The Short Memory of Game Design

Gamasutra has another piece in Ernest Adams' ongoing series Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! This week he looks at the terrible long-term memory the game industry suffers from. Because of fast turnover within company ranks, games released by a single studio can consistently make the same bad design decisions over and over again. From the article: "Which is worse: A game that introduces its features sparsely but regularly, or one that gives them all to you at once and then never gives you another one? I would much rather play the former. Obviously this will vary somewhat by genre, but offering up a new twist every now and then will certainly help to keep the player's interest. Too many games turn into a boring grind in the last third or so, and the player has to slog through it if he wants to see the ending. We didn't get into this business to make boring grinds."

Re:Water levels

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dive down to a lower level and get out into the air down there... why doesn't that space just fill up with water?


A wizard did it.

But what...

A wizard...

It's all about the crates

[ewe2]

Crate Review System [oldmanmurray.com]

Re:On the other hand...

[arodland]

Ooh, I know. You could have a game where you do nothing but send a check to Blizzard every month, and you get levels for it!

Meh. Nobody would notice the difference.