Attn: Game Designers and Artists.

[Johanna]

Call yourself an Artist? Call yourself a Designer?

Some challenges set by David Perry of Shiny Entertainment.

If you complete them well, you might get some pretty stuff too. [A personal letter of recommendation, a design award & a ‘DP Recommended’ logo for your resume have all been mentioned so far for completing the first challenges.]

I just thought this might be useful for some people.

So yeah, feel free to harangue me if I’ve been super naughty and put this in the wrong place or something.

Edit: Dogma 2001: A Challenge to Game Designers by Ernest Adams

[Jayel]

holy crap, that's a lot of guideline. with hardly any prize.

tempting...

[Kode]

holy crap, that's a lot of guideline. with hardly any prize.

tempting...

Well the prize is the knowledge that you've got it in you to be a designer/artist.

But you're right. That's a little too much passion for me at this stage.

[Erkki]

I'm thinking about maybe doing the first designer challenge. If only to improve myself as a hobbyist game designer. So far I've got lots of ideas but I've done very little and maybe I need a little external push like that.

[Roderick]

Perry's designer's challenge is a very good one. I'd learn a great many thing making a lot of lists of my findings on examining every good game to date. I'm bookmarking it for when it comes in handy.

[Chris]

Man, that sounds like an awesome thing to do even if I'm not trying to get hired by Perry. Chronicalling it could make a good Thumbs article.

[Twilo]

Dave Perry can go f*ck himself.

Want to be a game designer?

Design a game.

[Chris]

Dave Perry can go f*ck himself.

Want to be a game designer?

Design a game.

...or be hired by Dave Perry.

[Twilo]

...or be hired by Dave Perry.

Somehow I find it fairly unlikely that Dave Perry is going to hire anyone with no qualifications.

He's farming his forums for kudos.

That's a Video game idea right there!

[Jaero]

Occasionally, and I don't know 'cause I've only lived in this world, people do have brains which harbor a great aptitude for things like this, and in their hearts may lie passion... and sometimes porn. The point of this has nothing to do with Dave Perry, but about things that can help better oneself as a Designer. You're missin' the point, chief.

[baconian]

(I don't care if you played the games before, you need to look at them again.)

yeah. the top 100 best-selling ones? (none of which are by dave perry (wild guess). earthworm jim is hilarious though) nobody has the time, but if you can rely on your own judgement from when you were a kid, you can come up with something.

your memory tends to hold onto things that you like the most. making a game (album, painting, book...) tends to warp your judgement of your own work. only given time can you judge the true merit of an original creation. revisiting is always counter-productive. qed.

[Johanna]

I’m glad some of you found this interesting at least. It’s only because I was thinking about Earthworm Jim that I even found it.

I find the artist challenge a bit weak though.

The designer challenge looks like it would help your knowledge of different aspects of design, and be pretty fun too. The artist one doesn’t seem to be as useful.

Maybe it’s because I’d have a hard time analysing characters like Lara Croft objectively. But I don’t know, perhaps a giant pair of boobs really is the secret to a creating a great character.

[Redwall]

Well, they've sold a lot of movies...

[SiN]

(none of which are by dave perry (wild guess)

actually, sacrifice is somewhere there in the list, and that was a rather brilliant game that dave perry developed at shiny.

i think the idea is pretty good, but very impractical. its a very good idea to critique games, helps when ur developing your own games.

SiN

[RLacey]

Why should we critique only the best-selling games? Yes, there's going to be some dross in there, but shouldn't we also critique flops to try and work out what went wrong? Otherwise we risk falling into the same traps. But then, I'm not David Perry, so I suppose I'm not allowed an opinion on these matters .

He just wants some more people to buy Enter the Matrix.

[Chris]

IIRC, it wasn't "best selling", it was "best reviewed", which could also include poorly selling games.

[RLacey]

IIRC, it wasn't "best selling", it was "best reviewed", which could also include poorly selling games.

In which case I still think that his thinking is flawed. It's important to play bad games as well as good ones, so that you have a better idea of the pitfalls.

[Redwall]

Yeah, Beyond Good and Evil is on the PC list...

I thought I might try the top 10 or so... but #1 is Half-Life 2.

[Erkki]

The more I think about this, the more it doesn't really sound like a good idea...

[Steve Ince]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a crafty way to keep people off his back for a long time. Analysing 100 games would probably take you the best part of a year. If it's such a hot method, HE should analyse the games and then write a book about it so we can all benefit from his wisdom.

Choosing 100 games to analyse in this manner seems a little haphazard - what relevance will a football game have if you want to design FPS games, or a car racing game if you want to design RPGs?

[Roderick]

Very true. But I think it wouldn't be wise to neglect other genres altogehter when you're doing research. There are loads of good things to be found in every genre and you can take the best of each, or come up with new ideas. Of course you were just making a point, and I agree it seems a bit random to look at every good game. And obviously I can't judge whether Perry is just using it to elude his obviously MAD following. But still, his 'challenge' seems like a smart thing to do. If only to increase awareness.

[Johanna]

If you didn’t want complete the 100 games challenge, but just analysed the games you did play in a similar way, I still think it would be useful.

The good thing about attempting a challenge like this, even if you didn’t complete half of it, is that you are forced to play games you might never usually bother with. That way, like Rodi said, you can take things that work well or interesting ideas from one genre and implement them into another.

I do agree that it’s not very realistic to analyse 100 games in any short amount of time, especially if you have a demanding job etc. But to be fair, it does say it’s a passion test.

Oh, and if Chris did chronicle it for a Thumbs article, you wouldn’t need a book about it.

In other news, I just found a ‘new’ challenge for the designers. It’s weird; I could swear I’d read all of Ernest Adams’ Gamasutra articles before.

[Jaero]

Heh. Ernest has a ton of articles. I often think I've read them all too. It would be cool to have a good Dogma 2001 game though. Wonder if it's possible to make one, and still have it be a hit.

[Jake]

In which case I still think that his thinking is flawed. It's important to play bad games as well as good ones, so that you have a better idea of the pitfalls.

You're missing the point. We all play our share of bad or at least not-so-good games. The challenge he's issued will not just "make you play a lot of well reviewed good games" but is intended to get you to force yourself to really get a feel for a lot of games and more importantly a lot of genres of games that you would never really immerse yourself in. I think that's far more important than playing a lot of bad adventure games.

edit - weird. what compelled me to open this thread and reply to it when others had already replied in the same way weeks ago? sorry.