Black Golem

I've just read this article about the success factors of Minecraft. It's a good one listing the drawbacks and, even more important, the points of success. The weak points would have made each game publisher laugh his/her head off - back in Minecraft's embryonic state. Today we know it's a winner. This story already gets trite.

A key point of Minecraft's success seems to be the alignment of the game to its players. That sounds logical. If you throw larvas into a pond full
of Piranha hardly anything would happen. But some raw meat would make the pond's surface seethe.

Now I'm not sure what Nordenfelt is going to be: larvae or meat? Neither do I know if the gaming waters are crowded with flesh eaters or larvae munchers. So there is no clue if the meal I'm cooking has any nutritional effect. Where is the cookbook with the recipes?

As far as I can see there is only trial and error combined with own believes. It's old wisdom to create games you would like to play yourself. The absence of experience of newbie game designers emphasizes this conclusion. It would make no sense writing a turn-based strategy game if you only know platformers. You won't have the experience nor the feeling for strategy stuff.

Trial-and-error is the fate of a designer's first X games. Like a band playing awful first gigs until they become better and develop their own style. Hopefully X is close to zero for all of us.

Enough babble. Back to the stove!

Cheers,
Thomas