“Play as a game designer” is one of the most popular recommendations for those who take their first steps in the profession. What is really hidden behind these words? The authors of books and articles recommend playing as much as possible, playing games of different genres, playing not only good games, but also bad ones, in every way increasing their pretense.
There is nothing wrong with increasing simplicity, but for some reason it is not obvious to everyone that simplicity alone is not enough. It would be nice not only to consume games, but also to treat them critically.
The result of a critical analysis may be an article / video about how in one game or another the developers' tasks were solved.
Who needs it and why? First of all, such work will be useful to you, as a developer, as well as to your colleagues. Unlike game journalism, intended for players, game criticism is useful to specialists. The benefit may lie in describing strong solutions, interesting findings, or in pointing out errors.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the option of conducting such a critical analysis.
Preparatory stage
What to do
- Play the game . The requirement may seem obvious, but the main task here is not to spend several hours in front of the screen (or at the table), but to consider all aspects of the game from different angles so that your feedback is more objective.
- It is advisable to go through the game to the end, if the end is generally implied. If the passage takes tens of hours, you need to finish at least the main storyline
- If the game has asymmetric gameplay (as, for example, in StarCraft ) with various strategies, you need to play for different sides and against different opponents
- If the game has different difficulty levels, try playing on each
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After a certain number of disassembled games (focus on a couple of dozen if the games are not really from different genres), you will have enough material to upload videos like “10 ways ...”, and these videos can be more meaningful and more useful than most what is on YouTube now. And if you work in a disciplined manner, then in the long run you will not have any problems with the availability of content.