By: Michael Ebner
Montgazette Contributing Writer
Today’s gaming industry is full of players with little knowledge of how their favorite games get started. Chris Avellone, a video game designer, most known for “Fallout: New Vegas,” says, “Your job is to entertain [the players] and you can set up a custom adventure that lets them play the characters they want, that lets them take the stage and have their moment, while having a challenging session along the way.” With this knowledge, a game designer then has to create a world that people will want to play in. “Start with a moment or event you want to create, and why you want to create it,” Avellone says. The best games exploit their stories, resulting in a “letting the dice fall where they may” feeling. The end results are often something a gamer never saw coming. He went on to say, “and pay attention to the character builds of your group-each player is at the role-playing game session for a particular reason.” The next major step is the character creation process. “Realize why the players are there. Realize what skills both [the] players and [the] characters [have], and what challenges you can throw at them to emphasize those [skills].” Out of this, Avellone lists four steps for successful video game design. “Examine [the characters] role in the story. Name them properly, this is more important than it may seem. Set up a visual signature for the character with the concept artist. The character must be someone who can give voice to the [things] that bother you or is something you really, really want to write about. …Character designs all depend on the character’s function [in the story].” Even after the designer makes a concept, the story is written and the characters are drawn, game designers have to rely heavily on outside input to get there games off the ground. In the end, if it’s done right, there’s no downside for the game designer. As Avellone says, “The satisfaction you feel should be secondary to the players having a good time. If they do, your satisfaction comes after the session is over and they want to play more.”
The Montgazette 