What separates Good game design from Bad ones?

[OgreBattle]

There's a lot of strong feelings people have on particular systems, particulars of game mechanics and such. I figure the people who create these systems, the designers and producers, should be the topic of a thread.

What makes a good game designer?
Is it making a system that you like?
Is it possible to consider somebody a good designer even if you dislike their system?
Is it possible to enjoy a system but think the designer is bad?
Are there specific points where you can go "this was a good decision" "this is a complete turd" from a single designer?
Does the system not matter and the designer's just there to sell it?


What makes a good game designer?

[K]

A good designer reaches his objective design goals with the least amount of flaws and unnecessary complications and can resolve design flaws after they have been brought to his attention.

Subjective goals like "is this a fun concept for a game" aren't really on the designer since so much input from players goes into making a fun game.

Game producers and playtesting should be what tells you if a given mechanic or concept or flavor is fun for a game, and most of that kind of thing is simply farmed out anyway.

That being said, most game designers are simply celebrities whose reputation is used to sell games, so it helps if you aren't so socially inept that you can't participate in a panel discussion.

[ishy]

First of all I'll assume we're not talking about how to design a game.

What pisses me off the most about designers if they open their mouth and it becomes clear that they don't know what they are talking about.
Like for example that pathfinder dev who was suggesting house rules to deal with sneak attack + scorching ray and not even bothering to look up how scorching ray works in the first place.

Second thing what makes me think someone is a bad game designer is just bad mechanics. For example, mechanics which are better off ignored, just don't work or are contridicted by their own design.
And even worse if it is clear that the design is bad but they still defend it.

A designer can convince me that he is a good designer if he is explaining why he made certain mechanics the way they are and his reasons for it are actually good, even though I might still disagree.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What makes a good game designer?

This is a uselessly broad question. Hamlet and HAMLETMACHINE are considered classic plays and they have almost nothing in common. Not just in the actual content of the plays but also in production and direction; what makes a good playwright good in those cases?

You could argue on minutae such as organization, listening to player complaints, keeping to a schedule, managing a schedule, having a grasp of math, etc.. can make the difference between a shit game and a good game. You can also say that you can't have a good game without those things. But you could also have ALL of those things at once and I can still see you coming up with a shit game.

If I was being asked something on a quiz show or something, I'd say that a good game designer would be one willing to learn from past mistakes. But that's also a uselessly broad answer. If you want something slightly more concrete but still overall useless you could also say that a good game designer has enough foresight to see how proposals, if implemented, would change the game. But again you could say that for almost any creative or managerial profession.

Is it making a system that you like?

Like is much too ambiguous of a word. I mean, I like Star Trek Voyager and will watch it if it's on, but I'll go to the grave saying that the show is still a total piece of shit. Even if you say 'like it in a non-ironic way that was deliberate on the part of the designer' I'm still going to say no because that's too subjective.

Is it possible to consider somebody a good designer even if you dislike their system?

Again, dislike is way too ambiguous. Even if Exalted had mechanics that were actually good I would still not like the system because the amount of objectionable content in the system. Similarly I think that Mouse Guard is well-designed but I don't like the system at all.

Are there specific points where you can go "this was a good decision" "this is a complete turd" from a single designer?

Okay, here is a question with some meat in it. The answer is yes. If a mechanic does not produce the range of outputs that the game designed wanted then it's a complete turd. Even if the range of outputs is better than what the designer intended.

Now if it does that declaring whether a mechanic is a complete turd or not if it does meet the above criteria is hard. Saying whether something is good or not is much harder. The mechanics still need to do what they want but then you have to evaluate whether this is good or not. The HDA in 4E D&D is exactly what the game designers intended but I strenuously disagree with whether this is a good thing or not.

Does the system not matter and the designer's just there to sell it?

Yes. This is really the only measure of success of a system. Of course it needn't be the designer's job to sell it to the public. If people had more of a degree of separation from traditional game game designers then we could accept some slick marketing guy in a suit nattering on about how sweet and awesome the system is. The game designers being the primary advertiser is just a reflection on how insular the industry is.


The biggest problem with this thread is that it implies a dichotomy between 'good' game designer and 'bad' game designer. Aside from there being a continuum of results it also ignores results like 'I think Robert J. Schwalb is a good game designer even though his product is mediocre because he still produced it when 4E, especially DDI content, is/was in anomie and was the only one working on it' or 'I think Monte Cook is good but only if there's someone he can bounce ideas off of and veto his crazier stuff'.

[Username17]

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Good game design involves having the mechanics do what they are supposed to do with as little moving parts as possible.

Game design can be poor if it is overly complex or time consuming to resolve. THAC0 is a poor design. Resolving opposed rolls by having two players subtract their rolls from the TNs and then compare the results is poor design. These processes can be streamlined, and not doing so is poor design.

Game design can be poor if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do. Giving people a boosted combat profile in exchange for giving them a sub optimal choice in combat is poor design because people can just choose to not use the suboptimal choice and then you've given them something for nothing. Giving someone a super attack is poor design if that attack is not actually better than the normal ones in real play.

Game design can be poor if it doesn't feel like you're doing the thing you're supposed to be doing or if the actions you take are not intuitive. if being a "fighter" makes you bad at "fighting" you have screwed up along the way. If helping in the skill challenge makes your team more likely to fail, things have gone off the rails.

Game design can of course also be poor if the game is unclear or does not cover important ground. If you're playing a game and there is no way to figure out what the next step is, things are bad.

This doesn't always mesh with enjoyment. There is a variant on the Dominion card game from Japan which has some interesting mechanics based on spending extra actions to take VP cards out of your deck where they stop cluttering your hands but are worth points. It's well designed, but it's entirely about having maids and putting them in your bedroom, so I wouldn't play it in public. The Fantasy Flight game Android is actually really interesting and fairly deep and I like the stories and I like playing it, but for fuck's sake none of the actions you take in that game actually feel like you're doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. Being light or dark shifted is a neat mechanic, but it doesn't actually correlate with your character being drunk or clean or anything like the picture shows - it's a complete tangent based on how many bad things have happened to other players in an unrelated part of the story.

-Username17

[Wrathzog]

A good designer reaches his objective design goals with the least amount of flaws and unnecessary complications and can resolve design flaws after they have been brought to his attention.

This one is important. When you're designing something, you have to be able to take criticism and you have to be able to consider the idea that your product isn't perfect.

There is a variant on the Dominion card game from Japan which has some interesting mechanics based on spending extra actions to take VP cards out of your deck where they stop cluttering your hands but are worth points. It's well designed, but it's entirely about having maids and putting them in your bedroom, so I wouldn't play it in public

There's a surprisingly deep pool of talent in Japan that exists solely to create perverse entertainment.

Currently, I consider Mark Rosewater one of the better Game Designers still doing work. He enjoys using the word Elegance to describe how he likes to go about things which is something that I've tried to keep in mind when I'm designing systems in general.
Frank pretty much describes the concept in the first sentence in his post.

[fectin]

It is entirely possible to have terribad designs which are fun to play (Rifts) and good designs which are completely unappealing (Dogs in the Vineyard).

I like DnD 3.x more than just about any other system, but I couldn't name a designer from it who I think is competent.

A also like Rebecca Sean Borgstrom's designs better than anyone else's I can think of, but they have an unfortunate tendency not to be very playable (I'm hopeful that's an artifact of teaming up with other folks, and that someday I'll get my hands on a copy of Nobilis, and it will be awesome).

So, no. I don't see any relation between any of these things.

I suspect that RPG design would be handled better if it were treated as systems engineering, but I'm biased there.

[tussock]

Good design in a game does what it says it does.

So not like 4e's skill challenges, that say they do things that plainly work against the optimal strategy (like letting unskilled people try interesting things). Not like Pathfinder where it says Fighters are better and magic weaker. Not like 3e where they tell you the Monk is a PC class and the Hide skill lets you be stealthy.

Maybe that's what they were going for, but a lot of them missed the bar. When games promise me things, they should deliver.

[Josh_Kablack]

What makes a good game designer is pretty simple:

• The ability to take a game from concept to completed product
• The ability to sell that product

Lacking those two, you're just another asshole on the internet, probably whining about probability, unnecessary steps and trap options on some "fan" forum filled with similar hatemongers.

[Hieronymous Rex]

A also like Rebecca Sean Borgstrom's designs better than anyone else's I can think of, but they have an unfortunate tendency not to be very playable (I'm hopeful that's an artifact of teaming up with other folks, and that someday I'll get my hands on a copy of Nobilis, and it will be awesome).

This might please you.

[shadzar]

first rule to a good game designer i would say is being focused on what you are trying to design and design towards that purpose. it doesnt mean your game will be good, but at least people will understand the "objective".

the "objective" of most games today is easily found, while others, like D&D, it has been lost or bent, spindled, and mutilated.