iCombat

It occurred to me as I sat here going through dozens of game sound effects and game graphics that I don’t have the foggiest idea what I am doing.  Sure I have played plenty of games and have a clear vision of what this app should look like but beyond that, I have not read one book or one article about good game design.  I did stumble across The Hummingbird Manifesto but this is little more than a cheeky bit of pretty intuitive advice.  As my game development gets further along though I find that I have made dozens if not hundreds of decisions and all I am going off of is my past game play experience.

Atari Pong Screenshot

I am fairly confident I have limited just how much I can screw this up by keeping the game simple and without too much of a plot as this seems to add another layer of design complexity. This is why I chose to do a game based off of some of the original gaming platforms: these focused on the quality of in game play rather than depth and variety of sound or visual effects (of course there was no choice back then).

After just building what we have, and you guys will get to be the judges of how well we have done soon, I can say I really respect professional game designers.  To have the vision to not only create a fully developed plot but then to fold in the complexity of quality sound and graphics really is a huge effort.  Especially when you are inventing a new theme or world from scratch.  No wonder game budgets are becoming so enormous like Spore’s estimated $35 million and there are tons of Bachelor’s degree programs for game development and design like this one.

What I was wondering today is how much experience do you need other than the intuition behind knowing what you like when you see it?  I am not a gaming fanatic at all, I don’t own a single console or handheld gaming device and haven’t since the Sega Genesis!  I guess maybe the iPhone counts but I definitely didn’t buy it for the App store (purchased it a 4am after a night out in NYC on the day it launched – way before there was any talk at all of the App store).  I have played the Nintendo DS and it only interests me, as with all games at this point, if I can play with someone else.  The reason we are creating a 2 player version in our game is this: I only care about playing / creating a game for 2 players.  While I know that the XBOX live forum has mimicked this social interaction, for me I need to be in the same room with the person.  Trash talking just can’t be as much fun over a headset.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

So what do you think?  Do you think more formal game development training and experience is important for creating iPhone games or can designing a simple iPhone game work the first time by amateurs?  We have seen Trism and iShoot work very well but you could argue that these were copying general proven themes and thus were sticking to relying on what was already proven to work.  One example of a very unique game idea that popped up last year by an independent developer was Petri Purho’s Crayon Physics (just came out on the iPhone).  If you have other good examples of other first time developers with truly original game design I would love to see them.

Update: I found an interesting post here talking about Gogogic’s initial design process for their games where they use flash to run through and explain the most common usage scenarios before coding.  A great approach for any kind of application design.   Also, if you have not seen the Photokast slides on product design they have 15 great tips from their experience here.

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