Comments on: FFXII diary. Mostly rants http://gamedesignreviews.com/scrapbook/ffxii-diary-mostly-rants-2/ Inductive Game Design Research Thu, 17 May 2012 18:29:27 +0200 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 By: Yu-Chung Chen http://gamedesignreviews.com/scrapbook/ffxii-diary-mostly-rants-2/comment-page-1/#comment-195 Yu-Chung Chen Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:45:00 +0000 http://gamedesignreviews.com/reviews/ffxii-diary-mostly-rants-2/#comment-195 re: lecture on service design.<br/><br/>Yeah, I can't help but to think of <a HREF="http://www.lostgarden.com/2006/01/creating-system-of-game-play-notation.html" REL="nofollow">Danc's essay on game play notation</a>.<br/><br/>I don't know the Half Life feature yet, though. Gotta skim through it some time. re: lecture on service design.

Yeah, I can’t help but to think of Danc’s essay on game play notation.

I don’t know the Half Life feature yet, though. Gotta skim through it some time.

]]> By: Krystian Majewski http://gamedesignreviews.com/scrapbook/ffxii-diary-mostly-rants-2/comment-page-1/#comment-193 Krystian Majewski Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:40:00 +0000 http://gamedesignreviews.com/reviews/ffxii-diary-mostly-rants-2/#comment-193 Exciting! Hearing today's KISD lecture about Service Design I realized something funny. The cool thing about Service Design is that they sell smart thinking and ideas - literally "intelectual property". Therefore, every Service Design company puts a lot of effort into polishing the process of creating that intellectual property - because this is what they sell after all. They end up having a very well defined, well thought-out design process with lots of activities with intangible results. Often it seems like silly stuff. You are paying them a shitload of money and they invite people from streets and drink coffee and chat with them. They give them some funny cards and play with them. Or they will simply follow a person the whole day and make notes. From a rational standpoint this doesn't seem to make sense. Yet, this process is set up very deliberately and it seems like in the end, it yields exactly the kind of results they are looking for, even if the intermediate results are invisible.<br/><br/>My point is that I do respect how those companies focus so much on developing and maintaining those "non-efficient" solutions to end up with qualitatively superior products. I think the process is something completely overlooked in games. The only case I heard about was the <a HREF="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991210/birdwell_01.htm" REL="nofollow">Valve Cabal</a> thing and .. you know.. it's pretty much the least you can do. It's pretty obvious stuff and only scratching the surface. Also I don't like the result.<br/><br/>So I'm fond of the Idea of systematically writing out what you notice about a game when you play it. In a way, this might be also a kind of "non-efficient" solution. I would like to try to develop a well thought-out process of game design. I think looking at games, especially at details like fonts is one big part of the puzzle. In other words: "keep it up!!" ^_^<br/><br/>The thing with fonts: It might be because Final Fantasy was made in Japan. I remember, Ridge Racer R4 was quite stylish, but had some awful typography (messed up <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descender" REL="nofollow">descenders</a>) and I'm pretty sure it was because the Japanese designers had too little experience with western typography. Exciting! Hearing today’s KISD lecture about Service Design I realized something funny. The cool thing about Service Design is that they sell smart thinking and ideas – literally “intelectual property”. Therefore, every Service Design company puts a lot of effort into polishing the process of creating that intellectual property – because this is what they sell after all. They end up having a very well defined, well thought-out design process with lots of activities with intangible results. Often it seems like silly stuff. You are paying them a shitload of money and they invite people from streets and drink coffee and chat with them. They give them some funny cards and play with them. Or they will simply follow a person the whole day and make notes. From a rational standpoint this doesn’t seem to make sense. Yet, this process is set up very deliberately and it seems like in the end, it yields exactly the kind of results they are looking for, even if the intermediate results are invisible.

My point is that I do respect how those companies focus so much on developing and maintaining those “non-efficient” solutions to end up with qualitatively superior products. I think the process is something completely overlooked in games. The only case I heard about was the Valve Cabal thing and .. you know.. it’s pretty much the least you can do. It’s pretty obvious stuff and only scratching the surface. Also I don’t like the result.

So I’m fond of the Idea of systematically writing out what you notice about a game when you play it. In a way, this might be also a kind of “non-efficient” solution. I would like to try to develop a well thought-out process of game design. I think looking at games, especially at details like fonts is one big part of the puzzle. In other words: “keep it up!!” ^_^

The thing with fonts: It might be because Final Fantasy was made in Japan. I remember, Ridge Racer R4 was quite stylish, but had some awful typography (messed up descenders) and I’m pretty sure it was because the Japanese designers had too little experience with western typography.

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