- Top 6 Games at Amazon 2009 holiday season
This chart says it all. World of Goo is something else, really. The game was made by two people, and it’s outselling some of the “top” games this holiday. This is uncomfortable news for the gaming industry leaders. When a two-man operation can provide more value than your hordes of game developer drones, watch your back.
- IGN Award
So is World of Goo by 2DBoy an exception or is the indie gaming market really coming to fruition to become a contender with the big boys like Valve (Left 4 Dead), EA (Spore, Battlefield, et al), and Activision (Call of Duty)? I sure think so. They recently won the Indy Game of the Year at the Spike VGA’s, as well as a plethora of award at IGN. But I’m a designer, so I want to dig deeper into it, right? Right.
Turns out the creators of the game are fantastic prototypers and the game developed in a long spurt of “7 days per prototype” development for game models. They wrote a long and thorough guide on what they did and the things they learned through the entire process. Very worth the read.
Here’s the gist of it:
Setup: Rapid is a State of Mind
- Embrace the Possibility of Failure - it Encourages Creative Risk Taking
- Enforce Short Development Cycles (More Time != More Quality)
- Constrain Creativity to Make You Want it Even More
- Gather a Kickass Team and an Objective Advisor – Mindset is as Important as Talent
- Develop in Parallel for Maximum Splatter
Design: Creativity and the Myth of Brainstorming
- Formal Brainstorming Has a 0% Success Rate
- Gather Concept Art and Music to Create an Emotional Target
- Simulate in Your Head – Pre-Prototype the Prototype
Development: Nobody Knows How You Made it, and Nobody Cares
- Build the Toy First
- If You Can Get Away With it, Fake it
- Cut Your Losses and “Learn When to Shoot Your Baby in the Crib”
- Heavy Theming Will Not Salvage Bad Design (or “You Can’t Polish a Turd”)
- But Overall Aesthetic Matters! Apply a Healthy Spread of Art, Sound, and Music
- Nobody Cares About Your Great Engineering
General Gameplay: Sensual Lessons in Juicy Fun
- Complexity is Not Necessary for Fun
- Create a Sense of Ownership to Keep ‘em Crawling Back for More
- “Experimental” Does Not Mean “Complex”
- Build Toward a Well Defined Goal
- Make it Juicy!
Complimentary, David over at Wolfire analyzed the game in an in-depth video review World of Goo
Design Tour - World of Goo from David Rosen on Vimeo.
Merry Christmas to all! What did you think of this post? Do you like World of Goo?
