Game design laws

[elvor0]

So, the similarities to Warhammer 40k are totally accidental.

It was supposed to be 40k to begin with,(With Warcraft being Warhammer) but GW pulled the license at the last minute, Blizzard retooled them and became hugely successful. End of story. No ripping off involved.

Erm...did you just say that releasing a game DIRECTLY BASED ON another game counts as being original? So if I were to make a game based on Harry Potter, don't get the license, and rename the protagonist "Garry" would that still be original? It must be.

But they did give them the license, they pulled it at the last minute when the game was almost finished. Let's be honest here, they have a few trappings, but other than that the universes are pretty original beyond the existence of standard fantasy creatures. Games Workshop screwed them over and Blizzard were left with an almost finished game and a lot of wasted resources. and although the Zerg are similar to the Tyranids, I'm not sure that the Tyranids are an entirely original creation either, GW don't own the rights to standard Science Fiction creatures or tropes. Although they do seem to think they own the phrase "Space Marine".

I mean if you've played Warcraft or Starcraft you know that they're not aping Games Workshop, you know the universes have their own things that make them tick and make them vastly different from each other, beyond the existence of Space Marines, ravenous space aliens, orcs and humans.

If we're going to say using standard fantasy and science fiction tropes is wrong then the only people who should be allowed access to either would Tolkein and Heinlein respectively. I mean it's a generally accepted that if you have elves in your story, you use Tolkeins version, yet no one bashes you for that. I mean they're just accepted tropes, like all dwarves are scottish, all elves sit in trees and live forever, and the humans are always dicks. Space Marines have power armor, there's a prophetic elder race who berate the humans, "though they know not what they do!" and the bug aliens will be controlled by some sort of hive mind and eat planets.

Although your point about Harry Potter is reasonably amusing given HP itself blatantly lifts a character from an old Constantine story. I know you were just using it as an example, but it all ends up being a bit circular.

Here he is:

 

[DoPo]

How can I help it? How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? A game based on another game still retains the connections despite possessing license or not.

Sometimes, DoPo. Sometimes it is a completely new product. Sometimes it was never based in it to begin with. Sometimes all of these at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not that good at doublethinking. I'm just getting more and more confused.

Go through the conversation I had with canadamus_prime, see if you can make sense of it then come back and clarify how you saying "It is this game but it isn't" makes sense.

 

[elvor0]

How can I help it? How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? A game based on another game still retains the connections despite possessing license or not.

Sometimes, DoPo. Sometimes it is a completely new product. Sometimes it was never based in it to begin with. Sometimes all of these at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not that good at doublethinking. I'm just getting more and more confused.

Go through the conversation I had with canadamus_prime, see if you can make sense of it then come back and clarify how you saying "It is this game but it isn't" makes sense.

Yeah I suppose I went into that a bit too much, Let's put it without any pointless rambling and thinking out loud. It's just there more to it than "Blizzard "ripped off" Games Workshop"

Starcraft has a base in 40k, which has its base in 1980s science fiction, which eventually leads back to Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and his contemporaries such as Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

It certainly can be considered derivative of 40k I'll give you that (perhaps more than normal given it's history, especially aesthetically), but not much more than 40k took influence from the science fiction of its time. And being an avid player of both, I can tell you that they indeed very different. About the only similarities are that the Terran and Zerg look like the Ultramarines and Tyranids. Neither of which are original inventions themselves. I suspect 40k was accused of ripping off someone else when it came out, and whatever it ripped off, ripped off the thing before that etc etc

Canadamus_Prime was essentially saying that Starcraft is close enough to 40k on the surface to appear similar, yet is different enough to not be ripping it off. And that it annoys him that people say it's a rip off. Which I agree with. (I think that's what he was saying at least)

 

[Maximum Bert]

Only agree with rule 3 to an extent and that is a game should give some degree of engagement enough to satisfy its reason for existing usually games are made for entertainment and so they obviously must engage the player to provide that entertainment if it dosent engage you you will not get anything out of it.

If its made for training or educational purposes then it must engage enough to impart what it wants or be realistic enough depending on the education or training, take flight sims for instance they must engage the player in a suitable level of realism equivalent to the grade of the sim.

I see no other rules for making games I have been told by different people at different times what the `rules` to game making are and I just think why? I mean really a game dosent have to be anything specific it dosent have to be engaging just like a book dosent its just it wont be very good if its not engaging on some level or preferably a myriad of levels.

As for what rips off what, well looking at the outside everything seems similar because you dont know any better a door is a door sure it looks a bit different sometimes but they are all the same but if you actually studied doors im sure you would take issue with someone saying a door is just a door.

Note I do not study doors nor have I ever studied doors and I probably never will study doors, they are all the same anyway ripping each other off.

 

[Netrigan]

About rule two:
Copied games can be better. Or still different. Take LoL vs DoTa. Some swear by one, others swear by the other. Both are good and successful games. Same with the Warhammer and Starcraft series. Also, CoD (the first) did not copy CS (1.6). They were very different games back then.

Generally speaking, you need to have your own slant on an idea. Take a not particularly favorite genre of mine: the military shooter. The problem with so many modern military shooters isn't that they're modern military shooters, but they don't try very hard to stand out from the crowd. Battlefield 3 manages to stand out with vehicles, Crysis manages to stand out with its power suit and jungle/city environment. They've managed to carve out a niche for themselves. Whereas Homefront and Medal of Honor: Doorfighter have never been able to communicate how they're different from Call of Duty. Call of Duty manages to maintain its place by serving up real cool set-pieces in the single player game and continuing to fine-tune their multi-player experience.

If you can't figure out how to make your game stand out in the crowd, you're going to be dead on arrival.

 

[Altorin]

there is only one real law in video game design - do, don't show

basically, if you have an opportunity for the player to feel integrated into a scene, you should take that opportunity at every possible step. Exposition should be explored through gameplay, not get in the way of gameplay.

There's nothing wrong with copying as long as you have an engaging product at the end. If you can copy and make it better, please, freaking do, because we need "better" in this industry. The problem comes when designers copy things that they don't understand. If you're going to copy a game element, you really need to understand it, even more then in other mediums. You have to understand what worked in the original, what didn't, and have a keen insight on how to make improvements while at the same time not shooting yourself in the foot, it's difficult.

 

[Altorin]

As for the Starcraft/40k comparison, can we give up that dead horse already? Yes, the setting is similar from an outside view, but if you pay more then a little attention, they have very different nuances. The beings in 40k are on an order of magnitude higher then starcraft. Ultramarines are designed to be the absolute pinnacle of humanity, in terms of physiology, psychology and technology. Terran Marines are just dudes in power suits. This sort of thing applies to each of the races and their 40k equivalencies. 40k is a much huger world with a much longer scope. There are similarities, but everyone knows that, and you do nothing by pointing it out. Starcraft wasn't made in a bubble, and even though Games Workshop seems to think that it has the right to every interpretation of their ideas (which weren't even super original ideas to begin with), we should just sit back, take both IPs for what they are, and leave it at that.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Well I can't comment on that since I've never played either CoD or CS, but from my outsiders perspective all modern military shooters seem to be cut from the same cloth so there ya go. Maybe someone whose actually played them can cite the differences and maybe those differences are enough to distinguish them in the same way that Starcraft distinguishes itself from Warhammer 40K (but I doubt it).

CS has no aim-down-sights mechanics, heavy recoil, no RPG elements, no respawns (if you die, you stay dead until the next round), no regenerating health, no killstreaks, a totally different weapon/reward system (you get money for kills/winning/etc that you use to buy new guns and you lose the guns if you die), etc, etc.

Really, the only similarities between CS and COD is that they're shooters that are set in the modern day.

there is only one real law in video game design - do, don't show

basically, if you have an opportunity for the player to feel integrated into a scene, you should take that opportunity at every possible step. Exposition should be explored through gameplay, not get in the way of gameplay.

Completely agree. There's nothing wrong with cutscenes, but they should be used for things that aren't possible in gameplay. One of my principal complaints of DMC4 (and 3 to some extent) were how many action scenes featuring the main characters were done through cutscenes. I would have liked to play that! And videogame stories in general need to fuckin' stop with the awkwardly written info-dumps.

 

[Quadocky]

Geez, in my experience, there's only ever been one rule for games: Fun trumps everything else.

I thought it was shallow manipulating market schemes trumps everything else.