Does anyone know how to make a great game?

Does anyone know how to make a great game?

 

Yes, it's quite easy, if by "great" you mean "selling ridiculously well". All you need is a sportsing dude's name licensed, or to be Blizzard. Simple!

 

I'll tell you how for ten million dollars. Pretty good deal, don't you think?

 

I didn't watch the video yet. Let me know whether it's worth the time

 

I know how to make a grate game.

Spoiler

 

Yes.

Get around 500 000 000 USD, hire the best talent available, don't burn it all too soon by the accident and you'll have a great game.

 

Aye @Gigiwoo knows his stuff, seems I finally drove the point home about market saturation.. 100K mobile games a month jeez...!

 

You know I typically enjoy Arowx threads because even if people think they're ridiculous, there's usually some interesting idea at the heart of them that he's probing.

But I'm not really sure about this one. What are you trying to get at, Arowx?

 

I think it's just an attempt to fill a personal threadmaking quota.

 

Find an audience, cater to their taste (unlike me)

 

That's how to make a successful game, but not necessarily a great game.

 

@Arowx This has to be the single best question anyone has ever posted on these forums. Gets right to the heart of the matter. Because that is the whole point, right? Or should be at least.

 

If you want great, you need a standard to measure it, it's still very relative, for that audience it will be GREAT

 

I dunno, I know that for some audiences, they'll basically just take anything they can get, regardless of quality. I mean... *gestures towards the minor visual novel boom of the early-to-mid 2000s*

 

Starved peoples have low standard true, but as the scarcity drop and market rise so do the standard.

Also people don't understand other's standard. Transformer is often picked as something bad, but that's only for people too serious to like fun, or people like me who raise an eyebrows at the value depicts ... other will just enjoy the pure insane stimulation that border on abstract art, literally, snob will cries at the story that isn't there, wrong expectation . It certainly does something better that batman vs superman who couldn't do anything with all these Ayn Rand reference. Also see bayhem from everything is a painting, you can learn from Michael bay.

Always look at the fundamental of the standard.

 

I think this is more like a philosophical question. Does anyone ever truly know how to make a great game? Or anything great for that matter? ... Or does greatness come unbidden, subject of unpredictable public approval, and when they let you know it's great, you'll believe it yourself? Or is it you who must tell them what is great? And greatness is the ability to convince people something is great, in spite of what people trully think?
Well done Arowx, once again you have accomplished to puzzle us all with your profound riddles of life.

 

Nope. I don't know how to make a great game

 

Yeah this.

 

So if we went to a car forum and asked how do you make a great car, would the response be the same as this?

Or a movie forum (this may be more analogous).

 

I don't know of any forum where you would make a question as broad as this and you would get serious answers.

 

OK flip the question what are the greatest games and how were they made?

 

This is literally the exact same question though. There are no objectively greatest games because these things are entirely subjective.

 

Although their are games that are critically acclaimed, make more money or get better reviews. Games that any gamer or developer would not be able to deny are better than most.

Top Video Game Franchises -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises

Metacritic Best Video Game of All Time -> http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/all/filtered

So there are data points we can use to analyse which games are better and then we can class the games considerably above average as great.

 

No, there are points you can use to analyse which games are popular, not better.

 

Yet we still have an IGN top 50 games of all time and Rolling Stone Magazines top 100 guitarists of all time. Fair question I think.


Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater : Great game no idea how they made it, I assume mouse and keyboard mostly.

 

Is it a fair question? Or is it that we as a species just really like putting things into lists?

Like, let's apply this to film. Here's the top grossing films of all time adjusted for inflation:

1. Gone with the Wind - $3,440,000,000
2. Avatar - $3,020,000,000
3. Star Wars - $2,825,000,000
4. Titanic - $2,516,000,000
5. The Sound of Music - $2,366,000,000
6. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - $2,310,000,000
7. The Ten Commandments - $2,187,000,000
8. Doctor Zhivago - $2,073,000,000
9. Jaws - $2,027,000,000
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - $1,819,000,000

But immediately upon looking at this, we can notice some trends. You can break down the top grossing films into a few categories: epics (Gone With the Wind, The Ten Commandments, Doctor Zhivago), spectacles (Avatar, Star Wars, Titanic, The Sound of Music, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), and Steven Spielberg blockbusters (Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial). You can notice similar trends in the metacritic list and even IGN top games of all time list. This doesn't mean that the games are better, just that they have the broadest appeal.

 

Even if we agreed on which are the greatest games, I think the only ones that could tell us how they are made would be the ones that made them.

In the end, I don't know what kind of replies you're looking for. What is the end goal here?

A step by step tutorial that everyone can follow on how to make a great game? That won't happen.

A variety of vague platitudes that we've all seen before and are of debatable value? I mean we can do that, but why would you want that?

 

Yes, the long tail. The older a popular movie is, the more money it makes. Now try to compare 10 popular movies released on the same day

 

If I did that we'd notice that there's a severe trend toward spectacle films in the past decade or so. And the long tail effect doesn't make much sense here, since these are initial box office numbers, not including home media, network TV runs, or theatrical re-releases. It also flies in the face of the fact that those movies all come from a variety of years.

 

The same source you got the list from also warns that the oldest movies only have total sales figures, not box office numbers separately, because that's the only way they counted back in those days

 

Then if we look at it not adjusted for inflation, we get this:

1. Avatar - $2,787,965,087
2. Titanic - $2,186,772,302
3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens - $2,068,223,624
4. Jurassic World - $1,671,713,208
5. The Avengers - $1,518,812,988
6. Furious 7 - $1,516,045,911
7. Avengers: Age of Ultron - $1,405,403,694
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 - $1,341,511,219
9. Frozen - $1,287,000,000
10. Beauty and the Beast - $1,260,987,877

Or: spectacle all the way down. These films aren't necessarily "the best films", just those with the broadest appeal, typically leaning into spectacle because that's the safest bet on a high return.

 

Yes. Something I never disputed

 

I thought it was a very narrow question. With the assumption there is already a great game, the answer must be "yes".

And that was the first word of the first reply, so it's not surprising people were tempted to have a little fun after that.

 

That does not make them greatest.
More popular, maybe. Greatest? Hell no.

 

It wasn't narrow, because if we were to take the question seriously, we'd start by defining what is a "great" game, discuss that for 10 pages and then inevitably turn this thread into Unity vs Unreal.

 

I did spend a while after posting the "grate" game idea wondering if it could be iterated into a great mobile swipe game

 

Yes. Because the term "great" is undefined. Any game can be great..

if you go to a car forum and ask how to make a great car, you probably get ignore or laugh at. Because any car can be great. You need to change your question and your response will be different.

Example if you asked, how can i make my game render with best quality lighting. You repose would be relative to this..

 

Yeah, and that is a dictionary argument in a nutshell:
1. Start with a practical problem.
2. Reduce it to a useless edge case scenario by narrowing down the definition.
3. Argue to the death about whose definition is the most correct.
4. Get the thread locked after 100 pages of heated arguments, producing nothing useful.

So, the best idea is not to define what is a "great" game.

=============

One problem here is that if there's a greatest game of all time, then most people won't ever hear about it.

People have short memory - they only remember maybe games/movies released in last 10 years top. That includes critics. Meanwhile, beyond that timeframe and aside from popular releases there will be a lot of interesting stuff they never played. So the general public will be mostly aware of titles that hit them in the face with ADs and base their opinion only around those titles.

Meanwhile there will be some gems forgotten in obscurity.

So, essentially big, successful titles mostly base their off marketing/advertising budget and play it safe.

Speaking of movies... there's "Avatar", but did anyone read "Call me Joe" by Poul Anderson?

 

Yes and yes. Absolutely a fair question. Ask anyone what the best anything is and they can give you an answer. We as a race form opinions on value based on our limited experience and have no problem pointing to one thing as better than another. Is vanilla ice cream the best.....no I think rocky road is the best. Does this mean rocky road is best? Yes it does but only best from my perspective as you may think peaches n' cream is best. I think you may be correct about the fairness of the question as phrased. It should be "OK flip the question IN YOUR OPINION what are the greatest games and how were they made?" I just took the opinion part as implied but not said. Anytime someone asks for the best its always opinion so I just took that as a given.

I do see where your coming from. Best is a very broad and subjective opinion not much more, not factual for sure. I do think we as humans like to categorize and order things on seemingly random non factual criteria so I agree with you there. I also think its completely fair to ask someone what they think is best and this may or may not be whats most popular.

 

I think it'd be a more fair question if we weren't dealing with Arowx in general and the broadness of the term "great" which they have redefined to mean "successful" as seen in their post here. Best game of all time lists, be they determined by individuals or groups, almost always skew towards games that see major appeal to large groups of people, which is a problem, to say the least. It easily casts a lot of games to the wayside simply because a lot of people haven't heard of them.

Like, you say to ask anyone what the best anything is and they'll give an answer. Sure! And if you ask about 100 random people you're likely to get 75 different answers. To add to that, the qualities that make those games the best to those people will likely be very emotionally driven, which makes it hard to take much away from them past how the thing in question affected them personally. This gets further muddied when you realise that there are different things that different people will be affected by. In the case of games, some people will prefer crafted narratives, some will prefer emergent ones. Some people will prefer system-driven gameplay while others may prefer narrative-driven.

The problem with "can you say what makes a great game" is further muddied when we also realise how broad the term "game" is, as it encompasses everything from immersive sims to kinetic novels. What makes Thief 2 a "great game" won't necessarily do the same for Persona 5. "Game" as a term has become so broad that it's almost meaningless in itself, which presents a huge problem for defining "great."

 

Yes I am in agreement. Sometimes I like to quit overthinking things though and say hey Bootsy Collins was a truly great bass player or "hey remember Simons Quest on NES? What a great game" After that I can think about why I "feel" its a great game and what choices the designers made to make it great.

So I want to rephrase the original question for a more sane set of responses.

What games do you think are great and whad did the designers do that made you put that game above others on your list?

 

Well we can all agree than mario 64 is best gaem ever

 

You spelled "Jet Set Willy" wrong!

 

That was the first game I wrote a mod toolkit for. A sprite editor and invulnerability poke, I used them to let you play as Captain Scarlet (Miner Willy with a cloak and new hat) to run around without dying. Was the first obfuscated code I came across too, it had the copyright message Xor'd with the entire program

 

I like "jet set willy" too

 

If we define "great" as most successful, then GTA V pretty much fits that bill, doesn't it?

But it's not a game I have any interest in at all (as someone who plays way too many games). I certainly wouldn't call it a great game. I might call it a good game, in terms of how well things are put together (in a mechanical sense), but things like the fact that you play mostly unrepentant criminals, and the satire is played a little too straight to truly come off as satire, and other stuff mean I would never call it great.

Now, as for games that I do think are great and were actually rather successful--I would put Final Fantasy XIII into that list. Amusingly, however, regardless of how successful the game was (one of the most highly selling FF games), it's a game that is very broadly mocked and looked down upon. Yet I would still call it a great game because it's polished to heck and back, the actual gameplay experience is absolutely stellar (almost the best combat system in the series, X>III(real 3, not 6)=XII=XIII) even if one ignores the story, and the story is very well put together and manages to portray six completely different characters consistently through the game.

Another game I would call great, that wasn't necessarily super successful, but is still fairly well-known (and again is fairly broadly criticized), is Dragon Age ][. It was a follow-up to Origins that kept combat essentially unchanged from the excellent FF XII-derived gambit type of system, but took the story in bold new directions, stepping away from the traditional "save the world" RPG plot to something that manages to be incredibly personal to a single character (Hawke), and at the same time follows the gradual descent of a city into madness. Each of your companions was in some way essential either directly to the plot of the game, or to reoccurring Dragon Age themes or side plotlines. All in all a very unique and impressive experience.

Both of these games I would call great. One I believe was fairly successful. Both are largely panned by the general gaming world out there today.

There are other less well-known games I would call great, like Hammer and Sickle or American McGee Presents Scrapland. But I suppose they're less relevant to the purpose of this thread.

I could probably spend another several paragraphs on the two games I presented talking about what made them great, but in all honesty they're great for completely different reasons, which kind of contradicts the whole idea of this thread, of there being a single "cause" for greatness which we can identify and apply to any game.

 

I got as far as the second summon fight (Odin, I think) seven hours in, realized that either I missed a nuanced and unused component to the combat system or I had to go back through linear corridors to grind, and finally uninstalled that piece of S***. Both of those options pretty well clued me in that there might just be something horribly wrong in every aspect of the game.

It takes an hour and a half before there is any explanation of what's happening, which is funny considering the game it's aping, FF7, concisely explains what you're doing in, at most, three minutes. Just consider that it's an hour and a half of "What's this panic all about? Who are these people? Why are they in opposition to "the law"?" and my personal favorite "shut up you whiny little S***. He did not fridge your mom. Don't even try to blame your mom getting a murder boner on him."

So the moral of the story kids (arowx): everyone other than me has S*** taste.

 

Let's not.

(One of) The most popular food is fast food. It is not the greatest food.

 

I'm not coming up with that definition myself. I was under the impression that that was Arowx's definition.

I'm not sure why you're basing the quality of the combat system on the 6 summon fights in the game, and not on the hundreds of others.

The summon fights are kind of terrible in their execution, but their purpose is to get the player to exploit that character's "paradigm role" strengths. I think Snow's is the first one--Shiva--and the whole goal is to get the player to use Ravager, Commando, and Sentinel abilities (man, it's been like 3-4 years since I touched the game and I remember it all so well...) so they recognize how to use them in regular combat.

Spoiler: kind of (legitimate) fanwanking

That's really what the summon fights are about, and kind of highlights a strength (and weakness as far as the summon fight are concerned) of the combat system, in that it doesn't force the player to use it to its full ability to complete the game. The game doesn't have a difficulty system, so they allow the more casual (please don't think that's derogatory) players to just stick with the three automatic paradigms and auto-battle through everything. At the same time, there's an incredible wealth of diversity in paradigms available, and the fights are designed to both allow casual play (with casual auto-battle, same-paradigm attacks typically netting you 2 or 3 out of 5 stars), and reward higher-level play with paradigms tailored to a type of enemy (lots of weak enemies, one strong enemy with a medium stagger point, an enemy with a high stagger point but plenty of debuff oportunities, very powerful enemies who need a tank to target, etc.).

The problem is that the summon fights basically force you to grasp hold of these topics when the rest of the combat system does not force you to (and rightfully so). If they were optional it would be far better.

As for the story, it's amusing that you criticize the slow introduction of the game, because that both proves your point (more or less) and proves the point of others about greatness being subjective.

There's nothing inherently "wrong" in a 40-hour story (that's going basically as fast as you possibly can through the game, maaaybe 35) taking 3.75% of that time to set up the introduction to the story. The idea that this is objectively a bad thing is laughably ridiculous - read some Dickens and say it. But it's clearly a subjective point, where many prefer a much quicker and (importantly for this game) more open narrative. It's all subjective.

And let's please not compare it to VII with it's laughable "evul for teh lulz" villain who is

Spoiler

actually his mother for most of the game

with its slapstick "Shinra" side villains. I could spend another several paragraphs talking about how marvelous the Fal'Cie are as antagonists, who manage to both be right in their fundamental reason for their actions and to manipulate the main party into a situation where they literally have no choice but to give the Fal'Cie what they want...but I've fanwanked enough I think.

Edit: completely forgot to address Hope, who, while I initially hated him like you and many others, and kind of like to jokingly hate him now, was actually a little bit justified in his hatred of Snow, if you consider the fact that he is a 13 year old boy who's been coddled all his life and is a momma's boy. All he saw was Snow rousing everyone, and his mother responding to that, and then saw no one but Snow walk away from an enormous explosion (who then goes on to act all arrogant and cocky (out of a sense of insecurity)). The kid has every right to be upset, though they went overboard with his stumbling after Snow to tell him (Snow) how much he (Hope) hated him (Snow). Came off as yaoi half the time...

 

And that's how we get dictionary wars.

The problem with final fantasy XIII is that the game has 30 hour long tutorial before it starts. Basically, you go through linear areas to the point where the world opens up and starts looking the way it is supposed to be, and then it is quickly over. The reason why I call it a "tutorial" is because during that time the game slowly explains and introduces new concepts to you while messing with party layout non-stop.

---edit---

Either way, there isn't much point in trying to argue whether Final Fantasy 13 was a great or not --> as was state before, that'll result in a semantic/dictionary argument which will somehow transform into "unity vs unreal", and then the thread will be locked.