10/6/06
This reading was a very thorough summary of all things game development. It was too much to be a introduction, but not enough to bring anything new to the table that I haven't encountered in the program. Which is a mini internal confidence booster, letting me know that I don't think I've missed anything immensely important in the program.
With that out of the way, on to my primary beef with this article.
P. 102: "There is nothing 'magic' about the practice of game design, just as there is nothing mystical about playing and composing fine music. Design and dedication, practice, and the willingness to work methodically are all that are truly required."
If you've ever even met me, you can probably hear the steam screaming out of my ears after reading that passage.
Creativity is part of a great game: it's what separates "good" from "great." Creativity is what makes games, and anything else for that matter, unique and interesting and captivating. Innovative design doesn't come from only "working methodically." I agree that practice and dedication and such are all valuable to honing one's skills as a designer, but I can not get beyond the author's premise that creativity is a joke, presumably part of the "magic" that he claims are not part of game design. I'm especially distraught with his comparison to fine music as not having any creativity or "magic" to it. Bull! While music can be mathematically described and generated and subsequently methodically constructed, one can still hear the uniqueness in style and emotion of the musician playing a piece. It's as distinctive as handwriting, or the culmination of brush strokes on canvas. Mechanically generated music is never so beautiful as when evoked by a master of the art. The creativity--here meaning the minute variations in style, the infusion of emotion, the truly captivating human components of the endeavour--is what makes most human pursuits great. That innovative bit is hardwired way down in the brain, and without that, it's mechanical music.
Games without creativity. Bah. That's how we end up with yet-another-FPS, destined to become abandonware. Viva la Revolution Creativity!