Bad Game Design Advice

Why not have a fun thread once in a while?

Here we post bad game design advice you have received, either from other people, players, youtube, you name it. You then tried it and then it turned out to be pretty bad advice. You don't have to mention where you got it from but what the advice was.

Hopefully other aspiring devs will not make that same mistake.

I'll start:

"The Engine interface is sometimes confusing, so we will do it with code instead."

Many tutorials or guides skip over easy steps that can be done with the Animation or Canvas in favor of coding that ends up being a chore to edit instead of using the built-in interface of Unity. End result: your game isn't as smooth as it could be.

 

CryEngine is better than Unity because the former "supports C number score".

 

Read Ralph Koster's "A Theory of Fun" and Katie Salen/Eric Zimmerman's "Rules of Play." They're both great books.

 

"Dude, you gotta make it multiplayer" (spoken in a "bro" voice)

 

"It doesn't matter what kind of game it is, put a battle-royale mode in it."

 

Was just weeks away from completing a PC/Mac game and my partner said, "Oh man we have to release this on mobile! Have to!"

Wasn't able to talk him out of it, 2+ months of extra work later I gave up on optimizations for mobile (it would run, but I wasn't happy with the frame rates and would need much more time to get there) and just released for PC/Mac as originally planned, having missed the originally announced release date already by several weeks.

The only benefit of those 2+ months of work was the game became awesome on a Windows tablet or 2 in 1 touch screen laptop, but who buys games off steam for that? Waste

 

I got De Ja Vue. I am sure I read that before. Like quite a few months before. I assume you must have posted this somewhere else?

But should use Find Game Object by Tag and Name and call in Update.

 

"We don't need an object pooler" --Legitimate project director's words

"We should just put raycasts on every bullet so they don't go through each other!" --Other project member's legitimate words

Ok so not exactly advice, but definitely some foolhardy ideas.

 

"Add more people to make the project go faster."

 

Is this bad advice? I haven't read these books.

Neither have I been given bad advice, as far as I can tell...

 

Is not strictly about, if "you" / "I" gave bad advice, but bad advice, which you may have heard somewhere, or by someone.

I don't know, never hear about these authors / books.

 

Or even stuff that feels intuitivly like the right solution but if you really examine them they are horibble.

(Grammer edit)

 

Ah, all right.

The one that comes to mind then: "You don't need to learn coding, use Visual Scripting instead...".

 

I wouldn't be surprised if I posted this before, yeah.

 

It's bad advice. Theory of fun is prescriptivist nonsense and Rules of Play's core premise of meaningful play is effectively just as useless.

 

I worked with Ralph for several years... I wouldn't recommend it based on that experience.

 

MOD NOTE : Also, cleaned up derailment and follow on posts.

Note... if are going to pop in to thread to just post crap, or snark on someone else's post... don't. Warnings will be issued next time.

 

I was originally going to post this one but then again, it was a low hanging fruit
Many early tutorials/classes keep going back to this statement when in fact you will pretty much have to learn scripting to get something to do what you want. Almost like learning how to paint, but you can learn brushwork later...

 

"90% work is done. Let's switch engines now."

 

Don't ever buy assets. Just learn how to 3D model and animate above programming, level design, game design, marketing, and just the slew of other details you need to get right when making and releasing a game.

 

Rely on the asset store for everything and then be completely screwed when they become deprecated/incompatible with the newest version of Unity.

 

"Create the UX/UI so it looks good" - One of my ex-bosses ;v

 

"Start making game with detailed fancy graphics" - completely ignoring gameplay = dead project?.

 

"The story is the first thing that you should work in an RPG" - A stupid writer that I found on a facebook group.

 

How is that bad advice? It sounds very good to me.

 

Simply may be not feasible for many.

 

It's not bad advice taken at face value, I'm sure we can all agree learning new things/expanding one's skill set is very commendable. But often times, especially as a one man team, it can be hard to produce every single aspect of a game yet maintain decent quality and a deadline at the same time. Sometimes it's okay to compromise and get something good from a reliable source on the asset store. Mad props to those that can manage it but for many complete self reliance is not feasible and they need to consider the trade offs.

It could just be me but I've seen in various places that some hardcore indies kind of shunned not being totally self sufficient, but I think every group has a portion who are really zealous (I assume for most it's a temporary phase). I think it's bad advice in some circumstances because it can lead to burn outs or demotivation as one gets swamped in all the tasks they believe they must complete in order to be a "real" developer.

 

Yeah, but what happens when you are running under a deadline? IS better to use the best assets for teh things that complicate you the most and build what you can, sort of.

 

The first 4 classes I had used that mantra (I call it the game dev puritanism). Turns out that for models, I suck at it and I'd rather spend 5 pennies on a cactus than spend an hour optimizing it. Same with animations; extending that advice would mean I would have to program a mocap, design it, test it and THEN use it.

Don't get me wrong, every game dev should try to do everything and figure out their strengths and weaknesses but to use this advice to the extreme would basically mean never getting a game out for many people. If you aren't good at an element, by all means do not be shy to use an asset someone created and proofed.

I have met so many devs like that and I shun and ignore them. Making a good game will be reflected in your sales and distribution and maybe critics but definitely not some other game dev's definition of a "pure game". At that point, why even use unity? Make your own game engine.

 

Not strictly "game design" advice... But.

"AS3 isn't going anywhere anytime soon..."

 

"You dont need substance or quixel, 10 years ago when I was an artist we used photoshop for textures and I see no reason for these other programs".

This was advice given when we were working out how to best incorporate PBR into our pipeline. The person seemed to think you could HAND PAINT these maps...

 

More of a programming truism perhaps than game design: "We do it this way because this is the way we've always done it," with no chance to even consider something different because that's just how things are done. Period.

 

This is more of a real life truism. Every company I worked with on all levels in all departments.

 

I worked in a bank in the past; it was a truism there too.

 

"I want that character modelled, UVd, textured, rigged, photorealistic, and under 1000 triangles by the end of the day."

This was said while looking at a rough sketch of a person on a piece of paper.

 

I hope that character looked like a cardboard box.

 

It looked like a minimalist low poly model that had super realistic textures slapped on. It made my eyes bleed.

 

We don't have to deal with VR or Tablet versions for now, we will just port it when the Desktop version is done.

 

I can't think of a specific one right now, but I've seen a whole lot of articles and YouTube videos that claim to have game design tips or level design tips, but all of the so-called "tips" are really only informative to people who've maybe never played a game before in their life. Things like
"Tip number 2: Find the right difficulty curve. If your game is too hard players will get frustrated. Too easy: your players will get bored."

Great advice! Next you'll be saying
"Make your game good. If you make your game bad, no one will like it."

 

Most def, i hate empty ambigous statements as this.

 

My favorite is when they make polarizing videos that do not actually address the issues. Such as Unity vs UnrealEngine4, which one is the best. Nobody discusses anything past the surface and typically propose false dichotomies.

 

Not game design exactly, but there is this big myth in 3d modeling that n-gons are bad. Evil. Don't touch em, kill em with fire.

But it's just not true. Like anything else, there are certain situations where an n-gon might cause issues, but it's by no means a useful rule to avoid using them. In many cases it leads to a lot of wasted time to not make use of them.

 

Ha this is good and true. But to be fair balancing a game can be something of a balancing act, sometimes bad decisions are made that we have to go back and fix upon witnessing the wrath of our player base.

 

Ah, yes. Well, if the article actually gave you tips for HOW to balance the difficulty, then I would call it a really good article. Those are a lot more rare.

 

Not advice per se...

"I just need you to shave those estimates down a bit, then we can get this project done on time."

 

"Hey, I thought of a really cool feature..."

 

"You should make that demo into a full game!" --The bit of inspiration given to me which explains my entire life for the past four years (and why I'm here on these boards)

 

"Don't need to test this feature! It's just a quick prototype".
Because of deadline issues such "prototype features" often stays in the finished product ...with lot of bugs...

 

"Single player and offline multiplayer, is dying out and a thing of the past.
Online multiplayer is where it's at. No one plays, offline single player games
and modes anymore. And no one plays offline multiplayer."

"Everyone plays online games. And everyone plays, online multiplayer
Battle Royale games.
So it makes no sense to create, offline single player, and multiplayer modes."

Lol!