Seven deadly sins of game design

Is Bioshock perfect game design?

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:06:41 GMT

Yes. This being out of the way, let me explain why (just in case you haven't read one of the million

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Count Gamula — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:34:57 GMT

Gears of War is a pile of Llama crap sauteed in camel urine...PS - Halo called and would like it's match making system back...

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Bertrand Le Roy — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:40:09 GMT

Gregor: Gears is without a doubt a fantastic game. We both finished it at least once. It may be that it's so great that makes its few flaws so infuriating. It got so near to being perfect... You'll notice that most of the games we cite are actually very good games.

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Gregor Suttie — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:54:07 GMT

Oh i cant have anyone dissing gears of war - it just doesnt come out of my xbox disc tray end of - online its the best game out there by a long long way.

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Shawn Burke — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 01:18:49 GMT

Awesome post Bertrand.

Bad friendly AI. I love games that make me feel like it's not the whole world against me - Call of Duty 2 had some fantastic sequences that acheived this.

It's always incredibly frustrating when the bad guys are smart and are great shots, but your AI 'team mates' are stuck in the corner or running in circles, or worse, blocking you from getting to cover or in a door or whatever.

I'll pile on; Guitar Hero suffers none of these problems either. :)

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Shawnee — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:53:47 GMT

this so stupid because it did NOT HELP ME AT ALL! [deleted about a thousand exclamation marks]

LEARN HOW TO WRITE! [and here too]

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Robin Debreuil — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:32:39 GMT

my 2:

1) Games that have no 'game' elements, like strategy, teaming up and backstabbing, knowing when you've been had, rewarding alternate approaches, thinking etc. Think of all the things that are fun in a card game, where a lot of games today are like the card game 'war', with better graphics. Clicking over and over until you win or lose.

2) Games where the controls and 'special moves' are so numerous and rewarding that the person who has spent the most time in the manual wins. C&C type games have almost all went this way, they used to be fun, but now it isn't very different than work (learn some arcane thing, repeat over and over until 5pm - then again I'm a programmer, so maybe I'm the only one that sees it that way).

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Fabien — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:43:46 GMT

@ Ludovic:

Regarding mini-games: I tend to agree that if they're done right, mini-games should "blend" into the rest of the gameplay and "layer" it. One could argue that if a mini-game achieves this level of integration with the rest of the gameplay, it ceases to be a mini-game entirely :)

The point here is that most developers create mini-games that resemble gamaplay "warts" instead of taking the time and effort to interweave them seamlessly into the rest of the actions defining the gameplay.

re: Seven deadly sins of game design

Kevin — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:21:02 GMT

Good post. I especially agree with point 5. PGR3 was another sinner on that point, if memory serves.

One thing that drives me mad is when two games where you're doing exactly the same things (e.g. GRAW2 and Rainbox Six Vegas) which are written by the same people have different controls. Reload in GRAW2 is "A", reload in Rainbox Six is "X", and in a firefight you can guarantee I'll hit the wrong one... As far as I'm concerned, "A" should always be used for the thing you're doing most often - at least in my case that's where my thumb naturally goes.

Seven deadly sins of game design - Atlas and more

BulletBait's Blog — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:29:51 GMT

This article about bad points in game design is kind of interesting... Source: weblogs.asp.net/.../seven-deadly-sins-of-game-design.aspx