Importance of Game Design.
The success of a every game depends upon how well the game has been designed and conceptualized. Game design is a first stepping stone in developing a game and Game designer plays the most vital role in the success of it. Game designer are not only responsible for creating Graphics, Story board and out-of-the-world features of the game, but creating a concrete gameplay for the player. Loose gameplay is often the most common factor which results into the commercial failure of a game.
The key elements of game design are players, objectives, resources, rules, conflict, boundaries and outcome result of playing the game. We will take a deep dive into these factors in my next blog. Game Designer’s primary responsibility is to maintain balance between all these factors. After designing and developing the game, it is very important to make the game testing. Many game designer often neglect game testing as they don’t like criticism by others who does not know the efforts designer has put into creating the game.
However, this negligence sometimes may also result in failure of the game. Big gaming firm like EA has their own dedicated building where they create prototypes, brainstorm about game ideas and test their games among the professional game-testers before launching the game into the market. Amateur game designer usually showcases their game in Game Jams which is said to be hackathon for gamers where all industrial stakeholders like programmers, writers, artists and passionate gamers gathers for a couple of days to play new games.
In the process of game designing, first concepts are made cleared. Once the idea is formalized, it has been tested with various users. The gameplay of a newbie is observed through their viewpoint and actions while playing the game. After analysing the game with different users, changes are made into the game if necessary and then tested again.
Some Pioneer Game Designers
Shigeru Miyamoto — the man who thought games should have strong characters and storyline in the initial days of gaming. He created character named Jumpman for Donkey Kong which earned worldwide popularity after renaming it as Mario.
Will Wright — In those initial days, he thought that games should not be only of destruction but creation too. He created the world famous game named SimCity where user has to make their own world and city.
Note: This blog has been written as a part of academic writing.
