magerette
Hedgewitch
- Joined
- October 18, 2006
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Gamasutra has posted a summary of a lecture directed at game developers given by Blizzard's Rob Pardo at the GDC on the core design concepts used in Blizzard's multiplayer games, particularly WoW and Warcraft III.
The summary includes five basic design concepts: gameplay first; easy to learn, difficult to master; make everything overpowered; play don't tell; and make it a bonus.
Here's the explanation behind 'easy to learn, difficult to master:'
More information.
The summary includes five basic design concepts: gameplay first; easy to learn, difficult to master; make everything overpowered; play don't tell; and make it a bonus.
Here's the explanation behind 'easy to learn, difficult to master:'
More specifically, Pardo says the objective he pushes at Blizzard is more akin to "Easy to learn and almost impossible to master." Because almost all Blizzard games are primarily multiplayer, the company must focus a significant amount of depth to the multiplayer.
"When we shipped WoW, people say we dumbed everything down," said Pardo. "Actually, WoW is a really hardcore game, it just happens to be more accessible than a lot of other games."
Pardo says that the Blizzard design pipeline is to design the games depth first, because it's the hardest part of design. He suggested that rather than worrying about the multiplayer component of a game last, Blizzard tweaks that component first and feeds what they learn into the single-player campaign.
More information.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2006
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