Game designers hating SC2 - Page 3

I think you're all misunderstanding the sin of these game designers.

Their sin is not disliking RTS's. It isn't disliking RTS's for specious reasons like being real-time. As silly as it sounds, I can understand that point. Their sin isn't even not understanding RTS games; not everyone should understand every genre of games.

Their sin is pride, pure and simple. The sin from which all others flow.

If you see a group of people who are playing a particular genre of game, and you look upon that genre with disdain, that's your right. That's fine. However, if you're a game designer, who's job it is to understand gameplay, it is your duty to understand gameplay in all its myriad shapes and splendor. Even the ones you don't like. Especially those.

It is the very height of arrogance for a game designer to say that your gameplay is objectively wrong without being able to back that up with facts. For a game designer to conclude that some gameplay is wrong, they will need evidence. Facts and reasonable conclusions and inferences based on those facts. This body of evidence must include a detailed understanding of what it is that people actually like about that gameplay. Without this, you simply cannot draw that kind of conclusion and be intellectually honest.

See, it isn't that they want to take the real-time out of RTS games that's the problem. And it isn't that they're stupid enough to even say that that is the problem. The problem is that they simply put do not care to find out if their preconceived notions are actually congruent with the facts or not.

And this is an epidemic in the game designing community. They lack any systematic and objective way of understanding game design, so they jump from subjective impression ("I don't like X") to objectivity ("X is bad gameplay") without even noticing they've crossed an important line.

I personally hate rhythm games. They're awful. I can't stand them. They're basically Simon while playing music.

But I understand rhythm games. And if you strapped me down and forced me to sit down and design one, I would probably do a halfway decent job. And most important of all, if I had to design one, I would ask people about what they like. You know, collect actual information, rather than what I think I know.

It absolutely disgusts me to see game designers slacking off like this. So tied up in their own preconceived biases that they can't possibly fathom that there is more to RTS gameplay than they think.

The most important wisdom is knowing what you don't know. And these guys don't have that. Even worse, they believe that they do know, which means they make stupid statements like this.



I honestly wouldn't mind seeing more RTS-style games with off-board unit production. Pure real-time tactics.

Now, they wouldn't be C&C or StarCraft or anything. But it would be interesting to see more of this style of play.