The Developer Checklist
Posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 by steve Metcalf
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Top 10 things every developer should know There is a lot that videogame developers do right. After all, the games industry has seen unprecedented growth over the last two decades and has weathered both a hardware crash and a software crash. Games have risen to the levels of midnight launch, multi-million dollar ad campaigns, and entire buildings devoted to development. Having said that, there are some things about games that aren’t done so well. - I have compiled a list of videogame ‘conventions’ that really should be changed. If we want the games industry to continue improving, growing, and impressing, we need to keep each other in check. Think of me as the Judicial Branch keeping an eye on the Legislative. It makes sense. Look it up. - 1. Don’t get lazy and confuse impossible difficulty with challenging gameplay. There certainly is something to be said for the ratcheted up difficulty of the Call of Duty 4 level “No Fighting in the War Room.” But there never is a time during that level when the player is totally frustrated. There is always a sense of “I can do better.” Contrast that with the storming of the government building in CoD 5’s “Heart of the Reich” level. Unending waves of baddies with great aim. That is pure frustration. And certainly could have been done better with some more thought. - 2. Get public-friendly demos out early. If you want to ride the pre-order wave that so many retailers are aligning their buying habits towards, let the people play your game! Getting the demo of Brutal Legend onto Xbox Live the weekend before the game launch does nothing to help your cause. Pre-order orders need to be in about two weeks before the street date of the game. Keep this in mind. - 3. Pay attention to your soundtrack. Achy Breaky Heart might be your favorite song. But it ain’t ours. And also, when you’ve decided on the soundtrack, use it! Need for Speed Shift has fantastic menu music but no in-game soundtrack. What better way to perform a dirty overtake than to have some nasty heavy metal style drums thumping out of your speakers while you’re trading paint? - 4. Players love a deep gaming experience but try not to go too far with the real life stuff. It was odd to have to actually find a place to sleep and tell your character to lie down for bed in The Faery Tale Adventure and even worse to have to watch your diet and exercise in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. If I wanted to watch my caloric intake, well, I’d actually watch my caloric intake. I don’t need Rockstar telling me to do it! - 5. Make your achievements/trophies matter. As these ancillary game-play enhancers are becoming more and more the rage, developers must certainly understand that achievements and their points cannot be written in at the last moment. The website Trueachievements.com said it best: “Have a look at this appalling example – the 5 points for pressing the Start button in The Simpsons Game are worth exactly the same as the 5 points for completing 10 side missions in Just Cause. It’s an outrage.” I couldn’t agree more. The achievement list for Perfect Dark Zero reads like a horror story. I applaud Infinity Ward for keeping the achievements for their take on the Call of Duty series purely single player. That way there can be no conspiring. No cheating. If you’re good enough to get the Mile High Club achievement, you’ll get it. - 6. Tutorial levels that cannot be skipped are ridiculous. I played through the game Army of Two three times from start to finish (the last two on Pro difficulty) and all three times I had to go through the tutorial level. Are you serious? That is how you aim a gun? Brilliant! You’d think there was some way for the game to ask if you’d like the tutorial, or at least recognize that Yes, I have played through this monstrosity before. Get on with the killin’! - 7. Non-speaking main characters are not cool. They are not stylish. They are not clever. This story-telling mechanic kind of worked in Grand Theft Auto III, and it was kind of funny in Saint’s Row when the mute character finally exploded in speech two-thirds of the way through the game. But the Rookie in Halo 3: ODST not speaking and just using hand gestures wasn’t cute, funny, or clever. Quite frankly it was distracting. Stop it. - 8. Unlockable difficulty is okay, I suppose. But when it is tied to an achievement/trophy, then it becomes needlessly arduous. Forcing a player to play through X-Men Origins: Wolverine on normal to get one achievement that unlocks hard difficulty for the player to play through again on hard to that different achievement. Well that just sucks. What sucks even worse is that you start from the beginning again with no abilities or enhancements. I suppose it would be fun to start at the beginning of the game with harder/more enemies with your beefed up character . . . but no. - 9. This might be a marketing issue rather than a developer issue, but never gloss your game as “The Next” anything. You’re not the next Sonic. You’re not the next Gears of War. Let your game stand or fall on its own merits. If you have done your job the game will shine just fine. - 10. Don’t get lazy if you’re developing a game based on a movie property. Goldeneye was good because it focused on bits and pieces that weren’t always in the movie. Of course it didn’t hurt that the game play was spot on. But the important thing was to let the player experience the characters and worlds created on the big screen. Don’t just copy it verbatim and assume your level design is already done for you. - - UP NEXT: I Want to Play a Game on my Cell Phone in Saints Row. - - Steve Metcalf is the award winning author of RESET: A Videogame Anecdote. His accolades include Best Use of the System of Checks and Balances in a Videogame Article and Most Inventive Use of a Light-pole in Crackdown. If you would like to discuss this article with over 40,000 other registered members feel free to do so by joining the Gamingring.com forums. Its fast, free and easy to do so.
Tags: checklist, developers, steven metcalf |
