EVE General Discussion

Some do some don't, the stanley parable is an exemplary game from devs that do.

I don't know about ccp though.

They are running tests constantly on us, also they knit sweaters and eat copious amounts of "pylsa" hot dogs, "með öllu", when Hilmar doesn't watch them from behind a corner.

THey should but most don't.

Most game developers take it for granted - they understand the programming language, syntax, and can do and make virtually anything.

Then we get copy pasta JRPGs.

EVE was definitely made by people who understood social/political sciences, economy, asset logistics, etc.

There was an article about how some dude from CCP went on to lecture at a university.

http://en.ru.is/frontpage-material/nr/29027

also https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4618223

From what I've learned, a game designer needs to be a jack-of-all-trades. You need to be able to understand (at least) the basics of every technology and profession involved with games development so you can make use of them and communicate with the specialists *and* be able to act as a liaison when the different specialists need to talk with each other.

Then you need to do research on the background of the story so you can at least imitate depth to facilitate some semblance of immersion or tell the professional writers in which direction to take the writing.

Alas, good game designers are rather undervalued.

I'm still conviced Eve wasn't desgined to be a game, it's really a sociological experiment masked as a game.

Much like the food, fashion, automobile etc industries, successful game companies focus more on social engineering than substance. Look at Blizzard and the fiasco that was Diablo 3 for instance. They destroyed an entire genre and yet sold 11 million copies of that game and a ton for the expansion. It wasn't because they had a good game. It's because they had the cash to hire psychologists to market it.

Thank God CCP is a relatively small game with no money to spend on this kind of crap. They've been relying on trying to give the player base a solid game to have fun with. And while not always pleasing everyone it's been a damn sight better than if they had dumped half the development budget so they could hire a social engineering firm.

So I'd say that, yes, they are focusing on world building, writing the story, etc. I also feel that they are small enough that there is not a disconnect between the designers and the programmers. This has kept the player base small but the game focused.

Mr Epeen

There's been kind of a movement among the game design community to incorporate more psychology, sociology, and storyline drama into games. Some vocal people within the industry see it as analogous to the film industry. Film's goal is to immerse viewer and cause a "temporary suspension of disbelief." In other words, the viewer should forget that the story isn't really happening, and that it's a pretend production involving actors and cameras.

The more progressive game design people want to apply the same principle to games. To do that, the game's design has to reflect some real psychology and sociology that the player can identify with, so there can be complete suspension of disbelief and immersion. The gamasutra website tends to have theoretical articles about this kind of stuff.

I am friends with one of the main devs behind The Stanley Parable.

Psychologist is not a term I would use for him.

Master Troll comes to mind though...

What's that?