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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Archived: We distort. We decide.  |  Topic: Game Design, Theory and Practice (2nd Ed.) 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Game Design, Theory and Practice (2nd Ed.)  (Read 4678 times)
schild
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WWW
on: March 06, 2005, 06:06:21 PM

SirBruce
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2551


WWW
Reply #1 on: March 07, 2005, 12:43:21 AM

Evangolis
Contributor
Posts: 1220


Reply #2 on: March 07, 2005, 07:57:46 AM

I did like Bartle, although he has an academic style, and can get rather dry after a couple hundred pages.  At least Bartle did not write a truely opaque academic opus, which is blessed, since his is a vital work in the MMO field.  Mulligan and Patrovsky have a pretty comfortable style, not as good as Rouse and Sheldon, IMO, but still very good, and the ideas they put forth are even more important to MMOs than what Bartle wrote, particularly the stuff on Customer Service and post-Launch support.  I think I actually posted a short review of "Developing Online Games" on some precursor site.

The other two are on my reading list, once time and money are available.  On the other hand, reading Rouse added three more books to my reading list, so I may have to wait for the second edition there too.

I should have put in the review that this is a book on general game design, and not specific to MMOs.  Rouse has a chapter on Multi-Player games, and considers MMOs at various points, but does not pay particular attenion to them.  The focus here is exactly what the title says, "Game Design Theory and Practice".

I like to think of myself as a writer, as it is so much sexier to be an unemployed writer than an unemployed geologist or an unemployed programmer.

"It was a difficult party" - an unexpected word combination from ex-Merry Prankster and author Robert Stone.
Mr. Right
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Posts: 43


Reply #3 on: March 07, 2005, 08:22:41 AM

I have a partial answer for you : a strong modding community.

The formula is simple : excellent modding tools and an official support for the best mods. HL and Bnet success speak for them self.

The goal is to motivate a lot of small teams of designer/programmer wannabe to think and experiment for you. Pick the better ones, reward them with good money and an official release.

Granted It's harder for a mmorpg. Maybe you could try to sell a online RPG Maker. Or not.


An other way to deal with innovation cost is talented leaders and a successful money cow. Take the movie industry, the rich studios/actors/directors/etc can afford to throw some money in a riskier endeavor once in a while.

NcSoft make so much money with Lineage 1+2 that they can afford innovative mmorpg : CoH, Guild Wars, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa. It's a shame that EA and SOE are so corporate/pussie cause they could do the exactly the same thing.
Evangolis
Contributor
Posts: 1220


Reply #4 on: March 11, 2005, 08:57:53 PM

Turns out I was right, I will have to wait for the second edition.  Just released : Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2  Actually it is a second book, not a second edition, but I couldn't pass up even a weak joke.

On modding communities, while modders may produce original content, it will be hard for them to produce original games.  More likely is that the best of them will get farmed up by the standard dev studios.

"It was a difficult party" - an unexpected word combination from ex-Merry Prankster and author Robert Stone.
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