Tab A, Slot B
by Sam Witt
April 25, 2001
When you set out to design a game, you will almost certainly run into some areas where you have to cut back on you original goals, and get a clear idea of what you want to do. More importantly, you need to periodically take stock of your progress and decide on what features you want to have available at release. This week's article focuses on one criteria for deciding what to cut, and what to keep.
Earlier in this series, I talked about the pain of scaling back the size of the game world, of making sure that you know what you're biting off. This week, I'm going to talk about making sure that what you plan to do is what you should do.
The original spec for Horizon Station was, much to my chagrin, wildly extravagant. Even worse, I had diluted some of the coolest ideas in the game (rebuilding the Station and learning new technology) by including some things that weren't, really, necessary (such as mass combat). I was doing kitchen-sink design work, and as time has passed, it's started to show.
In addition to building the first Horizon Station stage, I've also been revising the main design document for the game. Over the weekend, I went through and started looking at each and every feature that I'd originally planned for, and made sure that they all had a purpose within the game world. I had a couple of surprises: cooking, which I had originally thought wasn't going to make it into the final design turned out to be vital to the feel of the game, while combat (which I had originally thought would be one of the largest aspects) got the axe. Oh, you'll eventually be able to hack up things into little bits, but for the first phase of the game there's really no reason to do any fighting. Starvation, however, could be a very real threat . . .
The key here is to make sure that what you want to include satisfies at least these two criteria:
- It provides an activity for characters that is somehow rewarding in relation to the effort it requires, and
- It promotes the feel and style of the game.
If your proposed feature doesn't do at least those two things, then cut it, and move on. There is too much work to be done when designing your game to waste time building things that only detract from the core of your game.
Cutting out nifty systems and concepts can be painful - but it's necessary. Just as no good book ever hits the stands without some heavy editing, no good game will see the light of day without some painful paring away of excess fat and baggage.
And that's it for this week, folks - the first Stage for Horizon Station needs to be finished. Seeya in 7.
Oh, and if you think you might be interested in working on Horizon Station email me, there might just be a job for you.
