The first rule, “Double it or Cut it by Half”, is about making significant changes that will provoke a tangible response during the iterative development process, without wasting time making small changes. The second rule, “One Good Game is Better than Two Great Ones”, warns the danger of including components into a game that don’t play well with each other, even if each component is fun to play on its own. The third rule “Do your Research after the Game is Done”, is about avoiding cramming too many facts and obscure knowledge into the game, to try to make the game educational or show off the amount of research the developers have done. The fourth and last rule, “The Player Should Have the Fun, not the Designer or the Computer”, states the player should be the star of the game, not the game designer or the computer. For this one, Soren gave an example from Civ4 development:
| For example, during the development of Civilization 4, we experimented with government types that gave significant productivity bonuses but also took away the player's ability to pick which technologies were researched, what buildings were constructed, and which units were trained, relying instead on a hidden, internal model to simulate what the county’s people would choose on their own. The algorithms were, of course, very fun to construct and interesting to discuss outside of the game. The players, however, felt left behind - the computer was having all the fun - so we cut the feature. [...] Thus, in Sid's words, the player must "always be the star." As designers, we need to be the player’s greatest advocate during a game's development, always considering carefully how design decisions affect both the player's agency in the world and his understanding of the underlying mechanics. |
Origineel Artikel: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.p…mp;goto=newpost