Dava's Tenets of Basic Common Sense in game design.. or too many no-no's don't make a yes-yes!

Hi WWW

Here are some Cardinal Rules of game design:

Rule 1:

Don't mess with people's saves. EVER.

Rule 2:

Don't put any invisible walls anywhere inside the sandbox. to cage us inside is fine. But once inside; it is OUR PLAYGROUND.. no longer yours. .. stop picking at it.

Rule 3:

Intuitive control.. beg, borrow.. steal if you have to from other Devs and Dev publishers.. the middle tool is so vastly unimportant, that you, Dev, sweating about it, isn't helping! If a control method is popular use that instead.

Rule 4:

Let us skip EVERYTHING.. cutscenes, cinematics, intro movies (I am aware I own a Nvidia graphics card, no need to waste my time showing me a mini movie about it).

Rule 5:

Don't put things in the game I could mistake as a 'glitch'. Seriously.

Rule 6:

If I have near completed a quest and the final part fails .. not due to me misunderstanding what to do.. but the game did not allow me to do it; ensure you have checkpoints. If the game failed and not me.. that was your problem not mine.. so to stop any arguments between player and Dev.. have checkpoints while the mission is active.. if the player quits; they must *then* and *only then*.. have to restart the whole mission if it is not completed.

Rule 7:

All bugs MUST GO. Even if your game is 20 years old.. if you are making coin off the franchise and a bug is reported. fix it!


Break any of these rules and you are a BAD DEVELOPER.. it's like being a bad parent but instead disappointing 10's of thousands of people in one go.

@Publishers

Have a 'Gamma Team'.. who are much like Beta Testers in reverse. Gamma 'Testers'.. small team that covers all franchised games, that make coin for you as a publisher. Team of 5 to 10 people.. like a dead letter office of games publishing. You send annoyed or concerned players to them instead of  your media team having to deal with an old game.

Dava

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I *may* come back and update this with more.. but that's enough for now.

I would like to thank Ubisoft for inspiring this list.. FLIP!! It's just basic common courtesy.. don't mess with peoples save games! FC5-DLC. Whoever thought it was a good idea over at Ubisoft.. well they probably deserve all the twitter hate the Ubi media team had to deal with and I hope they passed that along to that person.. as 'feedback/suggestions'. I am sure other players had some suggestions what that Dev could do with the game!