man, pretty good video for literally only having 300 views. I think the only thing I can add is sometimes a game can get away with forcing a specific playstyle to make the gameplay more excentuated, for example "ULTRAKILL," a game I know the most about. In ultrakill playthroughs you can often see the game FORCES you to play fast, dangerous and close. Most players tend to get hit and lose health even at long ranges depending on enemies, or by getting "too close." When people realize the "intended" way to play through dying too many times trying to put range between them and enemies, you see people start getting closer to enemies to regain health. This makes ranged combat not impossible, but fairly ineffective since you may die due to not having any HP left, which I see happen a lot at the beginning of playthroughs. The playstyle is also enforced through the game's rating system. Attempting to get a P-rank(S-ranking time, style and kills) forces a playstyle. Time requires you to play fast and aggressively. Style forces you to swap weapons and go for stylish weapon combos. Kills demands methodical precision from you, making sure you've cleared every enemy spawn in a level. While this means that ultrakill forces a specific way to play, this specific way to play is pretty god damn fun. So it's not always bad to deny certain playstyles, but it means the "correct" one(s) has to be fucking great, or else the game will just flop.
This is also why triple-A games tend to not do this sort of thing. As you said, its avoided because it's risky. The only game I can think of being from a large company like this off the top of my head is the recent DOOM games. I haven't actually played the older ones, so I'm not aware how those play.
Really good points. A key thing with game development is budgeting. There's only so much money and time. This means a designer needs to prioritise things - tuning a feature to feel really good takes time. Therefore we can only justify the cost if the feature greatly improves the game - We want to focus these efforts on features that encourage the playstyles we want to see - playstyles we think will give the best experience (ones that our pillars all cater to). In Ultrakill, movement and close range violence is the most fun. Features like healing from blood explosions and FOV/speedlines when moving fast encourage that behaviour implicitly. Its far more effective for a player to intrinsically WANT to do something because they WANT to, rather than being made to do it because they are punished if they don't. AAA teams have a lot more time and money so they can create and tune these features for more playstyles, whereas Indie games get a lot of bang for buck by focusing on 1 core playstyle and going all in. Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivations are key game design theories that describe this.
Your channel is simply incredible! Thank you so much for sharing your experience man. You've helped reignite my passion for game development.
I've started getting into game design as a hobby and your videos are really inspiring and helpful. Thank you, keep em coming!!
What games have you worked on in the past?
man, pretty good video for literally only having 300 views.
I think the only thing I can add is sometimes a game can get away with forcing a specific playstyle to make the gameplay more excentuated, for example "ULTRAKILL," a game I know the most about.
In ultrakill playthroughs you can often see the game FORCES you to play fast, dangerous and close. Most players tend to get hit and lose health even at long ranges depending on enemies, or by getting "too close." When people realize the "intended" way to play through dying too many times trying to put range between them and enemies, you see people start getting closer to enemies to regain health.
This makes ranged combat not impossible, but fairly ineffective since you may die due to not having any HP left, which I see happen a lot at the beginning of playthroughs.
The playstyle is also enforced through the game's rating system. Attempting to get a P-rank(S-ranking time, style and kills) forces a playstyle. Time requires you to play fast and aggressively. Style forces you to swap weapons and go for stylish weapon combos. Kills demands methodical precision from you, making sure you've cleared every enemy spawn in a level.
While this means that ultrakill forces a specific way to play, this specific way to play is pretty god damn fun. So it's not always bad to deny certain playstyles, but it means the "correct" one(s) has to be fucking great, or else the game will just flop.
This is also why triple-A games tend to not do this sort of thing. As you said, its avoided because it's risky. The only game I can think of being from a large company like this off the top of my head is the recent DOOM games. I haven't actually played the older ones, so I'm not aware how those play.
Really good points.
A key thing with game development is budgeting. There's only so much money and time. This means a designer needs to prioritise things - tuning a feature to feel really good takes time. Therefore we can only justify the cost if the feature greatly improves the game - We want to focus these efforts on features that encourage the playstyles we want to see - playstyles we think will give the best experience (ones that our pillars all cater to). In Ultrakill, movement and close range violence is the most fun. Features like healing from blood explosions and FOV/speedlines when moving fast encourage that behaviour implicitly. Its far more effective for a player to intrinsically WANT to do something because they WANT to, rather than being made to do it because they are punished if they don't. AAA teams have a lot more time and money so they can create and tune these features for more playstyles, whereas Indie games get a lot of bang for buck by focusing on 1 core playstyle and going all in.
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivations are key game design theories that describe this.
Thanks for describing all these roles 🙏🏼💥
I'm sad that you are not making more of these great videos, but happy, considering that you are most likely busy working on your game(s) :D
5:52 oh no, this brings back PTSD
you are a legend, keep going 🖤🖤
You are really awesome, thank you for starting this channel. You are helping me a lot.
how come people are not watching your videos, gonna boom soon
I love ur videos great work
ρɾσɱσʂɱ