Forum Title Issues: The Battle for a Game Design Forum that is about Designing Games

A lot of people are coming here asking questions about how they're supposed to "design" their game. Like how to "design" their pathfinding script so that it works, or how to "design" the artwork for their game.

Admittedly, design sort of is a vague term. We even wrestle with it.

My suggestion is simple, how about altering the name of the forum?

My suggestion would be "Game Design Theory".

We have ample facilities for handling technical issues. This may cut down on the spam, it might also attract new people.

 

That might help.

 

Agreed. I get tired of seeing posts almost daily asking about which engine to use or some other clearly tech implementation subject. It does show that most people are clueless about what game design is and think it is a synonym for development.

 

Being guilty of posting here when it didn't exactly belong here, I would agree.

The problem is that some things, like choosing what engine suits your game the best, and other similar considerations are not technically code either, so it's not always clear as for where a question belongs.

 

Fair enough and Game Design is ambiguous. Is that the game play experience design or technical design? I can understand the confusion looking at the title alone. Before I had knowledge of what it was for because this came out of another discussion.

I agree with Misterselmo. This forum needs to be renamed to Game Design Theory, Game Play Design, Game Design - Focusing on Fun something like those that indicates what kind of design we are talking about.

 

I fear this is becoming a catch-all for anything that doesn't suit other forums, a de facto "general games chat".

 

You mean another Unity Gossip?

 

Yeah it's like Emo subculture. It's the new Goth, but there's still Goth. So, it's really just whatever people think it is.

 

The catch 22 is that so far the forum is about design, but not designing. Architectural questions usually just get shuffled off to scripting. As much as I love arguing high level concepts with no right answer (even though I'm always right), I also like arguing low level concepts that are substantially more applicable even when there is no right solution.

Basically, I would love for this to become partly the curated scripting forum that won't make me want to hurt kittens due to bad code.

 

So the reason you want the Game Design forum to be about scripting is because you don't like the way the Scripting forum operates? So you'd rather be there be a bad scripting forum, and a good scripting forum? I think you should petition for the creation of a scripting forum just for people who know what they're doing. Either that, or do what we're doing here and try to change the discussion format itself, rather than trying to hijack another forum and bringing all of the same problems that affected the other forum.

Meanwhile, on the Game Design forum...

 

Think of it this way; right now this forum only discusses high level theory, while I would love for it to expand to all theory. Think about trying to discuss AI. Any discussion without talking about low level design patterns is really just pie-in-the-sky wank, while any low level talk is pointless without high level context. What's the point without being holistic?

 

I guess what's needed is a clearer definition on the "What belongs in this forum", because it means everything and nothing.

"Here, we discuss the theory, the practice, and the business of designing better games."

What I get from that is that anything relevant to "designing" games belongs here.
As far as I know, the phase before starting working on a project, where you balance out your ideas, and try to find out what tools could help you achieve your goals is also a part of the design.

That's obviously where we don't think alike, and that's alright, but it needs to be more clear in the posting guide lines.


From what I gather, things like discutions about semi-technical points and their potential impacts don't seem to belong here, but it doesn't quite belong into the "coding" section either, where purely technical question should go.


I'm not saying that the "game design" forum should become a "put everything in there", but if you want to enforce a "this doesn't belong here" rule, it should be clear as for what belongs here and why this specific topic doesn't.

 

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Oh I definitely agree that it's possible to talk about such things, but it has to be in the context of how it affects game play. This is supposed to be, in my opinion and the opinions of several people I've talked to, about making games, and making better games.

We haven't gotten to that point yet, though.

You're speaking of high and low level, well all of the high-level discussion has completely dried up and I'm not quite sure exactly how low you're willing to go... But I do remember that we all had a lot of fun in the two Overview threads.

I just don't want people to come here and keep twisting around their questions about unity documentation so that it really seems like its about design. Unfortunately, that is what is going to happen without a doubt, unless a few minor things change.

The most important thing is that people start to realize what this forum is here for.

One small step toward that would be being very specific in the name of the forum, because obviously most people do not read the stickies, let's be honest we're lucky they read the forum titles.

 

I like the simplicity of 'Game Design' as it includes the 'Theory, Practice, and Business of Game Design'. We could change the name to try and help the few folks who seem lost, except I think they may still be learning to read .

Gigi

 

As much as I think this should be about theory, adding it to the title would pretty much mandate that every post has to end in "but hey, it's just a theory..."

 

Or "theoretically, if I'm making an mmo..."

 

I agree that "the theory, the practice, and the business of designing better games" sounds nearly all encompassing. For the phase before starting implementation of a project the balancing out of ideas is probably game design (depending on what those ideas are about). Trying to find out which tools will be of the most value is simple project planning and preparation.

Obviously, there are a lot of different views on what topics should be in game design.

When I was pushing for a game design forum, the kind of topics I expected were along these lines:

• Coming up with a game idea
• Exploring various play mechanics and maybe even inventing some new ones
• Discussing rewards and punishments
• Making your game sticky (that is to say keeping players involved as long as possible)
• Making your game addicting (keeping the players coming back to it again and again and again)
• Enemy design (not graphics but their "character", purpose, etc basically making more interesting engaging enemies)
  
• Obstacle design (see above info for enemy design)
  
• Boss design (see above info for enemy design)
• Playfield design (establishing a "feel" for the game, exploring ways to allow more interaction with the environment, etc)
• Analyzing various game genres and perhaps figuring out how to make them "better" (not better graphics, better as in more interesting and engaging)
• Studying popular games. Analyzing them. Breaking them down. What makes them so much fun?
• Discussing player leveling and other personalization / customization factors

I am not saying exclusively limited to these things. I am just suggesting the above should be at the heart of a Game Design Forum. Basically all of these things are centered around the game design as in the game play experience. They are focused on how to make a game a more enjoyable experience for players.

Technical details may come into play but they should come in only to support a higher purpose directly involving a game play element. As in not "should I use Unity or UE4" or "should I compress all of my data so I can squeeze more levels into a mobile game" but rather things like "I'd like my enemies to be able to react to the player's presence so they provide a more interesting and engaging experience for the player. What are some ways to do this?" Such a question may well lead to some technical discussion and perhaps even some pseudo-code and in this context I think it would be completely on target.

I don't expect everyone to agree with my view on it. This is simply what game design means to me.

 

What's wrong with this? MMO discussion was actually one of the things I was looking forward to in this forum - it could be fun to talk about what could make a good MMO without the thread getting taken over with "why don't you make Pong first?" and the OP getting defensive.

Back on topic: I think the key issue we have here is that for inexperienced game developers, "design" and "development" are the same thing. So the forum title of "Game Design" sounds like "Game Development" and that certainly sounds like a good place to put any sort of Unity-related topic.

 

I am beginning to wonder what godlike knowledge could be obtained by entertaining all questions, you'd have to learn something, yourself. And yeah... theoretically, I guess anything could be discussed as long as it was hypothetical.

"Ask anything" I guess is just not what I expected from Game Design.

 

I think our personalities are very different. You seem very goal-oriented - learning something, answering specific questions to make better games. I enjoy these discussions for their own sake. To me, thinking about the design of games is almost as fun as playing them. The fact that I can learn how to make better games via these conversations is almost a fringe benefit.

Edit: Rereading your post, I wonder if you've misunderstood my position - I'm in agreement that the name should be changed to be more specific and exclude "Game Development" questions. Just that we shouldn't exclude discussions of interesting game mechanics and genres just because their implementation is impractical. Who knows, maybe someday, technology will improve - or some of us will be in influential positions in the game industry - such that those crazy MMO ideas are suddenly practical and we can apply what we've learned!

 

I don't think so, I don't think anything matters except for getting things done, making things, getting feedback and playing games. I want to make games, not talk about talking about thinking about making things that could be related to games somehow.

 

I just think making games is hard so it's more fun to dream about. Then you've got people who cut to the chase and start a project with zero clue what they're making or how anything works.

It's always one of those two extremes, it seems there's no balance to be found.

 

The cool thing is we have discussed some of these. Rewards and punishments came up a bit in the death discussion, I remember someone talking about addiction in one of the threads, enemy design was discussed in the AI thread, and I am sure some of the others came up as well.

This sounds great to me! I would also love to discuss this topic. I suggest that people who have horrible reactions to MMO to stay out of the thread for their own health and the health of others! I also found the "ignore" feature on the forums so have started using it with great success. It makes me so much happier!

Dallon, start a thread and I will join you.

 

Given that this forum has 5-7 regulars, you've just admitted that you're ignoring a minimum of 14%-20% of all posts. But since your ignoring me, you'll never know I just pointed this out.

 

Generally speaking, I agree with what you have said. There is room for design related technical discussions, certainly at least as much as there is for business/marketing. Just like those other two, there is a chance that the discussion can drift into implementation. Things like broad discussions on TD can be very useful and in some cases will inform/direct the overall design direction. I envision a heathy technical design discussion (particularly if someone is looking for help) ending/resulting the OP taking the input gained and then moving onto implementation topics in a specific forum like scripting or whatever. For here though, I think even going in to pseudo-code probably steps over the line between design and implementation. Flow charts/diagrams sure, they are tools of the trade for both game design and tech design for flowing ideas.

As far as refining the topic/title or narrowing scope, it's way premature. There are only a few people posting here right now, and only a few live topics a day. And considering a sizable percentage of the topics are "meta" (forum title, what to discuss, what the forum is about), it's unwarranted prematurely optimize. Let's give it time to see how it evolves. There's no need right now, and it certainly won't reduce the amount of inappropriate topics. You could make a forum called "Only post here if your name is Steve and you live in Alaska!" and you will still get people asking how to make games.

Honestly though, as much as I like the idea of this forum, it will probably always be challenged.
- With indies/solos/small teams, you wear so many hats, that the whole project is conceptually intertwined, and design is less of a discrete discipline and more of one step in your process.
- New users are so unfamiliar with virtually every single aspect of making games, that is unfair and unrealistic to expect them grasp the difference at this point in the process.
- Pro (designers), are unlikely to visit or participate. Unity is an implementation tool, there are several other places that pro designers hang out to talk shop. (a couple of ours visit the forums on occasion, but that is just for tech info to build prototypes).

Hobbyists are going to probably make up a bulk of the active/informed participation. Nothing wrong with that at all. It will just place it more in the social/hangout/chat arena (as it is now). Long theoretical discussions that aren't about implementation/experience/practical application aren't exactly going to appeal/draw in those from the other groups. To be clear, not saying this a bad thing, in fact is a fun and interesting thing. Just saying that right now, being overly concerned direction/protocols/descriptions/rules is premature. Lets see it grow, broaden, build some steam before we start excluding. Less discussion about the forum, more about game design.

 

Seems that way.

Like... the huge, always fun, poster friendly, already-in-existence Gossip forum?

You first.

 

I agree completely. I think discussing any game genre, analyzing what makes such a game tick, discussing how to correct flaws in current games and so forth is all very on topic for this forum.

The only things I would not want to see are along the lines of "Should I use Unity or UE4 to build my MMO?" and "which is the best shader to use in my MMO?" Threads started on things like that should be elsewhere in my opinion.

 

As a moderator I get a little bit tired of moving things out of the game design forum that shouldn't be there so perhaps a little clarification would not hurt.

 

Ha ha! A good discussion of MMO games would be a great addition. The only things that burn some of us out I think are all of these people posting "I'm starting my first game, a MMORPG! It will be the greatest such game ever created. I just need help with a few things. How do I make stuff show up on the screen? Is it possible in Unity to move the player around using the keyboard? How could I do that? Does anyone know how to make enemies walk? Oh and I want my game to look much better than Skyrim or anything else you have seen. Can someone write a script to do this?"

 

I was wondering how much fun that process was.

 

I made a thread for MMORPG's.

Let's see how many people post in it.

 

^ Such Win. Very Agree.
Gigi

 

You guys pay to keep the lights on. Fair 'nuff.

 

An other thing that might be good to push forward is that quite a lot of what happens around this part of the forum is discussing.

I don't mean as just exchanging posts, but as constructing arguments, building uppon what has been said, adding to it.

That is not an easy thing to do though, because most of us will, at least once in a while, will just not manage to do this, and try to force others into our views, by not accepting any argument given that does not support our point.

Still, it could be interesting to see if a small "guide" to discussions could be brought forward for the stickies. At least, I feel that it could help things a bit.


That is, unless I somehow mistook the purpose of this section.

 

If I think I know what you're saying it's that most of the time the discussions degenerate into arguments about one person basically only wanting to talk about one thing and if anyone else wants to talk about something different... then all be damned.

I think you see a lot of people picking up their toys and going home when the other kids want to play a different game than they do.

It's fine because those kind of people don't need to be here they're never going to help further the discussion, and if they choose to leave rather than stay here and be a nuisance then it's better that way because I don't like seeing things like what we had here the other day. Moderator action? It should never come to that.

I think people know how to have a civil discussion it's just that the people who need to be here aren't here yet. These are very early formative days, I'm learning. People will come and go.

But I think if you want to be a part of this kind of a cool, smart discussion forum... Then you kind of have to take personal responsibility and make sure that everything you are posting is contributing to discussion, on topic, etc. Cough I may be guilty sometimes but cough I really think this place can work out to be pretty cool eventually.

 

Sure, but basic guidelines on what makes a good discussion can also help learning it, and it applies to every one of us, from those that are not used to it, to those that practice it everyday.

I mean, it's an exercise that makes the brain work quite a bit, as you usually can't get your point across with just easy one liners, and no matter your age or background, working the brain is a good thing (I think?).

 

I dunno... people just like to argue, sometimes.

 

Lol... I'm just expecting someone to reply "I disagree"

 

That definitely happens a lot. Quite often because we have different goals. The reason I started another AI thread was because I did not want to be in the original AI thread trying to force it to get past theoretical / academic research and discussion and focus on real world actionable information people could use right now. I mean I did want that but I did not want to try to force the discussion over there to go to where I thought it should go. I prompted several times trying to do that and realized our motivations were different (not you but the others). So, at that time I started a new thread focusing on what I felt was important. My thinking was hey this is a win-win! The people who don't care about all of the academic research and developing HAL and just want to improve the AI in their games can come to the new thread. The people who want to explore the very cutting edge research and experiments in developing learning machine algorithms, read academic white papers and so forth can go to the other thread. The two threads each served a purpose and each connected with different people. Unfortunately, about the time I started the new thread the other thread was locked.

Your goal is definitely a great one. Unfortunately, most people will not even read the stickies. In fact, I am not even sure I have read all of them myself.

 

I don't think that's a legitimate expectation.

 

Ahh... I see what you did there

 

Bringing this back to the original topic, perhaps we could suggest renaming this forum "Game Design Theory" as @Misterselmo proposes and creating another forum higher up on the main forum page named "Game Architecture" or something like that to attract posters who have implementation-specific questions such as how to build a realistic horizon. I can understand that they might not want to post in Scripting if their question is broader than just code.

 

Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. We fought for this forum to begin with and are really just on trial. To ask for another one because we can't share this one, which isn't very big is not going to go over well with Aurore, and I don't blame her. My guess is she will tsk us and tell us to play nice.

There is no reason we can't discuss theory and still discuss designs of specific types of games and systems within those games in the same forum. What we could do on a volunteer basis, of course, is put [Theory] and [Applied] in bold in our thread subject if that makes people feel better. Honestly, both are interesting topics and they go hand in hand. The theory behind game design is only as good as it's implementation and the same is true in reverse. We are developers, meaning we are applying the theory to the games we design and even play so when we discuss design, we want to integrate the two. Making that leap from theory to application is crucial to a good game design. When I make my design doc, it is about the implementation of my game, minus code and other technical details. I am applying the theory to the game I want to design.

When I helped to fight for this forum, I thought this was going to be a Design Forum, and so far that is what I see. Why do we really need two? Is it too difficult to just not read the ones you don't want to read?

BTW, this reminds me of the war between geologists and engineers, or even better, between engineers and physicists. As a geologist who lives with an engineer, I understand. I believe we can share.

 

Oh, I certainly don't mean to exclude anyone. There have just been a lot of implementation-oriented questions like "how do I break an object into smaller fragments controlled by the physics system?" It doesn't seem to have anything to do with theory or application, but it doesn't necessarily fit in Scripting either. I don't have a problem with this forum becoming a catchall for anything that's not scripting. It just seemed like people with implementation-oriented questions might get better assistance posting in a different forum. Just a thought. It doesn't really matter much to me personally.

 

In response to...

"creating another forum higher up on the main forum page named "Game Architecture" or something like that to attract posters who have implementation-specific questions"

This...

"Unfortunately, that is not going to happen..." ... "When I helped to fight for this forum, I thought this was going to be a Design Forum, and so far that is what I see."

So, what exactly is the position here?

 

Ahh, okay, that makes more sense. I was confused. lol

It seems to me those have been redirected to the proper forum if the moderators feel they don't belong here. If they leave them here, then possibly their interpretation of design is different. Redirections happen in many of the forums so I don't think creating a new one would help that problem. Might make it more confusing!

 

Gameplay Design?

 

Personally, I'd like Game Design and Marketing to be separate topics... but it seems distribution questions are the main reason this subforum is finally getting traffic. Seems like a bit of a Kiruna situation to me, the very thing that destroys the subforum is also the only thing that keeps it alive.

Personally, I'd say something along the lines of "refuse to reply to topics about the wrong thing, but tell them they're in the wrong forum". (And preferably report them as well so a mod can move them). Getting enough negative feedback along these lines should make people start posting their topics in the right place. It's a never-ending battle that cannot be won (at least not until it becomes hip with the kidz to read and follow rules again), but at least you can't lose it this way.
download Fish Feeding Frenzy

Also, start with the man in the mirror and all that - by posting cool game design discussions, you're making the other topics less numerically significant with each topic.

 

I'd rather a new forum called Biz or something. While game design overlaps business to a degree, it's probably best to have one forum called Game Design Theory and another forum called Business. If only for vaguely ethical reasons. You can always discuss monetising game mechanics in the biz forum.

Dunno tbh, not that fussed.