By far, the most common response from people when they find out what I do for a living is “Hey – I’ve got a great idea for a game.”

This then forces me to feign enthusiasm and listen to their magnum opus despite the fact that I know exactly what will happen next. Sure enough, the overwhelming majority of these people don’t have a great idea for a game. What they do have, in fact, is a great idea for a story for a game.

 

They’ve got the main character’s tortured past and emo haircut all sorted out. The setting is nailed in all of its post-apocalyptic glory and the plot twists come thick and fast. At a stretch, they may even have a view nominated (if not, you can assume it’s an FPS).

All that they’re missing is just how the player is supposed to achieve all of this.

These are the Gameplay Mechanics – systems that make up the actual interactions of the player within the game world. They cover everything from how the controller and interface work to how fast the player’s avatar moves and what they can do within the game world.  It’s all very well saying that the player will be able to mercilessly gun down hordes of evil Space Nazis but someone’s going to have to explain to the poor programmer writing that bit just how it works. How do you move around? How do you aim? How do all the weapons work? Ammo? Shields? Lives? Scoring? Can you jump? Are there other ways to interact with the environment?

These are just some of the questions that have to be asked and it’s not just a case of saying yes or no to these things either. Each one has ramifications and potentially severe knock-on effects.  A designer should be able to work through these ramifications and ultimately determine whether the functionality is worth both the gameplay reward and the implementation risk.

Let’s look at jumping, for example. On the face of it, it’s a pretty simple feature. Player presses a button and the character leaps into the air. Job done. Or is it? Now your character is no longer restricted to just running around on the floor, suddenly the level geometry has to be built with that in mind. You don’t want to get into a situation where the player can get into areas that they weren’t supposed to or, even worse, fall through the world itself. Are you going to be able to mantle up things that are just a bit too high to jump over? Then what about animations? Do you have to tie the player’s input into an animation and can you live with the potential control lag that introduces? What happens if you get hit whilst in mid-air? Can you alter your trajectory in the middle of a jump?

That’s just for the simple stuff too. You start throwing around stuff like rag-doll physics or online multiplayer (or, even worse – combining the two) and the can will be opened, spilling worms everywhere.

I’ve even spoken to a few academic institutions that claim to have game design courses available and I have to report that the majority of them are falling into exactly the same trap. There’s plenty of stuff on level building (a noble and underrated art in its own right) and assorted art stuff, but precious little on how games work and what actually makes them fun.

The truly disturbing thing is that it’s not as if this phenomenon is restricted to would-be designers trying to break into the industry either. Oh no – this thing is far too common even amongst established industry types and it fills me with fear. See, these people can talk a good high concept (hero takes down hordes of Space Nazis) and bang out a great pitch doc (lovingly rendered in the cutting-edge Ubermega Engine(TM) featuring Buzzword technology and Practically Sentient AI), but when the team need them to explain just how it all works and hang together, they act like that’s not what they signed up for.

Hell, I’ve even met a Lead Designer who happily claims to not play games. How completely bonkers is that? I mean, I’ve seen artists and programmers who weren’t really interested in games and that’s not too bad. On the whole, these people happen to be adept in their fields, which as a purely aesthetic or technical exercise is normally just fine and dandy. But for someone whose remit surely revolves around gameplay, you’d think that they’d have at least a passing interest in gaming.

Whilst this attitude is deplorable, part of this blame must also lie at the feet of the Powers That Be for their “We can get anyone off the street to do that job” attitude. Long has the role of designer, with its lack of qualifications and accreditation been seen as the poor relation of the developer triumvirate (you’ll notice how the sound guy doesn’t even feature...) and with the misguided approach demonstrated by blood new and old, this doesn’t look like changing anytime soon.