It is difficult to define the meaning or scope of the word “design”. It could relate to anything and everything from a sofa to a watch to an automobile to a business card. To quote the revered graphic designer Paul Rand, most known for his IBM logo design (the adjoining image is a poster he did for the same company) among numerous other brilliant contributions, “Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.” Talking of design from the perspective of a graphic designer, the thing is not just limited to graphical illustrations, logos and page layouts, but extends to the complete visual appeal of a web screen or, for that matter, an application screen and maybe, a game screen. Yes, design does extend itself to gaming as well, and in fact, it holds a very critical position in the world of video games.
To start with, how do gamers define or differentiate a “good” game. I believe they primarily talk of two aspects, one graphics and two gameplay, usually in this order, although both are equally essential to the game. The gameplay part is concerned with coding and physics; the thinking part that is, which ideally should be the core focus of any game. The “game graphics”, as gamers prefer to call it, is actually the creative part of the game, or more precisely the design aspect of the game application. Design is what gives a face to the game, the skeleton of which could be assumed to be based on the gameplay and concept of the game. But design, is the flesh and the face, and the first thing one would notice about the game. Even before you begin playing a game, the way the game menu folds up, or maybe the presentation of the story prologue, is what immediately catches the eye and plays a very important role in delivering a “first impression” of the game. More than the fact that a good design of initial screens would encourage the gamer to try the game, what is important is, that a poor design may actually dispirit the gamer, who might end up not even trying the game. Try DownHill Jam on Zapak for instance, which I believe very well illustrates how good design can make a flash game interesting.
Not just the cover screens, but the actual game too uses a lot of design resources. The arena, as developers prefer to call it, does need to be visually attractive to encourage the gamer. Just imagine how a racing game would feel if instead of a driving a car, you were to be guiding a block. This is the importance of design in any game. Take the case of a simple flash game, which is greatly limited in terms of gameplay, considering the fact that flash games are mostly predictable and “there is not much to do” in such games. Yet, a good design enthuses the gamer who would not only try the game, but might even get hooked to it if the visual aspect is done well. Even if the game does not offer much in terms of the gameplay, yet a good design has the capability to convince the gamer to play the game. A poor design might, on the other hand, kill the interest of the gamer even if he seems to appreciate the gameplay. The first impressions of such a game could well indicate a substandard quality, if the cover screens or the arena is poorly designed. To generalize, most people would not care to play a game that appears to have compromised on the design part.
Now let us move to games beyond the basic flash games; the games which supposedly are much better engineered in terms of gameplay. Here also, design is found to play an equally vital role. Obviously such games pay a lot of attention to the design aspect as well, and the emphasis here is mostly on the graphic detailing of the game. The task is to impart as much “reality” as possible to the virtual world of the game. This is possible with very advanced implementation of design concepts. Talking of detailing, one important point to be noted is that it should not be overdone. Overdone design, in gaming or otherwise, looks clumsy, and should be avoided. It is true that detailing helps the game to come alive, but at the same time it affects the hardware requirements, which need to be kept as affordable as possible to have a larger audience to the game. Not everybody upgrades their graphic cards with every new game, so that idea should be kept in mind during development. Take for example, EA Cricket 07, which was criticized by some people for compromising on the detailing of the stadium crowds. It’s true that when you model players with expert detailing to resemble their “real” counterparts, it is expected that you design the crowd to at least look human, and not a bunch of wildly dancing pixels. But, EA chose to compromise on that aspect so that its hardware requirements could be optimized, which is why the game could run even without an external nVidia, and was thus available to a larger audience than it would have been if the "crowd" was paid more attention to. Although this did count as a drawback for the game, but it was a blessing in disguise. Talking of the recent DiRT2, the makers claimed that even the shadows of the pebbles lying on the rally tracks had been designed and detailed, which obviously raised the requirements of the game. While most people seem to appreciate this level of detailing, I wonder how many gamers would actually notice the shadows of pebbles while racing at 300 miles an hour, when controlling the vehicle itself needs more than all of your attention.
I would like to raise another point concerning the overuse of design. I believe almost all of us, whether we are interested in games or not, must have played Snake, most commonly on their Nokia handsets. The recent handsets from Nokia come preloaded with what they call Snake III, a new avatar of the good old Snake we used to play on the likes of Nokia 1100. This game is better designed with a properly modelled snake instead of a line, and well detailed fruits instead of the dots we used to chase. To suit the new design, the gameplay was altered to make it isometric instead of the classic overhead angle. What most people find is that the “original” Snake was much better, as they are not comfortable with the isometric gameplay. This is another adverse outcome generated by overdesign. The attempt to redo Snake as Snake III could well be compared to remaking of the classic Sholay into Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag, the result of which is well known to all. The point here is slightly different, which is never to attempt improving or redoing a perfect product, be it a game or a movie. Sholay is the highest grossing movie of India as per this Wikipedia List adjusted for inflation, while the latter has its "legacy" in securing position 13 in the IMDB bottom 100 list.
Coming back to the initial argument, I believe that perfect games are developed by a balanced combination of the left and right hemispheres of our brain. To put it in simple language, ideally every game needs to be worked upon by at least two people, one programmer and one designer. For even better performance, each of these individuals may be replaced by teams of people, and they might even be further broken down into more specific teams and segments which is how commercial development actually functions. But consider the case of a leisure developer, who tries to balance both tasks by himself. Respecting the rules of human psychology, one of the two hemispheres must always dominate, and as such, a single person producing a game must fail at either of the two aspects, and if not fail, the difference must be clearly visible. Talking of myself as a leisure developer, I believe I manage the thinking part well, and I have almost always failed miserably at the design part, particularly the visual appearance of the game. The other creative aspects like the game concept itself, the kind of characters etc, I believe, I do a fair job with. But this one most frustrating thing is that I can always see that there is something wrong with the design, but cannot get what it is. I have chosen to believe that I lack what designers call the “design sense”, which may or may not develop with practice. Maybe this is the reason I so deeply realize the importance of design, as I have always felt my games have been ruined by ugly Photoshop.
The conclusion I wish to draw from this post is, that design is as vital an element to any product as the air we breathe or the water we drink. The product, I would like to say once again, could be anything and everything, and design holds its importance in all forms of work. I believe that any product is certainly bound to fail if the design is not paid much attention to. This is because it’s human to judge anything by the eye, and this process is mostly unconscious. When buying a chair, more than the comfort, we look for elegance, and while looking for a car, more than its performance, we go by the looks. A good design might help sell a poor product while a poor design might ruin the prospects of a good product.
