A New Attitude for the Game Industry.

(I wrote this back in the summer. For some reason, I never posted it.)

My playing of Mirror's Edge has got me thinking about the way we make games...

It seems to me that a lot of games these days are more like proofs of concept rather than full games. They are more like a highly polished demo of a really neat mechanic than a full game exploiting that mechanic well.

Mirror's Edge is a good example of this. As you can see in previous posts, I think there are a few ways in which the game can be improved. This short game was a great way to prove that yes, we can make a game about parkour. After making seven or eight short chapters, we can now move on and work on a full 15 chapter game with a few tweaks and new features.

Portal is another example of these proof of concept games. It was a very short game and proved that a game whose central mechanic is a new law of physics could work - both artistically and commercially. It was a fantastic triumph of game design. But so far, Portal 2 looks like it will be even better. After watching all the videos, it looks like it took what Portal 1 did and improved it in every way possible.

This kind of iterative development is supposed to happen in the development process, though, right?

Yes. But I think there's value in seeing what the audience likes and doesn't like - beyond a focus group. It gives the developers time to regroup. To wait for the audience to contribute some good ideas. To figure out how the heck they can make the story better, the levels more devious. Rather than developing something and iterating in the team until it's perfect, why don't we do what these teams have done and release small versions of the ideas we believe in? Then, after audience reaction and some more time to percolate in-house, we could go back in, tidy it up, and build a bigger, badder, more awesome version of the game we sort of already designed.