“The best way to start? Make a small game fun.”
Brian Fargo
“One way to describe a computer game is “a series of interesting decisions”.
Brian Reynolds, Firaxis Games “Pace and cognitive effort combine to yield game play.”
Chris Crawford
“Challenge should always come in the form of testing the players´ skills at the core gameplay.”
Unbekannt
“If nobody is complaining about your work, you´re probably not taking enough risk.”
Brian Moriarty
“If anybody can afford to ignore what you´re doing, you are not being strange enough.”
Brian Moriarty “Simplification is the vital difference between a game and a simulation.
The object of a computer simulation is to model a real system as closely as possible in order to study ist behavior under different conditions. The object of a computer game ist to entertain, and other considerations
are secondary. Reality is complex and difficult. Games are supposed to be easy and fun. To get from one to the other, you have to simplify.”
Ernest Adams, EA
“Fill your program with active bytes that do things, not lazy bytes.”
Chris Crawford “In the perfect game design, each rule is applied universally.”
Chris Crawford
“You know you have achieved perfection in design not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other is to make it so
complicated that there are no obious deficiencies.”
Charles Anthony Richard Hoare “Bislang wurden nur wenige Projekte abgebrochen, weil ihr Design zu einfach war.”
Steve McConnell “Reviews of detailed designs provide significant quality and cost benefits.”
Steve McConnell “The smart money ist on too much design formality rather than too little.”
Steve McConnell “I begin researching games in the children´s section of the local library. This works because children´s books include a lot of graphics and computer games are intensely
graphical.”
Bruce C. Shelley (AoE) “Always look around for inspiration, whether it be in a colleague´s work, nature, or a bottle.”
An unknown teacher “Only when our products come out of a deep
connection with real-life will they resonate with the mass market.”
Dani Bunten Berry
“Tetris is a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans in the 1990s - of the constant
bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught.”
Janet H. Murray “But by far the main contribution of the publishers is their input into
our design process. They help us follow the lead of the last big seller. Without their help we might flounder around and make something original.”
Dani Bunten Berry
“I don´t think design by committee ever works and it sure didn´t in this case.”
Dani Bunten Berry (über Global Conquest) “I don´t know who discovered water but it wasn´t a fish.”
McLuhan
“Cooperative games” generally seem to be variants of “let´s all throw a ball around.”
Greg Costikyan “Wir machen industrielle Produkte, keine Kunst.”
Shigeru Miyamoto (Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda) “40% of a video game´s levels should be hidden.”
Shigeru Miyamoto “Es gibt genug Taktik im Spiel, um sich zu gratulieren, wenn man
gewinnt, aber auch genug Glück, um die Schuld auf die Würfel zu schieben, wenn man verliert.”
Begründung von Dr. Joyce Brothers für den Erfolg von “Monopoly”
“It is said that even the cosmic creator created a design document.”
Unbekannt
“It is sad that even the cosmic creator created a design document.”
Heiko Köhler “Make
the game too hard and you lose all the new players. Make the game too easy and you lose everybody.”
Ben Galica “Was würde heute, in der Zeit des Internets, passieren, wenn es jemandem
gelänge einen solchen Hype auszulösen?”
Brian Moriarty über den Paul-is-dead-Hype “Everything important in the 21st century will be hyphenated.”
Jerry Allan “A product that is not designed to ship on time... won´t. One that is... probably won´t.”
Jim McCarthy “If your team has questions about the customer, put them in
the survey. If they don´t, determine why your team is so lethargic.”
Jim McCarthy “Nothing is too simple fot a puzzle. That´s the rule.”
A. Pajtnikov
“The star of the show is not on the screen, the star of the show is in front of the screen.”
Harry Gottlieb
“Reviews of detailed designs provide significant quality and cost benefits.”
Steve McConnell
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernhard Shaw
“Deer Hunter revealed that people were starving for game styles that the industry hadn´t even considered making. It also showed that people would buy hunting products.
Only one of these lessons was learned.”
Owain Bennallack
“The answer
was not to punish a player for failing to supply his troops, but to reward him as long as he succeeds in supplying them.”
Andrew Rollings
”Termites build towers of tried mud with cooling vanes inside that keep the nest at the precise temperature needed to incubate the eggs. But no
termite has a blueprint of this wonderful structure in its head; it has only a few simple rules to follow about where to put each bit of mud.”
Andrew Rollings
”Any game that requires
reloading as a normal part of the player´s progress through the system is fundamentally flawed.”
Chris Crawford
“Man eats rooster. Rooster eats worm. Worm eats man.”
Chinesische Version von Papier, Schere, Stein “Werfen Sie nicht mit
Termini um sich, die Sie nicht definieren können. Und vor allem, werfen Sie sie nicht durcheinander!”
Monis Professor (passt sehr gut zu Konzepten!)
“Es geht nicht um die Murmeln, es geht ums Spiel.”
Deutsche Redensart
“Suppose, however, that you focus that no one else has bothered to think about. In such cases, even a very little creative thinking can produce spectacular results.”
Edward de Bono
“An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.”
Unbekannt
“In my experience, the worst thing you can do to an important problem is discuss it.”
Simon Gray
“If you have too many special cases, you are doing it wrong.”
Craig Zerouni
“The lesson here is that if
there´s a game you really want to make, don´t give up on it. Someone will be foolish enough to give you the money eventually.”
Warren Spector
“What designers really need to ask is not, “How could I make my game better with AI?” but, “What game could I
make with better AI?””
Phil Goetz
“Der Spieler, der an einem Spiel mit anderen Entscheidungsträgern teilnimmt, befindet sich in einer ähnlichen Situation wie der Forscher, der das Verhalten eines Affen studieren wollte. Nachdem er den Affen in einen
Raum gebracht und ihm Zeit gegeben hatte, sich an die neue Umgebung zu gewöhnen, trat er an die Tür, blickte durch den Spion… und sah das Auge des Affen, der ebenfalls durch das Türloch starrte.”
Morton D. Davis
“A good game lets its players feel each other´s personality.”
Unbekannt
"If our fans aren't able to grow with us, why should we bother about them?"
Dennis Lyxzén
A: "As a designer it´s my job to provide a vision. But frankly, I´m not seeing anything."
B: "Have another donut. Sometimes the sugar helps."
A: "It´s working. I´m getting something, but it´s fuzzy…"
Dilbert
“Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve.”
Tehyi Hsieh
„Entschuldigen Sie bitte die überdurchschnittliche Länge dieses Briefes. Ich hatte leider nicht die Zeit, mich kürzer zu fassen.”
Blaise Pascal
"... Und die
Designer kriegen die Saturnringe nicht rund. Kubrick erklärt kurzerhand Jupiter zum Ziel."
Aus einem Artikel von A. Rolf (TV-Spielfilm)
"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in
the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
John Steinbeck
“I´d do it myself but there´s no reason to waste a creative thinker on an implementation task.”
Wally / Scott Adams
“…if you manage your life for maximum creativiy, you end up looking like a lazy pig.”
Scott Adams
“Remember that the cost of saving the world cannot come cheaply.“
Andrew Rollings „Es läßt sich kaum ein auffallenderes Symptom für die Preisgabe des Spielhaften anführen als das
Schwinden des Phantasieelements in der männlichen Kleidung.“
Johan Huizinga / „Im neunzehnten Jahrhundert dominiert der Ernst“
“There is no reason ever to have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.”
David Allen
“Everyone at Ensemble Studios is asked to test our current
projects at least once per week and provide feedback.”
Bruce Shelley “The Age of Empires games demonstrated that our customers consider automating trivial activities (queues, waypoints) a positive improvement.”
Bruce Shelley “When considering a new feature for a game, apply the interesting decision test. Ist this new element or twist going to add an interesting decision to what the player is
doing? If the answer is not a strong “yes”, leave it out.”
Bruce Shelley “If a player finds himself waiting too often while the
computer grinds through some brillant calculations, maybe the computer is having more fun than the player is.”
Bruce Shelley
“In single play, the player should sweat but win in the end.”
Bruce Shelley
“A mediocre game that ships on time is a disaster (financial, brand, reputation).”
Bruce Shelley
“Chief Superintendent of Scotland Yard“
Niedrigster Rang (bislang 0% des Spiels gelöst) im Spiel “Sherlock”
„Peter designs a game by starting with the emotional range and dilemmas he wants the player to face and then he backtracks and looks at themes or technologies to achieve that result, which is quite different from what
other designers do.”
Will Wright über Peter Molyneux
“I actually start a game by just working on the tools, because once you reveal the game idea, everyone wants to rush and do the interesting stuff without thinking about
the infrastructure.”
Peter Molyneux
“The golden rule is this: If you had some significant impact on the world, you have to tell the player that – there has to be a sound effect, a visual, or some mechanism.”
Peter Molyneux
“The best forms of entertainment ask us to question social norms…
it´s about time Black & White came along.”
Will Wright
“Still, if you look at entertainment in a broader sense (toys, sports, etc.) you will see that competitive entertainment is only a tiny part of the cake.”
Daniel Sánchez-Crespo Dalmau
“Kreatives ist also
immer das Zusammenbringen zweier oder mehrerer Funktionen, die ursprünglich nichts miteinander zu tun hatten.”
Achim Hoffmann
“In the help files that comes with Solitaire, the game is explained in only 131 words.”
Ernest Adams
“Games should be simple, hot, and deep.”
Trip Hawkins
“Because guests must run from cannon
to cannon to best defend their ship they get a physical experience instead of merely sitting passively in front of a monitor. Guests get social interaction from bumping into each other, taking turns on cannons, barking
out orders, and negotiating the rocking ship. The feeling of being tired and practically out of breath after five minutes of plundering with your friends or family is a feeling that you got your money´s worth.”
Jesse Schell / Joe Shochet: Disney´s Battle for the Buccaneer Gold
“By introducing some weigth and friction into the firing mechanism (a pull string) it is physically hard to shoot more than once or twice per second. By solving the
problem with real physical methods instead of arbitrary virtual software blocks, the game remains fair and playable.”
Jesse Schell / Joe Shochet: Disney´s Battle for the Buccaneer Gold
“Generally, mothers at amusement parks are less interested
in having a good time themselves, and are more interested in making sure that the family has a good time. Piloting the pirate ship becomes an ideal task for them, because it not only affords them a good view of the rest
of the family enjoying the experience, but also allows them to tune the experience (by steering the boat appropriately) to maximize fun for the family.”
Jesse Schell / Joe Shochet: Disney´s Battle for the Buccaneer Gold
“Designers who
think too highly of their own design skills may also avoid non-linearity in their designs because they want the player to experience every single element of the game they decide to include. “Why spend a lot of time on
portions of the game that not everyone will see?” say these egotistical designers, starting to sound a lot like the accountants.”
Richard Rouse III
“The gap between apparent simplicity and actual complexity is what makes puzzles so intriguing.”
Scott Kim
“Tetris is a great spectator sport, which is one of the reasons it draws people in.”
Scott Kim
“Gamers like to move up levels.”
Amy Jo Kim
“It is essential to confirm the players expectations if you plan to manipulate them later.”
Brett Johnson
“In reality, a vast majority of players never finish their games. Many more players abandon their games when they run into a puzzle or point that they find
impossible to overcome. Game autors should, therefore, consider no more than fifteen hours of gamelplay and instead focus on quality.”
Pascal Luban
“Human motivation can arguably be divided into four basic drives:
desire for response, desire for recognition, desire for adventure, and desire for security.”
Randy Littlejohn
"Your garden is not complete until there´s nothing else you can remove."
Old Japanese saying "If you keep buying stuff it will eventually go
bad or die or need to be cleaned or whatever. So in some sense it´s like you´re filling up your house with all these potential time-bombs. And so at some point you end up spending so much time fixing these things and
doing this, that, and the other, that these objects you originally bought to save you time end up sucking all your time."
Will Wright "We ended up with a
game that I didn´t know how to win. I didn´t know which were the best strategies or tactics, even though I designed all the game´s systems. That is what makes a good strategy game."
Julian Gallop (X-Com) „There is probably no better training a designer could get than to spend a year in test.“
Bob Bates “Don´t make the
player perform a complex action twice. In an adventure game, after he has completed the steps to a puzzle, don´t make him do it again.”
Bob Bates "It is often joked that design documents are not read, they are weighed."
Richard Rouse III „Es ist
wichtig, sich in den verschiedenen Dingen hinlänglich zu üben, aber sich in einer Sache zu vervollkommnen.“
Miyamoto Musashi „Stell dir vor, du würdest nur ein Wort über
die gesamte Karte schreiben, als würdest du die Karte mit deinem Pinsel zerreißen. Ob deine Kalligraphie vorzeigbar wird oder nicht, hängt von deiner Energie ab.“
Tsunetomo Yamamoto „Einem nachdenkenden und forschenden Wesen gereicht es stets zum Nutzen, gewisse Zeiten lediglich der Prüfung seiner eigenen Vernunft zu widmen.“
Unbekannt „Pflege die Beziehungen zu intelligenten Freunden.“
Tipp von Wissenschaftlern wie man kreative Ideen erlangt
"Games lubricate the body and the mind."
Benjamin Franklin “This idea of player empathy is so important that
some consider it the single greatest indicator of whether a person can be a successful game designer.”
Bob Bates
“Because guests must run from cannon to cannon to best defend
their ship they get a physical experience instead of merely sitting passively in front of a monitor. Guests get social interaction from bumping into each other, taking turns on cannons, barking out orders, and
negotiating the rocking ship. The feeling of being tired and practically out of breath after five minutes of plundering with your friends or family is a feeling that you got your money´s worth.”
Jesse Schell / Joe Shochet: Disney´s Battle for the Buccaneer Gold “By introducing some weigth and friction into the firing mechanism (a pull string) it is physically hard to shoot more than once or twice per second. By solving the problem
with real physical methods instead of arbitrary virtual software blocks, the game remains fair and playable.”
Jesse Schell / Joe Shochet: Disney´s Battle for the Buccaneer Gold „I have to believe that the solitary nature of most computer games is temporary aberration, a consequence of the technology, and that as networks spread and their bandwidth
increases, the historical norm will reassert itself.“
Greg Costikyan „Ein gutes Design ist wichtig für die Moral, wichtig für
das Budget und wichtig für das Spiel.”
Andrew Rollings “A good game is one that you can win be doing the unexpected and making it work.”
Andrew Rollings “Remember: The serious
games wants real life; the casual gamer wants it to be like the movies.”
Bob Bates “At some parks, the triple-loop Death Drop roller Coaster has a
special line for those who want to sit in the very first car. The people who wait longer for that experience are the aficionados (expert players). This doesn´t mean that other riders (average players) don´t have a good
time.”
Bob Bates "In many ways, developing a game is all about understanding your limitations and then turning those limitations into advantages."
Richard Rouse III "If the character is too much of a departure from one the player could see herself being, the player may become frustrated when that character speaks linkes of
dialog she would not say herself or performs other stupid actions. Loom works around this problem by putting Bobbin Threadbare inside a cloak, with the player only ever seeing his eyes. This keeps the main character
anonymous enough that the player could believe that, in fact, it is herself inside that cloak. At the one point in the game were Bobbin takes off his hood the game quickly cuts away to a different scene, almost poking
fun at the continued anonymity of the main character."
Richard Rouse III “Activity level is a function of how soon the
participant expects a reward to occur. The more certain they are that something good or interesting will happen soon, the harder they´ll play.“
John Hopson „Encourage exploration.“
Tzvi Freeman
„Think of a game as realtime database with an exciting interface.“
Andrew Rollings “Violation of expectations is perceived as an aggressive
act, an unfair decision by the game´s creators.“
John Hopson “In our power-up example, the player would concentrate on
other parts of the game and return later to see if the new power-up has appeared. If it hadn´t the player would wander off again. Gradually the checks would become more frequent as the proper time approached, until at
about the right time the player is sitting there waiting for it.“
John Hopson „Tetris is a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of
Americans in the 1990s - of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught.“
Janet H. Murray “It is essential to confirm the players expectations if you plan to manipulate them later.”
Brett Johnson “Conflict powers games.”
Unbekannt F
“Der Wurm muss dem Fisch schmecken, nicht dem Angler.”
Dr. Helmut Thoma / RTL
“A focus test can only tell you what not to do. Sometimes, that’s incredibly useful.”
Mark Cerny
„Die Welt ist so bekannt und ihre
Bewohner sind so berechenbar geworden, dass alles, was sich mit einem Geheimnis umgibt, nahezu zwangsläufig ins Rampenlicht rückt und unser Interesse findet.“
Robert Greene
„Nobody gets their first game published.“
Theurer’s Law (Regel bei Atari für Neuangestellte)
„Until about 1986,
the attitude was that every game had to be completely new, completely different. It was much like saying if anybody ever did a fighting game, we shouldn’t do a fighting game because that would be a derivative product.“
Mark Cerny über Atari
“Avoid missing ball for high score.“
Anleitung zu „Pong“
“Since he planned to quit making games after this first RPG, Sakaguchi named his game Final Fantasy.”
Steven L. Kent
“All I can remember is that Nolan Bushnell was about the most
excited person I’ve ever seen over the age of six when it came to describing a new game, describing it so much that I was backing up, trying to get away, while he was talking.“
Eddie Adlum
“Natürlich muss es eine gewisse Anzahl Wissenschaftler
geben, die verrückt werden, damit die Tradition am Leben bleibt.”
Matt Ruff
“... Mit diesem Schrecken verbrachte er die ersten Tage in seinem neuen Beruf. Nachdem er aber (nach etwa einer Woche) die erstaunliche Fremdheit seines neuen Lebens
überwunden hatte, begriff er plötzlich, dass lange Ferien angebrochen waren.”
Milan Kundera
“One way that a young, bright-eyed game designer turns into a cynical, jaded game designer is through exposure to the mindless blaring of superlatives that is the output of the public relations machine.
After a while it all sounds the same, and you realize that you can’t trust any of it.”
Ernest Adams
“For original ideas to
come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness, in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
„If you have to explain it, don’t use it.“
Edward R. Tufte
„Why do I get my best ideas in the shower?“
Albert Einstein
„Develop interest in life as you see it; in people,
things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.“
Henry Miller
„The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf.“
Shakti Gawain
„Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.“
Les Brown
"One person gropes through the dark labyrinth – perhaps he will find something useful, or maybe he will just crack his skull. Another carries a small lamp to shine
through the darkness and, during his journey, his lamp shines brighter and brighter. It finally becomes an electric sun illuminating everything and revealing all. Now I ask: "Where is your lamp?""
D.I. Mendeleyev
"One cannot
participate in karate competitions after only reading a description of the different fighting methods."
Genrich Altshuller
"Wendy Maines saw five dogs attacking a cat. She stopped the car, honked the horn, and scared the dogs away. Then she
accidentally ran over the cat."
Bathroom Reader
„A passion for the little uncopiable things.“
Thomas Peters
“Wir konstruieren und konstruieren. Und doch ist Intuition immer noch eine gute Sache.“
Paul Klee
“To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.“
Unamuno
“You can have any combination of features the Air Ministry
desires, so long as you do not also require that the resulting airplane fly.“
Willy Messerschmidt
Jemand sagte einmal:”Ich führe ein sehr bürgerliches Leben, damit ich radikale Kunst schaffen kann.”
David Cronenberg
„Andy and I had our photos on the two products we did for EA in
the early 1990s. Photos! Publishers have certainly changed their tune. The picture they are painting of game industry is that the Publishers take select franchises and properties, add their valued branding and marketing
talent, and then have the videogames developed in factories.“
Jason Rubin (Game Developer Mai 2004) „Reading a fan magazine is similar to eating a banana under water.“
Ezra Goodman „Minds are like parachutes: the only function when they are open.“
Lord Dewar
„Opinion polls should be taken but not inhaled.“
Adlai Stevenson
"Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of
comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that make games fun. In other words, with games, learning is the drug."
Raph Koster
"The definition of a good game is therefore "one that teaches everything it has to offer before the
player stops playing.""
Raph Koster
"If anything, the question to ask might be why the most popular games are the ones that teach obsolete skills while the more sophisticated ones that teach subtler
skills tend to reach smaller markets."
Raph Koster
"While metaphors are fun to play with, players can basically ignore them. ... Games, by the very nature of what they teach, push forward this sort of understanding.
Since they are about teaching the underlying patterns, they train their players to ignore the fiction that wraps the patterns."
Raph Koster
"The destiny of games is to become boring, not to be fun. Those
of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination."
Raph Koster
"...the point at which a player chooses to repeatedly play a
game they have already mastered completely, just because they like to feel powerful, is the point at which the game is betraying its own purpose. Games need to encourage you to move on. They are not there to fulfill
power fantasies."
Raph Koster
"Füge eine Kleinigkeit zur anderen, und das Ergebnis wird ein großer Haufen sein."
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
Ovid
"Besser als zu seinem Beginn kann kein Ding mehr werden."
Blaise Pascal
"Ich kann die Geister
rufen aus unermesslichen Tiefen. Aber das kann ich, und so kann es jedermann; nur, werden sie auch kommen, wenn du sie rufst?"
Shakespeare, King Henry IV
"Wir, die bloße Steine behauen, müssen uns immer Kathedralen vorstellen."
Unbekannt
"...die Kosten für ein neues Feature ergeben sich nicht nur aus der Implementierung. Zu den Kosten gehört auch, dass damit ein Hindernis für zukünftige
Erweiterungen hinzugefügt wird. ...die Kunst ist es, Features auszuwählen, die sich nicht ständig gegenseitig im Wege stehen."
John Carmack
"Kreativität bedeutet, nicht zu kopieren."
Jaques Maximin
"It is not so hard to be original, what is hard, is to be original with continuity."
Andrés Segovia
"Wir brauchen keine anderen Welten, wir brauchen Spiegel."
Stanislaw Lem
“Verbannt die Furcht.”
W. Edwards Deming
„There’s a rule that all experienced game designers know, yet still gets surprisingly little press. Lie
about how great your design is.“
Noah Falstein
„You have to lie to your marketing department because they’re not smart enough to come with their own lies about the game without making it sound worse than it really is.“
Noah Falstein
"People try
hardest when they have somewhere between 1/3 and a 2/3 chance of success and some control over how they go about it."
Michael M. Lombardo
"Design the verbs first." – "Ask: What does the user do?"
Chris Crawford
"Aber es gab ja Würfel, mit äußerst passenden
Zahlen für Fußballresultate. 6:1 als höchster Sieg, sehr Fußball-kompatibel. Null, wenn der Würfel vom Tisch rollte. Ich begann zu würfeln, meine eigenen Meisterschaften auszuspielen..."
Klaus Theweleit
"It's only half what you put into it; the other half is what people get out of it."
Marc Laidlaw
"Because all art entails posing questions and puzzles - tough ones, ethical ones even. And games will never be mature as long as designers create them with
complete answers to their own puzzles in mind."
Raph Koster
"Art and entertainment are not terms of type - they are terms of intensity."
Raph Koster |
