Tracy Fullerton: Game Design Workshop VS Youtube

Hot tip; bet on YouTube

Its time for me to go back to Tracy Fullerton.

But I have to be honest, I have tried to write this blog post a few times. I read chapters over and over trying to find something I wanted to talk about but I hate this text book. Its painfully boring, unimaginative and lacks the fun and soul that makes game design mean something. I could write an essay on how much I dislike this Textbook, but I'm not going to do that. Instead lets do something more fun and more nice. I'm going to highlight some YouTube channels and videos that are infinitely better resources and free. so, lets begin. 

GDC - https://www.youtube.com/@Gdconf/featured

GDC (Game Design Conference) is a legendary channel, honestly its a gold mine. According to its own description "GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more." In short they get professionals in the game design world to come in and talk about whatever they want. Most videos are half an hour to an hour long and presented my many legends of the game design world. This information is so valuable as each video is basically a university lecture by a industry veteran. 


Design Doc - https://www.youtube.com/@DesignDoc

Design Doc is a very clever channel, most of the videos cover specific mechanics or design concepts. things like save systems, boss rush's, day night cycles, or what makes a good rhythm game UX. In each video he really interrogates the idea from multiple angles, citing games that have done interesting or notable things in that space. If your looking for advice on some strange topic like, how should I introduce a secret boss fight in my game? come look for an answer here, you wont be disappointed. 


                                   Game Makers Tool Kit - https://www.youtube.com/@GMTK

GMTK is a great resource for learning about design, there are videos covering a wide range of topics and hosted by a great guy with solid video production levels. Personally I find his advice and thoughts really inspiring  and I know I'm not alone because every year he hosts the GMTK game jam on itch and it has been the largest game jam on itch for the past three years. I would say the most interesting videos on the channel come from the Boss Keys series, lets have a look at one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouO1R6vFDBo&list=PLc38fcMFcV_ul4D6OChdWhsNsYY3NA5B2

In this video Mark ( the host) talks about the dungeon design in Legend of Zelda. He cover the interesting difference between linear dungeons with single playable paths and more open dungeons that can be completed by going in different routes. How linear dungeons can be made to feel open and complex while still only really having one way to go. As well as how large complex dungeons can be made to be secretly simple and easy to pass through. He even calls out interesting moments and clever bits of design. Its great stuff over all and when I started making levels for my games this is the type of stuff I thought back on. 

These Channels and Videos, and many more like them, have been my real inspiration and where the majority of my education in game design have come from. Don't waste your time reading dusty text books, the real life and passion exists in the indie scene online. Everything you could want to know is out there, go get involved. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Assignment 3: Development Progress

Image
I swear its a logo officer, promise I didn't crop the Design Page Ok so, Lethal Cuts. Its a simple little fighting game but its got some interesting stuff going on. Lets start by going over the game as it was presented to the group and then ill talk about the changes I would (and hopefully will) implement as the lead designer.  lets look at the Design Page for Lethal Cuts. really this image should be all you need but ill explain anyway See that black controller? that's the most important information as far as I'm concerned. Move with the left stick, jump with A, attack with X, block with B. Ignore the Attack Direction stick, that's not implemented. The attack works basically how you expect and theirs a different animation if you attack in the air buts its pretty much the same attack. Block is a bit more complicated, your character turns to stone after a small pause becoming immune to hits for a short time. No health bars just if you take 3 hits you lose.  Now there'...
Read more

Assignment 3 Iteration and Changes

Image
  Just because I had to work on assignments doesn't mean I'm missing Halloween. I'm working hard, the whole team is, its coming up to end of semester and everything is due. After much playtesting and many meetings with the team we have agreed that some things need to change in Lethal Cuts. Blocking is terrible, its not fun or effective. Infact most people couldn't figure out it was a block without it being explained. The Air attack is kind of useless because it only works against other characters in the air and as there isn't any other reason to be in the air its just not used. Worst of all and maybe this is a result of the other issues, every match becomes both players slamming the attack button as fast as possible while standing in front of each other. The silver lining is that apparently thats pretty fun as most of our feedback has been really positive.  I think, and play testers agree, that the game need more movement and more reasons to move. As such I want to ...
Read more