Designing games for real people

At last an actual gamer, Stuart Walpole who's a real person and shares his thoughts on what games should not be delivering.

"When placing a sequence in a level, ask yourself: "Am I challenging the player and giving him a compelling experience, or just trying to slow him down?" If the answer is the latter, cut it out like the cancer it is."

Are you listening, Square-Enix?  Eight hours was all I could bear of the tedium that was FFX.  Such a disappointment after FFIX.

Stuart also looks at the positive and highlights games that did things well.

"Games such as the "Monkey Island" series, "Day of the Tentacle" and "Sam 'n Max" broke this trend simply by tightly designing the game to avoid any instance of player death, and never put the player in a "gotcha" situation where he can no longer access a crucial item that he should have picked up earlier."

Good game design, indeed!

And my own favourite:

"The days when players were expected to map their progress out on graph paper or take copious notes are long gone."

If I have to take notes in a game, then it's a game I don't want to play.

A great article and much to think about for all of us game writers and designers who sometimes like to think we know better than the players.