July 9th, 2008 - 3:39 pm
Raph Koster lists what he thinks are the two hardest and most critical skills for a game designer.
- Be able to see the game with no hint of artwork, music, sound, anything
[...]- Be able to see the game without any mechanics, any rules, any knowledge of how it should play
If you’ve been following the site so far, you might have an idea of where I think this is lacking. Namely, I’d like to suggest that there is a third critical skill a game designer should have.
- Be able to take an abstract story, turn it into a series of coherent plot functions, and design game mechanics, art, environments, audio and haptics that reinforce those functions and combine to tell that story through play itself.
Of course, if the game doesn’t have a story, then don’t worry about it. But that’s becoming less and less the case as the gaming industry matures. The reality is that story needs to stop taking a back seat to mechanics if games hope to tell their stories to their fullest potential.
And a great designer? They should be able to see all three in their head at once.
Spake gian mancuso, tagged as: dialectic
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