tester #11

not a decent drawing this time. i had too much coffee at breakfast. was all jittery. (the shoes are of tester #10) didn’t help that yesterday’s tester was a fellow game designer. or rather that he has worked on so many games as a designer. he gave us a healthy dose of tough love and food for thought in how we can make things better for what gamers may expect. on the other hand he seemed surprised when i told him how other players had played. no one ever said game design is a science. it is, in many ways, the art of questioning everything you think you know about how people interact with virtual characters and environemts. is it giving them a form of training. have gamers been trained to think things should be one certain way? isn’t it my job to at least try to seduce them into thinking about things another way. i am somewhat disturbed by the maxim that one should “make games for other people’s expectations” and “let go of your ideas.” i guess because i feel like… i am a human too and to make a game for myself is to make one for others…. but this is why i don’t try to design on my own too because i know i have a very artsy attitude when it comes to creation of anything. i work for the audience but only to the extent that i want to communicate certain ideas. i think that creation of something as commercial product is quite another skill. one which i personally may never possess.
it was all good discussion. nice to talk about things on that level. i hope he can beta test the game too. see what he thinks of the more final result.
anyway, once again the game was played all the way through. he had QUITE a different playstyle than the first person who finished the game. he managed to finish The Path in 2 and a half hours. SO, what should we tell people then? since this game IS designed in such a way that you can play it through having a complete experience in either 2 hours which is extremely short by any estimation, or if you are one who likes to be involved and notice everything and experiment with whats there it can take you up to 6 hours. i do believe these are the extremes.