Jack Monahan attempts a daily vlog format outside of twitch streaming to explore game design related topics. Our first episode.
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Games like "The Surge" and to a lesser extent "The Surge 2" (I think 2 is a fundamentally better game than 1, still not "great" but certainly good) are very interesting to me. They are very cool ideas but that cool idea lacks as you said in the video "A core fantasy". I think many mediocre games could be elevated greatly by digging deeper and finding a core fantasy and building from there. I'm sure it's damn tough thing to do from a design standpoint. really getting to the essential essence of your game's appeal I'm sure is no easy task, it's certainly worth it, but I can see why a lot of games are okay with just approximating it. I also respect your humility to say "Brigador" didn't quite nail it. I think the games fantasy comes together as it establishes context and stakes. I also found it much more fantasy fulfilling after I checked out the audiobook (which was really good by the way). However, I would imagine you (and other game-makers) would want that fantasy core established by the moment the player hits start.
@computersciencestudentriverbat5 күн бұрын
I'm really glad you gave a shout-out to Dark Souls! I'm a really huge proponent of Fromsoft's game design and I can very easily get stuck on a tangent, but I'll try to keep it on topic, haha. One of the very first things I thought when I first played Brigador though, that first mission, was "man, this is kinda scratching that same itch". While Fromsoft has a fairly predictable palette of themes and gameplay structures, they've proven incredibly effective and engaging to me; You have this really satisfying core gameplay loop and interaction with conflicted space, a call to action that sets you on your way in that core fantasy, but just as important to me is the *intrigue*. You're set on your way to ring these bells of awakening, to fulfill this prophecy and kill the hollows and demons and everything else in your way with a very clear goal, but along the way you hit these bumps in the road, these characters with conflicting ideals and understandings of the world you're exploring, these scenes that tell stories of times passed and a history you aren't entirely clued in on. What does it mean to be hollow, really? When did the undead curse show up, and how? So many more questions and points of discussion, and you can only answer and explore them by proving your intent, committing to attentively exploring environments and reading descriptions, piecing things together for a bigger picture. The start of Brigador was really interesting in that same sense. All I know is Great Leader's dead, Solo Nobre must fall, and I have to kill this guy to accept a contract, wading through a tunnel full of stranded civilians that pad out a cash bonus for collateral damage in a big, fun war machine. I have an idea of the mess I'm getting into, and it's all the more tantalizing as more and more pieces come into play. I start asking those same questions I did when I play Fromsoft games: Who was Great Leader? What's the history of Solo Nobre? What's the story of all these different groups, what are they fighting for? The cherry on top is the fact that I have to pay for the pages of my own contract, which is so, so telling and sets a really strong precedent. All of these details and bits of history that you can read up on past what's teased and communicated in missions and briefings, for a price. Mixed in with the visual storytelling and staging of the urban environments, the architectures of the vehicles each faction uses, all the little, deliberate choices that reinforce those story elements, reward that inquisitive thinking with threads to piece together for a bigger picture and sense of context between the raw gameplay on its own.
@wetnoodles83211 күн бұрын
Thank you so much! A very flattering comparison. I'm still circling some of these considerations with the video I just uploaded today on "open world" design. Needless to say I want to keep learning the lessons of Dark Souls-I think that's what is so interesting about playing The Surge by comparison, in that all of those magic combinations that make DS so interesting and compulsive to play are just not there for me. It's worth spending time figuring out why sometime that takes DS as a stated influence doesn't work nearly as well, at least for me.
Games like "The Surge" and to a lesser extent "The Surge 2" (I think 2 is a fundamentally better game than 1, still not "great" but certainly good) are very interesting to me. They are very cool ideas but that cool idea lacks as you said in the video "A core fantasy". I think many mediocre games could be elevated greatly by digging deeper and finding a core fantasy and building from there. I'm sure it's damn tough thing to do from a design standpoint. really getting to the essential essence of your game's appeal I'm sure is no easy task, it's certainly worth it, but I can see why a lot of games are okay with just approximating it. I also respect your humility to say "Brigador" didn't quite nail it. I think the games fantasy comes together as it establishes context and stakes. I also found it much more fantasy fulfilling after I checked out the audiobook (which was really good by the way). However, I would imagine you (and other game-makers) would want that fantasy core established by the moment the player hits start.
I'm really glad you gave a shout-out to Dark Souls! I'm a really huge proponent of Fromsoft's game design and I can very easily get stuck on a tangent, but I'll try to keep it on topic, haha. One of the very first things I thought when I first played Brigador though, that first mission, was "man, this is kinda scratching that same itch". While Fromsoft has a fairly predictable palette of themes and gameplay structures, they've proven incredibly effective and engaging to me; You have this really satisfying core gameplay loop and interaction with conflicted space, a call to action that sets you on your way in that core fantasy, but just as important to me is the *intrigue*. You're set on your way to ring these bells of awakening, to fulfill this prophecy and kill the hollows and demons and everything else in your way with a very clear goal, but along the way you hit these bumps in the road, these characters with conflicting ideals and understandings of the world you're exploring, these scenes that tell stories of times passed and a history you aren't entirely clued in on. What does it mean to be hollow, really? When did the undead curse show up, and how? So many more questions and points of discussion, and you can only answer and explore them by proving your intent, committing to attentively exploring environments and reading descriptions, piecing things together for a bigger picture. The start of Brigador was really interesting in that same sense. All I know is Great Leader's dead, Solo Nobre must fall, and I have to kill this guy to accept a contract, wading through a tunnel full of stranded civilians that pad out a cash bonus for collateral damage in a big, fun war machine. I have an idea of the mess I'm getting into, and it's all the more tantalizing as more and more pieces come into play. I start asking those same questions I did when I play Fromsoft games: Who was Great Leader? What's the history of Solo Nobre? What's the story of all these different groups, what are they fighting for? The cherry on top is the fact that I have to pay for the pages of my own contract, which is so, so telling and sets a really strong precedent. All of these details and bits of history that you can read up on past what's teased and communicated in missions and briefings, for a price. Mixed in with the visual storytelling and staging of the urban environments, the architectures of the vehicles each faction uses, all the little, deliberate choices that reinforce those story elements, reward that inquisitive thinking with threads to piece together for a bigger picture and sense of context between the raw gameplay on its own.
Thank you so much! A very flattering comparison. I'm still circling some of these considerations with the video I just uploaded today on "open world" design. Needless to say I want to keep learning the lessons of Dark Souls-I think that's what is so interesting about playing The Surge by comparison, in that all of those magic combinations that make DS so interesting and compulsive to play are just not there for me. It's worth spending time figuring out why sometime that takes DS as a stated influence doesn't work nearly as well, at least for me.