The Design Crowbar

I took a couple of days off from work last week for family adventures. I mentioned before that we’re coming up to our alpha deadline, so the timing wasn’t exactly great, but when duty calls and all that. So yes, I had a four day weekend the likes of which I hadn’t seen since uni. I come back in on Monday, raring to go (actually bloody knackered; my family exhaust me) and check my inbox. In my absence, one of my levels was worked on. Fair enough; I don’t expect the world to stand still while I’m gone. But the scale of which the level had been changed from my initial design was pretty… profound. I barely recognised it.

Basically it had been chopped and changed until pretty much anything that had set it apart as being unique to the other levels was absent. Elements around which the entire level revolved had been replaced with existing mechanics to make it easier to make. My lead explained all these changes to me, and I nodded along, and in all fairness, he was totally right to make the changes; we’re on a deadline, and this way it’ll take less time. But nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel a little something in me sink. After all, it isn’t the first time this has happened. Many of the ideas I originally had in my designs have been stripped down to more basic forms – often right down to blatantly generic and imagination-free.

It’s a frustrating thing about being a designer, but a lot of the time you feel like you’re fighting a losing battle trying to come up with inventive ideas. It often feels like the entire team is conspiring against you to ensure that of all your ideas, only the ones that are easy to implement and similar to what they know will see the light of day. It’s like trying to stuff a tree through a key hole, or something – all that’s gonna come through are a few scraps of bark and maybe a twig or two (rubbish analogy maybe, but I wanted to get one in here somewhere). The worst thing is that half of the time I can see where everyone else is coming from… “Yes, this idea was a bit far-fetched…”, “I didn’t realise how much extra effort this would take…”, “Yes, I guess we could tone this down a little…”, “I guess this ISN’T THAT crucial, but it would be nice…” And so on.

Then again, they can all fuck off, because at the risk of sounding like a diva, it’s their JOB to make what we design! But then it’s also our job to tailor our designs to what’s actually conceivable when things are looking tight… something one of my co-workers refers to as ‘the design crowbar’. A fair bit of the time the ammendments I’m making are because I’ve not fully understood how the game would actually be made – this is something I’m realising a lot now. But, I don’t know, it often feels like people would just rather not try and put the effort in or something. I’ve said myself that this is a licensed game so okay, it’s never going to be great, but at this rate it’s never going to be anything but the same mechanics repeated over and over again until the player dies of boredom.

Sorry, I’m getting a bit carried away. There are some neat ideas in this game. But there could be so much more if only every time something that presented a challenge came up it wasn’t cropped straight out of the designs! It’s starting to feel like a sin to think up something that could be potentially difficult to implement. I’ve had dirty looks from coders, animators and artists alike in the last few weeks when I’ve explained how something works in my level. Half the time, a few days later said something has been axed in favour of ‘generic mechanic A’.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom. That crucial other half of the team actually seems enthusiastic about these ideas. It just often feels that, like I said earlier, it’s a losing fight. Somewhere along the line somebody is going to complain that they don’t have the time or the resources. Half the time it’s a case of standing your ground, because some of these bastards walk all over you if you don’t have the confidence to back up your ideas (something I’m trying to get gradually as I go along!); often they’ll be able to do what you want, but they just won’t want to.

Apologies for a rather downbeat entry, it’s been one of those days – bugs and crashes aplenty, and little in the way of progress. But I know we’re getting there… even if at the end of the tunnel or whatever half of what I wrote in my design documents is going to have been left on the cutting room floor.