NOT ALL USERS ARE IDIOTS
I guess its the start of term in US universities, because I'm getting a lot of educational sales of Democracy in the last week or so. I'm going to chase some more universities tonight.
As for the next game, its still at the early code-concept stage. I'm 100% convinced these days that a good game idea is worth its weight in gold, even though people tend to assume ideas are ten a penny.
I've recently become very wound up with games that don't give me much in the way of options, specifically audio options. Age of Empires 3 (demo) and Battlefield 2 are just 2 recent examples.
There appears to be no option in Battlefield 2 to turn off the voice sounds from your squadmates/team mates. If I hear the phrase 'Start fighting or I'll find someone who can', ONE more time, I'm going to go mad. (if nothing else, its silly. I'm sure most soldiers would happily be sent home rather than keep fighting (especially when your army is losing)...).
Anyway, it's reminded me how important it is to let the player tailor the game to his needs. I agonised about an option in Democracy which lets you skip the game dilemmas, but decided that if the player wanted to turn dilemmas off, that was up to them. The only downside is a slightly cluttered options screen, but who cares? Its not like windows only has 2 options in the control panel. Not all users are idiots.
I guess its the start of term in US universities, because I'm getting a lot of educational sales of Democracy in the last week or so. I'm going to chase some more universities tonight.
As for the next game, its still at the early code-concept stage. I'm 100% convinced these days that a good game idea is worth its weight in gold, even though people tend to assume ideas are ten a penny.
I've recently become very wound up with games that don't give me much in the way of options, specifically audio options. Age of Empires 3 (demo) and Battlefield 2 are just 2 recent examples.
There appears to be no option in Battlefield 2 to turn off the voice sounds from your squadmates/team mates. If I hear the phrase 'Start fighting or I'll find someone who can', ONE more time, I'm going to go mad. (if nothing else, its silly. I'm sure most soldiers would happily be sent home rather than keep fighting (especially when your army is losing)...).
Anyway, it's reminded me how important it is to let the player tailor the game to his needs. I agonised about an option in Democracy which lets you skip the game dilemmas, but decided that if the player wanted to turn dilemmas off, that was up to them. The only downside is a slightly cluttered options screen, but who cares? Its not like windows only has 2 options in the control panel. Not all users are idiots.
posted by cliff at
7:20 PM
