I hear a lot of game design pitches and my feedback is often a shrug of the shoulders. A few ideas are clearly superior and I get very excited about them, and a few are SO bad that I can easily shake my head and say, "No, that is a terrible game concept." But often I just shrug my shoulders, because great concepts and terrible concepts all require one thing to be successful: execution.
I sometimes use the original "Diablo" to explain my position on this topic. Before I learned the importance of execution I honestly believe that I would NOT have approved that pitch. I think the conversation would have gone like this:
I sometimes use the original "Diablo" to explain my position on this topic. Before I learned the importance of execution I honestly believe that I would NOT have approved that pitch. I think the conversation would have gone like this:
| DIABLO DESIGNER Diablo will be an in-depth RPG with great action and special effects!! JOHN CUTTER (thinking about the Ultima Series and games like "Daggerfall") An RPG... okay... that could be interesting. So there will be a large fantasy world with dozens of towns, each offering a unique cultural -- DIABLO DESIGNER Uh. No. Not really. There is only one town. JOHN CUTTER One town??? Okay, but it's a HUGE town with tons of explorable buildings and -- DIABLO DESIGNER Errr. Well, no, actually the town only has a few buildings... and you can't actually go inside any of them. But there's a dungeon -- JOHN CUTTER Oh, it's a dungeon romp game!! So there are dozens of intricate dungeons, each with lots of huge levels -- DIABLO DESIGNER Sorry. One dungeon. 16 levels. And it's not real intricate because the layout of each level is randomly generated. JOHN CUTTER (really searching now) You can be any kind of character, right? DIABLO DESIGNER Only 3 choices. JOHN CUTTER Quests? DIABLO DESIGNER Not really, no. JOHN CUTTER You're going to use the latest 3D techn-- DIABLO DESIGNER 2D. Isometric. JOHN CUTTER (pointing to the door) NEXT! |
My point is, the game was so well executed the pitch was kind of irrelevant. But stories like that make it difficult for me to judge other games, because there are lots of really horrible game concepts out there, but many of them could be successful, possibly hugely successful, with the proper execution by a talented individual or team.
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