by Nick - 02.24.06
Gamasutra attended the Wondercon event where Telltale Games spoke about their first Bone game, what planning went into that and how that has prepared them for the next set of games. Heather Logas, designer on the team, had some very interesting things to say.
She compares games to movies and says that a distinct difference is that games allow you to explore more of the world of the property than a movie could. Whereas movies often have to truncate material to meet time requirements, games have the great option of putting in more for players to experience.
In addition, she says that differing playable characters afford developers different methods for design and lead to different end experiences for players.
Both of these are very true and quite a wonderful thing about the medium of games. The fact that, given the right game, you can feel free to do whatever you like within a virtual world is really quite awesome. Half the time when my brother and I play Mario Kart DS online we just drive in circles, explore the outskirts of the levels and see what the parameters of the gaming world are.
And as for your playable avatar, we as gamers generally only think of it from our perspective. However, it’s very cool to think of it from a design standpoint. What do different characters afford game designers? My first thought was of Super Mario Bros 2 and the advantages of playing as one character over the other. A more advanced system, one that more drastically effects gameplay, can be found in Fable or Kotor. Being able to decide which side to align your character on and then following that path is really great. It becomes less about a predesigned character and more about what you can offer to game and vice versa.
