Game Addict Hotline

Don Daglow has some wise words for you young developers. As one of the oldest game developers still in the business, he has seen it all. During his talk at GDC Canada 2009 for the future play summit, a group of sessions focusing on future game development, Daglow conveyed to the crowd about what game developers of today should look for in this new age.

“If only the machine could stop holding us back. Now, we only have ourselves to blame,” Says Daglow speaking about how far we have come from his first games to what is available today. Daglow continued by saying that the old ways of creating games to fit a certain genre, ESRB rating, or whatever your competitors are doing. Game developers need to change the way that they think and leave the old ways for newer, better ideas.

Speculating on the future, Daglow said that developers no longer have to worry about technology and must instead develop for the fun of the gamer instead. He discussed the importance of finding what gamers think is fun. Daglow’s ideas include not thinking about whether gamers are either online or offline, but how to merge them together. He also felt that developers should look into what age group would like this game, how the gamer interfaces the game, and making better puzzles and bosses that gamers want to beat.

Daglow’s talk ended with a question for the developers. What do gamers spend the majority of their time doing? If a gamer is doing a certain task more than you thought they would, then you need to either change the game to what the player enjoys, or scrap the idea entirely. An example Daglow gave was games that allows you to be a hero for five minutes with 40 minutes of grinding and item trading. Gamers may not like the grind and may in give you more negative opinions about you game than you expected.

Edited by Nary Pung.