateveritis they are designing a game about. If you leave it like that you'll have a bunch of gritty routines, subroutines, phases, segments, and stray modifiers that mostly just get in the way.
Some people leave it like that, but I think the next step is to start taking things away, cleaning and degritting and combining, until the game both moves along and does what you want it to. But if you go too far the game will be incomplete; you also have to know when to stop.
Howzat for length?
:P
ReplyDeleteSo glad you approve!
ReplyDeleteB~D