Over at Next Generation, Colin Campbell asked three designers what their great game design evils were... which design choices, ubiquitous in games today, they would most like to pull the bowels out of through the belly button.

Jonathan Smith of Traveler's Tales' answer is pretty good: balance. ". Games are so often neither too easy or too hard but somewhere in the middle. As a player I can never quite fail, nor can I succeed too easily. It feels like I might as well not be there at all." I'm totally on board with him: I don't want to play a game that is completely without challenge. Games aren't passive entertainment like movies or books: I like to feel tested, thwarted and victorious, feelings which disappear when the game just can't be lost.

Molyneux's answer is obvious, but pretty good too: cut scenes suck. The answer of Simon Byron is pretty lame though: he hates stealth, saying "Games should be about fantasy and action..." In other words, his inability to enjoy a specific type of game means that it should be purged on an industry level, and all of the people who actually love games like Thief and Splinter Cell just need a good dose of God of War.

I agree that stealth badly done is pretty much worse than anything (San Andreas, I'm looking squarely in your half-assed direction), but the question Next Generation asked wasn't "What game design element do you irrationally hate like a crabby old man foaming at the mouth while sitting in an aluminum chair on his front lawn?" Florian Eckhardt

Three Great Game Design Evils [Next Generation]

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