Importance of Playing Games

If you want to make great games then you have to play games all the time!

Sounds easy and like a dream come true right?

However, this doesn't mean only playing good games or AAA titles. Instead, you should be trying to always expand your experience and knowledge base of the vast genres of games out there.

If you only play FPS or RTS games, then you are limiting what types of mechanics and level design concepts you can draw from when designing your own games.

As a designer, you should think of your knowledge and skills as your toolbox. Every time you play a new game, you are looking for new tools that you can add to your toolbox.




This could be anything from how a game tells a story, how the mechanics work with one another, how the difficulty progression is scaled, or even how the game managed to make the rain feel unique or more realistic.

It is up to you as the designer to play a variety of different games with the intent of finding new tools, while trying to understand how the game is made and why certain decisions were made by the developers.

Also, make sure you don't leave out the really horrible games.

You can learn more from playing a downright terrible game than you can from playing the most popular AAA title.

Playing a bad game teaches you what not to do and makes what the game does right, as well as wrong, really stand out.

If you want to incorporate a lock picking mechanic similar to The Elder Scrolls series, then play a few games where the lock pick mechanic is really horrible.

This will allow you to more easily see what is so good about the lock picking in The Elder Scrolls, which will allow you to design a better lock picking experience yourself.

Another reason to play bad games, is to build a more accurate reference for yourself when you are trying to gauge the quality of your games.

If you try to compare a game that was built entirely by you to a game made over the course of three years by over a hundred developers, then you are always going to feel like you are wasting your time or shoveling out crap.

When you feel like this, play a few really bad games and take a look at just how far you've come.