The storyline is the most important thing in a game. If the storyline is good, the game should be good.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5534080568776365031&q=computer

Absolutely Superb lecture on video on google video about game design, from the writer of the sims and sim city, sound is too quiet, but really worth watching, nearly 2 hours long, from the computer history museum. The 1st five mins are boring, speakers are introducing every other, after that wow!!!!

1: It has to be addictive. Factors of this are the other no.1 and no.2, but also, believeability, good graphics(not always though), and just fun gameplay

1: The story has to be good. I like long in depth stories for RPG's, and shorter but really interesting stories that give a motivation behind the FPS

2: You have to have interesting characters. If the character is boring, your story is boring, and the player has no motivation, and thus no reason to play the game.

3: There has to be some challenge. Make it hard to get where i need to go,but it can't be so hard that the player can't get farther, this inhibits the storyline and makes a boring game. There are exceptions sometimes, if the difficulty is parrt of the storyline. Another thing is don't make it take too long to get from place to place. Make some shortcuts!(think town scroll from diablo2 or the portals in sacred). Also, in larger scale games, i like having more than one way to solve a puzzle, complete a level, and kill the guy. A good example is Hitman 2. Also, the level design has to be smooth. Don't make it a maze unless its some dungeon in an RPG. Another good thing is to include a map, bu i think you can only do that in commercial or pro. But if you have them, make use of that.

4: You have to control the player easily, its no fun if it has impossible button configurations, like a,y,m, and insert as controls. the most popular is the w,a,s,d where w is up, s is down, w is strafe left, and d is strafe right. the mouse is used to make turns and look.

5: Originality! Don't copmletely clone another game. If it's a simialar plot, thats ok, but make it a different game. You know, different weapons, places, enemies, your on the other side, stuff like that if you have to copy another game. However, it is best not to copy a game, or a tv show, because once that game or show is no longer the popular, your game will not be played.

6: Detail! I like levels that have some detail to them. Don't have bare floors, walls, or such. No-one is that clean, lol. I guess the only exception would be a hospital. You also need to break up the level somewhat. You can't have box rooms with only enemies in them, have some obstacles.

In the case of a game on addicting games is that it has to have some kind of purpose, it has to be really bloody, and it has to be able to be played indefinitely.


Wow, this is my longest post. I'm kinda proud of myself

To me the story line comes first, be it bad or good, as a guide to follow, then the graphics need to be there, finally gameplay.

I've noticed that you've repeated item number 1 so there should be 7 items listed in your list.

At the first #1: This I agree on. If the player can come up with additional challenges on their own for this game, the player could then be playing the game longer trying to accomplish those additional self-created challenges.

At #4: I agree strongly in this as well. The game "Croc 2" has a horrible camera control, almost the worst I've seen. The modern Sonic games also have a fairly bad camera when it comes to playing as Sonic. Oh, and isn't it using the arrow keys for moving around? Up to go forward, down to go backwards, and left and right to turn? Of all the games I've played, it's always the arrow keys that are used to move the player around.

actually thats on the older game, and racing games. But on FPS, wasd is standard because it makes it easy to maneuver corners. Because people are so used to it now, it makes a good standard in other, non racing games, with some exceptions


I repeated number 1 on purpose, there may be 7 items, but i ordered them for importance. the two number ones are the same importance to me, and kinda interconnected too, now that i think about it.

Really, as far as level design goes, you need balance. You need it to be easy to get from place to place, but not to easy. Challenging, but not too challenging. Make it fun, but not too fun. ok, just kidding on the last one.

to be honest everything makes a good game, everybody enjoys different parts of games so its very hard to measure what actually makes a good game.