Wouldn't the section "Verbs" imply a C when really people are more likely to use object oriented programming and use C++? Nouns would be more appropriate or at least Nouns and then Verbs.

@JayD16: Verbs in that context are things like "roll a ball around" and "pick things up to get bigger" vs. concepts like "save the universe from a black hole".

@JayD16: It seems to me that these sorts of high-level design concepts should be completely abstracted from the actual implementation. I think there just happens to be some overlap in terminology between the design and code worlds here.

That image on the fourth page does look an awful lot like a UML diagram, though, doesn't it?

@teeth7: Ah, that makes much more sense.

I was gonna make a long post about how I think the top-down approach applies to Assassin's Creed, and that being the reason there isn't much variety in things to do (the stuff worked on last, in this case the "verbs," gets the least attention), but I figured no one would read it. I loved the game, flaws and all.

context = wheeee!

O_o?

Verbs are a really handy concept to get your head around. For instance, a first-person shooter has a verb for each weapon, as some enemies will keel over when shot with one weapon, while another weapon would barely hurt them. Each dungeon item in a Zelda game is a verb. In Tetris, there's from two to five. (Hard drop, soft drop, rotate left and right, and swap from storage.) In JRPGs, there's usually a list.

In general, you have to spend a little bit of time getting players accustomed to new verbs. One of the better tricks I've seen for providing strong gameplay variety without slowing your player down or giving them powers that would break your game is to mix up the nouns while keeping the player's verbs intact. For instance, in Portal towards the end of the game they introduce the rocket turret, which you interact with through the portal gun (two of the three verbs in the game). There's an extra noun there, which has a new verb of its own (fire rocket). Nintendo makes a habit of giving bosses verbs that hurt the boss - Ganondorf's ever-present lightning balls in Zelda, for instance.

The problem with too many verbs is that you risk either overcomplicating or slowing down your game. If every verb is given a command, like in Halo, you start to run out of buttons unless you start combining mutually exclusive verbs (there's no reason why the Use button can't be used to pick up guns). Otherwise, you're forced to create a menu for players to pick the 'active' verb, as in many first-person shooters, as well as the Zelda and Metroid games.

@teeth7: Hmm...what game could you be talking about?

@Blind_Evil: It does feel a tad top down... "sit on a bench listen to two dudes" "punch a guy senseless and he'll spill his beans" "do a coworker's job for him."

Those silly ideas compared with how fleshed out the platforming and the fighting are show how very little thought was put into Al Tair's day-to-day...

The thing is, you don't have to design a game from top down or from bottom up. You can in fact work on all areas at once.

One thing I learned in my gaming degree is game design is not an easy thing to explain in one sentence to someone because of all the complexities that make it up.

One of my courses a long time back pointed to a great article on Gamasutra that was able to sum up game design in two clever categories - style and substance. Substance being the fundamental and traditional foundations of the game design project. Style being the personality that is given to it that separates it from other games such as its unique selling points and individuality in areas of character and narrative. It was really a great article and interesting to read.

So at what part in the God of War creative process did someone add the layer "Truly, mind-bogglingly, awful dialogue"?

@TC: MGS2 and Splinter Cell.

Everyone know Splinter Cell was a deeper gaming experience than MGS2 (and even being the biggest MGS whore on this planet, I know it too.)

But ask anyone to, off the top of their head, remember the name of the main bad guy in Splinter Cell and they'll draw a blank. I'd bet my copy of Super Mario Galaxy on it.

@NumberONE: *knows

Feel free to chime in if I've read this article wrong:

So a Top-Down approach would be like a new IP, where the user is unfamiliar with the content of the game, like Psychonauts or Bioshock. The concept is nailed down, but the designer has to add the fun elements.

A Bottom-Up approach would be something already established, like Tomb Raider: Legend or some Mario title, where the fun elements are already established, but the designer has to make it fresh-feeling.

It is an interesting read, but, if there's one thing that nags at me when I read these analysis articles, it's that they're concepts that occur naturally -- that these papers only give a name to the face.

But that's just me. I have more interest in post mortems than theories.

For some interesting design-related articles, check out [www.charliecleveland.com] (mostly historical) and the natural selection 2 blog [www.unknownworlds.com] . In one of the more recent podcasts, they talked about how they spend a good chunk of the year making nothing but tools, but as a result of good tool making, the progress actually accelerates in the later development stages. Because they put so much effort into making a better map preview tool that is able to view psd files directly [www.unknownworlds.com] , and because he made all the game code be in lua, a scripting language, it takes far less time to make individual content.

Check out Max talking about, for example: the pistol here [www.unknownworlds.com]

For ns1 Charlie wrote, instead of a design document, a 3 paragraph short fictional story that summed up what he thought a game session might go like. The end result was something coders, etc referred to far more than a design document.

Gamasutra's such a good site to read anyway, this article is just icing on the... uh, well, let's leave that one incomplete to avoid the meme bombardment.

-- Steve

@NumberONE: Nikoladze?

Oh I get it. This is a game cake post. In disguise.

Awesome! I just flunked a course on this in college!