I'm sure most of you are familiar with the "triangle of quality" - a model that can be applied to any project or product. It often comes to my mind during the course of a game's production. Time, Money, Quality - pick two and forget about the third.
Well, I have my own triangle model - pertaining to the initial stage of game creation. You see, game designers are creative people - sometime too creative for their own good.
Jaded folks that game designers are, they would prefer, particularly with new IP, that everything to be new and different. The problem is, that most people don't have a good frame of reference to everything being new, so I have found that the best strategy is to pick one thing in your game to concentrate all the weirdness on otherwise things become unrelatable to the player.
To illustrate this point, I present The Triangle of Weirdness:
I tell developers to think about which of these three aspects is the weirdest in the game? The Main Character, the activities or the world they are in? It's ok to push the envelope in one direction but if you go off in more than one weirdness direction, you risk alienate your audience.
Let's take some movies for example:
Star Wars (the original one) has a weird world, but the main characters and the activities they do are pretty relatable.
Toy Story has weird main characters but their activities and world are based in reality.
Monty Python has pretty normal (albeit silly) main characters and a real world but things they do in it are bizarre.
Feel free to apply the Triangle Of Weirdness to your own game and see if it isn't the reason why people are having trouble getting into your game!
I like it. I'm not sure if I agree with it as a given, as I usually accept the Triangle of Quality as a given, except in cases where Money or Time are known to be trivially available resources at the outset of the project.
ReplyDeleteAs you state, this is a good place to start.
I can't think of a successful movie that doesn't follow this.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting theory however I dont think that it is a given. First: story structural devices always end up working better when they are broken. Second: movies like "A Clockwork Orange" (which has one of the most interesting Charecter arks in film history, a very intreguing futuristic london as a setting, and activities that serve as some of the most parodied scenes to this date) and "Good Fellas" (which has a normal world, but the plot is very unique, and another one of cinemas most iconic charecter arks which serves as a Rags to Riches charecter ark). movies like these, prove the thoery wrong. some more films that have at least two out of the three things:
ReplyDelete"Apocalypse Now" "2001: A Space Odyssey" "Jaws" etc.
again, I respect the creators idea, however im just trying to show people how and when it can be broken.