Game knowledge is very important to a Game Designer. A Designer needs to understand his creations, the players, and on top of everything, where the fun really lies in different kinds of games. This is why I laid out a page about my interests regarding different spheres of gaming:
---------- VIDEO GAMES ----------
I consider myself to have an excellent video game culture, but I did fall behind from time to time, University was one of these periods obviously, but also some of the times I played MMORPGs more intensely. I do follow the video game industry very closely on Gamasutra, Kotaku, Gamespot, IGN and on various Facebook groups.I owned almost all of the old-school consoles and/or went back to play a bunch of classic games on videogames emulators.
A list of some of my favourite video games:
A list of some of my favourite video games:
- Megaman series
- Zelda-like games
- Metroidvanias
- Diablo-like games
- Action RPGs
- Turn-Based RPGs
- Party Games
- Experimental Unique Experience (such as Braid)
- Watching Fighting Games competitions and MOBAs.
---------- MMORPG ----------
I think this is a category deserving it's own rightful section. I've played many MMO in my life, but most were MMORPGs, so I'll simply use the term MMO to lighten the text.As a game designer, I think it is very important to have tried at least once a deep and immersive gameplay and to that regard, MMOs offer the summum of how deep you can go. You play it at day and dream about it at night... until you don't sleep anymore at night... The one I've been playing the most and the game in which I will brag about some of my achievements in this blog is Final Fantasy XI.
First, I have to declare this: Final Fantasy XI is not a friendly type of MMO at all. Everything is particularly long to achieve and almost nothing can be accomplished by only 1 player. You have to teamwork your way into this game and it's very hard. I have heard testimonies of players who played both WoW and this game, and they say that just levelling up to the maximum level takes at least 3 times the lenght than in WoW. Not only that, but putting a group together is more complicated in FFXI and dying is more drastic and frustrating than in WoW.
The consequence of such a difficulty level is the feeling of reward. You are so happy of getting anything in this game because the game makes you work hard for it... even simple questing feels like an achievement!
This is my character Borgin, Lv.95 Dark Knight in a mix of Artifact, Relic & Empyrean armor kits:
On this picture, I'm wearing the Dark Knight Relic Gloves and Body. These pieces are obtained through instances meant for 40 people and more and you have to litterally take a number because more than on person have the same job and wants the same piece. The amount of participation to these events were noted by the guild leaders and armor pieces obtained were distributed based on these numbers.
On this picture I'm riding on my Black Chocobo. The only way to have those kinds of mounts is to breed your own... You have to spend in-game money on expensive breeding items and go check on it once a day, for a full month (earth-time). And the harshest thing about it is you only know the colour of your chocobo after 1 full week of investment. I had to restart twice to get the one that would fit my armour colour scheme ;). it ended up having an alternate head because of its high intelligence.
Those are only 2 examples of incredibly long grinding this game propose, and the black chocobo doesn't even contribute to the character's power. It's more for the bragging rights than anything else.
On top of being one of the most time-consuming MMO out there, this game allows you to have any number of jobs levelled. So if I'm bored being a Dark Knight, I can level-up Red Mage up to level 95 as well... and it's not faster than the first time i did it appart from knowing the best spots to level up. So here I am battling a gargantuan worm boss in another dimension... as a Lv.95 Red Mage this time :)
* Today's level cap is now 99, but I stopped playing before it went live.
Here's the full list of MMORPGs I've played:
(Asterisk marks reaching the level cap)
- Final Fantasy XI*
- Final Fantasy XIV
- Warhammer Online*
- World of Warcraft
- Dungeons & Dragons Online
---------- ROLE-PLAYING GAMES ----------
Pen & paper Role-playing games are perhaps the most complete form of gaming I know, at least the way my group and I play it. First and foremost, it is a social gaming experience, but when you delve into it thoroughly, you find all kinds of gameplay experiences: emotional, strategical, tactical, immersion, meta-gaming, adventuring, aggressivity, improvisation, camping, gambling, cheating (in-game), intrigue, learning... in fact, everything is possible in a role-playing game!I've been playing Pen & paper Role-Playing games for almost two decades now (since I was 14) and RPGs are definitively the reason why I wanted to become a Game Designer in the first place. When I began playing RPGs, I quickly and naturally became the person who almost always played as the Game Master (or Dungeon Master as D&D liked to call it). This is the role of the impressario, the director, the jack-of-all-trades walk-on actor and the almighty god who decides the fate of the players altogether.
In role-playing games, there's a golden rule which says that the Game's Master decides everything. It reached the Game Designer in me, making me modify all kinds of things in almost all RPGs I have played as the game master (which I was more often than not). Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play & Shadowrun are the two I have modified the most heavily. I have litterally binders of modified rules and revamped gameplay mechanics for some games I've played and still keeping updated Google Docs for reference tables for games I'm still playing.
Being a Game Master is game design in its purest form : You literally perform dynamic game design in the sense you have to create and balance things out, right on the spot !!! You can of course prepare a lot of content in advance, but you never know what the players will come with and you have to reward the players consequently for their creativity when they take unexpected course of action that even the Game Master didn't see coming. A good Game Master require to be versatile, show good improvisation skills, and creativity. But he also needs to create original layouts (level design), balance combat well so players come up with a good challenge and feel the thrill of danger without dying prematurely, make varied and original characters and locations (create content), which are all vital skills for a game designer in my opinion.
If you've browsed other parts of this blog, you may have have noticed that I have quite a liking of the Warhammer universe ;). In fact, it all began when I played to the Warhamemr role-playing game back in 1996. It's been my favourite RPG and I've been playing it since then.
Here's a list of RPGs I've played :
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (1st & 2nd Editions), Shadowrun (2nd & 3rd Editions), Dungeons & Dragons (2nd, 3rd & 4th Editions), Spycraft 2nd Edition, Vampire: Masquerade/Dark Age/Requiem, Mage: The Awakening, Call of Cthulhu D20, Star Wars D20 revised and Saga Edition, Mutants and Masterminds, Outbreak: Undead
---------- BOARD GAMES ----------
The experience and knowledge of a Game Designer is of course bolstered by the variety of games he plays. Playing a boardgame is a rich social gaming experience in which you see gameplay emerge and players argue. You can perceive optimal gameplays and game glitches quite easily in these situation since the players speak their minds out loud and tell what they think as it happens.Boardgames offer a raw experience because, unlike videogames, the players have to make the game works themselves and thus, are much more exposed to its mecanisms. It is often easier to find loopholes in board games and attain optimal gameplay much faster than most videogames, which is why most of the time, people get bored of board games more quickly.
For me, boardgames are much more interesting than for many people, because when I felt I reached the point I described earlier, I don't restrain myself from coming out with a bunch of house rules and game adjustments just for our fun (and always trying to keep the original work unspoiled).
Here's a list of Boardgames I've played:
Quarriors, Chaos in the Old World, Dreadfleet, Zombies!, 7 Wonders, Shadow Hunters, King of Tokyo, Carcassonne, Talisman, Dominion, Puerto Rico, Bang!, Settlers of Catan, A Game of Thrones, Ticket to Ride, Battlelore, Munchkin, Inn-Fighting, Formule Dé, World of Warcraft the boardgame, Risk, Hero Quest, Mystery of the Abbey, Clue
... and some examples of my zeal regarding house rules and game adjustments...
---------- CARD GAMES ----------
Card games have a unique dynamic because often, the player have to gather the cards he needs to have a better chances of winning. The metagame is a very strong aspect of card games because often, the sole existence of a single card can make you think for hours about what to play in your deck to be able to counter it, not even knowing if your opponents will even play that card. On top of this, most card games keep publishing new cards multiple times a year, which makes an ever evolving metagame.
The most popular of trading card games is Magic: The Gathering, but it's not the most popular because of its complexity, on the contrary, its success can be attributed by the fact it is easy to learn, yet hard to master. I have played a lot of different card games and I must admit my favorite wasn't Magic although I do recognize its depth. I think there are lots of even more interesting card games out there, but what made MTG be so dominant was a constant marketing effort, a dominating mass of players and it's ease of approach.
Here's a list of card games I've played:
Magic: The Gathering, Lord of The Rings, Warlords, Warcry, Warhammer: Invasion, Spycraft, Call of Cthulhu, Ani-Mayhem, Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Emmerlaüs, Munchkin, Star Wars, Universal Fighting System (featuring Street Fighter, Soulcalibur, Samurai Showdown, King of Fighters and even Penny Arcade)
