The Armchair Game Designer

RIP Michael Jackson. Your video game filled with glitter-throwing boots, a monkey sidekick and a special move involving choreographed dancing made us smile.

Welcome to “Things That Need To Die”, in which I thoroughly ream the gaming industry for its perennial laziness.

Unnecessary Musical Game Peripherals

With the recent showings of Beatles Rock Band, complete with custom instruments, and various rhythm/DJ games at E3, I found myself in awe at the cash grab currently taking place in the musical fantasy game market.

While it was a bit annoying seeing two separate guitar-based games out on the market with Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, it did seem to foster design innovation and improvements in the quality of the instrument, the number of instruments (though I’m still not convinced that the drums have nearly the same fun-factor as the guitar), and the way the instruments are configured (such as separate buttons for smaller hands and solos).

Yet, guitar peripherals, by their nature, have a hard ceiling built into them. Try to add too much and it just turns into a real fucking guitar, except this one doesn’t let you have jam sessions or actually practice, just strum along with a photorealistic Slash to the latest DLC guitar tabs. 24 time of getting “Song Failed” on “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” later, and Little Billy Gamerkid has smashed the guitar in frustration, and not in the cool end-of-gig sort of way.

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Most of the games on the Top 100 list are extremely big name, big budget titles from AAA developers with great track records. Braid is a different beast. An indie game in both its development and its heart, Braid is like looking into a moving Monet painting while listening to Mozart and attending a MENSA meeting. Come rescue the princess… or perhaps not… after the break.

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Picking up on the trend of “reviewing games I already have”, number two on my list was Gears of War. If the video game world did random drug testing, I suspect this is the game that would test positive for steroid abuse. But much like A-Rod, the juice lets Gears swing for the fences. (The rest of the post is currently hiding behind cover.)

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What better way to kick off the 100 Game Challenge than with what is arguably one of the best first person shooters of all time, Half-life 2? Let’s trade in our rusty old crowbars for gravity guns. Newton would be rolling around in his grave.

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I recently purchased a book (nay, tome) on game design by David Perry (founder of Shiny Entertainment and creator of Earthworm Jim, among other things), which led me not only to the book’s website, but to something called the DP Challenge. The link contains the nitty-gritty rules, but in summary, the DP Challenge involves deconstructing 100 of the highest-reviewed games of all time by systematically playing through them (for as long as is needed to fairly analyze them) and answering questions related to the experience.

The ultimate goal of the Challenge is to a) prove your capability to fulfill a monumental task; b) open your eyes to great games/designs that you wouldn’t normally play; and c) become more knowledgeable about what works, and what doesn’t, in game design.

This challenge may have been issued two years ago, but I figure… better late than never.

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This site is officially LIVE. I have a small backlog of posts to get things off the ground here, which I’ll be posting incrementally… Beyond that point, I hope to let the posting grow organically from there.

Check out the (wildly inaccurate) About Me section to find out what I’m all about. You’ll find a miniscule amount of real information there, buried amidst the fiction.