How Game Designers Solved These 11 Problems
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 кві 2024
- 🔴 Get bonus content by supporting Game Maker’s Toolkit - gamemakerstoolkit.com/support/ 🔴
Being a game designer means being a problem solver. In this video, I share stories of how game creators overcame huge design conundrums, so you can fix your own issues when they crop up.
Bonus Video on Patreon: / bonus-video-five-73005627
=== Before you watch ===
Content warning: Blood, Gore, Violence
=== Sources ===
[1] Bridging the Gap Between UX Principles and Game Design | GDC on UA-cam
• Bridging the Gap Betwe...
[2] DD2018: Maciej Binkowski - Creating experiences with numbers | Digital Dragons on UA-cam
• DD2018: Maciej Binkows...
[3] Mining Your Own Design: Crafting the Crafting System in Astroneer | GDC on UA-cam
• Mining Your Own Design...
[4] Through the Grinder: Refining Diablo III's Game Systems | GDC Vault (Free)
www.gdcvault.com/play/1017794...
[5] Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds for Halo 3 | GDC on UA-cam
• Changing the Time Betw...
[6] An excerpt from Sid Meier’s Memoir! on the making of Civilization | PC Games N
www.pcgamesn.com/sid-meiers-m...
[7] Check Point Design | Yacht Club Games
www.yachtclubgames.com/blog/c...
[8] How We Made The Last of Us's Interface Work So Well | Kotaku
kotaku.com/how-we-made-the-la...
[9] Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii | Nintendo
www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks...
[10] Intelligent Game Design on Rainbow Six Siege | GDC Vault (Free)
www.gdcvault.com/play/1025166...
[11] Gamasutra Plays Prey with lead designer Ricardo Bare | Twitch
/ 142411945
=== Chapters ===
00:00 - Intro
01:44 - Identify the problem
03:35 - Iterate on solutions
05:14 - Identify the levers
06:48 - Make big changes
08:02 - Flip it on its head
09:06 - Solve it elsewhere
10:17 - Solve multiple problems
11:27 - Study player behaviour
12:27 - Implementing solutions
14:44 - Conclusion
=== Games Shown ===
Gears of War (2006)
Super Mario Maker 2 (2019)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
Super Mario 3D World (2013)
Dying Light (2015)
Astroneer (2019)
Assemble With Care (2019)
Diablo III (2012)
Diablo II (2000)
Halo 3 (2007)
Dark Souls (2011)
Darkest Dungeon (2016)
Civilization (1991)
Shovel Knight (2014)
The Last of Us (2013)
Slipways (2021)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009)
Factorio (2020)
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (2015)
Prey (2017)
Alien: Isolation (2014)
DOOM Eternal (2020)
=== Credits ===
Music provided by Epidemic Sound - www.epidemicsound.com/referra... (Referral Link)
Halo 3 (MCC) Team Snipers Gameplay | FatRat
• Halo 3 (MCC) Team Snip...
Old Games - Civilization 1 | Old Nerd Playing Old PC Games
• Old Games - Civilizati...
New Super Mario Bros. Wii - Full Game (Multiplayer) | SullyPwnz
• New Super Mario Bros. ...
Proving I'm The Best Shotgun Player in Rainbow Six Siege | bAd
• PROVING I'M THE BEST S...
=== Subtitles ===
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/videos/8u1tgVK5LcpK/ - Ігри
Want more problem-solving stories? Here's how Nintendo solved its big open world issue in Zelda: Breath of the Wild - ua-cam.com/video/CZzcVs8tNfE/v-deo.html
i prefered the cover system
Cool
bro think he mark brown 🤡
@@slugintub He literally is???
The last bullets doing more damage also make it more likely you would kill an enemy just when you needed to reload, making you feel like you barely made it.
This is also why you take less damage at low health in the vast majority of shooters.
@@stigmata_rex That can be accomplished just by having the UI lie to you, 1 square of health at max hp is 10 damage while 1 square of health in middle is 20
its also the inverse of the Street Fighter healthbars where the last of your health looks visually identical but functionally is higher than it looks like, making the player more likely to have a comeback.
I feel like that didn't fix the issue but made it worse tho no? Cuz now the good players will let their magazines run dry to get the dmg boost from last few bullets ON TOP of getting the dmg boost from hitting the perfect skillcheck. Or did they make it so if you hit the perfect skillcheck and got the boosted mag your last few bullets had the same dmg as the rest?
@@R0x0r I was just thinking that so the good players double dip and now they got even more of a boost
Poltergeist really was one of the most memorable enemies in Prey, at least for me. The first time you see objects flying around you really get that fear of the unknown feeling.
Definitely one of the cooler enemies. Only problem is because it's invisible, my friend didn't realize he was being chased. The music and flickering lights clued him in, but because all the previous enemies were corporeal he was looking for a physical enemy. I don't think they should've changed the enemy at all, but it is something to consider.
Was it? I didn't remember its whole existence until this video, while I do remember well all the other enemies. The flying brain thingie, weaver or something, was the most memorable for me for its uniqueness. Even if I don't remember its name.
@@anteshell It’s Weaver.
The technopath was the most memorable for me because the first time I met one, it was in a room full of Operators. He hacked them all and it was not a good time for me lol
@@razzledazzle84921 Really.. Now I feel a bit idiot. Thanks! :D
I'm surprised they didn't include a famous one from Silent Hill. The PS1's draw distance was limited, so they covered much of the town in mist. Not only did it make the world feel bigger than what the game could actually show at a time, but as a horror game, it really amped up the suspense and made you curious about what you couldn't see, thereby incentivizing you to get closer.
Mist or fog can help a lot with these things... In vanilla WoW the fog was also much closer, helping the zones feel bigger. Once they increased it (and added flying), the world started feeling much smaller.
The initial release of GTA Defective Edition is where this was much more apparent. If you could see Mt Chilliad from every location in San Andres, it feels very small.
The value of the atmosphere that provided (despite being there because of technical limitations) was then proven by the later releases and just how much removing that fog hurt the game.
SH wasn’t the first game doing that. In fact, that mist trick was a common solution to fix performance issues for 3d games.
I wouldn't say that fits the category of this video. This is more about solving gameplay issues that hamper the player experience or designer's vision for the game, not so much glaring technical restraints.
@@IllidanS4 And the fact that you spent 2/3 of your levels running everywhere with far between gryphons help a lot also, once you finally got the horse at 40 you had already explored most of the early zones and later zones halted exploration with more mobs you had to fight to get past while in early zones you could mostly travel through the zone along roads without needing to fight.
So there where many tricks together to help make the world feel bigger.
My favourite story about solving a problem is when Blizzard wanted to make sure hardcore players didn’t grind for 10+ hours every day and leave other players in the dust. They started with giving XP-penalties after a few hours of gameplay, but after some backlash, they reversed it entirely, giving players XP-boosts that increased based on how long since they last played. Falls very well in line with your 4th point :)
My favorite part is that the "reversal" was just rewording. The actual XP you got before and after were the exact same but players liked it being framed as a reward rather than a penalty.
And many complained that it's the same punishment in different words, because they were not completely stupid.
@@christophersavignon4191 But giving XP boost for not playing in a while isn't inherently a punishment.
Someone grinding all that time while other people are logged out ought to still get more XP over extended period of time
@@tappajaav
Are you forgetting that the base exp gain was reduced? It's not a boost, never was.
And of course it is a punishment. You play more, you get less exp. A negative consequence in response to specific behaviors - that is the very definition of punishment.
@@christophersavignon4191 I don't know the exact numbers regarding this.
I just thought it would be reasonable that playing more would yield advancing more in the long run.
If it isn't the case then it's pretty silly especially in an MMORPG
The Sid Meier thing reminds me of an old engineering trick where, if you don't know the source of a problem between point A and point B, test the spot halfway between them. Then, if the problem exists there, test halfway between there and point A; otherwise test between there and point B. Repeat until you find where the problem originates. Mathematically it's the most efficient method of pinpointing the source. If halving the world had been too drastic, Meier probably would have gone back up to three quarters, and kept dialing it in until he hit the sweet spot.
Also known as Binary Search, used in almost all software that need to find something in an ordered collection.
Also used in the military when judging distance. It’s called bracketing.
Git actually automates this with the git bisect command. You tell it a version of your code where it worked and a version where it's broken, and it steps you through testing the revisions in between to find the one where the problem was introduced.
I’ve done this to find the git commit that broke something vague. Among 100s of commits, it’s a good approach if the reproduction is quick and reliable.
@@AaronRotenberg oh! I learned something today! Ha that’s awesome. I did it manually by eyeballing the middle each time.
I feel as if the fundamentals of each of these approaches are incredibly useful techniques for all kinds of creative projects. Great video, dude!
Very true. I’m reminded of how I try to figure out the causes of problems by wildly adjusting variables of the situation in my head and imagining how that changes it, which is basically the broad principle behind #4, for instance.
That’s kinda the beauty of these videos, isn’t it? I’m never going to be designing a game, but they sure serve as an amazing sort of thematic lens to understand all sorts of things through about media and ourselves.
Like solving problems associated with politics...
I was thinking the same thing, almost every single point made in this videos applies to projects outside of just game development. The lessons from this video are easily carried over to other aspects of media (screenwriting, songwriting, prop making, set design, etc.), they also carry over easily to other industries entirely and the rewards would be just as tangible.
a professor once said that before finding the requirements of a project we have to understand the needs of the user. this is very similar.
like, imagine someone asked you to build a lot of shelves. when you ask why they tell you it's for books. then why not use an ebook reader? a lot of the time what we need is not what we think we need, so we have to investigate further and try different solutions.
Iteration is basically codified as one of the best general case solutions in math. The fundamental process is make a guess (or seed) and plug it into your formulas and the output is your new guess, loop until the difference between outputs is sufficiently small. Of course it can fail, either by not converging to a solution, or missing a solution in favor of another depending on the seed value. But its incredibly useful for preditions of non-linear systems like the output of a transistor, diode, or any similar electronics. (Note that resistors, capacitors, and inductors aren't included in this usage) And in the case of math, its very easy to get a computer to do it for you so who cares if it takes 2,000 calculations, a computer can do that in less than a second, way faster than doing it perfectly by hand.
But the basic idea is that instead of trying to create the perfect solution kn your first attempt, just try stuff until you find a satisfactory solution. It isn't perfect but you find it way faster and learn alot more in the process. (Iteration is one of my favorite problem solving methods)
Working on Endless Legend back in the day, players could ally with one another, but at the end of the game, only one would win. This caused frustration as they felt everyone in the alliance should be declared the winner. I brought this up with the Sr Producer on the project, who told me we had very little resources in terms of programmers or designers on the project, as most of the studio was working on Endless Space 2 at the time. After considering our options, I suggested, not to make a significant change, but just a little one, aimed specifically at the player. The game checks whether you meet a victory condition. The game checks whether you are in an alliance. If yes to both, it asks you if you want to share your victory. If you select yes, it displays the victory screen to the rest of your team.
Allied victoried were in, at the cost of a modal text window.
Interesting. Sounds like the Bungie example with a .2 second change in the sniper rifle's delay between shots. I wonder what sorts of issues came up from having such asymmetrical factions in the game. Like the Cultists of the Eternal End, or Mykara, who only have one city, or the Kapaku, who can only gather food on volcanic terrain. Prior to a few years ago, I mostly played rts games and heard that highly asymmetric factions had to be few in number, otherwise they'd be incredibly unbalanced. I've also heard that 4x/ turn based strategy games can have big changes in them more, since there's more stuff to go through to get something. I think a good example is upgrading units; in most rts games I've played, you build the upgrade building and research +1 to melee attack. When it's done all melee units get +1 to attack. Meanwhile, in the Endless games you have to unlock the ability to mine advanced substances, then research advanced weapons, then create a new template, then either upgrade an existing unit for dust(money) and the advanced resource, or make a new unit for industry and the adv. resource. I hope Endless Dungeon does well.
Endless Legend is my first true 4X game and so it holds a very special place in my heart. Thank you for your work on it, it's a beautiful game!
And speaking of it, I am a very supportive player so I would definitely be the one frustrated about the alliance victory screwing over the rest of the alliance.
@@mattmorehouse9685 We knew balancing Endless Legend would be very tricky, but thankfully we went for a more immersive experience and never really tried to fully balance the game, which would have been a fool's errand. We just made sure the game, and each faction, was fun to play, and played out differently. This didn't please the 0.01% most hardcore MP players who fought each other for dominance... but they weren't our target audience and we couldn't ever satisfy them fully, so we just didn't try! I have left the studio during Endless Dungeon preprod so I know very little about it, but I hope it does well. I looks incredible.
The way I usually think about 6:49 is in terms of upper/lower bounds. Lets say you think/know that 10 mana is too cheap for a spell; its too spammable. You could increase it to 12, but then oh, its still too cheap. So before you knew the answer was somewhere between 11 and infinity, now you know the answer is between 13 and infinity. But if you instead increased it to 25 and realize thats too expensive, well now you actually have a useful upper bound. Overshooting makes it so much easier to fix something in 2 or 3 passes, rather than being stuck trying every single number between your first guess and the right answer.
necroposting about binary searching
so a number isn't right, it's too small. double it. still too small? double again. keep doing this and save the last two numbers you get: the one that's too small and the one that's too big. now while your number still isn't right, look at the halfway point. is it too small? replace lower number. is it too high? replace upper number. at some point it'll have to be good. same for numbers that are too large; at first, halve them every step.
this is why algorithms are useful to all people, not just programmers; the intuition behind one can help solve other problems that aren't really computer-based.
I once saw a talk from a developer of Marvel’s Spider-Man for PlayStation speaking about their massive performance challenges. He said something like "it's not a cutscene, it's an animated loading screen". That kind of blew my mind.
Metroid Prime did this too with delayed doors and elevator cutscenes. Really clever.
@@VideoMask93 reminds me that unfortunately that kind of thing had a negative impact on the gameplay design of bloodborne, where a specific alternative path through the game had to be cut due to performance issues, and because the geometry to the rest of the game was already done, they couldn't figure out how to prolong the walk to it and so the easier way was to just cut the alternative route.
Thats a very common thing thats been around for decades
yeah, pretty handy.. if I'm not wrong, i believe it was Rockstar who pioneered the cutscene-loading screen in Max Payne 3, granted the system was at its early stages and also due to hardware limitations, we had to compensate for sometimes long unskippable loading screen.. but nonetheless, i think it was pretty cool when i first encountered this back then when i played the game.. also, the game physics was phenomenal!!
@@Toki-Ralte even resident evil had loading screens behind cutscenes, e.g. doors.
Wow, never expected to get featured in a GMTK video 😅. Excellent compilation Mark, and honored to be included amongst such fantastic examples!
Yo! Which one were you?
@@yvesgomes Astroneer (Mining Your Own Design)
@@Smokeblue Awesome!
Cool!
@@Smokeblue Fantastic job. I really appreciate you and your teams work on Astroneer. One of my absolute favorite titles.
"Small change of 0.2s" That's massive balance change! 1.4x original cooldown ie. 40% increase. Especially considering a weapon that gets this every cycle.
Yup, that is basically a night and day difference.
Agreed. Absolute difference is what he was talking about. Relative difference was huge.
Thats the point!
Take into account that not all players would fire every 0.5 seconds prior to the tweak. I bet many players took longer than 0.7s between shots before that, and so, the unbalancing skill ceiling was lowered for top players, without upsetting the performance of less skilled players. Very elegant solution.
@@fernando47180 very good point!
game design is the embodiment of solving problems you created for yourself
I can vouch for the success of the bubble system in New Sup Wii. My mom, dad, brother, and I would frequently come across tricky sections, so if one person made it through, everyone else would get in a bubble and get popped.
It's like the Yoshi's Island baby system, but less whiny.
Wish more games gave it a try.
I think this only applies if you are fine with people playing for you.
I don’t find it to be thay good of a solution for that reason.
In my experience I found people feeling less valuable because they were better off staying in the bubble.
It might work for some people, but I’m certain there has to be better ways of doing this.
@@TestTubeGirl If that's the case, just don't advance unless everyone can pass?
@@TestTubeGirl These games can played differently, it's good for competitiveness but casually you could let everyone do it. If someone stays in the bubble they just won't have fun so it's up to them
The poltergeist situation in Prey reminds me of why the added Goombas to Super Mario Bros. They needed another enemy type to help fill out the roster of the early game levels, but they didn't have much space left on the cartridge. So they made an enemy with comically simple AI (if you can even call it that) and only required one sprite that just flipped horizontally for its walking animation.
One of my favorite games of recent years Darkest Dungeon had a problem with players just simply mowing down the front line of enemies causing the back ones to move forward and rendering them useless because of positional placement needed to cast spells/attack. So Red Hook had the genius idea of adding corpses which would serve as temporary placement holders. They would appear if an enemy died but only if it wasn't by a critical attack or damage over time effect.
It's a mechanic I like a lot, but it was contentious enough among existing players that they had to add a toggle for it in the difficulty settings!
GMTK's video on listening to negative feedback talks about the backlash to the addition of corpses, and how Red Hook dealt with it.
Was it a problem though? Or was it Red Hook punishing people for playing?
@@mrwizard5012 This was in Early Access, remember? They felt it was too easy to break the combat system in a game that was supposed to be about always teetering on the brink of ruin and tried to come up with a solution.
Game developers don't make changes to spite their players; they make changes in service of their vision of the game, in the hopes of making it better. It is, among other things, what user testing and rapid prototyping are for: finding elements, or the lack thereof, that compromise the intended experience.
This kind of story is super common in gamedev circles. Pretty much every game has one. Generally issues like this are caught early in development and squashed before the cement has time to set, but under the Early Access paradigm things solidify faster. Managing player expectations during this time is a task that can easily spiral out of hand.
A really common problem is players not looking at something important and potentially getting confused about what to do or where to go. Designers usually solve this by putting in visual elements that draw the player's line of sight -- sometimes subtly (aligning things so that they "point" in a specific direction -- an image composition trick), sometimes not-so-subtly (particle effects, changes in lighting, explosions, camera direction, etc.), and sometimes completely overtly (highlighted areas of the screen, objective markers).
One example that comes to mind is from Portal 2, where players were supposed to look at a particular animation (an imploding metal device of some kind) after completing a task, but kept turning around and missing it because there was a slight delay. The solution to this was to add a texture to a nearby object that would catch players' attention: a warning label that said something along the lines of "WARNING: DON'T LOOK AWAY FROM IMPLOSIONS". It worked; players would either pause long enough to notice something was happening or catch the hint and look back.
Bruh, Prey's team didn't have time to make a whole new unique enemy model? So they just made an invisible ghost?
And not only that, but they made it use the pre-existing physics objects as its weapons??
That's really funny but also kinda genius lmao
they still had to code in the new behavior which is the most time consuming part
@@aliatef7203 well, at least the artists didn't have to get involved
@@__lasevix_ true
you found them! I can't thank you enough
Reminds me of how the Mortal Kombat 1 devs avoided programming a new character slot for Reptile.
By making the game load Scorpion, turning his color palette green, upping his walk speed, and letting his AI switch between Sub-Zero's moveset,
it gave the illusion of being a wholly separate fighter.
I work as a Data Engineer which generally is FAR less sophisticated from a programming point of view than game development. It is staggering to me how the very essence of videogame development is about using extremely advanced problem solving skills to make something for entertainment.
Combine that with the human factor. You can never predict player behaviour!
Quaternions yay
I think part of that is that video games are an odd mixture of a piece of art created by science. It needs both halves to function. Movies may seem like this too but the difference is that a camera and an editing program get created by engineers and programmers and then used as a tool by artists to make the product. Or like, a mechanical engineer who created a stove isn't a chef, even if they're key to the process. But in video games the art (some of it at least) and the engineering are the same part
@@demonwaterdemonwater4993 Good for you
Heyo fellow DE!
I think that's very true. Also maybe part of how Mark likes to look at game design
This video really is a great summary of why I love game design so much. There are many times that I tell people that my goal is to be a game designer, and they don't understand what that means. I feel like this video would help people understand why the field is not only important, but captivating.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite dev stories, from the Killer Instinct reboot. Jago's healing was seen as a menace to the meta, with a lot of player complaints. The common request was to reduce the amount of health that Jago could heal, or even remove his healing capability entirely (which thankfully the developers saw as an untouchable lever!).
The devs followed the advice of "Your players are great at finding problems, but terrible at finding solutions". Rather than simply doing as players requested, they asked themselves *why* the healing was so frustrating. Lead combat designer Adam "Keits" Heart described it as curing the disease, rather than alleviating the symptom. They took 4 months to study Jago, and what they found was, Jago didn't have any bad matchups, and was solid anywhere on the screen. His long range was strong, his short range was strong, and his mid range could transition way too easily into short range via his Wind Kick. So they nerfed Wind Kick, making it punishable on block. Players reacted negatively, but within weeks, the Jago complaints vanished, and updated rankings now gave Jago several bad matchups.
This was discussed more in-depth in Hold Back To Block's excellent documentary, "FIGHT ON: The Killer Instinct Story". I recommend it to anyone interested in fighting game design, reboots, and metagame balance.
Anyway, excellent video, Mark! Thank you for these. I genuinely think this one might be my new favorite from you. God bless!!
this reminds me of "marvel super heroes" where Wolverine could heal himself, BUT his MAX health would decrease as well, so in the end it would usually take just 50% more damage than normal to finish him off.
(less if a powerful attack got through near the end)
Just want to add that the Potions made it back in Diablo 3 at release, but with a 30sec cooldown.
The health globe system worked great when the game was about killing a bunch of monsters, but then there were bosses and you're no longer killing things which broke the system again.
They tried to change it with stats that gave a % life steal on hit as well but changed it to a set number per attack instead, then that got nerfed as well.
they couldve just made the boss drop health globes randomly when taking damage with higher chances when the boss has lower hp
"Yeah, but what about bosses" was my first thought there too.
The fact that "health/any other goodie on kill" skills aren't just sometimes useless, but are specifically useless when games are generally at their hardest has long been a point of game design frustration. So cool to have a heal or other buff skill that's exclusively useless when I need it most. Sure, some games "solve" that problem by giving bosses infinite minions, but considering how much I HATE endlessly respawning boss minions, that solves the kill skill problem like chopping off your leg solves a stubbed toe.
Anyway, if you ask me, a game should either have bosses OR kill skills of any sort, but never both. Personally, I say it's kill skills that should go, as I strongly, STRONGLY prefer effects that trigger on hit rather than kill, such as percentage-based life steal. Not only do they solve the boss problem, but I just prefer rewards on hit (or stun or crit, etc, any offensive mechanic that's applicable throughout the entire course of an enemy's life rather than exactly once at the end) in general.
Currently working on a local multiplayer indie game with a friend, and we've certainly hit similar roadblocks in our design (and still struggle with a few). It's nice to know that even industry professionals with years -- if not decades of experience also sometimes run into a design hiccup that can take a lot of effort to smooth out and resolve.
You guys should check GDC videos. There's plenty of interesting info that developers give out on how they solve problems. Some solutions are surprisingly simple for how elegant they end up!
@@migueeeelet Thanks for the suggestion! We've checked out a few GDC videos in the past, but it's difficult to find resources on how to approach solving our current issues...
We've had a lot of trouble expressing information to the players without it being overwhelming, and also managing the camera to show both the players and points of interest during the game (it's shared-screen). Not many games take this exact design approach, so it's difficult to find people who had a similar experience and overcame it...
@@imjust_a you may need a set of fresh eyes, if the issue is as elusive as you say.
A newcomer can be a benefit to pointing out a simpler solution.
@@imjust_a like Lego star wars?
What is the name of the game ?
In Gears games, a perfect reload would only boost the damage of used bullets i.e. if you shot 10 of 16 rounds then perfect reload only the first 10 rounds of the 16 round clip get a damage increase. This gives those veteran players more incentive to shoot more rounds before reloading by increasing the overall amount of extra damage per reload.
Interesting, that’s a very clever little caveat to include
true they would get the boost from the last few bullets and also the reload in that case, however because this came from directly learning player behavior it works out, since its time sensitive and requires consistency ur just way more likely to want to trigger the reload yourself rather than have it start auto reloading and ur not focused on the mini bar
that's why player behavior is why this worked instead of backfired
The Mario bubbles also had some hilarious side-effects. My friends and I got in the habit of using the bubbles as an ejector seat to get out of sticky situations.
We would frequently find that we ALL bubbled, which caused plenty of laughter and chaos as we bounced frenetically through the levels only to find that we all bubbled and would have to start over.
This is just a great metaphor for dealing with any problems in life.
What an excellent video.
I'm not a developer, but as a gamer, this is still extremely helpful for understanding design mechanics.
I often find myself disliking a specific game mechanic, but fail to understand it's over all impact enough to offer constructive feedback.
Thank you.
Why don't u learn game dev
@@Gaius_Julius_Caesar_Augustus I have way too many other things going on in my life to just pick up game development. If I had unlimited funds and time, i would consider it. But I just don’t have the time, resources or interest to begin such a journey at this stage in my life.
I'm not that smart@@Gaius_Julius_Caesar_Augustus
Really liked this episode focusing on design from a more foundation core level
Me too, I like how a lot of the concepts can be applied to other projects, It’s just like Miyamoto said, a good solution can solve multiple problems at once
Flip it on it's Head could also be seen in World of Warcraft's early development. Rested EXP, where you get a bonus to experience aftering being logged out in a safe area for a length of time, used to be a punishment system where you got reduced exp for playing too long without logging out in a safe area to rest up.
None of the numbers were changed, just the wording of the system to the player.
Yeah. The WoW example is a classic!
Always loved that example. Because it points out that the presentation of a system is just at important as its implementation.
In general the industry has improved by flipping punishment systems into reward systems.
I would always change character in Wow when my rested xp ran out. Felt like the game was punishing me for playing too much.
It was a terrible system.
@@MisogynyMan I actually think it is a good system on paper. Theoretically It helps slow the gap between those that can only play an hour or two a day and those that play for hours on end. I think it is also good from an ethical standpoint to give the players a push to stop playing for a bit.
11:05 "this one feature made dying more fun" 💀
I feel like most of these can also be applied to context outside of game development. I am not a game dev but looking at these certainly made me think about the problems I have at work. Very interesting!
One of my favorite stories is not gameplay but in cutscenes. Kingdom Hearts released a game on the GBA. They wanted PS2 Real time cutscenes but, well, it can't do that. Instead, they recorded the cutscenes and turned them into a .gif file that plays at the opening and closing of the game with a synced audio track. Looks fantastic, if a smidge grainy, and takes up so much less space and processing power.
The concept of a prerendered cutscene wasn't exactly novel at the time...
@@somerandombub getting it on a GBA via gif with a synced soundtrack though...
@@madamminalost Do you have a source? I also doubt it was literally a .gif file.
@@somerandombub unfortunately not on hand. I read this like 15 years ago on I THINK KHInsider but could be somewhere else. And right now searching Chain of Memories .gif opening cutscene GBA just gets you either gifs or talking about the script or similar.
Huh, didn't realize nailing a difficult timing challenge to get a short bonus was a problem that needed solving. That, in fact, seems like the whole point of it -- "do something difficult, make the game easier for a moment."
Right? There was no problem to solve. Their «solution» is dumb.
The problem was that expert players were left with a game that wasn't hard enough to satisfy them. Experts don't want the game to be trivial if you do the minigame, they want the minigame to feel like almost a necessity, something you have to do to survive comfortably. They generally want games where all of the systems are important. But when the developers actually made that the case, novice players were getting destroyed. The "normal" solution would be to just pick one group to appeal to, but given it's a AAA game that's supposed to have mass appeal, they didn't like that idea. So they gave novice players a "consolation prize" for their bad reload habits to help them survive the higher difficulty, and hoped that the experts wouldn't notice that the minigame wasn't as important as it seemed.
@@lued123 Easily solved through difficulty settings.
Great video, I'm glad problem solving has always been a major theme in any of your design analysis videos.
Several years ago I studied Game Design and Production as my major, and one of my professors always repeated: "Anyone can come up with ideas, that's not what game design is about, it's about solving problems." I thought I had this idea down at an early stage, I'd always tell myself to make decisions not by creating a solution, but by addressing the underlying issue.
About a year ago when I started my current job I realized that... I didn't have this idea down at all. My current design lead hammers it home every single time I reply to a problem impulsively. It's incredible how my design work has improved just by being constantly reminded to understand the problem before creating a solution. For anyone looking to get into game design, this may as well be the best skill to develop at an early stage. Sometimes solving problems can be much more fun than analyzing them, but by neglecting the analysis of all the problems your game might develop, you actually remove many elements of control from development itself, and it can wind up feeling like your design gets... Directionless.
Keep asking questions, whenever you can, especially when your colleagues start to respond with "okay mom I get it"
As a TTRPG (Tabletop Role Playing Game) designer, a lot of these methods are ideas we have tried when developing or overhauling systems - anything from weapons and grenades, to what spells a character can cast, to something as specific as "can you attack after spending your entire turn running?". Seeing a lot of our methods being reflected in this video is a great feeling, knowing that we've generally been on the right course for efficient development. I'm going to share this with the rest of the devteam!
One of my favourite changes is in Cyberpunk 2077.
The problem: NCPD Scanner Hustles (small combat encounters and light puzzles) were too numerous, boring and amounted to going to each location marked on the map like a Ubisoft open world box checking exercise.
The solution: Instead of making all the Hustle's locations marked on the map, they are now only marked when the player is close to them. This spread out the content so it was less repetitive, encouraged exploration and felt like an encounter you stumble across rather than directly seek out.
The side effect: It was now much harder to tell which hustles were/weren't completed for the associated achievements. Although those achievements aren't tied to in game rewards as far as I know so it's a minor side effect.
I agree, but also - you can put all NCPD scanner icons on the map back with the filtering system introduced in one of the patches, so if you really want the previous system - you can still have it.
Just the default changed (for the better and exactly for the reason you mentioned).
@@domoslaf Didn't know you can revert it with the filters. That's real smart. Means players can opt-in for revealing all the locations if they're doing a completion playthrough but players playing for fun/immersion retain the fun of discovery.
@@PlebNC Exactly!
great vid, especially love the part where they solve problems
you haven't finished the vid bruh😭
KEKL nice one made me laugh
@Don't read profile photo OK i dont
@@zephyr6927 they solved the problem of the video being long by simply knowing all the details already
@Don't read profile photo ok
1:19 choice of gameplay clip here is perfection
I've taught almost exactly this content to people learning business process re-engineering and continuous improvement methodologies for years. These principles are universally applicable to problem solving and your presentation was amazing.
Defining the problem is the base of UX / Product Design. You have to spend as much time with understanding the problem (discovery and define phases) as with the solution (develop and delivery phases). Also prototyping and testing are indispensable tools of the development phases. In game design this is even more important as a lots of features only can only be evaluated when you see, feel how they work, or when you see how players react.
it's really interesting how when presented with the solutions to these problems it seems like it's obvious, but it's not as if I or most could easily come up with the solution when presented with the problem. Really just shows how well these designers handled what are problems that are much harder than many would have assumed.
The hard part is finding the simple but effective solution.
I typically "like" very few videos as I use my liked playlist to revisit interesting topics relevant to what I am currently doing or to simply enjoy a quality video, that being said, I will look over what I have learned here in case I ever come across these situations! Thanks for the video!
Love the structure of this video! This is definitely one of my all-time faves from this channel. The contrast and seeing the problem vs. the solution is super helpful and it's so insightful to see how game designers tackle these problems in very practical ways. As much as I've enjoyed the "higher level" game design theory pieces, this feels more like a glimpse into the day-to-day design work at a studio
One thing I love about games solving problems are the ones that do solve more than one. Mario Odyssey for example, using Captures to take out foes while finishing the challenge you captured the enemy for. It amazes me how well problem solving goes.
I love these kinds of videos. They are interesting, enlightening, and inspiring. I'm so glad to see you coming back to this style of video.
I can't believe how much work into this video. Absolutely fantastic work.
These videos are nearly always universal for most types of games. I love watching these and using concepts to help my board games flesh out that much better!
The way the gameplay shown relates to what he says is super charming! I love when he says about games being unbalanced and it shows the see-saw in super mario maker 2!
Mark, your ingenious insight to the gaming process and ability to pick and dissect small parts of gaming development always baffles me. Great work, keep it up.
Great video! As an industrial designer myself I found many parallels between these 11 "general" design problems and my work experience. These case studies offer nice tips on how to work on your product to find solutions.
"Very few ideas survive first contact with players" is a fantastic line and insight.
I mean it is just a mutation of "No plan survives contact with the enemy." But it is a good mutation.
This video can help not just solve game design problems, but rather any problems in general. Business, product design, engineering- anything. Great video as always!
big thanks for naming every game that appears on the screen in a popup, this is one of the small extra changes which I appreciate very much, because people don't have to scour the comments with the hope of finding someone curious about "what game is at time x:yz?"
How am I just now finding this channel!? Omg! What an amazing video today and I’m excited to go back thru your library to watch more.
Awesome video! Also wanted to thank you for your cameo in Jacob Geller's most recent piece. It was a pleasant surprise to hear your voice in some of my other game dev edutainment.
Amazing as always! This channel got me to try a game design formation and I'm starting my first real job in a few weeks. Thanks Mark!
Good luck!!
Congrats! Make us all proud!
5:26
I love how the agreed upon busted as Hell time between shots is SLOWER than the Sniper in TF2
4:55 reminds me of a previous video you did, where you pointed out that very often designers succeeded by rewarding players for doing what they wanted, rather than punishing them for deviating.
OH DEAR!!! YOU DID IT!!! YOU FINISHED YOUR GAME!!!
Your videos are great because they offer insight into why games have many of the features that they do. Often I've wondered why, or even criticized, certain features found in the games I play. Now, I consider that these very features are present, not because it was an arbitrary decision, but rather to ensure the game is balanced and is as engaging as possible. Keep up the good work. Cheers.
Way better than anything Extra Credits has put out.
I have watched this video three times since it's been out. It's beautifully done and so clear. One of my favorite videos on UA-cam
This was an excellent video! Thank you for making it. It's not only helpful for aspiring game designers but also helps gamers understand some of the challenges of game dev, and also helps critics suggest better solutions to problems they perceive. Liked and [already was] Subscribed!
As always, this was a really helpful and entertaining video! Can we just take a minute to appreciate the level of thought that went into the background scenes Mark chose when talking and describing certain things?
Just a few examples: 1:17 "going around in circles" + Link and the dog spinning around, 1:25 "how the best game creators go about solving problems in their design" + Mario and his friends figuring out how to fix the pipe, 13:00 "fixing a problem in one place can create another problem elsewhere" + gameplay from Slipways, where this is literally always a challange for the player.
It just fits and makes the video so much more enjoyable! THANK YOU MARK! ♥
This is a really thorough video, so much detailed information
Thank you for cultivating a list of such amazing stories, I love the stories but also the quotes.
I was just mindlessly scrolling on my phone an this video started playing and instantly hooked me. Good work I love the in and outs of game design
omg I didn't realize that those were checkpoints in Shovel Knight 😑
I broke every single one, every single time. I thought that it was just supposed to be a throw back to when games didn't have check points and you had to beat the whole level in one go.
Similar to the poltergeist in prey is the "darkness" enemy in Alan Wake where items would vibrate wildly and fly toward the player. I've been told this started as a bug in the engine, so the designers turned it into an enemy in the game. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.
I've heard that many features in Minecraft started out as bugs. For instance, quasi-connectivity in Java.
@@robertabarnhart6240 like creepers originated from a time when were pigs were implemented wrong
What an amazing video !
Excellent work my friend, the setting and explanation of every problem and solution was really well put together.
I really enjoyed it ! = )
That’s a fantastic video. Entertaining, info-packed and straight to the point. Just fire 🔥
"Fixing one problem can cause another problem elsewhere"
Ah yes, programming.
Videos where developers have to account for players behaviour and adjust are always a great watch
As soon as I heard the TLOU problem I came up with the workbench solution but that might be because I've been crafting in Fallout: New Vegas a lot lately
every time I'm in this channel I'm reminded of concepts from software engineering and hci, and it's really great to see the theory being translated into real examples.
Honestly this video is very well made as all the advice given applies not only to games, but hard life problems in general, especially for engineering and such, but in general too. Thanks
One of the other great points I thought of when you talked about flipping problems on their heads was the Rested Buff in WoW, which famously was just a mathematical reversal of what had been an exhaustion mechanic. People hated getting a debuff for continuing to play the game, but loved having a little boost for logging out in the right place. The two systems were literally exactly the same system, just presented differently (with the "base xp to level" being shifted behind the scenes to compensate), but elicited wildly different reactions.
This type of process is why an understanding of systems theory and troubleshooting is important for any engineering field
i love how those maxims of design overlap to other fields.
great vid and thanks for making it.
You know what makes your video flawless? That it doesn't only cover a subject I'm most interested in, but it also provides wisdom I can use anywhere in other life areas. X
Incredible video! Love your organized approach. Thank you dearly for the subtitles also (auditory-processing issues here). Thanks for sharing :)
Glad it was helpful!
They should post these 7 principles in the help section of every game development kit. Really great tips.
Love the video Mark. You always find the most interesting examples to showcase each point.
So much goes into game design that most people don't realise. Great video
I'm a games dev working on my second title and your videos are an invaluable source of insight and analysis.
My biggest problem to solve is figuring out which "problems" actually need solving. Many times when a player criticizes a mechanic, it's really just due to their own preference in playstyle, genre, etc not being met by my game. If you don't have some huge marketing and research department or funds to outsource it and get a better sample size, what do you do?
in UX research, the sample size considered "enough" to get useful feedback for a given player profile (you might have 1 to 3 player types in a typical game) is between 5 and 8
so given you get a representative enough panel, and these people don't have huge biases in your favour (like your friends do for instance), you can get a decent sample of your potentiel playerbase
then, it comes down to how you do your playests. this needs a whole methodology and it's hard to do it properly, but with in-depth research you can get some first, ok-quality playtests
I would say, dig deeper then. The benefit of players outside the targeted ones is that they can point to things you may be overlooking or provide new prospective. For instance, Dark Souls is a hard game. But why is it hard? Deliberate combat pacing and abilities. It's not hard because of poor controls or responsiveness, unbalanced attacks, etc. Therefore, while players may face a difficult game, you can confirm that it is at least not because of poor design all around which gives you more confidence that it's hard in the right ways. As for where that difficuly level lies? That is a subjective answer and up for you to decide based on who you're building the game for.
Great video to remind that to find a solution one should approach the core of the problem and how it interacts with other mechanisms in game
I love this! Fantastic to peek behind the curtain and see how the big names fixed different problems!
This is so insightful on just problem solving in general
Great vid so far. I love active reload mainly because it’s a good feeling way to show guns malfunctioning. More accurate, randomized malfunctions would suck. Making them part of a risk/reward mini game makes it fun.
im hoping youve played synthetik? uses this system, very very fun, gun based type game.
Very fun and informative. As always thanks for making these videos. I really enjoy learning some fun facts and hearing your breakdowns.
Long time fan, and a new sub. Love the topics, insights and format of your content!!
When playing Mario with my 5 and 6 year old nephew and niece, the bolder of the two will charge ahead, while the more careful one will sit in the bubble and watch.
I'm not sure if it's a bad thing that they don't have to challenge themselves, or if it's a good thing that they can still interact with the game at their own pace.
Something that Nintendo has captured in a lot of their game design is that quote from Reggie "the game is fun, if it's not fun then why bother?".
It is most definitely a good thing that they can still interact with the game at their own pace because it's a game and the point of it is to be fun.
In a lot of Mario games, there's always alternate paths and routes you can take, always different challenges with varying degrees of difficulty. As a result, these games become incredibly varied in the amount of people that can play them and enjoy them. On top of that, they also make replaying them much more fun.
It's a good thing if they're having fun, and a bad thing if they're fighting and complaining about how they're not getting to play, don't think about if it's "good" hypothetically, in the real world are they having fun? If so it's good 👍
My favorite one is in Resident evil. Friends and I had a hard time getting into the first few because the tank controls felt awkward and clunky. Then re4 came out and they fixed.... the camera. With an over the shoulder view instead of fly on the wall that constantly shifts, suddenly the tank controls made sense and felt intuitive.
Pretty cool problem solving approaches! And you can transfer them one-to-one to digital product development. Love it
I love these types of videos! I’m wanting to become a game dev and I feel your videos actually teach me more thank some schools have
Note that the time between shots change from 0.5s to 0.7s was a 40% increase. Small at first glance, but not when you look closer...
For the intro example, GOTG had a similar mechanic but if you miss the sweet spot in the cool down phase, it just takes a second longer before you can start firing again (and if you hit it, you have a short burst of damage boost and can keep shooting).
Game of the game?
@@CIinbox guardians of the galaxy
@@CIinbox Guardians Of The Galaxy
@@CIinbox Greath of the Gwild
Thanks for this compilation, I love videogames and I also solve problems in software development. This gave me a different perspective in how I should approach certain problems that I thought I knew the solution already. The list is awesome but the explanations and examples were superb!
Just subbed. Amazing channel. Thank you for these great videos. Time to binge watch!
What an astoundingly cool video! Thank you for sharing so many creative stories!
So once the magic bullets trick is discovered, won't pros adapt their gameplay? Similar to how speed runners intentionally die in re4 to affect the difficulty scaling? 🤔
Another incredible video. Super well done! As a game developer, these make me super happy to see. A little bit of me hates them because it slightly lessens my job security, but the other 99.9% of me is thrilled to see such a great resource for budding game developers.
This is a fantastic video, one thats lessons can be used and applied in almost all other industries.