Thursday, 25 April 2013

FanFest 2013: Design Principles

CCP Soundwave provided us with a selection of 6 from the claimed 9 principles that govern EVE Online (and presumably DUST 514) game design.

  1. No game should be more complex than it absolutely needs to be to meet its goals.
  2. A good feature can be based on positive or negative player interaction.
  3. Other players will always be more interesting, for longer, than designed experiences.
  4. Every system should affect, and be affected by, the wider world of the game.
  5. Here are the tools, do something cool with them.
  6. The social experience is more important than practical system balance; the interaction between winners and losers is more interesting than mechanical equality.
  7. Interactions should be about reaching and touching, more than reading numbers.
  8. Things in the world need to make sense.
  9. Players are not entitled to success. There should be an achievement mountain, with players able to find their level and strive to be better.

These are design principles that I can very strongly agree with. I have posted them here so I can refer to them when I come up with my next bizarre idea for tweaking the EVE universe.

Update: a longer article about these principles over here:

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