Pacing and Gameplay Article

Alberto Rdrgz

Dont know If this has been posted [sorry if it has i tried searching ]

Anyway, saw this in Gamasutra and absolutely loved it.

Gamasutra Article - Filip Coulianos

"We have always asked ourselves what great stories are made of; as a consequence, many refined methods for analyzing and creating good stories in traditional media have been developed. As the video game medium is only a toddler, no reliable toolsets exist yet. However, the question remains: what makes great games?"

Snader

Skimmed it a bit. Seems interesting.

But I reckon there should be more analysis's (analysises?) of different games, specifically: those that have more variation and change more often. Because there's a balance to be found.

Compare it with dinner. A bite of meat, then some veggies, then some potatoes... that's good dining. Potatoes potatoes potatoes isn't. But it's also not nice to eat something that has been mixed up too much - like tossing your entire dinner in a blender and eat some mushy goop.

I'll read more thoroughly tomorrow, though.

chrisradsby

I liked the article, well thought out. I do believe it's a good thing to analyze popular and good games in this way especially during pre-production and the blockout-stages. I really like reading these types of articles.

Calabi

Yeah definitely good, if I ever get round to making a game I will be using this.

I dont think in general many developers pay much attention to flow.

Alberto Rdrgz

Yeah, I enjoyed the read, real good perspective into game development.

Calabi wrote: »

I dont think in general many developers pay much attention to flow.

+1.

TrevorJ

I think often times it gets glossed over because in development, much like in his testing method you can only really look at flow near the end of a project, and at that point, most projects are so behind schedule(even if that schedule was absurd) that it never gets looked at in this way. Keeping flow in mind through out the entire process is obviously the best practice but can be hard to stay focused on it with everything else involved. Great article though. good post