When referring to video games, Gameplay is the term used to describe the players experience when playing the game. This encompasses how the player interacts with the game, how the game then responds to the player, and then how the player reacts to the game. Arguably the greatest game designers are the creators of the primary genres, this being “Space war” as the first shoot ‘em up, “let’s play tennis” being the first sports game and Pacman being the first survival horror/drug collection game. But the best developers currently are the one’s who are making the most significant advances in the pre established genres. Nobody can deny that Infinity Ward’s work on the call of duty franchise has been incredibly successful, but is far from ground breaking, it has been more of a fine tuning of the fast paced first person shooter genre, non the less very successful. But the current leading lights are developers such as Naughty Dog and Bioware, who are creating games with engaging narratives, rivalling any other medium, or Epic Games or Crytek with leading game technology.
Although many developers may have “celebrity” lead designers, such as Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux or Konami’s Hideo Kojima, game design is far from one person’s responsibility. Initial ideas for games can come from research by publishers, a developers dedicated design team, or in small developers it could be any member of the team. Undoubtedly the design process will always continue throughout the games production, where input of ideas can come from any team member, or occasionally even testers. Sometimes themes, features or even entire game designs can be demanded by publishers, making the designers job more of a problem solving task than a creative one. This usually occurs after an exceptional new game is released, and there are a slew of copycat games or copied features ride on any minor change, such as regenerating health, which was not invented by, but popularized by the call of duty series, which has become the staple health system in almost all shooters.
I play a wide variety of genres of games, but to generalize, there are a few key features I really admire in video games. I’m a keen player of engaging single player campaigns, so any feature that can make the game world that little bit more believable, no matter how subtle is always going to excite me, but there are some major features I always look out for. The use of humour to create some three dimensional characters is always appealing, even the members of B company in Dice’s Bad Company have so much more charm and personality, making the experience so much more engaging, just by bringing a bit of humour into the game, and making anything differ from the immensely dull characters from most shooters, who’s only concern is their dwindling supply of ammo. Another game which used some simple humour and personality to great effect is Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: the sands of time, The humour admittedly isn’t even that witty, but it makes the characters believable. Another great feature of Prince of Persia has to be it’s incredible art direction, with its use of light and atmosphere, but mainly it’s epic scale make it a fantastic place to hop, skip, jump, wall run and generally move in an energetic manner around in. A more recent title that I really admire for it’s art direction is Bioware’s Mass Effect, borrowing it’s style from many 80’s sci-fi movies, and more precisely, and quite heavily, taking inspiration from my most favourite Concept Artist, Syd Mead. Another feature I admire from mass effect is it’s not afraid to challenge the player mentally, with some brief detective sections, and some relatively complex moral decisions. Other games I enjoy for their capability to stimulate my brain are the impressive puzzles in Valve’s Portal and the complex tactical decisions required in Creative Assembly’s Total War series.
But a game can still be great, even if it has none of these, as long as it has an engaging and unique selling point. This can be well demonstrated by the Wii which is entirely based on the single feature of motion control. Proving that brand new ideas coming from left field still happen, and can be very successful. Ultimately what any game should really do is just provide some unique and engaging entertainment, or on the other hand just let you blow stuff up.
