Liking your own comment? I wish you would like mine as well. :) I think Spelunky was a great model of "Design Itself" because every iteration, every level, every playthrough follows the fun, where fun is in the randomness and pacing and decision making. There is no actual "proper Spelunky sample size" until you play a level.
Duck King “This process involves taking an initial idea - *HOWEVER LOOSE, FUZZY, OR UNORIGINAL IT MIGHT BE*” Seems to indicate that the original comment indeed holds true.
@@aliasmcdoe the "randomly throwing stuff at the wall" is not truly random. it has to go to some stages. at first choosing what stuff to throw at the wall, expecting stuff to happen, Throw the stuff, see the result, and goes along with it. in more scientifically way will be, Choose the subject, Make hypothesis, Held a test, compile the result and then conclusion.
Stepping outside the realm of video games, anyone who has run a game of Dungeons and Dragons (or a similar game) will understand that while you may start out with some idea of where you want the narrative to go, in all likelihood the actions of the players aren't going to align perfectly with that idea. As the dungeon master, it's your job to "follow the fun" and adjust what you're doing to work with what your players are doing.
Absolutely my experience, and there's a related phrase I've seen on author advice blogs frequently; "be prepared to kill your darlings." Even if you loved creating it, if it's not the fun path, gotta know when to chuck it and improvise
I watch GMTK almost exclusively for DMing tips. So many concepts overlap and in the end, it's all about finding something fun and entertaining for people to enjoy
@@meganr9102 in my experience, "kill your darlings" usually refers more to the need to cut out words during the editing process, I think it comes from something Hemingway said. But you're right, it can also be applied to larger scale structural changes in the story.
I'm not a game dev by any stretch, but a few months ago I had a dream in which the entire world was flooding, and I was constantly trying to get to higher ground. I met up with people on the way, sometimes the tide stopped rising and we'd try to build something or prepare in some way, then it would all start up again. I still think that would make a pretty rad game, but I can only imagine what it would evolve into over time!
I agree, I dropped a prototype that was too big to make for the size of my team and felt bad for a considerable amount of time, dropping something is not easy
It's true in almost any artistic endeavour. I've heard a similar maxim in writing: "murder your darlings". You might grow deeply attached to a particular turn of phrase, or passage, or character, or plot development, and not want to remove it from your writing. Yet you might end up editing and re-writing the rest of your work to the point where your "darling" simply has no place anymore. At that point, the best thing you can do is murder your darling and move on. You'll come up with other writing down the line, that's just as good if not better. But only if you let go, right now.
@@rosko5570 - I'm pretty sure rocket jumping (or using the push of a rocket blast to enhance movement) was originally an unintended effect in Doom, which was then used a lot more in Quake, again unintended. Many games have since copied the mechanic, either intentionally or unintentionally.
@@badmanjones179 maybe its not true, but i think it doesnt let you be from the other team, its about changing skins that are supposed to be from the other team. Also, do you code or make games, sir?
One of my favorite things about gmtk is that even though it seems that he only talks about games, (to me) he's actually talking about something more fundamental, something that (for me) apllies to any kind of storytelling. Be it film, book, music etc etc. It's the reason why I still watch them even though I have no intention to be a game designer.
So glad "Journey" made it into this video. In his soundtrack commentary on YT, composer Austin Wintory said that the whole game creation process was iterative. He'd get a description of an area, compose a rough song, and the game designers would listen to it. They'd change the level design based on what they heard. Then Wintory would play the new version and end up changing the song. They'd keep going back and forth between soundtrack and gameplay like this. He said they probably would STILL be doing this if they hadn't had to commit to a release date. That's why the music and gameplay mesh so well in Journey!
This is so cool!!! I didn't know this! Journey has a phenomenally good soundtrack with some of the best atmosphere I've heard in a game, and this explains why!
This explains so much. It was the first game to ever make me cry (after playing games for like 25 years), and I couldn't even understand why since there is no dialogue and the plot is vaguer than vague. But when I was playing through the Paradise section after dying on that mountain... Niagara Falls, Frankie angel
The main thing about Journey (which isn’t about love, but the journey of life) is that I became so concerned for other players when I was playing it. If I came across another player and they were lost or confused, it was genuinely distressing and I desperately chirped at them to help them find the way.
4:08 Capcom basically created the concept of “combos” in fighting games this way in Street Fighter II. They initially weren’t part of the base game but later discovered extremely high level players were finding ways to “link” attacks and create chains. At first they were working to find a way to keep players from doing this in later revised versions but discovered it created more depth to the gameplay and opened up more options and an entirely new world for fighters. Then they actually started working combo systems into the game and the rest is history.
specifically: when striking the enemy with a hit, if you input the special attack motion for a fireball before the attack ended, you could "cancel" into the fireball earlier than intended.
There's actually another example of a Capcom game "writing itself," as it were. After Dino Crisis 2 launched, Shu Takumi was given a small team of developers and told to just make a game - didn't matter what kind, they just had to make a game. The original plan was a game about a private detective who got accused of murder and wound up having to defend himself in court because he was given an incompetent lawyer. But then Takumi realized that his protag was spending way more time in court than he was investigating crimes, and was like "Hey, we can run with this." Bada bing, bada boom, Ace Attorney was born.
@@emilyarmstrong83 sure explains the ace attorney moments where the lawyer has to defend themselves in court because the detectives were incompetent...
Was that different than the one you linked to with two people competing in some sort of tournament? I watched that whole video and although they mentioned bugs a few times it wasn't clear what the bug was or how they developed it later into a mechanic.
Sorry, that's the credit for the video I used. The talk from Chris Hecker is listed under sources. Or just click here - th-cam.com/video/Tvcm3uUbzAw/w-d-xo.html
In the board gaming world it's "rush to prototype". Same philosophy, if you've got a game idea then build _something_ out of paper and play it by yourself to see what works and what really doesn't.
I went to a 3 part board game development seminar and at the end of the first session, they gave us a box of stuff and told each of us to make a game in an hour. In that environment you have to have a single idea and work from that, and I am now in the process of turning that idea into a full boardgame, with the intent to publish it!
The Ape Out example at the start was just an excuse for Mark to use it's style for the rest of the video. No one can dispute this. But I can't really blame him. Ape Out looks and sounds smooooth. Such an awesome game.
The most iconic case of this was with Halo: Combat Evolved. What was originally intended to be a top down rts game, the entire studio shifted gears in development when they were testing around driving the warthog. They had such a blast driving the warthog around in testing with a controller, that they decided to scrap the entire rts idea and instead develop a first person shooter that all around felt good to play. And as a result of this, completely overhauled how fps games are played, and set the framework to shooter mechanics that is now a template for every fps to this day.
Quake is often forgotten when it comes to this. There's no classes or any enforced "meta" that decides playstyles - all playstyles are emergent. Weapon denial and item control/awareness were not designed but simply came into being as people played.
@@aurumcoinforge4582 Diabotical plays like Quake but it's newer and with more features, including an ingame map editor and an ingame HUD editor. I would recommend that if you're new to arena shooters.
I’d argue that that is a slightly different situation, as these classes and play styles were found and elaborated on on the player side, rather than the developer game.
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 That's not true, actually. Everything that emerged in Quake 1 and 2 were elaborated on and perfected in later iterations, to the point of people actively getting angry if something was made to reverse it, like John Carmack and strafejumping - strafejumping was a bug in Quake 2 that people absolutely loved, but John Carmack didn't like it so when he tried to remove it in Quake 3, people were understandably upset. Strafejumping has been a stable in both Quake and other arena shooters since then.
The Anno series would also be a good example, too. Anno 1602 the first game in the series was supposed to be a RTS, like AoE or Star Craft. The developers then spent more time to building their cities than fighting each other, so they focused more on city building.
I find it incredibly hard to “drop an idea” once I’ve started brainstorming/creating it. Game Jams are really good to get these out of my mind and actually let them go once I’ve seen what they’re like. Thanks for the great insights as always!
@jocaguz18 i read an article a week or two ago stating it's actually a pretty common experience for writers that is unconnected with mental illness, I'll see if I can find it again.
That monologue starting at 10:35 is such an important message. Not only for game making, but all art. It's a very significant lesson for poem or song writing, painting, sculpting, prose fiction writing, choreography, cinematography, etc. Don't wait for some eureka stroke of genius inspiration. Don't wait for inspiration at all. Just keep working, even if you're slugging through bad ideas. Then, if you keep working and keep striving for improvement, the good ideas will happen. Find inspiration, don't wait for it to find you.
renn jazz is a genre where the musicians make up the music as they go; as they do, they develop motifs and phrases that they might go back on or just follow whatever theyre currently playing to think about what notes to play next
Yeah! It's great to see this apply to most creative endeavors. "People are using physics exploits to jump using the rocket launcher. Let's make this a game mechanic!" "This line in my portrait drawing doesn't look like a hand, but it kinda looks like a tree. Let's draw a forest instead!" "That line in my script wasn't supposed to be a joke, but people loved it! Let's write a whole scene around it."
@@Drekromancer Yeah. And this is great advice for scientific research (which is creative also). Though this video makes this process sound easy. It's not. But it can take you to really interesting places that you wouldn't have imagined.
I love how much detail you put in all elements of these videos. Playing jazz the entire time in a video about improvising while game designing, okay Mark I see you.
Love how I can spend 2 days straight working, fall into a lull that'd usually result in a depressive few weeks of not making anything, but instead watch a GMTK video, and immediately be like 'aight back to it'
All this perspective of "the game designing itself" and the developers "discovering" it reminds me of the ancient Roman definition of "genius"... Great video!
Heat Signature was so underrated. You have a grenade shotgun, a gun that shoots EVERYTHING at guards, and a gun shooting the highly corrosive acid used as money. You can even teleport into someone with your sword already in their chest.
You did not explore alone, friends. You loved your scarf dragons, and if you got good drop ins, you felt the warmth of companionship (assuming you played online). At the end of my second run and first drop in, I regretted so much I Couldn't say anything to the wanderer who'd gone the whole way with me. He drew a heart in the sand, so I did too, and I like to think we both felt better. I heard the message about love in that.
Great video! I wish it would've also talked about limitations, which are one of the reasons indies actually make many iconic design decisions. Limited resources, time, and manpower may require an extra dose of creativity to solve problems that sometimes can lead to the best results.
This is great advice for any creative endeavour, and I love it when games are the medium that drive innovation in other creative spheres. I give similar advice when teaching creative writing; I say that the blank page is the most terrifying and difficult thing to work with - once you start putting sentences on it, at some point you'll chance upon a good sentence that you'll want to build a story around.
I've always wanted to be a writer, but I've had a hard time just getting to it because I tend to focus on making the perfect story first. I think this video has helped me start to get out of that mental trap. Thanks!
Not a writer myself but a good teacher of mine, after reading my 12 y.o essays, told me that "It's always better to throw out a lot of everything and keeping what sounded good rather than always questioning the same idea you absolutely want to expand on". So try out as much stuff as you want, even if it sounds stupid, because you may find gold in the dirt.
I've been looking at this from a writing perspective too. I had a super good professor in uni and he had a saying called "chase the heat" in writing, meaning that as you write and find something that excites you or starts writing itself, you ride that flame and feed it. I have a huge inner critic which sucks for writing, but I've been working up to it again. I want to revamp a novel I wrote which is trash but i like the central idea. I love writing, it's when I feel happiest, but I feel so critical it just 'feels better' to avoid it My advice is just write and see where it goes :) if you end up liking it, that's great. If you dont, you still learned something. I wrote a 50k word novel in a month and while it sucks, it's still something!
Part of the reason why I started doing fan fiction is because it's usually low stress and easy to "fail fast." There's certainly authors who use beta readers and heavy strict outlines, sure, but a lot of writers just throw stuff out there without much worry, and hopefully learn something about writing in the process.
This is also why elements that can all work together in level creation/creative games lead to so many fun creations that the devs would have never thought of, some times leading to whole new games or genres. And having elements react and adapt not just to the player but also to each other can lead to even more amazing things. Like cats in dwarf fortress that got drunk because there was a system that made them dirty when walking through puddles of beer in bars, a system for them licking themselves clean and a system for getting drunk.
I'd love for you to do a video on "horror" sections of games that otherwise aren't horror related and how they worked a couple examples I can think of is Big Boo's Haunt from Super Mario 64 and another is Queen Vanessa's Manor from A Hat in Time. Both are more light hearted fun games but have that one section that even grown up you still get spooked by them. I guess you could call it "How to make Horror in non Horror games"
@@MatthewTaylor86 I think all of half life, and the new alyx is, and are, especially good at having horror aspects. Lots of zombie tunnels, dark areas, etc. Halo 1 flood too. (more annoying than scary but still)
This, for me and lots of thers, is almost exactly like making music, you start with an idea and try to sketch that down as much as possible, try new things, ask "whats happens if ?", and then see what comes up that is interesting and lean in on that. If you start with the endgoal in mind and only focus on that, your perfect song or game will never be finished, gotta learn to go with the flow. The final product can turn out completely different than the original idea was to start with.
Great video! As a creator by hobby, I love the idea you brought to light of “fail faster”. I will definitely take that to heart going into future work.
The game I'm working on started as an auto-generated hex puzzle about balancing planets' gravitational pull, and changed direction to become a hand-crafted puzzle game about combining and manipulating colors. Edit: Thanks for the likes :) If you're interested in checking out the game, I recently released a trailer (+free demo): th-cam.com/video/uJrn6x-bUDM/w-d-xo.html
Really shows the creativity and flexibility of the devs to be willing to make these changes and make whole new games almost around these fun mechanics.
Skiing in the original Starsiege: Tribes was a total accident. It was discovered by one of the Dynamix QA testers that if they rapidly tapped the space bar (jump) while sliding down a hill, they could pick up a lot of momentum, allowing them to boost off an up-slope with a massive amount of speed. Of course, it eventually broke the intended gameplay, but enabled the game to far out-last it's original lifespan. And it was incorporated into all the Tribes sequels as a core mechanic.
As a writer, I'm familiar with this premise. Characters do the exact same thing! I had one character who was supposed to be a generic badass turn into a wide-eyed and naive one who was secretly amazingly tough. That ended up being way more interesting, so I ran with it! I think you find this phenomena a lot in creative processes.
Spot on! The Development is also about what is manageable for the person or team that is designing it. You soon discover what your strengths and your weaknesses are, which in combination with the "game evolving itself", will ultimately dictate what your game/project materialises in to.
Love this. It's like taking advantage of the teachable moment. Just took a course on game design, and this adds perfectly to what we began to learn about game design there.
Another great video! There's something similar to 'follow the fun' in writing, or any kind of artistic medium I guess. Writers have to be very flexible and receptive to new ideas. You have to listen and feel what the story wants to be, and you often have to completely re-write scenes (that you often love) for the sake of the story to work as a whole.
I have some gameplay gimmicks in mind for when I eventually learn to code. I’ll certainly keep this information in mind when I try to make them reality.
Very inspiring. Creatives in many fields probably wrestle to keep their egos and their well-laid plans from snuffing out fun and spontaneity. These "happy accidents" came up a lot when I used to write songs, for example. Great video, as always!
I totally agreed with you. I've participated in Brackey's Game Jam a week ago, and the starting point is always hard. Sometimes the ideas come, sometimes don't. But once something appears and you prototype it and watch and play that prototype, that's were the magic happens and everything starts to flow. New ideas you probably never thought materialize just there. And you must learn to use them and try them to see if they're as interest during gameplay as they're in your mind. Great video
GMTK videos since Mark has mentioned "Into the Breach": 000 Sometimes I wonder why we bother installing two digits on the sign, let alone three! No hate on the game tho, sure it must be fun if it gets mentioned every other episode.
I’m an R&D engineer and honestly a lot of this is just great general design advise too. “Follow the Fun and Fail Fast” but replace “Fun” with whatever design criteria (that ideally starts with an “F” lol). Anyway, well done, I wasn’t expecting to get advice for my own non-game design job when I started this video!
@@rewrose2838 I wish there was something like a "sarcasm check" to check if someone was being sarcastic. The only real way to check if something is sarcastic on the internet is to ask so... Are you being sarcastic?
@@ThreeBeeHDb That's just basic communication though isn't it? I'm autistic and that has a lot of problems, but on the upside I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm likely missing a lot of 'obvious' cues. But then I was also into science, so I've read research papers and stuff. Gave up on it eventually, so I can't easily cite sources anymore. Even so, when it comes to human communication it was something like pretty extreme like 90% of communication is body language, 8% is tone of voice, and only 2% is the actual words used. Now apply that to youtube comments, and it should be pretty clear why people struggle to spot sarcasm. XD We've thrown out 98% of the message, and then still expect people to get it without being extremely obvious (with things like /s or the like that make it explicit...) -shrug~
I love that your videos are totally applicable to so many other things than just games... like the teaching you give us all is very important to me for, character building, world building in general, like any form of art can be influenced by what you teach us... heck even life lessons are given in here.... thank you so much..
Awesome job (as always)! This has actually helped me. I've been having many ideas on what kinds of games I want to make, both if I wanted to make an indie game, or a AAAish kind of game, and I've felt mentally blocked since none of my ideas convince me. My game ideas either sound boring to me, or sound too ambitious, so I've felt stuck. Thanks to your video, now I could try just makeing a quick and dirty prototype, and then I would "listen" to the game to see what works and which ideas are fun. That would be in a long time since I've been a bit busy and I'm still learning the basics of game programming. But still, thank you for making this video! You have helped me get a clearer idea on the kinds of games I want to make.
I was just making the devlog today about this level design concept, and suddenly this video pops up. Great to see so many examples of games with the similar approach, amazing video!
Mark, your channel is awe-inspiring. Not only do you offer the best video game content, but this is some of the best content on TH-cam. Your thoughts are very orderly and your intuitions, piercing and spot on. I am going through all your content in order. How time and time again you vocalize and expand profusely on issues that I pick up on but not always able to put them into words is magnificent. You are a true journalist and your ethic and talent are comparable to none. Thank you for sharing your vision and making the best possible use of this platform. All power to you.
This is so true. I'm remaking the 8 bit version of Sonic 2 and even with a remake things can change when you listen to the game. For example, I had some square paper that I was going to use for level design but the engine I'm using has a level builder where you can test it Mario Maker style, so it felt a lot more fun to design the levels as I played them. Also my act 2 for UGZ changed from what what going to be a night time theme, to a sunset one after I received a new remix from the composer and I imagined a new environment. And it's a shame most "AAA" devs can't follow this ideology due to time and pressure.
You always manage to impart a valuable lesson in every video you make. Well done. With Crash 4 coming out in a month, why not make a video analysing what made the original level design of the first three Crash games so beloved? Seeing that Toy's for Bob have managed to figure that out, I'd like to see it put into words of someone like you.
As a musician, I feel these two ideas also apply to composing or other creative arts. "Follow the fun", just follow your idea and see what works instead of having a preconcieved plan and forcing yourself to stick with it. And the "game jams" idea, from time to time i spend several months composing one new idea every single day. Some of those are crap, some are meh, some will be good. Great work, great channel!
This is basically just- "Ok I made the prototype, Now gotta fix the bugs" "Wait, that bug wasn't intentional but it fits the theme so I'm gonna leave it be" And that little bug changed the whole aspect of game, thus, creating a unique famous game!
Only 2:28 and geez, this video and channel is just way too good. It really gives you a feel of how much META there's on building a game - all steps precisely classified, with detailed explanations on how to do a game from A to Z - and how many professionals there is that are dead serious about what they do, giving you a wake up call that this endeavour is just as skilled and using old principles as other respectable professions like Architecture and Agriculture. And it gave me the MIND BLOWING EPIPHANY that whatever you're trying to do someone already tried, for generations, and there are people that are doing, some at an incredibly high level (the only exception is maybe some futuristic stuff). Just follow they're steps you dofus! Even if your area is totally new, like Feynman searching Quantum, you can develop this by expanding on what is known today.
Hey, the last few days I have been playing Horizen Zero Dawn on the PC and this game doesnt have the longest loading screens ever but its enough that random thoughts can pop up in your had. So a few days ago while I was waiting for the loading screen to go away the thought: Why do so many games have the same basic loading screen? poped up in my head. A few loadings screens later i thought that it would be a cool video idea for GMTK to see why these boring loading screens withmusic and maybe a "PRO-TIP" that is about stuff that everyone figers out after playing like 2 min and what other possible options there are. Just an idea, have a nice day/night/afternoon/meal/whatever you are currantly doing P.S. sorry for the grammar and spelling mistakes (English is not my first language)
There used to be full-on arcade games like Galaxan in games like Tekken--but Namco owned the US Patent for loading screen minigames, preventing other developers from using them. This patent expired in 2015, but by that point the precedent for boring loading screens had been set. And hopefully, upcoming consoles' use of SSD drives will make loading screens short enough that a loading screen minigame would be pointless.
Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. Tons of games have found ways to either make the time it takes for the game to load more interesting, or to simply outright disguise it. Lego Marvel Superheroes has the Loading between levels take the form of a mission briefing, giving you little nuggets of knowledge that may or may not come in handy in the level. Or Luigi's Mansion 3, that outright makes any loading completely unnoticable by having it happen in the middle of the elevator rides. You don't notice the time because your in an elevator, they're supposed to take time to arrive to their floors. An idea that GMTK should definitely go into.
I don't think this is a juicy enough topic for a GMTK video. Unloading a level and loading another takes time. Displaying assets from the game is a pretty efficient way to get mileage out of your artwork/models, and displaying a tip takes very little writing time compared to the potential benefits of players learning new info they may have missed out on in your AAA game's insanely bloated tutorial.
Andrew I think there is definitely something to delve into there for a video. Maybe he can talk about how some games give you tips based off of your own gameplay, or how games can give useful tips on mechanics without fully robbing the player of the chance to discover them
I'm currently struggling to become a professional game artist, however, i just suck up every video of you, because the production value of your videos is so high nad it's so much fun to watch you talking about anything,.. keep your work up, its both inspiring as well as educating us.. big fan!!
There was this really bad bug in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. You could use some exploit to hit an opponent multiple times. Obviously, that bug nowadays is a feature.
wow this video is perfect. i'd like to start a school of game design and i wanted in these days to try and create a board game to try but since i'm always scared of failing i stopped and start looking for ideas that were actually good. now i'm motivated again. thank you, Mark
Creepers , the most iconic mob in minecraft was a glitch aswell. It was a pig in a the creeper shape and notch really liked it and made it the creeper mob .
Feels like after watching this video that the most amazing game creation skill to have would be able to simulate your ideas mentally, without having to create them, you could fail and iterate extremely fast that way. Can probably be learned to a decent extent with practice, try to simulate, actually prototype, were your predictions correct? Etc.
@@Irondragon1945 You know how pig bodies are long horizontally and short vertically? Notch mixed up his axes and ended up with a quadruped that was short horizontally and long vertically.
I am from the startups world, and it's interesting to see we use the same principle, it's called "Lean Startup methodology". You try to quickly iterate the product development cycle based on feedback from your users. Essentially you are building your product with them.
any creative work really, some stories/books write themselves as the author follows the flow, several good scenes in movies came from improvisation (like "I'm singing in the rain" in Clockwork Orange), while painting or drawing you may discover something different that brings new opportunities ("no mistakes, just happy accidents" as said by Bob Ross). I think it's something that can apply to most things, even life
Been watching your vids for so long! What a fantastic creation methodology. Loved it. This how most artists draw, they start with few seconds long rough sketch, and start drawing over the lines they liked, for example. Great Vid!
I think the method itself is more oriented to system-focused games. Remember, the methodology works heavily on play testing. It's easier to play test systems rather than dialogue.
Thanks for the inspiration! I don’t design games, but I make music and I’ve been stuck for months on a complex piece that’s been blocking me from going anywhere or even enjoying making music. Time to ditch that stale idea, experiment, follow the fun, and make a bunch of small, weird, playful pieces that get me back into creating.
The Talos Principle, one of the most thought-provoking games I've ever played and a puzzle game masterpiece, emerged from the CroTeam devs messing around with 3D mechanics for the next Serious Sam game. They followed the fun and if the result isn't wildly different from the original intent, I don't know what is.
Fascinatingly I actually go through this same process with art. You make like 5-10 quick drafts just to see which one is "working" and then you fine tune and develop that one discarding the rest. I always save time doing the rough draft process versus when I stick to just one idea--because if that one idea doesn't work you just waste hours *struggling* with it. I also find that having a third party occasionally come in and tell you their opinion on the drafts can completely change the course of a project. For the better.
I do a lot of analogue game design (board games, card games, TTRPGs) and this kind of design is helpful so often. A game will tell you what its focus is during design and during play. Thanks again, Mark! 👍
I have spent a lot of time writing music, and the same principles apply. A blank slate is very hard to work with. Once you get some sounds and beats down, you can start to connect the dots and new shapes and ideas start to emerge - the more dots you have down, the more you can connect. And it's true, the ideas often feel like they come out of nowhere - when I listen to any one of my old songs I can remember the 'happy accident' that one of us would pick up on and say, 'That sounds amazing! Do that again!' These were often little musical gimmicks or motifs that would spin out to become the basis of the whole song. The hardest part of connecting the dots is getting the dots down in the first place - and Jams (both the game and musical variety) are so great because they force you to drop your inhibitions and get those dots down. And I suppose the analagous writing advice is 'write drunk, edit sober' - for the exact same reason. Lower inhibitions can make for great material to come back to once you've sobered up.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Quick correction: I'm quoting Seth Coster from Butterscotch Shenanigans here, not Sam (who is Seth's brother, and also works there). Whoops!
Liking your own comment? I wish you would like mine as well. :)
I think Spelunky was a great model of "Design Itself" because every iteration, every level, every playthrough follows the fun, where fun is in the randomness and pacing and decision making. There is no actual "proper Spelunky sample size" until you play a level.
I have a strange feeling you might enjoy Into The Breach somewhat
Design of counter strike video ?
ya fuiste te vamos a mandar la moto
Can you cover Rain World's AI its pretty good
Basically, make games like you’re Cave Johnson in Portal 2. “We’re throwing science at the wall here to see what sticks. No idea what it’ll do.”
Will it explode? Likely. Will it do nothing? Probably not, but we may as well try!
maybe with less sadistic murderous robots though.
@@roguedogx actually I'd prefer more sadistic murderous robots
Duck King “This process involves taking an initial idea - *HOWEVER LOOSE, FUZZY, OR UNORIGINAL IT MIGHT BE*” Seems to indicate that the original comment indeed holds true.
@@aliasmcdoe the "randomly throwing stuff at the wall" is not truly random. it has to go to some stages. at first choosing what stuff to throw at the wall, expecting stuff to happen, Throw the stuff, see the result, and goes along with it. in more scientifically way will be, Choose the subject, Make hypothesis, Held a test, compile the result and then conclusion.
Stepping outside the realm of video games, anyone who has run a game of Dungeons and Dragons (or a similar game) will understand that while you may start out with some idea of where you want the narrative to go, in all likelihood the actions of the players aren't going to align perfectly with that idea. As the dungeon master, it's your job to "follow the fun" and adjust what you're doing to work with what your players are doing.
Absolutely my experience, and there's a related phrase I've seen on author advice blogs frequently; "be prepared to kill your darlings." Even if you loved creating it, if it's not the fun path, gotta know when to chuck it and improvise
I watch GMTK almost exclusively for DMing tips. So many concepts overlap and in the end, it's all about finding something fun and entertaining for people to enjoy
ah the classic "rule of cool"
@@meganr9102 in my experience, "kill your darlings" usually refers more to the need to cut out words during the editing process, I think it comes from something Hemingway said. But you're right, it can also be applied to larger scale structural changes in the story.
As a DM, this is absolutely correct.
I'm not a game dev by any stretch, but a few months ago I had a dream in which the entire world was flooding, and I was constantly trying to get to higher ground. I met up with people on the way, sometimes the tide stopped rising and we'd try to build something or prepare in some way, then it would all start up again. I still think that would make a pretty rad game, but I can only imagine what it would evolve into over time!
i want to make this lol
Does that water ever go down? Would Wooden platforms drift? How would mountains and rivers affect this idea?
Noah's flood
You should play Catherine. it has a similar idea in it.
Love it!
I've had dreams of potential game ideas as well. One of which involved "competitive roguelike firefighting." Might be something there.
GTA was famously originally Race N Chase, until the police AI just started ramming the player's car, and the rest is history
Oh I didn't know that, that's very interesting!
Everybody gangsta until the police AI goes
*Whoop-whoop!!*
*THAT'S THE SOUND OF DA POLICE!!*
*Whoop-whoop!!*
*THAT'S THE SOUND OF DA BEAST!!!*
Was about to say this, I'm surprised it wasnt mentioned in the video
You were suppose to follow the damn train cj
Amazing that a single bug created a multibillion dollar ip
Notch: *screws up dimensions of model*
Notch 10 seconds later: "it should be green, it should explode and destroy your hard work"
notch 20 seconds later: should women have rights? I'm just asking questions
notch is famously a terrible bigotted piece of trash. GMTK even got him to delete his awful twitter for a minute but unfortunately it didn't stick
"Follow the no-fun"
@@Vallam23 what
@@Vallam23 who tf asked
Being able to drop ideas that aren't working takes true courage for a game developer.
Honestly it takes a lot for any person to let go of something that isn’t working for them, too.
Yeah, sunk cost fallacy is dangerously powerful.
Runix Runix college
I agree, I dropped a prototype that was too big to make for the size of my team and felt bad for a considerable amount of time, dropping something is not easy
It's true in almost any artistic endeavour. I've heard a similar maxim in writing: "murder your darlings".
You might grow deeply attached to a particular turn of phrase, or passage, or character, or plot development, and not want to remove it from your writing. Yet you might end up editing and re-writing the rest of your work to the point where your "darling" simply has no place anymore. At that point, the best thing you can do is murder your darling and move on.
You'll come up with other writing down the line, that's just as good if not better. But only if you let go, right now.
For those who dont know, the spy from tf2 was from a glitch in the original tf where players could disguise as the enemy
And rocket jumping is a fault in the engine, yet a big feature now
@@rosko5570 The question is: *how do you do it!?*
@@rosko5570 - I'm pretty sure rocket jumping (or using the push of a rocket blast to enhance movement) was originally an unintended effect in Doom, which was then used a lot more in Quake, again unintended. Many games have since copied the mechanic, either intentionally or unintentionally.
how do you bug so badly that your game lets you be the other team
@@badmanjones179 maybe its not true, but i think it doesnt let you be from the other team, its about changing skins that are supposed to be from the other team. Also, do you code or make games, sir?
One of my favorite things about gmtk is that even though it seems that he only talks about games, (to me) he's actually talking about something more fundamental, something that (for me) apllies to any kind of storytelling. Be it film, book, music etc etc. It's the reason why I still watch them even though I have no intention to be a game designer.
Intelligent. It could really be applied anywhere.
So glad "Journey" made it into this video. In his soundtrack commentary on YT, composer Austin Wintory said that the whole game creation process was iterative. He'd get a description of an area, compose a rough song, and the game designers would listen to it. They'd change the level design based on what they heard. Then Wintory would play the new version and end up changing the song. They'd keep going back and forth between soundtrack and gameplay like this. He said they probably would STILL be doing this if they hadn't had to commit to a release date. That's why the music and gameplay mesh so well in Journey!
This is so cool!!! I didn't know this! Journey has a phenomenally good soundtrack with some of the best atmosphere I've heard in a game, and this explains why!
This explains so much. It was the first game to ever make me cry (after playing games for like 25 years), and I couldn't even understand why since there is no dialogue and the plot is vaguer than vague. But when I was playing through the Paradise section after dying on that mountain... Niagara Falls, Frankie angel
The main thing about Journey (which isn’t about love, but the journey of life) is that I became so concerned for other players when I was playing it. If I came across another player and they were lost or confused, it was genuinely distressing and I desperately chirped at them to help them find the way.
4:08 Capcom basically created the concept of “combos” in fighting games this way in Street Fighter II. They initially weren’t part of the base game but later discovered extremely high level players were finding ways to “link” attacks and create chains. At first they were working to find a way to keep players from doing this in later revised versions but discovered it created more depth to the gameplay and opened up more options and an entirely new world for fighters. Then they actually started working combo systems into the game and the rest is history.
Same with special cancels in sf2
specifically: when striking the enemy with a hit, if you input the special attack motion for a fireball before the attack ended, you could "cancel" into the fireball earlier than intended.
Some Capcom devs had commented that combos were actually planned to be in the game from the beginning of SF2. Can't find the source now though
There's actually another example of a Capcom game "writing itself," as it were. After Dino Crisis 2 launched, Shu Takumi was given a small team of developers and told to just make a game - didn't matter what kind, they just had to make a game. The original plan was a game about a private detective who got accused of murder and wound up having to defend himself in court because he was given an incompetent lawyer. But then Takumi realized that his protag was spending way more time in court than he was investigating crimes, and was like "Hey, we can run with this." Bada bing, bada boom, Ace Attorney was born.
@@emilyarmstrong83 sure explains the ace attorney moments where the lawyer has to defend themselves in court because the detectives were incompetent...
I want to know more about the bugs that became features in Spy Party.
Check the source link the description - there's a talk where Chris Hecker goes in-depth on some of the exploits
Was that different than the one you linked to with two people competing in some sort of tournament? I watched that whole video and although they mentioned bugs a few times it wasn't clear what the bug was or how they developed it later into a mechanic.
Spy Party is an amazing game. Also 6:24 I’m famous!!!
Sorry, that's the credit for the video I used. The talk from Chris Hecker is listed under sources. Or just click here - th-cam.com/video/Tvcm3uUbzAw/w-d-xo.html
In the board gaming world it's "rush to prototype". Same philosophy, if you've got a game idea then build _something_ out of paper and play it by yourself to see what works and what really doesn't.
Ngl that sounds pretty boring tbh then again I never liked board games or table top games
@@mikemarks6136 Yes I imagine the process for designing a board game doesn't sound particularly exciting to someone with no interest in board games.
I went to a 3 part board game development seminar and at the end of the first session, they gave us a box of stuff and told each of us to make a game in an hour. In that environment you have to have a single idea and work from that, and I am now in the process of turning that idea into a full boardgame, with the intent to publish it!
Rush -B- prototype.
Table 53 lmao gottem
The Ape Out example at the start was just an excuse for Mark to use it's style for the rest of the video. No one can dispute this.
But I can't really blame him. Ape Out looks and sounds smooooth. Such an awesome game.
Interestingly, the jazz music of Ape Out is generated on the fly.
Saul Bass is probably the most famous artist in this style, you can see it had a massive influence on the art of ape out.
It’s not a GMTK video without a section about Into the Breach.
Don't forget about Spelunky 😆
And a footage of Speelunky
And some sort of Jonathan Blow game
Can't blame him
Far cry 2 will be missed
The most iconic case of this was with Halo: Combat Evolved. What was originally intended to be a top down rts game, the entire studio shifted gears in development when they were testing around driving the warthog. They had such a blast driving the warthog around in testing with a controller, that they decided to scrap the entire rts idea and instead develop a first person shooter that all around felt good to play. And as a result of this, completely overhauled how fps games are played, and set the framework to shooter mechanics that is now a template for every fps to this day.
Quake is often forgotten when it comes to this. There's no classes or any enforced "meta" that decides playstyles - all playstyles are emergent. Weapon denial and item control/awareness were not designed but simply came into being as people played.
sounds like i have to check out quake then!
@@aurumcoinforge4582 Diabotical plays like Quake but it's newer and with more features, including an ingame map editor and an ingame HUD editor. I would recommend that if you're new to arena shooters.
I’d argue that that is a slightly different situation, as these classes and play styles were found and elaborated on on the player side, rather than the developer game.
Woo! Diabotical!!!! See you in the arena!!!!!!
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 That's not true, actually. Everything that emerged in Quake 1 and 2 were elaborated on and perfected in later iterations, to the point of people actively getting angry if something was made to reverse it, like John Carmack and strafejumping - strafejumping was a bug in Quake 2 that people absolutely loved, but John Carmack didn't like it so when he tried to remove it in Quake 3, people were understandably upset. Strafejumping has been a stable in both Quake and other arena shooters since then.
The Anno series would also be a good example, too. Anno 1602 the first game in the series was supposed to be a RTS, like AoE or Star Craft. The developers then spent more time to building their cities than fighting each other, so they focused more on city building.
That's both random as hell and a good example lol
I have a friend who doesn't want to play aoe with me because he doesn't like that he has to build a new city every time... Maybe he should try Anno
Sim City was inspired by the level designer in Will Wright’s earlier game which was more fun than the game.
It's like tasting your food continously throughout cooking
This is one of the best analogies I've ever heard.
I find it incredibly hard to “drop an idea” once I’ve started brainstorming/creating it. Game Jams are really good to get these out of my mind and actually let them go once I’ve seen what they’re like. Thanks for the great insights as always!
It's just like in writing; I've heard many authors talk about how a story "just happened" as characters seem to pull the plot in different directions.
@jocaguz18 i read an article a week or two ago stating it's actually a pretty common experience for writers that is unconnected with mental illness, I'll see if I can find it again.
@jocaguz18 Nah, dude. I can confidently say that once you've birthed your brain children, you're just along for the ride XD
The custom graphics and animatics (like at 11:06) are an amazing touch that help get the point across in ways that typical stock footage can't.
That monologue starting at 10:35 is such an important message. Not only for game making, but all art. It's a very significant lesson for poem or song writing, painting, sculpting, prose fiction writing, choreography, cinematography, etc.
Don't wait for some eureka stroke of genius inspiration. Don't wait for inspiration at all. Just keep working, even if you're slugging through bad ideas. Then, if you keep working and keep striving for improvement, the good ideas will happen. Find inspiration, don't wait for it to find you.
>"Games that designed themselves"
>starts video with jazz music
Brilliant.
?
renn jazz is a genre where the musicians make up the music as they go; as they do, they develop motifs and phrases that they might go back on or just follow whatever theyre currently playing to think about what notes to play next
@@HueManatee ah ok i get it now ty
@N N R U you are very cool :)
@N N R U ?
I'm not even an aspiring game developer, just a general artistic type, and this is still great advice. Thank you.
Yeah! It's great to see this apply to most creative endeavors.
"People are using physics exploits to jump using the rocket launcher. Let's make this a game mechanic!"
"This line in my portrait drawing doesn't look like a hand, but it kinda looks like a tree. Let's draw a forest instead!"
"That line in my script wasn't supposed to be a joke, but people loved it! Let's write a whole scene around it."
@@Drekromancer Yeah. And this is great advice for scientific research (which is creative also). Though this video makes this process sound easy. It's not. But it can take you to really interesting places that you wouldn't have imagined.
I love how much detail you put in all elements of these videos. Playing jazz the entire time in a video about improvising while game designing, okay Mark I see you.
Love how I can spend 2 days straight working, fall into a lull that'd usually result in a depressive few weeks of not making anything, but instead watch a GMTK video, and immediately be like 'aight back to it'
Ugh, that's way too familiar to me too.
Good luck with whatever you're working on! Keep it up.
@@exLightningg Thank you :D
I've been in the depressy spell for the past two weeks. Hoping this is the video that will rouse me.
All this perspective of "the game designing itself" and the developers "discovering" it reminds me of the ancient Roman definition of "genius"... Great video!
Nice
Heat Signature was so underrated. You have a grenade shotgun, a gun that shoots EVERYTHING at guards, and a gun shooting the highly corrosive acid used as money. You can even teleport into someone with your sword already in their chest.
10:20 "this game would explore the theme of love"
me, a person who has played journey: wait. was that what it was abaout?
I know, right? It's hard to get that from wandering the graveyards of a civilization erased by weapons of mass destruction.
*Cocks gun* Always has been.
Same lol, I always thought it was more about life, navigating through the challenges, the scary times, the easy times, the fun times, etc etc
You did not explore alone, friends. You loved your scarf dragons, and if you got good drop ins, you felt the warmth of companionship (assuming you played online).
At the end of my second run and first drop in, I regretted so much I Couldn't say anything to the wanderer who'd gone the whole way with me.
He drew a heart in the sand, so I did too, and I like to think we both felt better.
I heard the message about love in that.
Right? And here i thought it was about apreciating the journey lol XD
Great video! I wish it would've also talked about limitations, which are one of the reasons indies actually make many iconic design decisions. Limited resources, time, and manpower may require an extra dose of creativity to solve problems that sometimes can lead to the best results.
This is great advice for any creative endeavour, and I love it when games are the medium that drive innovation in other creative spheres. I give similar advice when teaching creative writing; I say that the blank page is the most terrifying and difficult thing to work with - once you start putting sentences on it, at some point you'll chance upon a good sentence that you'll want to build a story around.
"Follow the fun" is also an improv technique
And an interviewing/conversational technique!
I've always wanted to be a writer, but I've had a hard time just getting to it because I tend to focus on making the perfect story first. I think this video has helped me start to get out of that mental trap. Thanks!
Not a writer myself but a good teacher of mine, after reading my 12 y.o essays, told me that "It's always better to throw out a lot of everything and keeping what sounded good rather than always questioning the same idea you absolutely want to expand on". So try out as much stuff as you want, even if it sounds stupid, because you may find gold in the dirt.
@@HigaaraEnd Thanks! I actually just found some little things I wrote in high school I was going to look at. Your comment and timing are perfect.
I've been looking at this from a writing perspective too. I had a super good professor in uni and he had a saying called "chase the heat" in writing, meaning that as you write and find something that excites you or starts writing itself, you ride that flame and feed it.
I have a huge inner critic which sucks for writing, but I've been working up to it again. I want to revamp a novel I wrote which is trash but i like the central idea. I love writing, it's when I feel happiest, but I feel so critical it just 'feels better' to avoid it
My advice is just write and see where it goes :) if you end up liking it, that's great. If you dont, you still learned something. I wrote a 50k word novel in a month and while it sucks, it's still something!
@@allterraincapybara6749 thanks! I totally understand the 'feels better to avoid.' I hope you keep going strong.
Part of the reason why I started doing fan fiction is because it's usually low stress and easy to "fail fast." There's certainly authors who use beta readers and heavy strict outlines, sure, but a lot of writers just throw stuff out there without much worry, and hopefully learn something about writing in the process.
This is also why elements that can all work together in level creation/creative games lead to so many fun creations that the devs would have never thought of, some times leading to whole new games or genres.
And having elements react and adapt not just to the player but also to each other can lead to even more amazing things. Like cats in dwarf fortress that got drunk because there was a system that made them dirty when walking through puddles of beer in bars, a system for them licking themselves clean and a system for getting drunk.
Actually can confirm it slightly because when I make mods for a game, sometimes there are unexpected interactions that lead to deph and strategy :D
I'd love for you to do a video on "horror" sections of games that otherwise aren't horror related and how they worked a couple examples I can think of is Big Boo's Haunt from Super Mario 64 and another is Queen Vanessa's Manor from A Hat in Time. Both are more light hearted fun games but have that one section that even grown up you still get spooked by them. I guess you could call it "How to make Horror in non Horror games"
Another great excuse to talk about Ravenholm, too!
@@MatthewTaylor86 I think all of half life, and the new alyx is, and are, especially good at having horror aspects. Lots of zombie tunnels, dark areas, etc. Halo 1 flood too. (more annoying than scary but still)
This, for me and lots of thers, is almost exactly like making music, you start with an idea and try to sketch that down as much as possible, try new things, ask "whats happens if ?", and then see what comes up that is interesting and lean in on that. If you start with the endgoal in mind and only focus on that, your perfect song or game will never be finished, gotta learn to go with the flow. The final product can turn out completely different than the original idea was to start with.
Great video! As a creator by hobby, I love the idea you brought to light of “fail faster”. I will definitely take that to heart going into future work.
I can relate to this more than ever. Sometimes, I just have days where nothing really goes as planned but something still came of it.
The game I'm working on started as an auto-generated hex puzzle about balancing planets' gravitational pull, and changed direction to become a hand-crafted puzzle game about combining and manipulating colors.
Edit: Thanks for the likes :)
If you're interested in checking out the game, I recently released a trailer (+free demo): th-cam.com/video/uJrn6x-bUDM/w-d-xo.html
Really shows the creativity and flexibility of the devs to be willing to make these changes and make whole new games almost around these fun mechanics.
Skiing in the original Starsiege: Tribes was a total accident. It was discovered by one of the Dynamix QA testers that if they rapidly tapped the space bar (jump) while sliding down a hill, they could pick up a lot of momentum, allowing them to boost off an up-slope with a massive amount of speed.
Of course, it eventually broke the intended gameplay, but enabled the game to far out-last it's original lifespan. And it was incorporated into all the Tribes sequels as a core mechanic.
As a writer, I'm familiar with this premise. Characters do the exact same thing! I had one character who was supposed to be a generic badass turn into a wide-eyed and naive one who was secretly amazingly tough. That ended up being way more interesting, so I ran with it! I think you find this phenomena a lot in creative processes.
Just a moment of appreciation for the constantly amazing presentation of these videos. Mark is a madman when it comes to editing and visual style!
Spot on! The Development is also about what is manageable for the person or team that is designing it. You soon discover what your strengths and your weaknesses are, which in combination with the "game evolving itself", will ultimately dictate what your game/project materialises in to.
Love this. It's like taking advantage of the teachable moment. Just took a course on game design, and this adds perfectly to what we began to learn about game design there.
Another great video! There's something similar to 'follow the fun' in writing, or any kind of artistic medium I guess. Writers have to be very flexible and receptive to new ideas. You have to listen and feel what the story wants to be, and you often have to completely re-write scenes (that you often love) for the sake of the story to work as a whole.
ape out is just a top down shooter where you reload by hugging people
it's brilliantly simple
Tf2's spy class was all because of an accidental glitch. I love when games and features are just rolled with till they make a signature feature
I have some gameplay gimmicks in mind for when I eventually learn to code. I’ll certainly keep this information in mind when I try to make them reality.
Very inspiring. Creatives in many fields probably wrestle to keep their egos and their well-laid plans from snuffing out fun and spontaneity. These "happy accidents" came up a lot when I used to write songs, for example. Great video, as always!
"Follow the trails of whats fun" Thats a refreshing thing to hear in 2020
Such a great message that can be applied to so many different mediums.
This is one of your best videos, amazing work.
I totally agreed with you. I've participated in Brackey's Game Jam a week ago, and the starting point is always hard. Sometimes the ideas come, sometimes don't. But once something appears and you prototype it and watch and play that prototype, that's were the magic happens and everything starts to flow. New ideas you probably never thought materialize just there. And you must learn to use them and try them to see if they're as interest during gameplay as they're in your mind.
Great video
GMTK videos since Mark has mentioned "Into the Breach": 000
Sometimes I wonder why we bother installing two digits on the sign, let alone three! No hate on the game tho, sure it must be fun if it gets mentioned every other episode.
Hey, it's an amazing game with a cool design.
should be Spelunky, that game is Mark's weakness
But he didn't mention Celeste!
@@Rexodiak I hate Spelunky. Tried it many times and it always ends with a nervous breakdown xD
Into the Breach is for chess nerds that enjoyed FTL but wish it was less RNG. Total fucking dweebs, really.
(It's me, I am the nerd dweeb)
I’m an R&D engineer and honestly a lot of this is just great general design advise too. “Follow the Fun and Fail Fast” but replace “Fun” with whatever design criteria (that ideally starts with an “F” lol). Anyway, well done, I wasn’t expecting to get advice for my own non-game design job when I started this video!
“Fail faster”
YandereDev: *confused internal screaming*
He's got the first half down perfect 🤣
@@rewrose2838 I wish there was something like a "sarcasm check" to check if someone was being sarcastic. The only real way to check if something is sarcastic on the internet is to ask so... Are you being sarcastic?
@@ThreeBeeHDb yes 🙃
(and I can totally relate, sarcasm is often lost on me)
@@ThreeBeeHDb That's just basic communication though isn't it?
I'm autistic and that has a lot of problems, but on the upside I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm likely missing a lot of 'obvious' cues.
But then I was also into science, so I've read research papers and stuff.
Gave up on it eventually, so I can't easily cite sources anymore.
Even so, when it comes to human communication it was something like pretty extreme like 90% of communication is body language, 8% is tone of voice, and only 2% is the actual words used.
Now apply that to youtube comments, and it should be pretty clear why people struggle to spot sarcasm. XD
We've thrown out 98% of the message, and then still expect people to get it without being extremely obvious (with things like /s or the like that make it explicit...)
-shrug~
I was thinking something like that.
I love that your videos are totally applicable to so many other things than just games... like the teaching you give us all is very important to me for, character building, world building in general, like any form of art can be influenced by what you teach us... heck even life lessons are given in here.... thank you so much..
"Bugs creates feature"
Bethesda games: I know. It just Works. Every time...
Awesome job (as always)! This has actually helped me. I've been having many ideas on what kinds of games I want to make, both if I wanted to make an indie game, or a AAAish kind of game, and I've felt mentally blocked since none of my ideas convince me. My game ideas either sound boring to me, or sound too ambitious, so I've felt stuck. Thanks to your video, now I could try just makeing a quick and dirty prototype, and then I would "listen" to the game to see what works and which ideas are fun. That would be in a long time since I've been a bit busy and I'm still learning the basics of game programming. But still, thank you for making this video! You have helped me get a clearer idea on the kinds of games I want to make.
Could also be called the importance of prototyping. Projects that spend too much time in idea stage can catch Star Citizen disease
I was just making the devlog today about this level design concept, and suddenly this video pops up. Great to see so many examples of games with the similar approach, amazing video!
Dang this video has such high production value especially the animations I wish my videos could look as good as this
I don’t want to make a game but I still needed to hear this advice. Fail fast, follow the fun.
I think this is one of your best video's yet, up there with the talking instead of shooting video
Mark, your channel is awe-inspiring. Not only do you offer the best video game content, but this is some of the best content on TH-cam. Your thoughts are very orderly and your intuitions, piercing and spot on. I am going through all your content in order. How time and time again you vocalize and expand profusely on issues that I pick up on but not always able to put them into words is magnificent. You are a true journalist and your ethic and talent are comparable to none. Thank you for sharing your vision and making the best possible use of this platform. All power to you.
This is so true. I'm remaking the 8 bit version of Sonic 2 and even with a remake things can change when you listen to the game. For example, I had some square paper that I was going to use for level design but the engine I'm using has a level builder where you can test it Mario Maker style, so it felt a lot more fun to design the levels as I played them. Also my act 2 for UGZ changed from what what going to be a night time theme, to a sunset one after I received a new remix from the composer and I imagined a new environment. And it's a shame most "AAA" devs can't follow this ideology due to time and pressure.
Hey, good luck with your remake! That sounds like a lot of work but very rewarding achievement in the end :)
We did this for our game Dwerve and it became a tower defense dungeon crawler! Wish us luck, Kickstarter starts next week.
You always manage to impart a valuable lesson in every video you make. Well done.
With Crash 4 coming out in a month, why not make a video analysing what made the original level design of the first three Crash games so beloved? Seeing that Toy's for Bob have managed to figure that out, I'd like to see it put into words of someone like you.
Thanks, that's super inspiring! Been waiting for the perfect game idea for years...
2:19 BUTTERSCOTCH SHENANIGANS! huge fan of theirs! very happy to see them included in this video!
Yep, I love those guys. They have a great podcast as well!
As a musician, I feel these two ideas also apply to composing or other creative arts. "Follow the fun", just follow your idea and see what works instead of having a preconcieved plan and forcing yourself to stick with it. And the "game jams" idea, from time to time i spend several months composing one new idea every single day. Some of those are crap, some are meh, some will be good.
Great work, great channel!
This is basically just-
"Ok I made the prototype, Now gotta fix the bugs"
"Wait, that bug wasn't intentional but it fits the theme so I'm gonna leave it be"
And that little bug changed the whole aspect of game, thus, creating a unique famous game!
Only 2:28 and geez, this video and channel is just way too good. It really gives you a feel of how much META there's on building a game - all steps precisely classified, with detailed explanations on how to do a game from A to Z - and how many professionals there is that are dead serious about what they do, giving you a wake up call that this endeavour is just as skilled and using old principles as other respectable professions like Architecture and Agriculture.
And it gave me the MIND BLOWING EPIPHANY that whatever you're trying to do someone already tried, for generations, and there are people that are doing, some at an incredibly high level (the only exception is maybe some futuristic stuff). Just follow they're steps you dofus!
Even if your area is totally new, like Feynman searching Quantum, you can develop this by expanding on what is known today.
Hey,
the last few days I have been playing Horizen Zero Dawn on the PC and this game doesnt have the longest loading screens ever but its enough that random thoughts can pop up in your had. So a few days ago while I was waiting for the loading screen to go away the thought: Why do so many games have the same basic loading screen? poped up in my head.
A few loadings screens later i thought that it would be a cool video idea for GMTK to see why these boring loading screens withmusic and maybe a "PRO-TIP" that is about stuff that everyone figers out after playing like 2 min and what other possible options there are.
Just an idea, have a nice day/night/afternoon/meal/whatever you are currantly doing
P.S. sorry for the grammar and spelling mistakes (English is not my first language)
Bump
There used to be full-on arcade games like Galaxan in games like Tekken--but Namco owned the US Patent for loading screen minigames, preventing other developers from using them.
This patent expired in 2015, but by that point the precedent for boring loading screens had been set. And hopefully, upcoming consoles' use of SSD drives will make loading screens short enough that a loading screen minigame would be pointless.
Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. Tons of games have found ways to either make the time it takes for the game to load more interesting, or to simply outright disguise it.
Lego Marvel Superheroes has the Loading between levels take the form of a mission briefing, giving you little nuggets of knowledge that may or may not come in handy in the level.
Or Luigi's Mansion 3, that outright makes any loading completely unnoticable by having it happen in the middle of the elevator rides. You don't notice the time because your in an elevator, they're supposed to take time to arrive to their floors.
An idea that GMTK should definitely go into.
I don't think this is a juicy enough topic for a GMTK video. Unloading a level and loading another takes time. Displaying assets from the game is a pretty efficient way to get mileage out of your artwork/models, and displaying a tip takes very little writing time compared to the potential benefits of players learning new info they may have missed out on in your AAA game's insanely bloated tutorial.
Andrew I think there is definitely something to delve into there for a video. Maybe he can talk about how some games give you tips based off of your own gameplay, or how games can give useful tips on mechanics without fully robbing the player of the chance to discover them
I'm currently struggling to become a professional game artist, however, i just suck up every video of you, because the production value of your videos is so high nad it's so much fun to watch you talking about anything,.. keep your work up, its both inspiring as well as educating us.. big fan!!
There was this really bad bug in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. You could use some exploit to hit an opponent multiple times.
Obviously, that bug nowadays is a feature.
wow this video is perfect. i'd like to start a school of game design and i wanted in these days to try and create a board game to try but since i'm always scared of failing i stopped and start looking for ideas that were actually good. now i'm motivated again. thank you, Mark
"they're not glitches, they're just free extra content"
Its not a physics engine exploit its "rocket jumping"
Creepers , the most iconic mob in minecraft was a glitch aswell. It was a pig in a the creeper shape and notch really liked it and made it the creeper mob .
Feels like after watching this video that the most amazing game creation skill to have would be able to simulate your ideas mentally, without having to create them, you could fail and iterate extremely fast that way. Can probably be learned to a decent extent with practice, try to simulate, actually prototype, were your predictions correct? Etc.
I don't understand why anyone would down vote this video. It's well structured, professionally designed and with clear narration. What's not to like?
I opened youtube and a GMTK video? Monday is good.
Oh shit it’s monday
Mark not only gives awesome game development advice but also philosophical advice for life. *What a guy*
Creepers were created whilst notch tried modeling a pig
Thinking of exactly this while I was watching! Glad someone brought it up.
Uhhhhh?!
Only their model, though, not the idea of them exploding and breaking your stuff.
@@Irondragon1945 You know how pig bodies are long horizontally and short vertically? Notch mixed up his axes and ended up with a quadruped that was short horizontally and long vertically.
@@DrPumpkinz Ah, I see - pretty much like how he mixed up his tweets with racist ones accidentally! Excellent point. Joke btw...
I am from the startups world, and it's interesting to see we use the same principle, it's called "Lean Startup methodology".
You try to quickly iterate the product development cycle based on feedback from your users. Essentially you are building your product with them.
Just like music; writing a song. The best ones often "write themselves"... :)
any creative work really, some stories/books write themselves as the author follows the flow, several good scenes in movies came from improvisation (like "I'm singing in the rain" in Clockwork Orange), while painting or drawing you may discover something different that brings new opportunities ("no mistakes, just happy accidents" as said by Bob Ross).
I think it's something that can apply to most things, even life
Been watching your vids for so long! What a fantastic creation methodology. Loved it. This how most artists draw, they start with few seconds long rough sketch, and start drawing over the lines they liked, for example.
Great Vid!
I’d love to see some examples of narrative games using this type of approach, most of the games shown were based heavily in systems
I think the method itself is more oriented to system-focused games. Remember, the methodology works heavily on play testing. It's easier to play test systems rather than dialogue.
This can be applied to writing. Just keep throwing ideas till they stick/evolve. Since narrative are writing it also applies to them.
Thanks for the inspiration! I don’t design games, but I make music and I’ve been stuck for months on a complex piece that’s been blocking me from going anywhere or even enjoying making music. Time to ditch that stale idea, experiment, follow the fun, and make a bunch of small, weird, playful pieces that get me back into creating.
Can’t imagine there are too many people who are *so* smart, *so* innovative that their ideas go directly from their head to the history books.
The Talos Principle, one of the most thought-provoking games I've ever played and a puzzle game masterpiece, emerged from the CroTeam devs messing around with 3D mechanics for the next Serious Sam game. They followed the fun and if the result isn't wildly different from the original intent, I don't know what is.
Love the animated psa style In thus video. This channel's editing is always top notch
Fascinatingly I actually go through this same process with art. You make like 5-10 quick drafts just to see which one is "working" and then you fine tune and develop that one discarding the rest. I always save time doing the rough draft process versus when I stick to just one idea--because if that one idea doesn't work you just waste hours *struggling* with it. I also find that having a third party occasionally come in and tell you their opinion on the drafts can completely change the course of a project. For the better.
I do a lot of analogue game design (board games, card games, TTRPGs) and this kind of design is helpful so often. A game will tell you what its focus is during design and during play.
Thanks again, Mark! 👍
This was really inspiring. I really needed this as I've been in a bit of a design rut. Thanks again mark for the great content.
Some of Warframe's movement mechanics were also born out of a glitch.
I have spent a lot of time writing music, and the same principles apply. A blank slate is very hard to work with. Once you get some sounds and beats down, you can start to connect the dots and new shapes and ideas start to emerge - the more dots you have down, the more you can connect. And it's true, the ideas often feel like they come out of nowhere - when I listen to any one of my old songs I can remember the 'happy accident' that one of us would pick up on and say, 'That sounds amazing! Do that again!' These were often little musical gimmicks or motifs that would spin out to become the basis of the whole song. The hardest part of connecting the dots is getting the dots down in the first place - and Jams (both the game and musical variety) are so great because they force you to drop your inhibitions and get those dots down.
And I suppose the analagous writing advice is 'write drunk, edit sober' - for the exact same reason. Lower inhibitions can make for great material to come back to once you've sobered up.