I have more recently been getting audio books written (And often voiced) by the creators of some of my favorite games and studios. Just hearing John Romero talk about the limitations of his time, him for a while making games while not even knowing what variables were, and the most shocking when he said "Doom was my 90th game" is just so eye opening. We see so many success stories that skip to the end, we forget just how much time and effort it took to get there.
Design Doc is a great recommendation! Same with channels like Daryl Talks Games and Design Frame 👀, the former is rooted in psychology, the latter in game design itself.
The best resource I've found for a wide range of useful advice (apart from GDC lectures) is to check out Jonathan Blow's stream vods. His views are often controversial but always thought provoking.
My top recommendations are the channels Mental checkpoint, Game Maker's Toolkit, Adam Millard - The Architect of Games and Jonas Tyrollerfor tips about game design and the process of creating games.
Off the top of my head I would say, Game Makers Toolkit and Adam Millard Architect of games, their channels on here are worth watch. Tim Cain also posts quite a bit here too. And Jacob Gellar has some interesting adjacent type topics too.
@@jaykaye594 I rate GMTK a lot and Tim Cain’s new channel. Mainly trying to encourage people to diversify, read books etc too. Haha. I still think Extra Credits is pretty good as well.
an unusually useful resource that can be translated into game design is Alan Becker's summarization of 12 Principles Of Animation, in particular, Staging is a highlight that can be translated into a lot of aspects of both level design and interface design, like how do you lay out things to be discovered in order, or in a way to overwhelm with intent, or how to communicate important information changes to make sure that everything is known regardless of how much is shown at once at the same time that the player is occupied in a task. this is something a lot of people take for granted but is actually kinda difficult to pull-off when you need something with more complexity aside from major events like a player finishing a lap in a racing game or a turn-based battle finishing. in the best cases figuring out your own rules also lets you know when and how to break those rules and principles to make it easy to express what you want.
I haven't read that many academic papers, but the ones I read, I found many of them way too wordy and word-salad-ish, rather than clear and straight to the point. From some of them I got the impression that they were written by university students trying to impress their teachers through vocabulary and grammatical acrobatics more so than with their actual study. To clarify: I'm not saying people shouldn't read them. I read them myself when I find them, if they're about something I want to know more about. Unless they use complex mathematical notation, which is out of my league. The above has just been my experience with the ones I've read, that they are overly wordy. Though to be fair, my experience also includes scientific papers, which may or may not make a difference.
@@IndieGameClinic well you should've read the next five words. I'm talking about my experience with them. And I'm also not saying people shouldn't read them.
@@IndieGameClinic Dude, you are so obnoxious, it just feels so snobish. This guy is 100% correct, lol. It's hilarious how you felt personally attacked, because the guy said the truth about academic psycho-babble. And it's coming from a person with academic background that is more of a hard science (neuroscience) than BA in "Media&Culture" (lol!). But it only makes sense for you to defend it on ideological grounds, since it's your job and you are often employed by some second-rate universities, based on your LinkedIn. So you have a direct stake in defending this system. Although I must admit, your passive-aggresive nerdy tone of response is very academic. They will never confront you directly, but use euphemisms and a facade of civility. What you are saying is "hurr durr you are a moron! Good luck though, break a leg, you won't make it, don't let the door hit you, moron!". Also sorry to say that, but your academic background and hyper-fixating on some low impact, no h-index (no productivity) papers didn't somehow made you a millionaire succesful in the gamedev industry. While some Joe Shmoe like Scott Cawthon, who didn't read any "academic papers" happened to create a goldmine. Same goes for Toby Fox, Ed Boon, Tim Cain etc. - they got "the paper" (higher education degree) just so they can land a job easier in the future. There are probably even some succesful game developers with only high school degree. It's mostly a craftsmanship (mix of commodity & art - very fascinating relationship for university geeks to furiously type out wordy essays). Do carpenters read engineering papers about various high concepts and study in details the mathematical properties, ins&outs and limits of physics to practice their craft? Obviously not. They don't. They are not even aware it exists and they can create something demonstrably beautiful, which some random engineer probably couldn't, since they are not a carpenter. Not to mind things like "replication crisis", which shows that like 10-20% of soft science academic papers are reproducible. We can read ""Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test". Besides most of those studies being worthless and low impact, so we see further devaluation of academic research and papers. They are just pushed out to meet a quota and get paid. We have also a crisis of "p-hacking", more frequently encountered in "hard sciences". Basically you just tweak the data until you achieve statistical significance. And it's very hard to spot, since it can be artifact of the sample, the analytical method used, or a legitimate judgment made by researchers. How do you differentiate? So called "Sokal Affair" has exposed the laziness and rottenness of cultural studies. And instead of actually addressing the problem of academic rigor. They doubled down and sinked even lower in quality, especially in USA. Also... It makes me wonder as well.... "Doctor"! For all your praise about research... Why are you not on ResearchGate? Surely an esteemed person such as yourself would have more opportunities when you can connect with other "scientists", right? Weird, right...? It's must be some kind of a mistake, since all the people actively engaged in publishing research use ResearchGate. Doctor...? Doctor! It seems like you never published any research to begin with. You have 2 small chapters in a book that netted whopping 9 citations over 8 years, PhD dissertation from 2015 that netted 4 citations and white-paper from a 2015 conference that netted 1 citation (self-reference?). But surely this guy is wrong. Right? It can't be that academia just being a nonsensical circle-jerk, where you can live in your own bubble, vomiting out some "artistic critique" babble that has no value or impact on real world, does nothing to progress humanity forward. And you can have students publish lots of masters theses that have literally 0 citations just to get paid a wage. Right? Best of luck, "Doctor"! Best of luck in growing the channel! I hope it goes well as we all can see it growing!
@@RandyBurgertime Yeah bro! Hidetaka Miyazaki (FromSoftware) that created Dark Souls series reads 2 academic papers a day! Same goes for Hideo Kojima bro! Hit the papers instead of hitting the gym! This "concept" of reading random zero impact, 2 citation papers makes so much sense and is so useful! It's totally needed for an average person and it's not an intellectual masturbation for midwits. Trust me! I wouldn't lie to you! Stalin read 500 pages a day! It's on Wikipedia! It's totally real bro! You should read 500 pages a day so you can be GIGA-BRAINED SIGMA MALE LIKE STALIN. Look how big of a success he achieved in life! You surely can do it too, by just reading Harry Potter all day. Trust me bro, I am an academic. Science rulezzz, we nerds gotta watch out for each other. Unless you have a hard background in academia and done statistical analysis courses then telling some random person to read academic papers is the worst thing you can do. If they can't read and verify the methodology how can they tell if something is useful? It will just lead them to wrong conclusions. Besides the fact that any sociological or cultural papers have no objective measures to verify them. It's just an opinion that can be invalidated. The same way a philosophical paper can be invalidated. At best it's just food for thought. And seeing the philosophical papers... 1 out of 1000 is not a wastepaper to be recycled. You have a better time-waste ratio just watching UA-cam videos from some popular content creators or watching some educational stuff how to make things. Yes. Your "concept" is useless and harmful for an average person. Don't bother with academic papers, especially on some lofty vague things like video games that have no hard criteria to determine anything. It's all just opinions that can't be measured or verified. Opinions that change over time and has changed over time with trends. At least in hard science you can verify the methodology and the numbers to see if they match up. You can't do it in soft science. You can write anything you want about sociology or cultural phenomena like video games and it's not reproducible. Opinion of some random academic shmock that got BA or PhD in Arts sadly does not correlate with success. If it did, they would make games or movies that make billions instead of getting paid a wage in academia. It's the truth.
@@TessyDivine it’s really great. I do think it’s important for game designers to know a lot about existing games and how they work, but there’s so much to be learnt from just embracing *general design* and some of the most innovative designs of the last decade have come from this. Reigns and Mini Metro both jump out as great examples (which I will probably do videos on!)
This is like finding gold, thanks for the recommendations. Could you give some advice or recommend some resources on how to become a professional game designer? I would be grateful, as I only found a small number of resources on making the career out of game design.
@@zaktak4380 hey Zaktak, one of the most commonly recommended design theory books is The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. There’s also an app which goes with it which is free. In terms of “going pro” it’s a case of just doing it and then applying for junior level jobs when you have a portfolio that proves you can do what they need. I am working on an ebook at the moment covering “getting your first game design job”; so thanks for giving me another reason to finish it! When it comes to game design books start with the Schell one.
You used a 0:20 term here that i dont think i have heard before and could be used more: "gameplay design". Thats the key! The term "game design" seems to be confusing people. Maybe it includes code quality? Maybe includes art styles? Maybe it includes music? Sure it can, bu "gameplay design" is more important than all of those put together. ❤
@@blarvinius “game design” MEANS gameplay design. Unfortunately there are a lot of hobbyist educators who use the terms game design and game development interchangeably. Game design is not code, and it’s not art direction.
Thanks for watching/listening. With these videos which aren't based on a review, I'm just trying to focus on the "stuff I wish my students' had done before signing up" type stuff, at least while the channel is new.
I strongly disagree with the video. Though it might be helpful to watch GDC's or listen to podcasts, it is mostly a waste of time in the end. Without the real experience the words of experts have little to none meaning. Also, it makes people fall into the loop of constant learning of anything for nothing. Try to simply get an idea of the game, and listen only those videos, which focuses on the problem you currently have. Solve the problem, keep going with your vision of the game, and hitting an obstacle again, learn about the subject while working on it. Do not watch tutorials, listen what experts have to say about the stuff you don't need, it's useless at best, and harmful at worst. Read a book or two about game design, watch the most crucial 3-4 videos of GDC, a few podcasts or reviews about the similar games you make, and stop at it. Later, just keep working on the game and only learn what's needed. Perhaps, the creator didn't mean that you need to keep learning anything, but without proper explanation, this will make people actually do that. Best regards!
@@arthurmeyer2977 If I say you should do B and not “just” A, then it should be clear that you should still be doing A. If people want to selectively listen to advice and use it to justify only doing research and never putting anything into practice, that’s a “them problem”. the advice in this video is based on observations of hundreds of 18 year olds going into game design courses. YMMV.
@@TheYashakami i not sure if we have been watching the same archives, but GDC talks have helped me a lot for starting in game developement, understand a lot of things of how they work, what should I be focusing, etc... they can have some commentaries and ego strokes, but most talks are pretty informative and even inspiring, at least for us we are jyst starting
@@IndieGameClinicyou may have collected a few of these such commenters. Some very anti-intellectual folks coming to the "here's some stuff to learn" comments.
I got a slightly different tip. Try writing guides for stage plays. Or read stage play scripts. They are made with the idea of the audience sitting there in a 3rd person fixed camera. Especially in games with limited possibility for cinematic shots that fits. There's a bit what we can learn from stage performance, the slight overacting, the silhouettes, the timing of movement and dialogs etc.
@@sealsharp you might like the Game Studies Study Buddies Podcast; Michael Lutz comes at Game Studies from a Theatre Studies POV a lot of the time, and there are some episodes which touch on what you’re describing!
@@IndieGameClinic once in a while i have situations like these when some random person (in this case you) tells me some thing and then i find another thing that i would have never ever found if i wasn't pointed at it. Like this podcast. That's 71 episodes "hidden" in some sub menu of someones private website. How much greatness must be out there without us knowing i wonder?
i just don't agree with the video. sure it has many points that are true and some are important to learn, but the overall massage its trying to convey, i just don't agree. learning from articles like game studies website or watching GDC is inefficient. instead, youtubers and r/game design are the second best source for learning. the best source for learning is by doing the learning yourself. its hard to explain, but my way of viewing my self is like this: whenever i encounter a problem that i can solve. i look for the solution that someone else had, and then i try to design the mental component that i was missing in order to solve that problem when i first encountered it. the problem with game designers in the industry is that they focus to much on the low level stuff and feel-good stuff, that they barely have exp in developing new concepts. they are also not good at transferring wisdom (high level knowledge) they acquired so watching GDC a lot of times feels unproductive. the best way to be a better game concept designer is developing internally as many models on how things are. for example, the one of the higher level models i developed that is simple but profound is: mechanics >dynamics > experience. what it means is mechanics create dynamics and dynamics create experience(which in turn create emotions(like fun)). when i want to create a new game concept, instead of just thinking on theme or combining 2 games (like most noobs do...), what i do instead is to take a daytime from a genre, than think what i dont like in that genre, and combine it with other dynamics to change it. after that i start thinking on what mechanics sholde be to crate the dynamics. for exmple: i dont like anymore traditional rougelikes, but i like the dynamics of resorce management that they do, o running out of materials. and having to chose what to keep and what to lose and waht to use to solve a problem. so i tale that dynamics and merge it with another dynamics like, launcher games (like learn to fly), where i try to go further each launch and you need skill to be able to reach further (lets ignore the progression mechanics for now). then i start to think on the mechanics and lower dynamics, and i decide to copy backpack hero item and inventory system. and between each lanch you have opportunity to change inventory and get new items that change the way the launching mini game behave. the game ends when you run out of fuel or get to the end location. i am to unfocused right now, so i probably deviated from commenting directly on the content of the video (i am so out i can bearly remember the video lol), but might as well post it
@@yairklein-mp8vo I think I made it pretty clear that the resources I was promoting were supplementary to actually making things. I’m also pretty sure you’re not the first to develop the Mechanics - Dynamics - Experience model, and this seems like a particularly odd place to claim that you have (unless you’re just totally unaware that that is an existing design system?)
@@IndieGameClinic i am not aware of this. i develop my models by introspection of my experiences. would be interesting to read, can you reference me to others who have developed this model also? also,i have not claimed that i have developed the model publicly. just for myself.
@@yairklein-mp8vo there was a model called MDA (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework#:~:text=In%20game%20design%20the%20Mechanics,%3A%20Mechanics%2C%20Dynamics%20and%20Aesthetics.) which was later developed in DDE; your model has elements of both of these. I personally don’t use MDA because I think “aesthetics” is too much of a complicated and misused term to be a helpful part of a definition of something else.
I don't think political topics are at all relevant to indie devs. Why should I care about the drama or controversies that some gaming companies are involved in? It might satisfy my curiosity and amusement, but it's completely irrelevant for my work and my understanding of software/art development.
@@skaruts we might be using the term “political” in different ways, and idk, maybe it’s a sort of “you won’t know why this is important until you have a job in a bad studio- or are running one” kind of thing
@@skaruts (I should probably also add that it’s not the whole point of the show, that was just a disclaimer because it’s the thing people might find most contentious about it. There are lots of good episodes about other things which are less negative and more inspiring; watch the episode about Jubensha games for example)
While I agree that any artwork should stand on it own, it's also part of a culture and a timeframe to gain it complete meaning. Although generally the drama and controversies of a studio are "production difficulties" and a side note to the work. Picasso was probably not very happy going up ladders with many buckets to paint Guernica. Is that relevant to the work? Not that I endorse bad management practices. I'm actually very opposed to them, but creating games is different from enjoying games. Sometimes you just don't want to know how the sausage is made.
@@dancingdoormanable but the general ups and downs of running or working at a company, which I suppose is what you mean by "production difficulties", are not political or even related to any political topics.
@@skaruts I think your right. Most games have no political message, so the whole work process is not relevant. Most games are not ground breaking, so workplace extremes should not happen. I think gamedev's should stop whining at the wrong people and make something that is worth the effort, possibly by starting their own studio. It would be if there was less attention for bad studio's and more attention for new studio's with experienced gemdev's.
I have more recently been getting audio books written (And often voiced) by the creators of some of my favorite games and studios. Just hearing John Romero talk about the limitations of his time, him for a while making games while not even knowing what variables were, and the most shocking when he said "Doom was my 90th game" is just so eye opening. We see so many success stories that skip to the end, we forget just how much time and effort it took to get there.
Design Doc - is a channel that's not strictly about game design but it can make your juices going
Design Doc is a great recommendation! Same with channels like Daryl Talks Games and Design Frame 👀, the former is rooted in psychology, the latter in game design itself.
The best resource I've found for a wide range of useful advice (apart from GDC lectures) is to check out Jonathan Blow's stream vods. His views are often controversial but always thought provoking.
@@torgo_ seriously, even just knowing the name of ONE game designer puts you ahead of 90% of game design students
My top recommendations are the channels Mental checkpoint, Game Maker's Toolkit, Adam Millard - The Architect of Games and Jonas Tyrollerfor tips about game design and the process of creating games.
Off the top of my head I would say, Game Makers Toolkit and Adam Millard Architect of games, their channels on here are worth watch. Tim Cain also posts quite a bit here too. And Jacob Gellar has some interesting adjacent type topics too.
@@jaykaye594 I rate GMTK a lot and Tim Cain’s new channel. Mainly trying to encourage people to diversify, read books etc too. Haha.
I still think Extra Credits is pretty good as well.
an unusually useful resource that can be translated into game design is Alan Becker's summarization of 12 Principles Of Animation, in particular, Staging is a highlight that can be translated into a lot of aspects of both level design and interface design, like how do you lay out things to be discovered in order, or in a way to overwhelm with intent, or how to communicate important information changes to make sure that everything is known regardless of how much is shown at once at the same time that the player is occupied in a task. this is something a lot of people take for granted but is actually kinda difficult to pull-off when you need something with more complexity aside from major events like a player finishing a lap in a racing game or a turn-based battle finishing. in the best cases figuring out your own rules also lets you know when and how to break those rules and principles to make it easy to express what you want.
Thanks for the useful resources!
I haven't read that many academic papers, but the ones I read, I found many of them way too wordy and word-salad-ish, rather than clear and straight to the point. From some of them I got the impression that they were written by university students trying to impress their teachers through vocabulary and grammatical acrobatics more so than with their actual study.
To clarify: I'm not saying people shouldn't read them. I read them myself when I find them, if they're about something I want to know more about. Unless they use complex mathematical notation, which is out of my league.
The above has just been my experience with the ones I've read, that they are overly wordy. Though to be fair, my experience also includes scientific papers, which may or may not make a difference.
The first seven words of your post invalidate all of the ones which follow. Best of luck in whatever you’re currently doing!
@@IndieGameClinic well you should've read the next five words. I'm talking about my experience with them. And I'm also not saying people shouldn't read them.
@@skaruts yeah, you're just denigrating the entire concept. No way anyone could confuse that for advice not to bother with them.
@@IndieGameClinic Dude, you are so obnoxious, it just feels so snobish. This guy is 100% correct, lol. It's hilarious how you felt personally attacked, because the guy said the truth about academic psycho-babble. And it's coming from a person with academic background that is more of a hard science (neuroscience) than BA in "Media&Culture" (lol!). But it only makes sense for you to defend it on ideological grounds, since it's your job and you are often employed by some second-rate universities, based on your LinkedIn. So you have a direct stake in defending this system.
Although I must admit, your passive-aggresive nerdy tone of response is very academic. They will never confront you directly, but use euphemisms and a facade of civility. What you are saying is "hurr durr you are a moron! Good luck though, break a leg, you won't make it, don't let the door hit you, moron!".
Also sorry to say that, but your academic background and hyper-fixating on some low impact, no h-index (no productivity) papers didn't somehow made you a millionaire succesful in the gamedev industry. While some Joe Shmoe like Scott Cawthon, who didn't read any "academic papers" happened to create a goldmine. Same goes for Toby Fox, Ed Boon, Tim Cain etc. - they got "the paper" (higher education degree) just so they can land a job easier in the future. There are probably even some succesful game developers with only high school degree.
It's mostly a craftsmanship (mix of commodity & art - very fascinating relationship for university geeks to furiously type out wordy essays). Do carpenters read engineering papers about various high concepts and study in details the mathematical properties, ins&outs and limits of physics to practice their craft? Obviously not. They don't. They are not even aware it exists and they can create something demonstrably beautiful, which some random engineer probably couldn't, since they are not a carpenter.
Not to mind things like "replication crisis", which shows that like 10-20% of soft science academic papers are reproducible. We can read ""Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test". Besides most of those studies being worthless and low impact, so we see further devaluation of academic research and papers. They are just pushed out to meet a quota and get paid.
We have also a crisis of "p-hacking", more frequently encountered in "hard sciences". Basically you just tweak the data until you achieve statistical significance. And it's very hard to spot, since it can be artifact of the sample, the analytical method used, or a legitimate judgment made by researchers. How do you differentiate?
So called "Sokal Affair" has exposed the laziness and rottenness of cultural studies. And instead of actually addressing the problem of academic rigor. They doubled down and sinked even lower in quality, especially in USA.
Also... It makes me wonder as well.... "Doctor"! For all your praise about research... Why are you not on ResearchGate? Surely an esteemed person such as yourself would have more opportunities when you can connect with other "scientists", right?
Weird, right...? It's must be some kind of a mistake, since all the people actively engaged in publishing research use ResearchGate. Doctor...?
Doctor! It seems like you never published any research to begin with. You have 2 small chapters in a book that netted whopping 9 citations over 8 years, PhD dissertation from 2015 that netted 4 citations and white-paper from a 2015 conference that netted 1 citation (self-reference?).
But surely this guy is wrong. Right? It can't be that academia just being a nonsensical circle-jerk, where you can live in your own bubble, vomiting out some "artistic critique" babble that has no value or impact on real world, does nothing to progress humanity forward. And you can have students publish lots of masters theses that have literally 0 citations just to get paid a wage. Right?
Best of luck, "Doctor"! Best of luck in growing the channel! I hope it goes well as we all can see it growing!
@@RandyBurgertime Yeah bro! Hidetaka Miyazaki (FromSoftware) that created Dark Souls series reads 2 academic papers a day! Same goes for Hideo Kojima bro! Hit the papers instead of hitting the gym! This "concept" of reading random zero impact, 2 citation papers makes so much sense and is so useful!
It's totally needed for an average person and it's not an intellectual masturbation for midwits. Trust me! I wouldn't lie to you!
Stalin read 500 pages a day! It's on Wikipedia! It's totally real bro! You should read 500 pages a day so you can be GIGA-BRAINED SIGMA MALE LIKE STALIN. Look how big of a success he achieved in life! You surely can do it too, by just reading Harry Potter all day. Trust me bro, I am an academic. Science rulezzz, we nerds gotta watch out for each other.
Unless you have a hard background in academia and done statistical analysis courses then telling some random person to read academic papers is the worst thing you can do. If they can't read and verify the methodology how can they tell if something is useful? It will just lead them to wrong conclusions. Besides the fact that any sociological or cultural papers have no objective measures to verify them. It's just an opinion that can be invalidated. The same way a philosophical paper can be invalidated. At best it's just food for thought. And seeing the philosophical papers... 1 out of 1000 is not a wastepaper to be recycled. You have a better time-waste ratio just watching UA-cam videos from some popular content creators or watching some educational stuff how to make things.
Yes. Your "concept" is useless and harmful for an average person. Don't bother with academic papers, especially on some lofty vague things like video games that have no hard criteria to determine anything. It's all just opinions that can't be measured or verified. Opinions that change over time and has changed over time with trends.
At least in hard science you can verify the methodology and the numbers to see if they match up. You can't do it in soft science. You can write anything you want about sociology or cultural phenomena like video games and it's not reproducible.
Opinion of some random academic shmock that got BA or PhD in Arts sadly does not correlate with success. If it did, they would make games or movies that make billions instead of getting paid a wage in academia. It's the truth.
Love Abstract and wish there were more episodes! It's one of my favourite rewatch background shows to when I want to feel inspired.
@@TessyDivine it’s really great. I do think it’s important for game designers to know a lot about existing games and how they work, but there’s so much to be learnt from just embracing *general design* and some of the most innovative designs of the last decade have come from this. Reigns and Mini Metro both jump out as great examples (which I will probably do videos on!)
thank you for the videos, wish you luck on YT... if you have any other recommendations like books or a certain talk/interview I would appreciate it
@@mdfalcon2665 are you watching Tim Cain’s channel yet?
@@IndieGameClinic thanks for the recommendation
This is like finding gold, thanks for the recommendations. Could you give some advice or recommend some resources on how to become a professional game designer? I would be grateful, as I only found a small number of resources on making the career out of game design.
@@zaktak4380 hey Zaktak, one of the most commonly recommended design theory books is The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. There’s also an app which goes with it which is free.
In terms of “going pro” it’s a case of just doing it and then applying for junior level jobs when you have a portfolio that proves you can do what they need. I am working on an ebook at the moment covering “getting your first game design job”; so thanks for giving me another reason to finish it!
When it comes to game design books start with the Schell one.
@@IndieGameClinic Thanks and good luck with finishing your book!
Keep up the good videos coming doc. Very nice channel just found it on my homepage 😁
Thank you - much appreciated!
Awesome video thank you! Subscribed
Thanks Jak!
You used a 0:20 term here that i dont think i have heard before and could be used more: "gameplay design". Thats the key! The term "game design" seems to be confusing people. Maybe it includes code quality? Maybe includes art styles? Maybe it includes music? Sure it can, bu "gameplay design" is more important than all of those put together. ❤
@@blarvinius “game design” MEANS gameplay design. Unfortunately there are a lot of hobbyist educators who use the terms game design and game development interchangeably. Game design is not code, and it’s not art direction.
Great video! Liked and subbed :)
Thank you!
Google scholar got me my Masters.. no wait - and you! 😂 Cool channel.
Haha!
don't skip books there are powerful academic books nowadays, hard to crack but worth it. For example RULES OF PLAY
@@LiveDoG Amen.
Really interesting
Thanks for watching/listening. With these videos which aren't based on a review, I'm just trying to focus on the "stuff I wish my students' had done before signing up" type stuff, at least while the channel is new.
Subscribed.
Thanks! (ps are you THE Vivek?)
great video
@@KountKasper you know the struggle is real
I swear, I opened this because I thought it was a ryan george video.
well it makes a change from being compared to Ricky Gervais
"So, you have some Game Designing Resources for me?"
"Yes sir, I do!"
I strongly disagree with the video. Though it might be helpful to watch GDC's or listen to podcasts, it is mostly a waste of time in the end. Without the real experience the words of experts have little to none meaning. Also, it makes people fall into the loop of constant learning of anything for nothing.
Try to simply get an idea of the game, and listen only those videos, which focuses on the problem you currently have. Solve the problem, keep going with your vision of the game, and hitting an obstacle again, learn about the subject while working on it.
Do not watch tutorials, listen what experts have to say about the stuff you don't need, it's useless at best, and harmful at worst.
Read a book or two about game design, watch the most crucial 3-4 videos of GDC, a few podcasts or reviews about the similar games you make, and stop at it. Later, just keep working on the game and only learn what's needed.
Perhaps, the creator didn't mean that you need to keep learning anything, but without proper explanation, this will make people actually do that. Best regards!
@@arthurmeyer2977 If I say you should do B and not “just” A, then it should be clear that you should still be doing A.
If people want to selectively listen to advice and use it to justify only doing research and never putting anything into practice, that’s a “them problem”.
the advice in this video is based on observations of hundreds of 18 year olds going into game design courses. YMMV.
I almost didn't watch this because I thought Markiplier was in the thumbnail
@@sonicfan826 Big Face Gang REPRESENT
@@sonicfan826 don't get this comment. That dude's pretty great. Helped me figure out I have ADHD.
GDC is a great way to learn how to waste millions of dollars while designing a game.
@@TheYashakami I’m not sure what specific talks you’re basing this on, but your comment reads as performative ignorance.
@@IndieGameClinic GDC is an ego stroking competition, not a font of valuable insight.
@@TheYashakami i not sure if we have been watching the same archives, but GDC talks have helped me a lot for starting in game developement, understand a lot of things of how they work, what should I be focusing, etc... they can have some commentaries and ego strokes, but most talks are pretty informative and even inspiring, at least for us we are jyst starting
What a lovely sweeping insult.
@@IndieGameClinicyou may have collected a few of these such commenters. Some very anti-intellectual folks coming to the "here's some stuff to learn" comments.
Here's my tip: don't read game design books, read books about writing and replace the word "main character" with "player"
@@CaptainDeathbeard interest perspective (although, as with most “don’t do x do y” advice, I would usually say “do both”!)
I got a slightly different tip. Try writing guides for stage plays. Or read stage play scripts.
They are made with the idea of the audience sitting there in a 3rd person fixed camera. Especially in games with limited possibility for cinematic shots that fits.
There's a bit what we can learn from stage performance, the slight overacting, the silhouettes, the timing of movement and dialogs etc.
@@sealsharp you might like the Game Studies Study Buddies Podcast; Michael Lutz comes at Game Studies from a Theatre Studies POV a lot of the time, and there are some episodes which touch on what you’re describing!
@@IndieGameClinic I'll check that out. Thx 👍
@@IndieGameClinic
once in a while i have situations like these when some random person (in this case you) tells me some thing and then i find another thing that i would have never ever found if i wasn't pointed at it.
Like this podcast. That's 71 episodes "hidden" in some sub menu of someones private website.
How much greatness must be out there without us knowing i wonder?
i just don't agree with the video. sure it has many points that are true and some are important to learn, but the overall massage its trying to convey, i just don't agree.
learning from articles like game studies website or watching GDC is inefficient. instead, youtubers and r/game design are the second best source for learning.
the best source for learning is by doing the learning yourself. its hard to explain, but my way of viewing my self is like this: whenever i encounter a problem that i can solve. i look for the solution that someone else had, and then i try to design the mental component that i was missing in order to solve that problem when i first encountered it.
the problem with game designers in the industry is that they focus to much on the low level stuff and feel-good stuff, that they barely have exp in developing new concepts. they are also not good at transferring wisdom (high level knowledge) they acquired so watching GDC a lot of times feels unproductive.
the best way to be a better game concept designer is developing internally as many models on how things are.
for example, the one of the higher level models i developed that is simple but profound is: mechanics >dynamics > experience.
what it means is mechanics create dynamics and dynamics create experience(which in turn create emotions(like fun)). when i want to create a new game concept, instead of just thinking on theme or combining 2 games (like most noobs do...), what i do instead is to take a daytime from a genre, than think what i dont like in that genre, and combine it with other dynamics to change it. after that i start thinking on what mechanics sholde be to crate the dynamics.
for exmple: i dont like anymore traditional rougelikes, but i like the dynamics of resorce management that they do, o running out of materials. and having to chose what to keep and what to lose and waht to use to solve a problem. so i tale that dynamics and merge it with another dynamics like, launcher games (like learn to fly), where i try to go further each launch and you need skill to be able to reach further (lets ignore the progression mechanics for now). then i start to think on the mechanics and lower dynamics, and i decide to copy backpack hero item and inventory system. and between each lanch you have opportunity to change inventory and get new items that change the way the launching mini game behave. the game ends when you run out of fuel or get to the end location.
i am to unfocused right now, so i probably deviated from commenting directly on the content of the video (i am so out i can bearly remember the video lol), but might as well post it
@@yairklein-mp8vo I think I made it pretty clear that the resources I was promoting were supplementary to actually making things.
I’m also pretty sure you’re not the first to develop the Mechanics - Dynamics - Experience model, and this seems like a particularly odd place to claim that you have (unless you’re just totally unaware that that is an existing design system?)
@@IndieGameClinic i am not aware of this. i develop my models by introspection of my experiences. would be interesting to read, can you reference me to others who have developed this model also?
also,i have not claimed that i have developed the model publicly. just for myself.
@@yairklein-mp8vo there was a model called MDA (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework#:~:text=In%20game%20design%20the%20Mechanics,%3A%20Mechanics%2C%20Dynamics%20and%20Aesthetics.) which was later developed in DDE; your model has elements of both of these. I personally don’t use MDA because I think “aesthetics” is too much of a complicated and misused term to be a helpful part of a definition of something else.
@@IndieGameClinic What would be your usual methods to designing a game?
I don't think political topics are at all relevant to indie devs. Why should I care about the drama or controversies that some gaming companies are involved in? It might satisfy my curiosity and amusement, but it's completely irrelevant for my work and my understanding of software/art development.
@@skaruts we might be using the term “political” in different ways, and idk, maybe it’s a sort of “you won’t know why this is important until you have a job in a bad studio- or are running one” kind of thing
@@skaruts (I should probably also add that it’s not the whole point of the show, that was just a disclaimer because it’s the thing people might find most contentious about it. There are lots of good episodes about other things which are less negative and more inspiring; watch the episode about Jubensha games for example)
While I agree that any artwork should stand on it own, it's also part of a culture and a timeframe to gain it complete meaning. Although generally the drama and controversies of a studio are "production difficulties" and a side note to the work.
Picasso was probably not very happy going up ladders with many buckets to paint Guernica. Is that relevant to the work?
Not that I endorse bad management practices. I'm actually very opposed to them, but creating games is different from enjoying games. Sometimes you just don't want to know how the sausage is made.
@@dancingdoormanable but the general ups and downs of running or working at a company, which I suppose is what you mean by "production difficulties", are not political or even related to any political topics.
@@skaruts I think your right. Most games have no political message, so the whole work process is not relevant. Most games are not ground breaking, so workplace extremes should not happen. I think gamedev's should stop whining at the wrong people and make something that is worth the effort, possibly by starting their own studio.
It would be if there was less attention for bad studio's and more attention for new studio's with experienced gemdev's.