That's a hard call, but seeing how others do things is great way to get inspiration. Some things are just cut and dry though, i got an idea and I'm running with it. If it's a little like your game, then kudo's to your game.

This is great advice, I for one used to be one of the developers who didn't play as much as I wanted, then I realized how much I could learn and started playing games as much as I can. I think it is key that we realize you don't have to beat the whole game to experience it, when I realized that I was able to play more games.

I completely agree with Brandon, but I'd also add some stress on the specific games anyone might attempt to play being much more diverse than they usually are. Not just with respect to genre, either; in fact, not even so much with respect to genre. Instead, developers should be playing games from other countries and cultures, including board games, strategy games, sports, and other activities. They should look for games that are not the current "big thing" but have been overlooked, neglected, or simply missed due to lack of marketing or recognition in their local market and peer group.

As an example, I think Western developers, publishers, and gamers need to play many more East Asian offerings that have not been licensed for release to other markets around the globe. Conversely, it's also true that East Asian developers should play Western games. However, the caveat to this is that the Western market exerts a far greater influence around the world in the past 10 years or so than East Asian markets. This is true in culture, politics, and other areas of life. This means that East Asian developers are already more exposed to Western influences than the reverse.

That's just one example, though; the same thing is true for other areas of the world. Also, that's not the only way to consider a diverse approach. For example, how many developers play or participate in activities that people who are middle-aged and older do as a regular form of entertainment or hobby? How many developers are aged 45 or older? In other words, the industry needs to adopt a much more diverse outlook on its workforce as well as the potential market while avoiding stereotyping. Participation in different diverse groups allows new ideas to flourish but shouldn't lead to assumptions that everyone of any group enjoys that same activities.

You left out an important point: World of Warcraft doesn't count. Seriously.

I've known an awful lot of console game designers that only play WoW, and it often shows in the kind of ideas they come up with.

The problem is this, like many other aspects of making games, game knowledge is difficult to quantify. An encyclopedic knowledge of games doesn't automatically make you will be a better designer, programmer or artist. But, in an industry as risk-averse as this one can be, it can help you see your ideas in action without having to devote resources to them. This is especially if you're open to playing and researching games that aren't similar to your current project.

Often times people will take umbrage when you suggest their new pet idea was in some obscure Japanesse game they've never heard of, but knowing what worked in that game and what didn't will only make your game stronger.

This is especially true for artists. The art department, in particular, is the dept. least likely to play games and most likely to be compared to other games, because quantifying and comparing art quality is a lot easier than doing it for design or programming, and also can be done in a store based on a box or video.

Basically, everyone should play as many games as they can, and in as many genres as they can stomach. You'll be a better informed and more flexible developer for it.

Influence is inescapable. The fewer games you play the more you are influenced by only one thing.

I was thinking you were going to make a few points as to why playing WoW doesn't count, but it was left pretty open and suggests you might just have something against MMOs.

I understand if your designers are directly copying and not scaling or altering ideas from WoW to make them a good fit for a current project, that's a sign of laziness and is a problem. But done properly I'd say there are some lessons and examples learned in WoW (or any MMO) that can prove beneficial if executed properly.

For example, a big exclamation point above a person's head is now common visual language for "HEY! I have something that needs doing, talk with me" which is a lot more beneficial than, say, EverQuest's system where you had to hail an NPC and manually dig through text for quest information hinted at by a keyword in brackets (/say Where is a book, /say Who has a book, /say What about a book. Ah, there we go). Players are pretty familiar with this, and while some angsty internet kids will scoff at how you copied WoW, it doesn't change the fact that you are using very clear and widely understood visual language to accomplish your goal of getting players to understand who they can talk to that has a quest they can undertake.

I've probably digressed a bit much from the topic (which I do certainly agree with!) but I'm just saying WoW and MMOs are not completely devoid of design examples and lessons that can prove beneficial to a project. ;)

I don't have a problem with WoW or MMOs - I play a non-WoW MMO, even. Didn't intend for it to come off that way, at all - in fact, my last two games have used the very exclamation point convention you mentioned.

If everyone is playing the the same game and more or less drawing the same influences and lessons from it, both good and bad, what's the point?

The point that I'm trying to make is that people should sample lots of games so they can draw on as many ideas and influences as possible, and I've run into more than my fair share of people who identify themselves as heavy game players, yet only play one single game heavily.

@Christiaan Moleman: I'm not sure I can agree with that. Miyamoto is one easy example, but it's not because he's a lone genius (although he is), it is because his sources of inspiration come from elsewhere.

Perhaps Miyamoto's case is something that only occurs in designers, where in most situations, having a wide variety of interests or hobbies means that you will be exposed to many more things that can influence your decisions for a project. Similarly, an artists may not play games but get artistic influences from movies, and so forth.

I guess the crux of it is that games are not the only place to get inspiration from. Perhaps an amendment to the author's original intention for this article could be more along the lines of how developers should constantly be seeking inspiration for new ideas (be it from games or otherwise). Games are just a good place for them because it's easier to quantify what works and doesn't, and it's also something that any developer from almost any department can get something from.

I'll go out onto a bit of a limb here and point out that WoW really doesn't have a lot of original gameplay mechanics. I really can't think of anything in WoW that didn't appear somewhere else, usually a long while before WoW was even a gleam in Blizzard's eye. This is not a slam on Blizzard, not at all... if those "source" innovator games were so great, why don't they have 11 million subscribers?

The answer is that execution > innovation. Blizzard is better than anybody else at refining and polishing a gameplay mechanic and combining them into a package with a great gestalt. They are otherwise conservative, and wait and see what innovations get traction before adopting them.

What does this have to do with the original thesis of this article? Simply this: We all know that there is nothing original under the sun, and your pet gameplay mechanic has almost certainly been done elsewhere. YOUR job is to do it BETTER. Once that's part of your axioms, and you realize it's all about integration and balance, seeing how other games' mechanics, playstyles and gestalts do (and do not) work is critical. Cultivating the instinct for "how is this going to play out" comes only from a breadth of exposure, and that exposure doesn't end when you land a job in the industry.

Game developers who don't play other games don't make games worth playing. They -can't-.

I really hope floating exclamation marks are NOT considered best practice.

Outcast did better (with characters waving to get your attention) in 1999.


@Sean. I did not mean my statement to exclude influences other than games. I restricted it to that only for the sake of punchy simplicity. We are entirely agreed that we should look outside of games for inspiration... in fact this probably the first thing you should make time for before playing other games. Then if you can fit it in, sit down in front of a screen some more.

HOWEVER, even if you have a rich life with all kinds of influences, if the only game you play is Starcraft, you will be doomed to make very inspired Starcraft clones forever.

Great article; I always seem busy either creating random stuff or (more recently) training in building skills for a desired profession or reading on various topics to broaden my sense of knowledge and understanding of all the nonsense that exists around us, that I don't find TOO much time to play games as much as I'd like. I'm not a professional (as in getting paid) and don't have any kids of my own, but time is time, and it goes by it's own (some'd say cruel) agenda. I've recently kinda seemed to find a system that works for me though; firstly, I usually just game on the weekends as that's my personal time to wind back and-while still working on stuff-scale back on the workload and just ENJOY some of that personal time. I also try doing all of my work early on, starting from the morning (trying to start even earlier, at around seven or eight) and up 'till about evening time, that way I have time to do stuff like watch a good flick, listen to some music (which I try to do while working), and play games. I also have a buddy that always goes for the new releases, and chill at his place about once a week or so and we just play games for a few hours.

Like I said before, I'm not exactly a "professional"; I don't work a 9-to-5 in this industry (yet) and dont' get paid, and my workload doesn't compare w/ a lot of people's, but I still personally think (given my skill level) it's a big workload but yet, through it all, I still make time to play games. I'll even play a few while I'm working on stuff, to rejuvenate the mind and so forth, and if you're willing to actively find some time, you CAN find the time, no matter what # of other stuff you have to do. It's really all about time management, (pretty much) end of story right there.

@Sean Parton: Couldn't agree more. In Miyamoto's case, he has A LOT of interests that aren't particularly gaming-related; he used to draw comics as a child, and plays a musical instrument (I think it's a banjo), in addition to growing a garden. He-and all of the best designers in the industry-know that being a true designer means being well-rounded, and having an interest in multiple areas of the arts (even if that means transposing something like martial arts-which isn't "art" in the basic sense-as art, which is what the designers of Virtua Fighter and Street Fighter, etc clearly did b/c those games are art, in my honest opinion) and understanding of various aspects of the world, be it nature, political, cultural, etc. That's one of the reasons I try learning as much of what's around as as possible; it just doesn't make sense to be so one-minded, b/c you cut off so much potential.

I also agree w/ everyone that says that in order to "understand" a game, you don't necessarily need to beat it completely; technically there are some games-like fighting games-you can't really "beat" b/c the only modes that have a sort of beginning and end are-in the end-secondary to the multiplayer aspect, and a good multiplayer game can be replayed indefinitely. You just need to get an understanding on the mechanics and what makes them work.

In a sense, I'd say even playing bad or terrible games is worth it, b/c I personally don't think there's a single game out there that isn't worth existing. What I mean by that is, even if a game plays terribly, it could have a great concept deep in there somewhere, but it just wasn't executed well...at all. I sometimes get the feeling so many designers these days only play games that have been rated exceptionally well, but sometimes it's the crappy game w/ the great concept that deserves a runthrough. Which reminds me..I should look for more bad games xD.

@ Robert Allen

FFXI does not have much of a midgame either, and because of the longer time it takes to get to max levels -- where there should be life at 45-62, there's none -- the grind is just longer.


Aside from EQ, I've always thought PSO/PSU did a nice job of allowing those of different levels (and of different time constraints to team together. It also is a better design for those who only have say an hour to 'do something' --- and by 'do something' I mean more than take a chocobo from Windy to Jueno. Even some mor traditional solo-style rpgs have worked in bits with smaller time constraints. My World My Way is basically a series of linked 30-45 minute adventures and 30 second Hero promises to be even quicker.

@Jeffrey Parsons: It's worth noting that the use of the GUI in the two cases are different (one shows that it has been alerted to your presence, the other shows that it wants your attention). If we wanted to be picky and claim who came up with putting symbols above a character/object's head to inform the player of something, we'd probably go farther back than that.

The beginning of the article has reminded me of why I hate the gaming industry today, and to what lengths if any I would become a part of it.

Designers need to not only play more games, they need to critically experience as many interesting things as possible. Biology, psychology, physics, music, current events, humor...there are innumerable sources of inspiration for a curious mind to explore. Why ARE these things interesting and how can I put that into a game? There is so much more to what people like to do in life that we can be putting into a virtual world for players to explore and play with.

Really, there is no reason anyone should be working 60 hour work weeks.

Video games are so profitable when successful, that if you actually had a high quality team (not lazy) who was given quality leadership and adequate time without deadlines, they could work less and by more efficient at what they do.

I have never understood why it takes so long for people to do such simple tasks, until I realized that it is because they are overworked and bored at work. Companies seem to believe that milking their employees dry with unpaid overtime and practical slave labor in addition to poor management and leadership-- is the way to go for profits.

Little do they realize how inefficient their employees are working, and how other countries (such as many countries in Europe) work less hours, less days, but are more efficient. Whoever invented the 8 hour work day and 5 day work week should be shot. Tell your employees that if they can do the same work in less hours, tell your leadership to be efficient rather than draconian, and not only will you have more efficient workers, but happier ones, a cleaner society, and higher quality products.