fun – Jesse Bollinger

In theory, you might think that it should be easy to appreciate the merits of a game before any sound or music has been added to it, but in practice you might be surprised at how difficult this often is. A game which feels utterly fantastic with all its sound and music in place can easily feel very stale when you silence all of the audio.

The soundscape of a game often drastically impacts the emotions of the person playing it. It can make or break the game. It can even distort the ability of the game designer to accurately perceive what is working and what is not in the game. Don’t make the mistake of underappreciating the importance of having strong audio.

One of the greatest dangers that a game developer can ever face is to fall so in love with the aesthetics of their theme that they lose sight of ever actually making the game fun. World building may indeed be a wonderful creative exercise, but it is not a game.

Fixating too much on theme will often cause game developers to spend huge amounts of time and resources creating assets that may never even contribute in any meaningful way to the substance of the game. Many game projects have been ruined by this. It often causes game devs to fly blind for very long periods of time without ever testing whether their assumptions about how the game will end up feeling are really true and without considering the schedule.

Tag: fun

Game Dev Tip #10: A game without sound will often feel hollow, even if it is otherwise good

Game Dev Tip #5: Make your game fun as soon as possible, or else it may never be