The general rule is that most game designers are what you could call "a one trick pony".
They make one fabulous game and then copy it all over to the next one. Be that video games or board games or even script writers.
Dan Brown anyone ? That man simply rewrites the same book over and over again.
Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but I think the tric is to have the right man on the right place to take the right decisions. This industry is very much a question of teamwork instead of "one man" @ work.
What I noticed also is that once so called good designers leave their home and go out to publish something else, they fall flat on their faces (like Lord Garriot), also many people are not even occupied with the design but try to get away with the credits (like Bill Roper - Diablo).
John Romero is the first name I thought of when I read the title. Man my brother in law worshipped the ground that guy walked on. All the sucess seemed to just go straight to this guys ego. He was the Rockstar of the Shooters. I played every title up too Daikatana. I refused to buy that one, it just look bad to me. Romero seem like he put all his cards into this game telling us all it was gonna POWN us. Lol, hense to say my brother ran out day one to get it. And he was in literal tears when he finally got his chance to play it. Most know it was crap. Now I don't hold any bad will toward Romero but my brother to this day will still bring his name up in hate over his one failing project.
The way I see it though is this guy and John Carmack where the first and gave me plenty of hour gib goodness. I can't hate either cause they screw up here or there. My brother though, I never understand why the worshiping starts. It seems each time he does he later ends up hating the devs. he did this with all shooter devs, he got me to playing WoW which I ended up plaing longer than him. He still hates WoW to this day because he couldn't figure out how to beat rogues with his warrior. His current worship is Halo Reach and even though I bought it and played it I just don't see where this worshiping the game/devs starts with him. Guess I'll never understand.
"But... what about tabula Rasa?" Honestly, throughout development I really had little idea of what it was or what it was inteded to be, so I had very little attachment to that. I think however if I was more attached to TR, that game and the nonsense around it may have colored my view of RG.
I generally think RG is overrated and I don't like the way he adds his own personality as VIP figures in his games (Lord British, General British) which gives me the impression he has some sort of narcistic disorder. But maybe I am all wrong.
But afaik Tabula Rasa was a game that has been totally developed at least twice! It had 100mio development costs!!! There was a fantasy version before the sci-fi thing that was eventually released. And it was just one little game for the costs of 2 or more. Of course it doesn't pay off for the investors if you let develop two games and throw away one. They shut it down because it would not met the originally expected ROI. So as usual they screwed up the launch and reduced development from thereon. Go figure why it failed!
All in all it was not such a bad game. It had lack of content (as most mmos have at the beginning), the base engine wasn't overly well done, the music utterly sucked, etc.
But there were some fresh ideas in it and it was a nice alternative to the generally high-fantasy games that dominate the market. The combat felt much more action-packed and fluent. It definately had potential. Idk who did the decision to redo it, if it wasn't RG (i guess he didn't, he and his company were basically a supplier as I understand it), then it actually is not his fault.
On the actual topic: humans have a tendency to figure out leader-personalities and overestimate them up to worshipping. As a president with the best intentions and whatnot will screw up if he is entangled in a web of political constraints without any degrees of freedom, and thus disappoints his followers, so will a game designer screw up which is entangled in a web of market, financial and investment constraints with too little degrees of freedom.
Comments
The general rule is that most game designers are what you could call "a one trick pony".
They make one fabulous game and then copy it all over to the next one. Be that video games or board games or even script writers.
Dan Brown anyone ? That man simply rewrites the same book over and over again.
Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but I think the tric is to have the right man on the right place to take the right decisions. This industry is very much a question of teamwork instead of "one man" @ work.
What I noticed also is that once so called good designers leave their home and go out to publish something else, they fall flat on their faces (like Lord Garriot), also many people are not even occupied with the design but try to get away with the credits (like Bill Roper - Diablo).
John Romero is the first name I thought of when I read the title. Man my brother in law worshipped the ground that guy walked on. All the sucess seemed to just go straight to this guys ego. He was the Rockstar of the Shooters. I played every title up too Daikatana. I refused to buy that one, it just look bad to me. Romero seem like he put all his cards into this game telling us all it was gonna POWN us. Lol, hense to say my brother ran out day one to get it. And he was in literal tears when he finally got his chance to play it. Most know it was crap. Now I don't hold any bad will toward Romero but my brother to this day will still bring his name up in hate over his one failing project.
The way I see it though is this guy and John Carmack where the first and gave me plenty of hour gib goodness. I can't hate either cause they screw up here or there. My brother though, I never understand why the worshiping starts. It seems each time he does he later ends up hating the devs. he did this with all shooter devs, he got me to playing WoW which I ended up plaing longer than him. He still hates WoW to this day because he couldn't figure out how to beat rogues with his warrior. His current worship is Halo Reach and even though I bought it and played it I just don't see where this worshiping the game/devs starts with him. Guess I'll never understand.
I generally think RG is overrated and I don't like the way he adds his own personality as VIP figures in his games (Lord British, General British) which gives me the impression he has some sort of narcistic disorder. But maybe I am all wrong.
But afaik Tabula Rasa was a game that has been totally developed at least twice! It had 100mio development costs!!! There was a fantasy version before the sci-fi thing that was eventually released. And it was just one little game for the costs of 2 or more. Of course it doesn't pay off for the investors if you let develop two games and throw away one. They shut it down because it would not met the originally expected ROI. So as usual they screwed up the launch and reduced development from thereon. Go figure why it failed!
All in all it was not such a bad game. It had lack of content (as most mmos have at the beginning), the base engine wasn't overly well done, the music utterly sucked, etc.
But there were some fresh ideas in it and it was a nice alternative to the generally high-fantasy games that dominate the market. The combat felt much more action-packed and fluent. It definately had potential. Idk who did the decision to redo it, if it wasn't RG (i guess he didn't, he and his company were basically a supplier as I understand it), then it actually is not his fault.
On the actual topic: humans have a tendency to figure out leader-personalities and overestimate them up to worshipping. As a president with the best intentions and whatnot will screw up if he is entangled in a web of political constraints without any degrees of freedom, and thus disappoints his followers, so will a game designer screw up which is entangled in a web of market, financial and investment constraints with too little degrees of freedom.