Over the years, I've seen a lot a poor and misguided game design. Both in games that I've played (going all the way back to tabletop games) and in many of the products that I've worked on. The industry as a whole suffers from a lot of copy-cats and me-tooisms.
Back when I worked at New World Computing, I overheard a conversation between two our lead designers.
"So, how do we want to handle modifiers to ranged attacks?"
"Between 0 and 50 feet, let's have no modifier, from 51 to 75 a -1, from 76 to 100 -2, and beyond that a - 3."
"That's good, but let's extend it out to 200 feet."
This illustrates a basic misunderstanding of designing computer games. With this approach why design the game at all. Why not just copy the charts from the Dungeon Master's Guide verbatim? At least then the game mechanics would have undergone years of play-testing.
These designers failed to grasp the biggest differences between playing a game on the computer and playing a paper-and-dice game.
First and foremost, is the failure to realize that the computer is very good at math, so let's use it to do that. The "to hit" modifiers are attempting to recreate an exponential curve that has been coarsely quantized to make its application to die rolls more comprehensible. Why not just use an inverse-square falloff?Secondly, fact that a computer has a physical input device, whether it ba a mouse or a control pad, eliminates the need to have simple random chance to determine success.
So how do we find designers with an ability to "think outside the box?" How do we evaluate the designer during the interview stage of hiring?
I humbly submit that we test them. Tests are routinely applied to programming and art candidates. These test are both quantifiable and subjective. Did the applicant complete the test? What approach was used? How well was the final product executed.
Here is the test I would require of designers:
Create an original multi-player boardgame with a narrative that has no random elements employed during game play, i.e., die rolls, spinners, et c. Randomization may be used during initial game setup, e.g., card shuffling.
By making it a board game with have placed a parameter on the test that elimates classic card games such as poker and more modern game like CCGs.
By eliminating in-game random events, we have disallowed such games as Backgammon, Monopoly, and even Warhammer 40K.
Requiring a narrative be applied, both allows us to evaluate their ability to tell a story through game play and further elinates games like checkers and chess.
This test requires that the designer develops mechanics that test the players' skill.
This would be a "take home" test, to be sure, but ask yourself how many of your current designers could handle such a test.
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