Why Some Games Work and Others Don’t
This article was written by Molegul, a Roblox developer who worked on titles such as Horse Valley 2, ROliday 2018, Solo, Crumble, and many others! In this article, he’ll be diving into game design and factors that can determine whether a game succeeds or fails.
I’ve been a developer on Roblox for over 7 years now, starting out as a “builder” without any idea of what I was doing. As I developed on Roblox, I was acknowledged by a number of incredible developers who I had the opportunity to work alongside with, such as Younite, R0cu, Ukendio, Bof, Zairky, and FirstValentine, just to name a few. However, my relationship with them is not what qualifies me to talk about success and failure: Having a few dozen failed games is.
The truth is that everyone inevitably experiences failure, and that’s absolutely normal. Failure is a better teacher than I or anyone else could ever be, and if you let it, failure will teach you everything you need to know about how to succeed. After a long development journey, I have successfully had two games reach the front page and participated in a multitude of projects — all because I kept refining my craft and learning from my failures. These failures have provided me with a solid understanding of game development. Here I will share some things that I have learned in regards to game design.
What is Game Design?
Game design entails the development before a game is released. Think of programming, modelling, composition, and everything else that goes into creating a game as individual layers of a cake. Now put all of the layers together and you get a full game. Every component is important; it all needs to come together to make a great game. The design of a game can vary greatly depending on what kind of game you want to make, but there are some universal core principles that will always apply. How you go about implementing those principles of game design determines what happens to your game as the implementation of those principles can affect your game. Next, we’ll examine some examples of how game design impacts a game.
Failures and Successes of Game Design
If you want to make a successful game, you have to understand the factors that determine success and failure. You might often hear other developers talk about game quality, but it’s never as simple as “this game is higher quality” — quality is mostly subjective. You can make a game with low-quality assets or amateur scripting and have it blow up. Quality has little to do with determining a game’s success; it typically comes down to getting those cake layers just right. There have been several games on Roblox (and elsewhere) that look breathtaking, but they concentrated way too much on making the game look beautiful instead of how it feels to play the game. Your focus should be the entire game, not just making it look pretty. Think about the expression “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” — don’t put everything you’ve got into one mechanic or one aspect of your game.
Let’s take a look at a successful game: Phantom Forces. The game has been at the top or close to the top of the Roblox games page for years and it’s not by luck or by accident. Phantom Forces really exemplifies game design principles.
Phantom Forces gives players an incentive to keep coming back using palpable, rewarding progression systems. The developers gave each weapon its own behavior and unique stats. You’re able to track your kills with each weapon, giving players the ability to measure their success by taking into account which weapons have historically worked the best for them.
The game is also exemplary in regards to the concept of level design.
Level design entails the modelling/building component of game design. Many developers would say that modeling/building, programming and animating are the most important parts of a game. If you want to make a truly good game that will survive the test of time, you will have to nail most of the elements of game design, but it can be argued that those three are the main components that you must get right. Phantom Forces has got them down, but let’s take a look at the level design in particular.
One might notice that the map design in Phantom Forces is aesthetically pleasing, but that’s not why it works. It’s because it has been designed to fit the flow of gameplay for a first-person shooter; the same level design wouldn’t work for a different genre of game.
Every map in Phantom Forces follows the level design concept illustrated here, which encourages creative problem solving by giving players multiple options to get themselves out of tough situations. The game also has excellent animations and brilliant programming, giving the weapons impactful feelings and satisfying controls. That’s the crux of how Phantom Forces has remained successful for so long.
When you’re making a game, try to keep in mind what level design will fit the gameplay and how to give the players an incentive to keep coming back and playing the game. Finally, you should work on polishing the game using animations, sound effects and music to create ambience.
Recurring Themes Between Successful and Unsuccessful Games
Here are some examples from popular Roblox games that reflect the standards I laid out for good game design:
First Point: Incentive
Incentive can be created in many ways. It commonly involves creating a currency that you can earn and use to progress or experience points that allow you to level up and access new content.
Second Point: Level Design
These games design their levels to fit their respective genres both aesthetically and in terms of gameplay.
These are three completely different games with different styles. Jailbreak is a roleplaying game where exploring the world and interacting with other players is the main functionality. As such, the developers created a massive world that the players can interact with. Bad Business is a first-person shooter game in which the level design is centered around the game’s gameplay. First-person shooter games, like previously mentioned, require a lot of different paths for the players so they can maneuver around the map easily and quickly to avoid getting shot at. Roses is a story driven horror game and thus the level design is very much linear walking from point A to B with events and scenery in between.
Third Point: The Small Things
Most successful games have carefully designed and refined mechanics. Most have something in common: They spent sufficient time on all aspects of game design and set out to create a fun experience.
Before I get further into that topic, I want to clarify: When I say “small things”, I do not mean “insignificant” or “unimportant”, I simply mean aspects of a game that are not as grand in comparison to modeling/building & programming.
Music and animation, which don’t typically directly contribute to the functionality of a game, are still both incredibly valuable tools for game design. Some “small things” that games use to implement these elements are UI elements, effects, and other visual enhancements. These are things that do not necessarily have to be in the game, but having them greatly improves the gameplay experience and ambience.
When you hit an enemy with your weapon in Dungeon Quest, a UI element will pop up indicating how much damage you dealt. This kind of feedback is a great experience for players, especially once they start getting better weapons and dealing higher amounts of damage. Small effects like this will give players an important feeling of growth.
Having item stats visible can also give players a feeling of growth and progression. When a player plays a game, they want to feel like they are making progress. This is why small visual cues that demonstrate to the player that they’re growing are very worthwhile to implement. All of what I have talked about can be summarized into bullet points, as thus:
Accomplishing Great Game Design
- First: Always make playing your game rewarding.
- Second: Think about what kind of game you want to create. What are the core mechanics? Focus on this and then build it up from there, applying all aspects of game design: Building, programming, ambience, etc.
- Third: Always aim to make your game accessible and simple. That does not mean you need to hold players’ hands, it just means making the game something players can jump into and start playing without having to read a bunch of lore or go through long tutorials. Games like Tower Defense Simulator and Tower of Hell do it perfectly. If you make a game worth mastering, it will give a sense of accomplishment to your players.
Unsuccessful games generally do not follow these core principles of game design. A common mistake you can see is that the developers concentrated on one aspect of game design such as the building, which always results in an incomplete game. Putting 70% of your effort into building and only 30% into everything else won’t work because you’ll end up neglecting everything but the building. Remember the best way to split up your resources: Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
In conclusion, game development is a rollercoaster. There will be ups and downs, successes and failures. One truth rings throughout all well-received games: That they are fun and they give the players a good incentive to return and continue playing. All of this can be achieved by following the fundamental principles of game design. If you want to succeed and make a good game, you need to make the game fun and enjoyable for your target audience. This isn’t always an easy task as there’s a good number of nuances involved, which is why execution is one of the most crucial aspects of game development. You could follow every rule in the book and make the most wonderful game imaginable yet still fail due to poor execution, but it’s important to remember that every failure gets you that much closer to getting everything just right.
