[HN Gopher] Game Design Perspective: Stardew Valley (2020)
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Game Design Perspective: Stardew Valley (2020)
Author : prismatic
Score : 51 points
Date : 2021-01-22 19:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pixelatedplaygrounds.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pixelatedplaygrounds.com)
| kvirani wrote:
| Variety? Now do rimworld.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Rimworld has had so many wonderful moments that have stuck with
| me even though I haven't touched it since the alphas. Because
| one of the mechanics of the game is the colonists can lose
| their minds due to stress, where usually they strip naked and
| grab a gun and start shooting people or run toward the nearest
| living thing and try to beat it to death, managing that is
| important.
|
| Anyway, one of the early builds had this bug where sufficient
| terror/horror stats were enough outweigh any degree of stress.
| So the solution to a happy colony was hundreds of occupied
| gibbet cages placed in rows as a sort of path guide to/from the
| entrances to the cafeteria, bunk houses, etc. so colonists
| would constantly be exposed to them.
|
| If you filled them with barbarians or whatever you could catch
| (sometimes your own people if the headcount started to get
| above your food production...) you'd have a nice "happy"
| colony.
|
| I'm sure this is long removed or fixed, but it just struck me
| as amazing at the time...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| My criticism towards game designers is that they often analyze
| games from an abstract perspective, leaving out important details
| that contribute to the success of the game:
|
| High frame rate, stability, good quality animations, color
| palette/art style/fonts that are consistent with the game
| fiction, UI usability, soundtrack, community, abscence of
| cheaters... just to name a few.
|
| You can have a great game, but if it's unstable, has annoying
| sound effects, or constant monetization related nagging, or a
| toxic community or some cringy voice actor or soundtrack or
| excessive unskippable cutscenes with irrelevant stupid dialogs...
| the magic in the experience goes away. Everything counts.
|
| If you go to a 5 star hotel where everything is perfect but when
| you try to use the shower it doesn't work, your overall rating
| will be 1 star. For a experience to be gratifying, everything
| needs to work together.
|
| I've read countless articles and postmortems of the style "why X
| is successful", and then seen games that follow those documents
| closely and produce a horrible game. Because they are unable to
| capture the whole experience.
|
| Lately I played a game, Ex-Zodiac, which is a StarFox clone. Only
| the demo is available, but the author really captured every
| single aspect that made StarFox great. That attention to detail
| is what makes games fun.
| vvanders wrote:
| The thing is unless you are a small shop like the Vlambeers of
| the world(rip) there's _so_ much work to put together a game
| that clicks.
|
| You have to trust that your art, animation, gameplay
| programmers, etc are experts in their own way and there's
| usually at least one or two people making sure those things are
| all coehesive.
|
| Honestly that's the thing I think we lost in the 90s/00s was
| that the scope of a game was within the grasp of a team of 8-12
| people. This is now making a resurgence in the indie
| space(latest example is Everspace 2 which just _nails_ the feel
| of Freelancer and Escape Velocity).
| grawprog wrote:
| To apply what you're saying to a different media.
|
| I was a big star trek fan growing up. Around the time of
| enterprise, then going on to the reboot and new series i'd lost
| interest in star trek.
|
| The series changed in ways I didn't enjoy. Not to bash on them
| in any way and getting to my point.
|
| I've been recommended The Orville a bunch lately. After hearing
| what it was, I wasn't really interested, but finally i was
| pushed into watching it and I was immediately hooked and
| finished the first two seasons in a couple days.
|
| This is the reason why:
|
| >Lately I played a game, Ex-Zodiac, which is a StarFox clone.
| Only the demo is available, but the author really captured
| every single aspect that made StarFox great. That attention to
| detail is what makes games fun.
|
| You can tell the people that made the Orville loved the hell
| out of the earlier star trek series and put a lot of care into
| small details that really made it feel like star trek, moreso
| than most newer actual star treks. Despite being somewhat of a
| comedic parody, like you say, they 'really captured every
| single aspect' that made star trek great.
| ptcampbell wrote:
| I get the point you're trying to make but regarding the hotel
| analogy, I expect a lot more from a hotel than a video game.
| The trappings of a dodgy hotel are more universal than the
| subjective shortcomings of games whose tropes align to specific
| genres. For example, I have a soft spot for the aesthetic
| vision of the original StarFox but the game itself is
| incredibly linear, repetitive and one dimensional. According to
| your criteria it would ruin the magic, but I don't really see
| it that way.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| StarFox is not so linear or repetitive if you pay attention
| to it. If you just want to pass levels and see an ending, the
| game can be somewhat mediocre... but if you want to master
| the game, it has a lot more to offer. And this is even more
| true for StarFox 2.
| jkinudsjknds wrote:
| Nobody really doubts that some art fails because its just not
| good. Differentiating art that is technically superb to art
| that really resonates is a more interesting conversation.
|
| I do game dev. It's very easy to think "this animation could be
| better". It's a lot harder to figure out "could this be made
| more fun". Tactics vs strategy.
| psyc wrote:
| Are we talking about Stardew though? Because IMO it excels in
| half your criteria and is pleasantly adequate in the rest.
|
| If you mean games in general I mostly agree. Most teams just
| don't seem to prioritize these things and it can be
| frustrating. Especially when the core concepts are so
| promising.
|
| There are a lot of reasons to idolize John Carmack, but my
| favorite is his lifelong obsession with latency. End to end.
| From the player's fingers, through the hardware, through all
| the many software layers, back through the hardware and into
| the player's eyes. From Doom to the Oculus Rift architecture.
| This is why to me Id games feel and play like no others.
| iOS14Icons wrote:
| Great art. I'm a game developer too. I use Unity C#
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