Planning is Important

Posted by santosj on September 2, 2007

Planning is important, damn it!

I had a conversation with peer in the CIT 125 (Game Design) class about planning. I told him basically that after working on several games where the development was ad hoc, that planning is very important. The more planning, the better the game will be and the less planning, the more terrible it will come out.

However, I couldn’t really tell him how much planning is needed. The professional commercial games, the last time I read from Gaming Mag. takes about 6 months and several games have every detail planned, from speech to missions, to how everything interacts with each other.

The ideal game means that everything is seamless and fluid. That means that everything has a function. Why is this component in the game? Does it enhance the player’s enjoyment or allow more ease to the overall experience.

The discussion came up in class about difficultly in planning games. I stated that you can create the flow to where the game is only as difficult as the player competence. A game should be difficult and require strategy, but should be so difficult that it requires the best gamers to beat it. It would cease to be fun at that point.

Playing Two Worlds has been fun and because it is the right level of complexity. It is easy in most cases, yes, but requires strategy and you can easily die if you enter a situation you’re not prepared for. It has been fun to me, because it took a while to get a feel for how to play the game and beat the monsters and enemies. It also wasn’t so difficult like some games where it is impossible to get passed the first level.

Why Planning is difficult

As a developer, my focus wants to be on development and not planning. “Okay, I have two pages, lets start cranking out some code!” Not exactly the best idea. Thoughts of spending several months on planning is depressing to the point of extreme despair. “You mean I can’t program for three months until this is done! Just kill me now and revive me when it is time to start.”

I think the experience will be refreshing however, because I can go into the game and have a firm plan on features and know when the game is finished and ready for players to join in. Also, if it is a team effort, the other developers will know which tasks to complete and know when the game is finished also.

Wouldn’t that be refreshing? Not having to communicate your goal in abstractions and expect the others to know what you mean and not what you say. They won’t by the way, they will do what you say and not what you mean and things will start to break down from there.

Having a massive document saying this is where we are at, this is where we are heading, and this is what you will and this is what I will do.

There has to be a Story!

What is the point of playing a game without a story? For what purpose am I playing this crap, when I could be doing homework, or watching TV?

A story would partly answer those questions. People can become captivated by stories and the desire to get the ending can be enough motivation for them to continue playing. The answer is at the end of the game. Having a good story can be difficult, as can be having a good game play. If you have a really good story and adequate game play, then it might mean more than having no story and functional game play.

The goal must be to strive for both a great story and fun game play. Functional means that when a player clicks a button, something expected happens. Having fun game play means that they enjoy clicking buttons and are placed in the magic circle of the game. They do not fully realize that clicking a button is merely clicking a button, but doing some function to continue the game play.

Hmm, difficult to explain, but mostly clicking a button is work, but if the game is fun, then clicking the button is fun. If at some point they realize that they are merely clicking a button and think it sucks, then more focus should be made to cure that painful experience from the game play.

Background Story

Really difficult. At least for myself. I’ve tried it for Mecha Asylum and did a couple of drafts, but never wrote anything fascinating. I would say it isn’t needed, but would enhance the game play. Revealing the story’s background through interaction with characters is easier, in my opinion.

It might also help to develop the background story by doing so. Part of the complexity could be in part to what the background story should contain. Should you speak to the player as a player or as a person in the story? I would assume the latter would be the case. However, in what way should it be written to meet that? Should the background story include part of the history? How long should it be?

For Mecha Asylum, I wanted to have several pages for the story, but it became boring really fast. I became disillusioned by the crap that was typed. A good writer I am not. Doesn’t mean I’m going to try, but I shouldn’t expect it to become a best seller. Nor should anyone else. I think readers and players are forgiving or enough will be.

Providing Freedom

I am a firm believer that the player should be given the freedom to do whatever he or she wants within the confines of the game play. If providing a story and missions, this would require a great deal of planning as to what the final act will be. I would assume that if the game is online, that there shouldn’t be a final act. However, providing a story that continues is perhaps difficult.

For Robotechnik, I would want to develop it as having reputations with not only other human players, but also other computer players. I would also add computer players, so that the game isn’t boring with only a few active players. Lets say that there is dialogue between computer players, before and after the battles. Then when the same computer players meet the same human player, the computer player remembers the human and the dialogue reflects this.

This would probably require some degree of AI in some cases, but I would expect it to adds some unique style and excitement to the game. If AI is used, it shouldn’t be the primary focus, it should be used as a tool where it is needed to enhance how the player plays the game.

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