But is it fun?

I spose this is aimed more at people who earn money from games design but it'd be cool to hear from everyone.

How important would you say it is to actually enjoy playing a game you are designing? Do you ever design a game knowing that others will enjoy it, even if you dont? Maybe you just enjoy the actual process of making the game (I dunno, to see if you are able to do it maybe?)

I'm currently writing a report for my uni project and the only real rule I had during development was 'the game must be fun' but while it seems important to me, it'd be intersting to see what others think, ta!

Hmm, I think when you're the developer, sometimes it's hard to have an unbiased opinion. I generally shy away from games that are blatantly repetitive (doing the exact same thing every 5 sec or less). It makes it hard to genuinely judge the game. About that time is when I go "hey honey, come check this out". And she says "that looks ok I guess". Note to self, don't ask your wife unless she's a gamer!

In conclusion, I'd say it's important to somewhat enjoy playing the game you're developing. Because if you don't then you might just sell it short and not create the game you could have.

I'd say it's important to enjoy your game. If you don't, it's bound to show in the game itself. Take most EA games - they're mostly soulless affairs. Fortunately they can shift product through licences and a marketing budget.

Prototyping can help.

Start 5 games, play them yourself. Which do you go back to? Get strangers to play them. Ask them which they would go back to. Split the 'fun' project into 5 new variants. Repeat.

I think it'd be foolish to jump in and write a design doc or start development without some basic proof of concept.

It depends on the game genre. If the game has some random factors, it may be fun for the developer as well. But if you're working on a level for a FPS game, you'll know everything, there's nothing to explore and that's why it's hard to say if it's fun or not when played the first time.

But this is exactly why I like 3D games - enter and explore a virtual world of fantasy. forget the real world for some time. like a book or a movie, only much more plastic, real.

Personally I sometimes play with random world generation ideas, but they are never as good as conventionally produced levels.

So, if I still like to play my games, even if I already played them a zillion times and there ain't no surprises anymore, then at least the controls etc. seem to be nice.

That said, todays expectations are extreme. Everything that isn't a multimillion blood sweat and tears mega production will get absolutely no respect. Digital decadence IMHO.

I enjoyed playing my match-3 games and I enjoy playinh my current game a lot.

Some of the larger games I've put together which have taken a lot of time and money I don't find as fun as the ones I've never finished but which are still neat entertaining little games on their own. However I don't make games to sell so they kind of have to be entertaining for myself & friends to play otherwise there is not much point in making them.

I love playing my games more than others. In fact it's sometimes hard to finish a game as I'm playing it too much (I tell the missus it's research)

I enjoy programming. I wouldn't code anything If I didn't however, should contracts be written, you have to finish what you started- and I do.

I seem to have certain moments when the game comes alive and suddenly becomes much more fun, and these spur me onwards to continue with the project - a few days ago I added (correctly this time) steering wheel support into SRX, and all of a sudden I found myself playing the game more than coding it, smiling and laughing as I drifted the car around. I had a similar moment when I added the engine sounds for the first time.

Some parts of the process just seem to add so much to the game, but I find little fun in (for example) getting the front end working - stuff like that I find really boring, perhaps because it has nothing to do with the way the game plays. Ploughing through the front end really puts me off the project and makes me want to do something else - it's no coincidence that my Road Engine NFS ripoff thing was born when I was really sick of SRX having just redone the entire front end for the second time - I just wanted to go and play with the physics stuff again.

Thanks everyone!


Haha, I'd love to be in this situation!

As for working on the front ends I agree. That said, once I had actually finished the front end everything felt more complete, even though there was still alot of work to be done on the main engine.

Yeah when you have even a basic front end and some kind of "play level, complete level" flow in place the game suddenly feels more like a game instead of a tech-demo.

For me, I try not to focus on the front end as being "boring" because I know that when it's done the game should be ready to beta test and that's an exciting prospect.

GUI and Front-End stuff is killer. Even right now I'm having to discipline myself to get GUI demo code done. I once wrote an entire GUI system and it was fun, but once completed, I was very fed up ot GUI coding.

I have been lucky so far as in the products I've worked on require more work by the artist than myself. If I was one and the same, I'd have quit this programming scene a few years ago due to lack of skill!.