Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook' - Kotaku Comments

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

Spiffyness — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:23:25 MDT

I love this guy. He makes great games, has great ideas, and he's really not that pretentious, either. Well, he has lofty goals and highbrow sorts of ideas, but he never really seems like he thinks he's better than others. He's always got a "well, this is just MY opinion" sort of attitude (as far as I can tell).

Spiffyness

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

jrghoull — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:05:43 MDT

damnit i forgot the whole purpose of posting! sorry for the double post

i think the idea of focusing on game prototyping is critical to the development of video games. i honestly feel that there should be a sort of acedemic journal which focuses on it. i think it would be great at very least for there to be some sort of filing system that would file away the many different maine, and subcategories of game play and game types, so that guys who want to make a game, who know what they want, but dont quite have a solution to how the gameplay would work, could scroll through the different types of systems and find one that would work for their game.

jrghoull

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

jrghoull — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:02:59 MDT

i am not a programmer (though i wish to be) but i am a history major, who has had to write a paper on an occassion or two.

carving marble, painting a picture, programming, they're all forms of ar, even if it isnt supposed to be art. these forms of art (writing and coding to be particular) can be played around with indefinately, and imho, can never be truly perfect..you always want to add, subtract, or change something.

the point isnt to make it perfect, but to get it to a point that you can live with.

jrghoull

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

Eden.B — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:32:07 MDT

@ggodo: Yeah, Passage is 'art' of some sort, I agree.

However, what I'm saying is that it's very easy for a critic to take one look at Passage/gravitation etc and say "see? my medium is far better because it's produced [insert great work of art here]....Passage is art, but is it the best that our medium has produced? (I don't think so). So it's very irking when people cite Passage etc as the epitome of "games as art".

The medium is young though.

Eden.B

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

ggodo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:29:51 MDT

@Eden.B: I'm extremely sorry for triple posting. I just played passage and it is certainly art. Whether it counts as a game I'm not sure, all I know is that it hurt.

ggodo

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

ggodo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:20:55 MDT

@Eden.B: I don't think this is even claiming to be art, but passage most definitely was trying for that title, and since I can't seem to get myself to play it, I can't tell you if it was or not.

ggodo

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

ggodo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:18:50 MDT

@baccardi84: Ok, because most of the people I know that have it talked like it was linear story with an open world, kinda like Jak II. Of course I think Jak II is about the greatest game ever made, so that's not really a bad thing.

ggodo

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

baccardi84 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:00:53 MDT

@ggodo: I played Dead Rising and I thought what they did worked perfectly. It makes your playthrough unique, adds replayability, and really forces you to think through your priorities and what kind of player you are. I can't wait for Dead Rising 2.

baccardi84

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

Eden.B — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:58:07 MDT

If people cite games like this (and passage, etc) as the epitome of proof that "games are art"; well it's pretty easy to see where the critics of the medium are coming from.

Eden.B

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

ggodo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:45:24 MDT

@kiigan: The Escapist always seems to have stuff like this on it. That's part of why I go there.
Sorry for a double post, yours came up after I typed my last one.

ggodo

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

Graham — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:44:33 MDT

@kiigan: Now that I can't argue with.

Graham

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

ggodo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:43:57 MDT

@Graham: He ain't Johnny Blow by a long shot though.

ggodo

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

kiigan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:27:57 MDT

I don't disagree Graham, but at least Rohrer is having a go, you know? Doing his own thing - you gotta respect that. I admit that I found "Passage" to be a rather trite and uninteresting (considering the lofty arty credentials he aspires to in his pretentious "creator statements"). But it's cool he is putting stuff out there for people to talk about, fair play to him.

I may not buy into much of the "games as art" waffle but I appreciate that guys like Jason Rohrer exist and put their ideas out there. And sticking little prototypes online is always fun. The only thing I don't understand is why this is on The Escapist. Seems an odd match. Most gamers aren't really interested in game design, no matter what they say.

kiigan

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

Graham — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:06:05 MDT

@baked ham: Hey don't get me wrong, I'm not talking crap about the guy. It's just his "ideas" are a bit hokey to me. They're along the same lines as "modern art" and the movie American Beauty, both of which I feel are extremely overrated and pretentious.

Graham

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

baked ham — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:41:48 MDT

@Graham: He never called himself a genius, did he?

He just has ideas and explores them. It makes him ambitious and creative, not to mention disciplined. He is most certainly all of those things. I see no reason to talk trash about somebody who has ideas and follows them through. If his ideas are off the wall in your opinion, or you don't like the way he describes them, then, OK. But I think if anybody is pretentious in the Jason Rohrer equation it would have to be his fans and followers. The man himself, he seems pretty down to earth/talented/interesting to me.

baked ham

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

flukielukie — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:25:31 MDT

The escapist is getting tonnes of people.

flukielukie

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

Graham — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:24:22 MDT

This guy is way too pretentious in my opinion. I mean, he's way cooler than me, but he is by no means a genius.

Graham

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

MisterSleep — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:56:22 MDT

This was awesome. It's articles and designers like Rohrer that prove that games can be art... they don't necessarily have to be entertaining for everybody; you don't have to be able to "get" them; they don't have to make sense; hell, they don't even have to be "good" by whatever standards you care to apply to them. I'm not talking so much about the game he's describing, but it's always refreshing to get the behind-the-scenes look at games from a standpoint that's easier to connect with than the big-budget AAA titles.

MisterSleep

Jason Rohrer's 'Game Design Sketchbook'

ggodo — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:52:04 MDT

Isn't this what they said they were doing with dead rising, the multiple projects limited time thing?

How well did that work there? I never got to play that.

That aside I think it's a good idea, and could be used great on a larger scale.

ggodo