Designing a game

It's a dream many of my generation live with: design a great game. I will start a series right here in an attempt to put together a great game design. This part will discuss the goals of the design.

The first question to ask is: What makes a game great?

This question is, of course, extremely tricky to answer. A single game will likely not be able to capture every aspect, but just taking things from popular games that already exist, we can start with a simple list:

• Accessibility - reach across genders, age categories, and pcs
• Atmosphere - especially in horror games
• Attachment - sense of responsibility for the character or its actions
• Cooperation - playing with others, offline or online. Forming clans or guilds
• Competition - competing against others directly (pvp) or indirectly (ladders)
• Customization - the look of the character, the space they own
• Distinction - someone playing the game can (and most of the time, will) have a different experience from someone else who has played it.
• Freedom - the ability to make choices and affect outcomes
• Graphics - technical (Half Life) or stylized (World of Warcraft)
• Rewards - some of the items listed above are their own rewards, but all great games have an excellent reward system. This item could be as simple as a sense of achievement, but it's something to keep in mind
• Social Interactions - chat, speech

And just to clarify, these are aspects a good design can control. The more technical aspects that can contribute to a gaming experience, such as gameplay, is a more technical issue. The goal of this game, then, is to specialize in as many of these areas as possible. And I say specialize in this case, even though it is contrary to maximum coverage, because I want to ensure that each aspect is a refined piece in the overall design, and not some mechanic that's just thrown in because we had to have it. For example, I wouldn't consider hotseat play to be satisfying for competition in Civilization 4. The game just takes too long for hotseat to be reasonable. However, in Jones and the Fast Lane, it works just fine.