How about a "Game Design" forum?

I'd love to have a place to post questions and thoughts about game design. This could be anything from general "how do you come up with such great ideas" questions, to subtle "how can I make the controls in my game more intuitive?"

None of the current forums here seem quite right for this sort of thing. Most of them are technical, which is good, except for this one, which is much broader.

Anybody else think a Game Design forum is a nice idea?

 

For a second there I thought this was a necro. There was a topic like this a few months ago and the general consensus was it's a really bad idea. The likelihood of it becoming overrun with blowhards was a little too probable.

 

I like that topic too.
But at gamedev.net is not too newbie-friendly so I just become a ghost reader there.
Don't know how will it be at Unity.
Maybe you could just post at Unity Gossip first.

 

Sounds like a fun idea to me. Might even be cool to let people throw out some basic game ideas and everyone participate pitching in ideas and such. Kind of like a writing a story by passing it around the room.

 

We did that once, six words at a time. You can see the monstrosity we made here (Just warning you: it's not as pretty as it sounds...)

The best part, is since I posted that link? There's no need for the llama gif. That topic may actually be more mentally harmful.

 

It sounds like a cool idea but I can definitely see it turning into an alternative to gossip. It would need moderated. Hard.

 

We would be seeing more "how do I make this MMORPGFPSRTSSIM game?" and that would be unacceptable

 

I like this idea. Could we limit user participation in such a forum though? I'd expect a user to have at least 50 posts and to have been a user for at least 50 days to create a thread, or possibly even to post. That would get rid of 95% of the stupid threads, trolls, and fly by night posters.

 

I would definitely see a Game Design forum working here. Though, as it's been said before, we could put a little limitations to filter unwanted behaviour.

 

I definitely agree with that. This will be good if we filter bugs.

 

That's awesome. Looks like some good fun. Not exactly what I was thinking though. lol

I'm thinking about something with a little more structure and trying to make it sensible. Maybe each person adds one play mechanic to the growing design. There could be challenges in a sense also. Like coming up with the most interesting play mechanics / features but they must be as simple and easy to implement as possible. Just an idea.

 

I reckon it's worth a shot, what's the worst that could happen? The only issue I see is that game design is not really Unity related.

 

Hmm, so what you're saying is.. If I wanted to make a version of battleships where everyone was made out of skittles and had nipples for noses. I wouldn't have to use Unity?

Interesting concept there. This forum idea seems a little too "jazzy" for my likings, lets go back to closing popular threads randomly.

 

I think that thread or one of them was more about game idea section which would be horrible with all the idea guys filling it and trolls bashing them.

Game design in general might not be needed as there are other places for that but then again how to design and execute something in the Unity world using engine specific features and practices might be good. Currently it seems that when people ask whats the best way to do this in Unity they ask it in gossip, support or etc. and those sections get flooded with other type messages so the questions get buried. Then when the design questions are all over the place no one else can browse them easily.

 

I don't care if there's a sub-forum for this here but there are dozens of places on the net where this can be discussed as well such as reddit (various gamedev subs), tigsource, gamedev.net, gamedev.stackexchange.com and others. There's no reason to believe the atmosphere here would be too different than any of those honestly other than level of moderation efforts.

 

OK, first, apologies if I missed an older thread (though if I had found and raised it, some would have bashed me for necro-posting anyway, so...).

Second, I should be clear that I wasn't thinking mainly of game ideas (e.g. "Anybody got a k3wl idea for a game?!?"), but rather game design (e.g., how to make a game sticky, how to make controls intuitive, thoughts about game balance, how best to adapt a specific desktop control scheme to mobile, relative value of AI NPCs vs. MMO, etc.).

And third, yeah, I know there are some other places on the net where such discussions take place. But none of those have a forum as welcoming, smart, and supportive as our community here. This is where I hang out nowadays; I'd prefer not to have to also start hanging out elsewhere, and I bet I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Besides, if the forum were here, then many times what starts as a general game-design question would probably veer quickly (and happily) into specifics about how to implement those design ideas in Unity. E.g., "well if you want your game to support multiple players on one machine, then here's how the Input manager deals with that, but it's a bit of a PITA so you might want to look at this thing over in the Asset Store..."

And finally, sure, I'm fine with some limits on new accounts if necessary to keep down the noise. But we could start with it open, and see whether noise is actually a problem before putting a lot of effort into solving it.

 

Online communities cannot thrive when new users are blocked from participating. An online community needs to be welcoming toward new users, and only delete posts or ban users when needed. Blocking all new users from posting in certain sections of the forum will send the wrong message to new users. What would compel new users to participate at all if the community sends the message that new users are significantly inferior to other users?

 

On the other hand, posting restrictions assure that the content is of a good quality and is worth reading. (see WIP thread, where the half of threads are... yeah)

If we had a game design subforum, I'm sure it would become one of the most popular and most read.
Also, game design is awesome to discuss as in GD basically there are no rules - everything is subjective, so it would be definitely worth to participate in a such place.

 

The problem mostly is that we already have too many "how do I do X" threads that are all answered by kicking someone out the door and saying to come back once you've learned to program. Inversely, the lack of a specialized subforum isn't/should't dissuade people from posting these topics as is. Unless it was some specially moderated area, I don't see such a forum really becoming a vault of gems that would raise it's value any higher than the other support sections.

 

I am all for this and would have the most interest in this as well. I just threw out the idea of a sort of rolling game design as a fun exercise. But yeah the game design fundamentals especially tied to implementation is gold.

 

Where would you suggest we do that? I made this suggestion because, just yesterday, I wanted to get some opinions on a control scheme for a learning game, but I couldn't find any forum where that wouldn't be blatantly off-topic.

Even this thread is off-topic here (there should be a "Suggestions" or "Meta" forum). But as it's the closest thing we have to a catch-all, everything gets posted here when it doesn't fit elsewhere. As a result, the Gossip forum is nearly useless. I'd certainly subscribe to a Game Design forum, but I wouldn't subscribe to this one. So yeah, I guess we can post game design threads here, but they'd be missed by a lot of people that would probably be interested.

 

Well the general support forum would kind of be the place to put things that don't fit explicitly in the other areas.

 

I agree that half of the threads in the WIP forum are lackluster, but that does not mean that posting restrictions (such as disallowing new users) is the answer. Posting restrictions would decrease overall activity and weaken the community.

In general, we need to always be welcoming to new users, even if their first posts are less useful. Guide new users. Point new users in the right direction. But don't block new users from participating.

It is concerning to see comments from existing users that are negative toward new users. The long term success of a forum is built upon how welcoming that forum is to new users. Some users in this community have determined that new users are the problem, rather than the opportunity for future growth.

 

Getting back to the subject of Game Design... one site I find very interesting is named, quite simply, The Game Design Forum. They do deep detailed analysis of games. You can check it out here:
http://www.thegamedesignforum.com/

 

I would love to see a game design forum here. As I stated in the older thread, there was one at the Garage Games forum and it was a mature, balanced place to go. I miss it.

Game design is not the same as story ideas.

Any thread in Unity has the possibility to go off topic and get heated. More so than I like, to be honest. It is very very difficult to keep it on topic and I really feel for the moderators that really do try.

The majority of people I see taking a topic way off are seasoned Unity posters, not new people. So I don't think banning newbies would help.

What would help is for the community who posts in a Game Design forum does what needs to be done to keep the forum sane and on topic. We could redirect topics that are not relevant, like someone asking for a good story. We could post a link to another place they could find such information. We could ignore trolls who will come in and tell us that "design is just theory and not important" because you know they will be there...and they will have 2000 posts.

And most of all, we can respect each other. Be nice. Don't come on just to get attention or cause conflict but instead share ideas and explore new avenues. There are a lot of talented people here and I for one, would love to have some in depth conversations about game design.

 

That's not a forum in the traditional sense (i.e., a message board where lots of people participate in discussions). It appears to be just a series of articles (all by one guy?). However, they do look like interesting articles, and I'm going to study them when I have a bit of time. Thanks for pointing it out!

 

Oh yeah. I didn't mean it as a replacement for your Game Design Forum here. Just figured instead of contributing to hashing out whether it is a good idea or not I'd throw something out (hopefully) more useful. And I do find it amusing that despite the name there seems to be no forum or at least I never found one.

 

I know I'm about to prove Teila's point about veteran posters (especially given my recent weaponization of the llama), but that site's visual design is horrible.

However, that won't stop me from reading it (I notice they've done an analysis of Chrono Trigger...hmm...)

Really, though, I think a Game Design forum would be a very good idea. The problem is, it's not something that is Unity-specific.

In theory, you could have bought a competing game engine (possibly UE4, even) and post here to discuss game design, which may or may not help the Unity brand. By 'not help', I mean that it wouldn't net Unity a sale. By 'help', I mean it would help establish the Unity community as a good place to learn about development.

In my day-to-day Unity (forums) use, I see the Works In Progress section being shoehorned into something nearly resembling a Game Design subforum. People like me post prototypes and ask for feedback on aspects of the same that we're unsure of (do my controls feel right? Is this expository level well-designed?) Sometimes, we even get it.

I feel a Game Design forum would be really excellent for something else: Post-Mortems. Most of the time, those who succeed at making something become the game's strongest critic after it's been released (That's what I've been with The Hero's Journey, so much so that I'm reworking parts of it this week, in preparation for a patch to the game.) A lot can be learned about game design/development from reading Post Mortems.

I like to think that my post mortem on The Hero's Journey was useful for some newer developers - in it, I talk a great deal about the challenges I faced, what I felt worked, and what didn't. By it's nature, some of it is business, some of it is technical, some of it deals with the cosmetic, some of it deals with player's reactions. This is all to be expected, but more importantly, this is all relevant to Game Design. Building the ruleset, mechanics, and artifacts of a game does not divorce it from the realities of its development.

As others have said, good design information often gets lost here in Gossip.

 

That is true with any topic, including art assets and even coding to some extent. Definitely true of the collaboration and help wanted sections.

Besides, I haven't been back to the Garage Games forums since we started working with Unity. I don't intend to do so. Having a forum here will mostly attract Unity users and it might actually help people to make better games and boost Unity's brand.

It has been people like you, Asvarduil, that have completely changed my view of Unity. I came here reluctantly and was not impressed with Unity's price and the missing things I needed, such as terrain and whatnot. But through discussion with people on the forums and looking at the great games that are developed, we are now dedicated to Unity for our project.

Adding a forum where we could discuss design would just be the icing on the cake for me. I imagine there might be others as well. While programing and art assets are very important, story, game mechanics and how all those things fit together is equally important. I would like to feel more valued here, to be totally honest.

 

Since you bring up value, and the fact that art and code are only two pieces of a much greater puzzle, I feel that a Game Design forum would add value to being in the Unity community.

I also feel it would resolve some uncertainty among our newer users. There are people who don't have the knowledge to know a lot of things about game design. You get all sorts of weird game design anti-patterns like giving players abilities and tools so powerful there is no challenge in the game, or extremely convoluted skills that have a massive burden of knowledge to use well, or other more insidious design flaws such as crappy UI (something I fight against in my own works daily.) The problem is - speaking as a relatively new game developer myself - you're going to have these things happen. The WIP forum is good for gaining that feedback, but not quite as much for speading the known best-practices of how to create an engaging experience.

That is the problem a Game Design forum would solve. That would help people be more likely to succeed at making games for profit, which can be used to buy shiny Pro licenses, and all the awesome graphics effects conferred thereby.

Most importantly (at least, for you), I don't think - outside of a troll or two who can't be trusted to say anything intelligent on a good day - that anyone doesn't value you. If anyone should be less-valued, it's me, I've created three crappy games that I can be relied upon to shoot off my trap about. I've yet to build my first non-crappy game.

 

All right, it sounds like there is something approaching consensus that a Game Design forum here would be worth a try.

Now, whom do we have to bribe, cajole, or wheedle to make that actually happen?

 

@Aurore

 

The worst that could happen is a declaration that people aren't properly using it en masse, and as a result it has been locked/deleted/passed by a gas giant.

 

A game design forum could be a good idea to help beginners and discuss crazy ideas that brake established methods and patterns etc.

We could even start a thread in that forum where we collect recommended books and links for people that want to dive deeper. Many "game design" books are a waste of time, that is why it could be good for people to know what actual game designer read and what they find helpful.

 

I admit, I've bought many Game Design books that were in fact a waste of time.

So far there's a couple of good ones that stand out as being worthwhile reads:

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses Amazon - Jesse Schell
Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Excersizes for Video Game Designers Amazon - Brenda Brathwaite
Dungeon Master's Guide (4th Edition) - Wizards of the Coast

Yeah, a good game design book list at the very least would help.

 

Exactly, most of the books that has helped me in my work wasn't even meant for game development... remember, game designers are intergalactic-spaghetti-monsters that got a tentacle in every department, do scheduling, hold meetings, assist the marketing department and much more...

 

I just bought The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Great book! I can't wait to read more!

Also, I am currently reading Interactive Story Telling in Video Games by Lebowitz and Klug. Not so much about game design but it does discuss pacing and player centered game stories. I like it.

 

@Teila - "Lenses" is one of the better books but it too could be improved. Haven't read that second book but it definitely sounds like a design book to me. Pacing, progress, development, stories are all design related topics. I think that you are mixing up "game design" with "game mechanics" and "game rules" (aka "Ludology") . The rules and mechanics probably explain themselves. Game design is the rules, mechanics, values, story, pacing, menus, sound, system requirements, target audience and much more as a whole.

I think that we are getting a bit off-topic and someone should start a separate thread about design and related books etc

 

I, for one, am in favor of this idea, and I think its critics might be misunderstanding it... I hear a lot of people saying it would lead to a lot of "How do I make a X game?" topics... those topics should be insta-locked, even more so than in Gossip. A Game Design subforum should have nothing to do with implementation, except where implementation might affect gameplay. "I have this cool idea for a game" topics should be welcomed there - it would be the one place they are (unless, of course, they ask for help making it, at which point they get rocketed over to Collaboration to be eaten by the trolls).

In fact, I think the great strength of the Game Design subforum would be that it doesn't involve implementation. I could post a novel idea for an MMO, and everyone would understand that the practicality (or lack thereof) of the idea is off-topic and we're free to discuss the design as if the developer has unlimited resources. It could become a constructive topic about the gameplay of MMOs and what might make them better rather than the typical "no you should make pong" response (which, while valid criticism, for almost any indie developer, limits an interesting theoretical discussion). We've actually got one of those topics going in Gossip right now, I'm not sure how long it will last though...

 

There's a (few) problem(s) with the idea that a Game Design forum has to be divorced from implementations, or practicality.

While the mathematical parts of Game Design don't require an implementation, game development itself is a highly iterative process. I know in my titles - yes, my crappy ones - they would have been crappier had I not put up builds/worse ideas and solicited feedback on things.

A good example? A project that no one probably remembers, called Not Another Fantasy RPG. It was a mix of good and bad ideas - the worst was the combat system, though - it was pure RNG. No sooner did I show the build to people than I got some well-deserved feedback along the lines of, 'Nice try, but your idea is fundamentally off. RNG is not good design. Putting the story of the Illusionary Wood monuments was kind of cool, but it's impossible to reliably get to that point in the first place.'

A good principle for the Game Design forum is to have dreams, yes, but to talk about how to make them work if such a feat is possible. Not all ideas will work. Of course, discovering this is not a bad thing; this is how you grow.

Perhaps Game Design would best serve the community as a sub-forum of the Works In Progress section? I feel such discipline has greater affinity to that part of the forums. I don't know, though.

 

I would see it being as a mix of these. Not just, "I have this idea, would it work?", but also along the lines of, "Okay. So I have this idea. But I also have this one. Which would show players a better idea of the gameplay?"

 

A game design forum need to be able to discuss implementation because it can happen that the feasibility of the whole feature depends on it. An example based on a game I saw a while ago... someone came up with the idea to create a world out of a simulated 4D block (Tesseract) that is presented within 3D space and you can change the world by rotating the tesseract, or move through the rotation because your position is presented in 4D space... it would end up with mathematical discussions but people would probably also discuss the implementation... should we force forum users to create another thread in the programming forum just to discuss that part of the feature, basically splitting the discussion into a mess of people jumping from one thread to the other while they try to solve the problem? Until no one understands what the previous post was talking about?

I personally do not think that is good for any forum...the only rule should be that threads have to start as an idea or problem discussion... not as a technical question that belongs in another forum. Then let the thread live out its short and happy life

Remember that game design cover everything from target audience, story and mechanics to art and sound etc...

A feature often start as a short extract in a game design document, explaining it with a few sentences. What is it? Why should we have it? Who is it aimed at? What it solves? etc... then comes a more detailed explanation.... The ability to fade-in music tracks that follow specific beat allows us to add emotional music to the game that increase in intensity based on the sum of all damage that the users avatar dealt to the boss every second and equally fade-out music when the avatar is taking cover or retreating from the boss... The long winding explanation is typically followed by a technical details, risk assessment, list of required assets and maybe a sound gallery in the case of this example... maybe someone mixed a basic melody and then took the same song and added a track with new beats that makes the song more intense...

This is game design and a feature can become really strange... especially if you need to include theoretical papers and other documentation so that everyone involved understands the topic.

 

It would be awesome if we could get a response from the Unity staff.

 

One thing people here need to remember.....You can always NOT respond to a thread if it is off topic. The thread will quickly roll off the page into nowhere.

On the other hand, I agree that the Design forum could be a much better place for people to post general ideas and ask for input. Again, if you don't like that, then don't even open the thread.

I believe part of the purpose of a Community Forum is Support. There are always enough people willing to provide the support.

 

I think implementation fits in as well. Certainly not the actual coding for the entire game and not the kind of stuff I continually see on the forums "So I want to build a game. It's the greatest MMORPG ever! It will completely crush all of the big commercial games. Problem is I don't have a clue how to start. Now... how do I make a cube appear on the screen?" ... yeah... NO! Not that kind of thing for sure.

But I can see discussion for AI implementation being very important to design. Interactive coding techniques in general. And so forth. Just my half a cent on it.

 

The problem is, this is what @DallonF was arguing against. There comes a point when you get so far into the minutiae, you're no longer talking design at all, and instead are discussing a technical field (e.g. Scripting, Art, Sound.)

Design is by its nature a higher-level discipline than any of those things. As a programmer, I'm familiar with FSMs, Subsumptive AI, GINI indexes, red-black trees, and other useful concepts. But, at a design level, we only need to know the very basics of AI, which is that an agent in your game requires three key components: a Sensor, a Processor, and an Actuator. The Sensor is a system that reads what other entities are doing. A Processor possibly remembers previous actions, but its key function is the actual decision-making. The Actuator provides means for the Agent to carry out its preassigned tasks.*

As designers, we don't care how precisely this is coded, though some pseudocode detailing the general decision-making process wouldn't go amiss. What we do care about is that the 'intelligent' agents in our game lose in a way that is fun for the player, as appropriate to the overall experience.

All of this is to say, if we go down too far, then there really isn't a point. Game Design lives 'above' scripting, art, and sound, relatively speaking.

*: Actually I like arguing for a n-th component setup, of a Sensor, Processor, 1-n Behavior providers, and an Actuator. This was a setup that served me really well near the end of The Hero's Journey with building the final boss, and revamping the second boss.