Can a Badly Designed Game Still be Good? | Design Delve
Added 2024-01-05 17:16:34 +0000 UTCThe next episode of Design Delve is now available!
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Can't say I've ever been so nostalgic for anything in my life that I'd positively promote it to line the pockets of someone who has made it her life's work to encourage genocide of a vulnerable minority group.
Egor A. Palchyk
2024-01-07 23:27:57 +0000 UTCLudo plushies and no bitches stickers.
Jeffrey Pikul
2024-01-07 19:41:14 +0000 UTCSo I’ll discuss properly the questions posed in the delve on discord. But three things from me here: 1. Another solid vid - keep up the good work 👍 2. The merch ad at the end was laugh out loud funny 👌 3. Ludo plushy!!!!😀
Pete3.141
2024-01-06 08:21:23 +0000 UTCObviously this is a nuanced question that deserves thought, discussion and healthy debate. It's also a question that I can pretty confidently say won't have a singular, definite answer that isn't some wishy-washy over generalized mess. That being said I do have some thoughts: 1. I think there is merit to the 'If you had fun playing the game then it was a good experience' argument. In the same vein that someone's favorite movie can be because you spent its length razzing it and throwing popcorn at the screen or a terrible dive bar being someone's regular because it's where they met their best friend. At the risk of over-generalization: games were originally created to entertain players, and while both the medium and the industry have evolved to become so much more than quarter-munchers, that same sentiment still lives in any game that is commercialized: To entertain. To entrance. To provide a world to get lost in however you end up doing so. Some of the most fun I've had has been watching speedrunners demolish terrible games from ages past while absolutely T-Posing on the developer's proposed limitations. Or watching a man complete Fromsoft games with fruit. Or watching a streamer play Getting Over It for six hours and purposefully fail at the same section to salt-bait his chat. The point of these wasn't the game themselves but the experience the game provide the framework for. I don't personally feel like this should be taken as 'Don't care, had fun' I do think that if you were entertained by a game, in whatever manner, then the game deserves partial credit. (Insert Russel Crowe's Gladiator here: "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?") 2. Even the worst (Referring to quality, not content. There's a lot out there on the internet that deserves to never see the light of day and who's creators I hope one day regret their creation) game has some passion to it. It might not be everyone on the team (especially if it's a big team like Starfield), or present in every aspect but it's pretty likely that some dev, sound engineer, tester, artist, musician, animator etc. put blood, sweat and tears into parts of their work and should rightfully get to be proud of those bits. Even if the overall product was as Yahtzee would put it 'Spunkgargleweewee'. Too Human was a terrible TERRIBLE game by metrics of control, story, and camera, but it's aesthetic was interesting enough to get me to try it, and I remember the environments being quite enthralling for their time. It wasn't enough to salvage the game by any metric, but they were present and I don't believe those little touches deserve to be written off. I don't like the idea of a lot of little achievements like those being swept under a rug labeled 'bad game' and forever relegated as bad by context. 3. What about when a game has ideas/controls/motifs/characters that were initially charming, interesting and desirable but overstayed their welcome? In this context does that make the design and/or implementation of those things bad or do they become bad only in the context of being too stretched out? Would JarJar have been remembered as a better character if he bumbled as much but then stayed behind for the rest of the film and was only seen as a cameo later in the movie? I often see in reviews that it's listed in a game review that a game knowing how long it should stick around for is considered a very desirable thing. If a studio's manglement forces it to make its game to be twice as long by dilution of content then is that content itself diminished, or would one consider only the game as a whole to be less good?
Dnaps
2024-01-05 23:24:02 +0000 UTCI got an example I accidentally discovered this past year: Watch Dogs Legions. Conceptually this is a great game undermined by bad balancing. Every mission can be approached two ways: Stealth around, or kill everything. The problem was the way they balanced the game, the stealth around was too hard, so practically everyone that played it went the kill everything route, and it was boring. I used mods and cheats to make playing the stealth around game easier, and purposely avoided killing if possible. Suddenly the lame looter shooter became the Deus Ex clone it was originally designed to be, and all it needed was a different balancing strategy. So yeah, lame game that nobody plays, and abandoned by its developer is good actually, if you cheat the right way.
Ariane Barnes
2024-01-05 23:11:05 +0000 UTCTo answer some of the questions about "can a badly designed game be good?" I think the answer is heavily dependent on the terms we use. The distinction on a number of things I deeply enjoy, but were poorly designed, poorly made, etc, is not that they were good, but rather, that they were enjoyable. "This is not a well made game, it is not good, but I did have fun." -- Oftentimes, too, some of that fun is in spite of, not because of, the way the game was made. If one lives in a garbage dump, and one merely has a particularly large elephant turd wrapped in tinfoil for entertainment, that doesn't make turdball a good game. It just makes what you've done with it, entertaining enough to suit your needs. I would also say that something that also very much keeps a badly designed game from being good, is what the cost to create it was. I do not know much about, the working conditions specifically in making Starfield, but given the scope and quantity and visual fidelity present, as well as Bethesda's continual acknowledge of "yeah, we still crunch, but we're trying to do better," -- but that particular rhetoric being repeated for almost a decade now, "yeah we've crunched, but we're trying to do better" going as far back as 2014, with no signs of stopping, I would argue that, the human cost of a poorly designed game, also can keep it from being good, even if it was enjoyable. The one scenario in which I can argue that, a poorly designed game being, good, separate from its ability to be enjoyed, is situations in which something is... poorly designed, deliberately. To evoke certain things in the story, the experience. But then it gets complicated, because then, if it's done well, then it wraps back around into being well designed again, because it's achieving its goal even if it is, perhaps, deliberately unenjoyable for a period of it. I reference something like the Drakengard games, which, ostensibly, kind of hates the player. Anyway, it's a good and interesting conversation, and what you define as "good" is really the big starting place for things. I personally think "badly made, but enjoyable" is, entirely reasonable, and also, "badly made and also unenjoyable," and also, "badly made, and the conditions under which the game was made, made the world worse, regardless of how enjoyable it was," are all valuable things to consider when asking the question "Can a badly designed game be good?" Anyway, many warm regards to y'all. May the new year treat you kindly. Stay safe and Stay Cozy out there!
Sunspot
2024-01-05 18:34:17 +0000 UTCI would very much second this sentiment, Demi. For a group of authors and writers who fully understand that the concept of "there is no such thing as an apolitical story," it is always, disheartening for when lipservice is paid to that particular franchise. I do not begrudge people their private enjoyment of things, but to highlight it in a time in which those who are making great money off the franchise continue to promote aggressive and unkind political agendas targeting multiple minorities seems, in bad taste. While corporations in general are, not anyone's friends, it is a rare thing that the heads of development, the authors of a great work of fiction, etc, are so singlehandedly directly involved in campaigns of hate, so directly using their money and status as prominent public figures to demonize their neighbors.
Sunspot
2024-01-05 18:22:57 +0000 UTCI appreciate the message of the video as a whole, but I'm disappointed by the decision to prominently feature Hogwarts Legacy
Demirath
2024-01-05 17:32:55 +0000 UTCDeadly Premonition exists. Therefore the answer is yes
Roboknob
2024-01-05 17:29:57 +0000 UTC
