The Do's & Do Not's of Game Design

Really funny and informative! :-)

Absolutely a thumbs up!

I loved the article from the OP - it was both humourous and informative. I also loved the occasional picture of a mad dictator to help hammer the rant home - well done!

I think it would be an interesting exercise to codify the do's and don'ts of gaming into a bullet-pointed list... and I know just the people who could do that, muahahahahaha!

(I love having dictatorial powers)

<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">"<font color=RED><font size="4">DON?T</font></font> show me an unskippable animation when I die. It doesn?t matter how elaborate you make this, the maximum number of times I?ll ever want to watch it is none. And if your load times are horrible, this becomes infinitely more awful."</font>

<font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I completely agree. Though it once made an (sometimes questionable) attempt to further immerse the player in the embodiment of the character, it's grown tedious. Recently games such as Hotline Miami and other titles have used a rapid, no-nonsense approach to death and restarting. Practically a lack of animation and instant restarting really aids the flow of the game's action and it basically removes any frustration in death.</font>

NO

I agree.

A lot of great and funny points made. I will make sure to keep a few of these in mine whenever I make a game myself :-)

A lot of brilliant points in that article. Definetely worth the read. I'll make sure to use it when I make my own game.

Do not take too much heed of lists like this...

Do use your imagination...

quote]

<font color=red>DON'T</font> leave diary entries by one person scattered over miles of corridors, buildings and countries. That?s not how a diary works. A diary tends to be all in one place. Most people, when journaling their lives, don?t tend to scribble it out on the nearest scrap of paper and then leave it wherever they wrote it. Because that would be utterly insane.

Yeah, but maybe the diary writer was insane. Actually, wouldn't that be more likely than not, otherwise there's no plot.

> <font color=red>DON'T</font> leave diary entries by one person scattered over miles of corridors, buildings and countries. That?s not how a diary works. A diary tends to be all in one place. Most people, when journaling their lives, don?t tend to scribble it out on the nearest scrap of paper and then leave it wherever they wrote it. Because that would be utterly insane.

Yeah, but maybe the diary writer was insane. Actually, wouldn't that be more likely than not, otherwise there's no plot.

Insane Diary scattered around the area. It's so old cliche.. I'd expect it to be found on TV-tropes.

^Really, any pices(s) of paper scattered around waiting to be gathered for no particular reason is kinda trope-y, and overdone.

It's missing one rather important piece of advice:

Don't ever make a Flappy Bird clone!*

*1:1 clone, that is. Something like Delirious Bird is pretty cool, actually.

Do not add words Flappy or Zombie to your game title in a next 20 years at least.

Why everything has to be about zombies anyway? Maybe there is a wide audience of people who can relate to them or something.

The whole bit about animation after dying is awesome. Especially in mobile games where it can get absolutely infuriating. I don't need a sad sound, depressing animation and a question if I want to play again. The levels take usually 3 minutes to beat, of course I want to play again. Just restart the level and we're done. If I don't want to play anymore I know how to quit the game (usually).

Of course you can't sprint for more than 3 seconds; your magic trousers are wayyyyyy too full of guns. Drop a couple hundred pounds of ordnance and you could probably sprint through the whole game...

With a grain of salt, it's a decent article, but largely just an opinion piece. Everybody's preferences are different, and every game should have a target audience other than "Everyone".