Porter's World

Becoming A Game Developer

As we’re all aware, or should be aware of, the path to becoming a game developer is not one that can be completed over night. Not only must you have certain mental abilities, but the skills that you must posses can not only exist, but must be refined. For example, I myself have a good eye for what elements in a game make the game more fun, and the elements that just make a game annoying. Despite my keen eye for this, I have a lot to learn, as all developers do. Certain activities should be done on a regular basis to refine the skills needed to be a successful developer, whether you’re a professional or just starting out. Playing games of all types on a regular basis is one of them.

It’s no mystery that playing games is something that all game developers should do. If you don’t play games that are successful, as well as unsuccessful, how can you possibly make a game that will come close to doing great itself? This may be common sense, but it goes a bit deeper. A common misconception floating around game developers and game testers is that when we play games, we’re just playing games. It’s not exactly like that, and if you think it is, I urge you to read on. When a developer or tester is playing games, they’re doing far more than laying back and enjoying some awesome games. As a developer, you must constantly analyze various aspects of games while playing them. Some of these include the length of the game, the fun factor, bugs, pacing, what’s annoying, difficulty, how easy is it to understand, and so on. Each of these aspects is just a main category as well, all can contain sub categories making the list larger than you would expect. It’s these game aspects that you need to pay attention to when playing a game.

Let’s take a deeper look into a specific game genre. Let’s go with any generic “Beat em up” game, Streets of rage, Captain Commando, Turtles in Time, take your pick. When thinking of these games, what important characteristics of the genre come to mind? First off, I would look into the move speed of the character. If the character is moving too slow, then those scrolling backgrounds better be damn pretty or the player is going to get bored fast. Second off, the amount of enemies the game throws at you per each area needs to be carefully thought out. If a game has too many enemies per small checkpoint, it may do one of two things. First off, it may be too hard. These games often aren’t too hard, that is, until one or more enemies decides to attack you at once like the little punks they usually are. Second off, it may make the pacing of the game drag, so it’s important that the number of enemies is too few rather than too many. Next, what makes this game stand out from the others? Almost every game out there has another game like it, if not many, so it’s important to have a few original features. In these games, that usually consisted of special moves (such as the cop car in streets of rage, or the different abilities for the 4 characters in Captain Commando). Although walking around and beating guys up is fun, the occasional destructible terrain such as boxes or phone booths is a very welcome addition. Looking back to difficulty, it’s important that there are enough items laying around to replenish your health (such as the infamous piece of meat on a place), but it’s also important not to have too many as this would decrease the difficulty dramatically. As far as level design goes, it’s important to keep the visuals new, and the way the level progresses interesting. For instance, most levels move left to right, the end resulting in a boss fight. It’s important that this isn’t the case in all levels. Elevators leading to new floors, holes in the floor to drop down into, getting on trains, hopping onto moving trucks, and many other forms of level navigation add to level design greatly and help mix things up. As you can see, I’ve gone into some pretty deep detail as to what should be examined in a “Beat em up” game. That said, there’s plenty more that could be examined; this is only a start, a nice start, but a start none the less.

Playing games doesn’t sound so fun now does it? Well it is, so don’t let the above get you down. Playing games as a developer is definitely hard work, but it’s one of the best activities you can do to get yourself to become a better game developer. In addition, a true game developer can analyze a game while enjoying it simultaneously. That said, if you’re a game developer in the works, or someone who’s just forgotten about how important it is to analyze games, make sure you really tear what makes a game what is apart next time you play.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3