Leave to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

 We never know when trying out our latest acquisition (game), whether it will live up to our expectations as a player. Unfortunately, it is a matter of merely a few seconds before our gamer subconscious awareness starts to tingle, saying to us that something here is simply just...wrong.

 We ask ourselves: "What the hell is going on here? Maybe I should have tried a demo of that game first." And working aside our first impression of the game intro animation, we find ourselves giving yet another chance to that AAA title which we patiently waited for all those long months. Truly it shows good potential: Graphics are crisp and pleasant to look at, animations are fluid, no lag, the sound score and voice acting seem like they come straight out of any Hollywood blockbuster movie and so on. But as we go deeper into the storyline, as the first few minutes of the tutorial and opening scenario flows, there is still that uneasy feeling that something is truly amiss: Fun!

 Then again, our own definition of fun might not be the same as our closest neighbour, our sister or even our best friend. But that is in no way a discussion we want to get into in this article. What is really on the line here is our personal experience, the sole reason why we had so high expectations about the game. For sure the final result is nowhere far from a technical masterpiece (after over thirty years, this industry has at least made some progress somewhere), but the controls just don't feel right, character dialogs are shallow and drab, too many core mechanics just don't seem to blend out very well together and it gets rapidly annoying when you collect so much game currency that you cannot even do anything with it beside watching numbers rise.

 There you are, sitting on your living room's couch, questioning yourself again for yet another of those game trailers that had awakened that sparkle of hope in your eyes and had given you goosebumps. But even as it reflects that a tremendous amount of effort has been invested in its realization, once again the game original vision, as is it for many games that have been released up to this day, the game's very soul, its design and creative process, are flawed. Might it be because the team encountered some financial issues during the many months of its development? It might even be because the artistic outsourcing partners had to be replaced three times during the project's duration? Or simply that some people from other areas of expertise improvised themselves as veteran game designer and decided to change the game systems and a few characters too many times after the alpha milestone was delivered...

 What matters the most in the long run, is what you, as an investor of 60$, has a seasoned player and whose experience and hopes are being ruined is getting off of the whole process. And unfortunately, as it happens way to often, the enjoyment of a good time, the feeling of affiliation to the main character, the sheer pleasure of mastering control over the game core mechanics is absent, thus once again, crashing your party.

 Anyone can have ideas, most of all good ones. But not anyone has the potential to expose them clearly, to carry them along the hardened road of a development process. Even more importantly, it is not given to the masses to have that natural gift of an open mind. Being able to welcome other's own ideas, to let them challenge your own and make those blend together to create even better and stronger ideas. To be able to defend your point when someone is trying to toss it aside and replace it with a last minute solution which should lead to the next game of the year.

  As a game designer and also a long time consumer of games, I will never pretend that I have mastered all of those skills, even if  I consider myself a good designer with great potential. But to all of those non-designers or members of creative teams by title who don't even play video games and think that they should hold design decisions, for they always have awesome ideas and think that it will be fun and appropriate for their current project, do yourself and your intended audience a favor: Grab a console, your mobile or get on your personal computer, get some demos or buy full games and play for a while. Take careful attention about what you are experiencing and ask yourself, if in any case you feel you aren't getting your money's worth, what could have possibly been wrong while that game was developed.

 Experience, live, learn and as much as you should submit your ideas and care for them to be part of the final build of your next game title, take a few moments to position yourself in the user's shoes, and try to use this so effervescent imagination of yours and visualize what kind of experience you will get from that incredible feature your just thought about. That's what great designers do: first and foremost, they ensure that in the end of the whole development process, the player will get his moments of pure fun out of his latest investment and maybe the desire to reiterate the experience when additional titles are released.