"You aren't a game Dev so you don't get to have an opinion on what is or isn't bad game design"

[chipperrip]

Quoting myself here because it applies the same.
A good suggestion is still good ofc.
But when you write "lazy", "half job" or "simple", you've lost me.

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The issue we're discussing here isn't "bad post is bad", it's "can players discuss game design with any merit"?

The problem with this is, the dev more often than not *knows* it's a suboptimal decision, but it's the only one possible.
And the reason why that might be are way more complex than the average gamer could ever imagine and stems from hundreds if not thousands of hours of talks, discussions, meetings and the interaction with other involved disciplines like art or tech.
Let's not assume that if something is not done, then it's because they didn't think of it or thought it wasn't a good idea.
A game is a heap of compromises barely hanging together with tape and sweat.

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This seems to be a common sentiment from devs, and seems to be a specific response to a certain type of "why didn't they just do this" post.

People can talk about problems and solutions from an ideal design standpoint (having and talking about ideas) without being aware of behind the scenes technical and business difficulties after the fact.

If someone's opinion is vaguely expressed, and full of mean-spirited speculation on the value and intentions of developers, you can try ignore them, or attempt to reason with or inform them.

It's best to engage with people who are making interesting discussion in good faith.

 

[LonestarZues]

You can criticize a game dev without being a dick. Just don't be a dick and be respectful and constructive.

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My thoughts exactly.

 

[Dalcop]

There are thousands of design decisions that are made deliberately and thousands more that aren't. It's foolish to think that every aspect would be free from flaw or criticism or that they should be. An opinion does or doesn't have merit based on its own validity, not the supposed authority of the one who gave it.

 

[Ninge]

Yeah he's wrong - your opinion definitely counts. You are the customer after all. I've been making games for three decades and there's nothing more insightful than player feedback. It doesn't matter how good/pure your design might be, if the people playing your game think your design sucks, then it sucks :)

 

[Corralx]

The issue we're discussing here isn't "bad post is bad", it's "can players discuss game design with any merit"?



This seems to be a common sentiment from devs, and seems to be a specific response to a certain type of "why didn't they just do this" post.

People can talk about problems and solutions from an ideal design standpoint (having and talking about ideas) without being aware of behind the scenes technical and business difficulties after the fact.

If someone's opinion is vaguely expressed, and full of mean-spirited speculation on the value and intentions of developers, you can try ignore them, or attempt to reason with or inform them.

It's best to engage with people who are making interesting discussion in good faith.

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I don't think any dev in his right mind would complain to a fruitful discussion about the design (or art or tech) of a game he worked on.
There's plenty of amazing discussions going on, and a ton of great resources out there, especially in specialised subreddits/forums.
The problem is those are rare, and most often than not they end up with the word "lazy" or "simple" in it, and that's when you give up.
On top of that, some people simply cannot accept that the reasons behind that choice are not trivial and often (especially when we talk about tech) cannot be discussed freely on a forum, or they are motivated by something beyond the knowledge of that person. And trying to explain why that decision was the best possible one in that case when someone simply thinks he could do a better job than you, is a lost cause and becomes very frustrating, which eventually alienates developer (hence why devs mostly stay away from communities and have they're own private circles or engage as normal customers anonymously).

 

[Don Fluffles]

Players can and do often point out problems with a game. There are other times where it's not really apparent. For example, an FPS doesn't "feel good" to play but can't put their finger on it. A good dev can, more or less, diagnose the issue and find a fix, if not implement it.

 

[Nestunt]

Like any other argument, it should be justified with some robust evidences. You might not know the technical terms or calculations, but, in the end, you're not born with a designer's brain. Designers translate into math, physics and engineering, what we perceive as an experience. We can comment on that experience, with detailed justification on that feeling.

 

[Teeth]

A couple things:

1) There was a point in my life where I was not a game designer before I was a game designer. Where I crossed that line is blurry unless you only count getting paid for something as actually being something. I've had opinions the whole time.

2) If you have said something to the effect of "I don't need to have designed a car to know if it's badly designed." or "I don't need to know how to paint to tell you if a piece of art is garbage."....I actually kind of disagree with these sentiments. You can have opinions, but if you can't articulate what the issue is, then I can't tell if you understand it. If you don't understand it, then your opinion is invalid. Let's go with the following statements from a different medium:

"Rap isn't even music."
"This <complex jazz song> is just random notes."
"This Rachmaninoff piece has no flow."

These are similar statements to "this game is badly designed." If you can't articulate further than there or use language like "it has no soul", or "it's badly paced", or "it lacks charm" then you might be better off with statements like "I hated this game" or "I found it boring".

Similarly, saying "this fight is badly designed because it's got a bullet sponge enemy" is like saying "This painting is poorly done because it has too much blue." You gotta go a little deeper than that if you're going to criticize the design.

 

[Bjones]

That statement is incorrect but at the same time just like there are professional critics for other things, it does take someone who can be objective as possible to really be taken seriously.

 

[RadzPrower]

I'm 50/50 on this.

Yes, a player with experience to draw from can form coherent and valid thoughts on the design of specific games. It is entirely possible to determine based on how the game plays on whether it is ideal game design or not.

Now, the flip side of that is that players don't necessarily understand the nuts and bolts and business side of things either and why certain design decisions were made over others. Yeah, a game may technically be poorly designed in a vacuum, but it may have also been the best they could do given business or technological restraints of the time.

TL;DR: A player can have an opinion on game design, but they need to at least recognize they don't necessarily have all the context.

 

[fourfourfun]

This, plus armchair critics often stray into "this design choice would have been easy"/"there's no reason this couldn't have been done" when they are clueless about the reasons certain choices were made or if something was even possible.

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The little insights we get into game design show us how little that we know. The way that multiplayer is angled to give new players a little booster in order to engage them with the mode, thereby stopping the thing becoming a strict vertical of hardcore enthusiasts. How structures are designed to handle the speed of loading assets and all sorts. Yeah, we're all novices really speaking about utopia game design.

 

[Corralx]

The little insights we get into game design show us how little that we know. The way that multiplayer is angled to give new players a little booster in order to engage them with the mode, thereby stopping the thing becoming a strict vertical of hardcore enthusiasts. How structures are designed to handle the speed of loading assets and all sorts. Yeah, we're all novices really speaking about utopia game design.

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The funniest posts are the one commenting on the balancing of big competitive games like LoL, Dota 2, Overwatch and such after every patch.
Plenty of ppl are like "how can ppl still play this game when it's so unbalanced and broken?" (and they ofc go back to play the game themselves).
What they don't realise is that the balance is broken *on purpose* and how it's broken every patch is carefully crafted to drive the engagement of players up and keep them playing. Turns out what keeps ppl playing is not what ppl thinks they're playing for.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

I don't think I've ever seen someone say that in response to game criticism in my 10+ years of games forum reading / posting.

 

[Servbot24]

I am not a cook but I can still say when food is bad.

 

[mael]

Vex your thread is reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad
the title is saying the opposite of the content of the original post.
I nearly voted without reading further emphasising how wrong you were when your post says the opposite.
Some of the best art critics aren't artist so there's no reason why it would be different for games.
Do we expect the best food critics to be the best cooks as well?
Seems utterly pointless to even consider discussion if you need to create something in the field of what you are evaluating.

 

[Fisty]

You need to go to college for 4 years to be able to tell if a boss sucks or not

 

[justiceiro]

Well, depends. I'm not a chef, but I can say that the food needs more salt... But sometimes it's not exactly that. I can have a opinion on how a game can improve, but I think a game developer would still know better than me.

 

[Teeth]

I am not a cook but I can still say when food is bad.

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Can you?

Like, if served a piping hot cup of fresh cow's blood or fish that's been "fermenting" in the sun for 3 days, would you be able to decipher between cultural illiteracy and "bad"?

 

[Ghostwalker]

Can you?

Like, if served a piping hot cup of fresh cow's blood or fish that's been "fermenting" in the sun for 3 days, would you be able to decipher between cultural illiteracy and "bad"?

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That easy your bowels will provide the answer to that question

 

[virtua_44]

Do game devs make games for regular people? Or exclusively for other game devs? As long as games are made for the public, obviously we will have a say.

Isnt this partially why playtesters exist? To see if the game is readable and playable by a person?

Kinda in shock that this is a discussion but damn that poll is more even than i expected.

 

[Sordid Plebeian]

I'm allowed to have an opinion

 

[Moist_Owlet]

That's true I had to study game design to know that superman 64 is bad

 

[Ruisu]

I'm divided. While there are somethings you don't need experience to know are bad, Gamers have a extremely common tendency to have terrible steaming hot takes about what they consider "bad design" that clearly shows they have no idea what they're talking about and are sooo wrong.

A lot of reasons.


First and foremost, players are often bad at identifying what they actually have a problem with. A player might tell you "the dodge mechanic doesn't work" when the actual problem they're having is that the boss's attack isn't telegraphed well enough to give them the advance warning they need to use it. They might tell you "there isn't enough content" when the actual problem is that you set the leveling curve too shallow and they're outleveling 90% of the content in the game before they ever see it. They might tell you an enemy "has too much health" when all they really want is a better visual indicator for how close the boss is to dying, or that a gun "sucks" when mechanically it's fine and all it needs is more satisfying visual and audible feedback.


They're even worse at identifying how to fix problems, which is an issue considering most players want to do so without even having stopped to identify the problem properly first. To take the example above, a lot of players will skip the entire "the dodge mechanic doesn't work" part and go straight to "you should replace the dodge with a block"; basically they'll give you (potentially bad) advice about how to fix something that isn't even the actual problem.


They're also prone to being forgetful/having a recency bias/etc. If you actually run biometrics moment-to-moment--eye-tracking linked to heat maps on menus, heart rate during specific moments, etc.--you'll find that they often neglect to mention the important points and instead project the feelings from those onto the broader experience or later parts of it. A player who gets really frustrated with a bad menu might neglect to mention that entirely, and instead tell you they didn't enjoy the entire sequence where they were struggling with the UI, even though it had nothing to do with the rest of that sequence.


Think of it like going to the doctor: tell the doctor your symptoms in the simplest terms, don't try and self-diagnose and offer possible prescriptions.

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Also this is the best response.

 

[Teeth]

That easy your bowels will provide the answer to that question

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But it wouldn't. Your "bowels" are tuned to what you've grown up eating. It has nothing to do with taste.

Do game devs make games for regular people? Or exclusively for other game devs? As long as games are made for the public, obviously we will have a say.

Isnt this partially why playtesters exist? To see if the game is readable and playable by a person?

Kinda in shock that this is a discussion but damn that poll is more even than i expected.

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Playtesting is for making games sell, not making games "good".

Games are both tools and art, so the mixture can often be in conflict and they are both massively in conflict with the business of making them. Take something that trends away from the tool aspect and more towards the art...would you be satisfied knowing your favourite movie director's movie was re-edited based on a random sampling of movie-goer's test screening opinions?

 

[Timeaisis]

Of course non-developers can have an opinion on game design, just as non-artists can have an opinion on art, and non-musicians can have an opinion on music. All opinions are therefore valid. Are some of them nonsensical? Yes. Are some of them quite insightful? Also, yes.

Of course you can talk about game design from a more technical perspective, i.e. why did the developers do this given that they probably knew it was bad game design? Or, why did they not realize this was bad when designing it? That's an interesting topic that game developers probably have more insight into. There is a lot more to it than surface level enjoyment, and there are a lot of considerations made to each design, even bad ones. A lot of times a bad design is a lesser of two evils, what I call a necessarily bad design. These are unfortunate. Encumbrance is a great example of this in the Fallout series. It's a necessary because designers haven't figured out a better way to achieve a particular (and necessary) design goal (which, I might add, is not always make it fun, but we strive to make that the underlying goal of all the systems together).

But, similarly, my brother, who doesn't even play games much anymore can point to a system or feature and say "this is bad', not even citing it as a "design" just a function of his enjoyment and engagement in a particular feature or system. He is pointing out bad game design because there is a disconnect between design intent and (his) player perception. Criticisms like these can be pointed out by pretty much anyone, given they are capable of explaining why they feel a certain thing is bad or good. The discussion really comes down to the why, as you are justifying whether something is bad or good, and examining the thing's intent and why that intent has failed. It's obviously a very subjective field. Clearly the game wants me to do X, but I can't do X because Y. The design intent has therefore failed. That is a great example of a non-developer's criticism of a bad design, and a very valid one.

Source: I am a game designer at Bioware.

 

[Garrod Ran]

the phrase "everyone's a critic" comes to mind, because it's definitely true.

film critics aren't expected to be filmmakers themselves but they are expected to be knowledgeable on the technical qualities of filmmaking, in addition to being able to properly articulate on why those qualities are good or bad. There's a difference between going "film is bad" and detailing on why the film is poorly shot, or poorly paced, or poorly depicts its subject matter.

Similarly, food critics aren't expected to be professional chefs, but they are expected to be skilled in determining the quality of the food that they're served. There's the difference between "by the standards of which this dish is expected to be served at, you have failed or otherwise struggled to meet them" and "you gave me mushrooms and i fucking hate mushrooms fuck you"

that said, there's obvious surface level criticisms that can be made and those are valid
if you burn someone's meal and serve it to them anyway like nothing is wrong, yeah you deserve some criticism
but if the chef burns someone's meal because they're being made to work on 10 other orders at the same time and the restaurant owner forces the staff to serve it to the customer like nothing is wrong, then the owner deserves criticism, but without the knowledge that the restaurant you're eating at has these problems, you'd just think you were served a bad meal by a bad chef. And you wouldn't know better on where to redirect your criticism.

basically, criticisms are valid but if you want your opinion to be taken seriously by creators, you need to articulate them properly in such a way that shows you have some degree of understanding on the topic. "game is bad" doesn't communicate anything other than... you think game is bad. as such, the devs can't actually glean any worthwhile information from that. Something like "bosses have too much HP" or "this weapon type is underpowered compared to other options" are immediately much more graspable in terms of what the problem is and therefore devs can properly receive that as a criticism and potentially work towards correcting it.
Furthermore, don't act like a know it all, just because you played dark souls doesn't mean you know what game design is, Kevin

 

[headspawn]

Someone, let me know if I it's okay if I pleb critique the game design here...

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

 

[Ghostwalker]

But it wouldn't. Your "bowels" are tuned to what you've grown up eating. It has nothing to do with taste.

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Your bowels will adapt to new food that is of good quality but not your taste if you eat enough of it.
However if it is bad food they will never adapt, say a pork that is half burnt and half raw.

Their is a firm difference between what is bad and what is just not to your taste in all things. Although some people cannot tell the difference between two when giving their option

 

[Dusk Golem]

People obviously can form thoughts on games from their experience. I'd even say it's healthy, productive and part of the form of entertainment.

For me the issue starts coming when what they know from playing games makes them think they know how to make better games, while also simultaneously not knowing how hard making games truly is and why making a good game is challenging. It's easy on paper to say, "Well, this could've obviously been better, why didn't they change it?" I think it's fine and really easy to look at an end product and say how it could be better, but when people cross a line and start becoming armchair game devs who don't know a lick about how games are made or very limited knowledge and assume it's as simple as that one old QA Tester video game ad that they "just need to tighten the graphics up in level 4," that's often where I think the issues begin to arise.

That and black and white thinking many on the internet seem to have on everything is either amazing or shit and being either a jackass with their opinion or growing up learning how to share critique from angry video game YouTubers unironically, mixed with many who mistake personal subjective opinions as critique. As a game designer if you asked 20 different people's feedback on a stage and all they like and dislike, you are likely to get quite a few different answers which may even contradict the other due to people's subjective taste. Game design by committee has the problem of people wanting what they like rather than focusing on what something is going for. That doesn't make the process useless, you can find shared opinions between people and a consensus, but if you changed games to every person's nitpick, you'd keep on changing things because there's never something that will satisfy everyone.

 

[Deleted member 11976]

You can criticize a game dev without being a dick. Just don't be a dick and be respectful and constructive.

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This is it. I work as a designer and feedback and opinions from players is good. Even better when it's thoughtful and thorough.

I'm 50/50 on the OP's question because so much of knowing why X design decision was made, especially if you disagree with the decision, is largely the result of some technical constraint, internal dev team politics, or lack of time/scope/budget that is entirely unique to that project. This means that it's not really fair for developers to shit talk one another because to fully understand the reasoning, you had to have worked on a project.

As a player this can be really frustrating and I get that. I experience it too! But yeah, I've always found being respectful and asking questions is usually the best way to find out why a decision panned out the way it did. And with ongoing/live games, figuring out how and where to collect feedback for devs is key. If you truly want to improve the game, wasting time typing "you guys fuckin suck why would you do this to me" literally makes the community manager and dev team's job harder. My honest advice, for a quick way to help, is to look up "user stories" and figure out how to frame certain feedback items as such.

 

[Servbot24]

Can you?

Like, if served a piping hot cup of fresh cow's blood or fish that's been "fermenting" in the sun for 3 days, would you be able to decipher between cultural illiteracy and "bad"?

Click to shrink...

If I hate it then it's bad

Why is it still a mystery to people that the internet is made out of opinions. It's 2020. People should have figured this out by now.

 

[Teeth]

Your bowels will adapt to new food that is of good quality but not your taste if you eat enough of it.
However if it is bad food they will never adapt, say a pork that is half burnt and half raw.

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Your bowels would be perfectly fine eating pork tartare (sterilized) and the outer layer of a char broiled pork chops.

Many would say that the raw pork (tartare) was an exquisite delicacy. And many barbecue fans would say some blackening is necessary for a good sear.

If I hate it then it's bad

Why is it still a mystery to people that the internet is made out of opinions. It's 2020. People should have figured this out by now.

Click to shrink...

If you hate it and therefore it's bad is all your opinion is, then it is of no use to anyone and isn't worth expressing.

 

[Servbot24]

If you hate it and therefore it's bad is all your opinion is, then it is of no use to anyone and isn't worth expressing.

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Obviously "it's bad" is not all that I would write if I were a food critic.

 

[Garrod Ran]

If I hate it then it's bad

Why is it still a mystery to people that the internet is made out of opinions. It's 2020. People should have figured this out by now.

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"i'm allowed to be an asshole on the internet because opinions and it's 2020"
wow what airtight logic

 

[Zonal Hertz]

Can you?

Like, if served a piping hot cup of fresh cow's blood or fish that's been "fermenting" in the sun for 3 days, would you be able to decipher between cultural illiteracy and "bad"?

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That's stupid. It's really not hard to disagree with design decisions devs make. My expertise would be competitive shooters - and yes - I've never made a game or tried but I can quite easily comment on the design choices made and my perspective perfectly valid.

 

[Servbot24]

"i'm allowed to be an asshole on the internet because opinions and it's 2020"
wow what airtight logic

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I have no idea what you're talking about or where that quote came from

 

[FrakEarth]

You can criticize a game dev without being a dick. Just don't be a dick and be respectful and constructive.

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This should be all there is to it. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know how to not be a dick.

I'm not a developer - I wouldn't blame any developer for filtering out some of the extreme, aggressive and often hyperbolic nonsense people tend to churn out when they're unhappy about something. If you can be articulate and express what your problem is without being an arsehole, I'm pretty sure any dev worth their salt will value your feedback.

 

[Huey]

50/50 on this

A player can definitely tell what works and what doesn't once in the drivers chair. However, said player also can think fixing things or changing things iis far easier than it is "Just change the value to X" isn't exactly how things work.

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I think this is much more the phenomenon that happens here. I usually don't see devs respond to critiques about the game experience, I see them respond to often aggressive suggestions on how easy it should be for them to fix it.

 

[Thera]

We can judge the end product without being involved in the product itself or knowing how it is done. That is the reason why you need external view on what you are making / doing. There is a reason why most IT stuff have a big lack of ergonomy, because that part is mostly not done at all.

After that, there are people who will judge or make comment about "lazy" or how "easy it is to make this".
Also people in evey sub about next gen will say stuff like "I don't think that matter" "I don't think this is important" while knowing shit about dev.

Those two aren't the same at all. One is legit and important, the other is infuriating.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

Be constructive in your criticisms, just do not be an asshole about it.

 

[Teeth]

Obviously "it's bad" is not all that I would write if I were a food critic.

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I guess what we disagree on is whether there's a difference between the defining something as bad vs defining something as something you hate.

I think defining something as bad requires knowledge.

I can define something as something I hate regardless of context. Me hating something has everything to do with my own personal feelings. If I'm going to judge the art or design of something, education is necessary.

To expand on this: there are things I feel qualified to judge as bad art or poorly crafted. There are many more fields that I don't. Even in fields I would consider myself very knowledgeable in, I would be very leery on judging as bad due to the cultural context they may inhabit, and I mean that in the broadest sense. Equating my own feelings on something to its quality falls really hard into the Dunning Kruger effect.

 

[Ghostwalker]

Your bowels would be perfectly fine eating pork tartare (sterilized) and the outer layer of a char broiled pork chops.

Many would say that the raw pork (tartare) was an exquisite delicacy. And many barbecue fans would say some blackening is necessary for a good sear.

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So let take a Pork tartare seared to perfection on one plate and then a pork chop two day past the sell by date left in the sun for a day that is half charcoal and half raw on the other.
I think it safe to say pretty much everybody regardless of their personal opinion of pork is going to say which one is Good and which one is Bad.

 

[platypotamus]

I've been working in the game industry for over twenty years now and I can state unequivocally that being a game dev does not stop people from being wrong about game design, so yeah it is pretty irrelevant

 

[Servbot24]

I guess what we disagree on is whether there's a difference between the defining something as bad vs defining something as something you hate.

I think defining something as bad requires knowledge.

I can define something as something I hate regardless of context. Me hating something has everything to do with my own personal feelings. If I'm going to judge the art or design of something, education is necessary.

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While this is all true, I'm also not going to begrudge anyone who plays a game, hates it, and says "it's bad." It is a common understanding that this is the opinion of a person with their own biases and does not need to be explicitly stated. Of course that comment doesn't really add much to the conversation either. But if someone were to say "Rubberbanding AI is bad because it's frustrating and makes me feel like my skill doesn't matter" - yes we all know that's their opinion. They don't need to add another sentence saying "NOTE: I am not a prophet bearing truth from on high, but am actually a person who plays games and posts thoughts about them online." Information that incredibly obvious doesn't need to be spelled out on every post.

 

[Rookhelm]

I think players often conflate "I don't like thing" with "bad design".

you're allowed to like or dislike whatever you want, but I personally try to refrain from calling something "bad design" when I have no idea what it takes to design a thing. I don't have to like a game or game element, but there's other discussions to be had that don't revolve around a "bad design" claim.

 

[Deleted member 23850]

We are the ones playing and buying these things, we absolutely have a say in things.

 

[Teeth]

While this is all true, I'm also not going to begrudge anyone who plays a game, hates it, and says "it's bad." It is a common understanding that this is the opinion of a person with their own biases and does not need to be explicitly stated. Of course that comment doesn't really add much to the conversation either. But if someone were to say "Rubberbanding AI is bad because it's frustrating and makes me feel like my skill doesn't matter" - yes we all know that's their opinion. They don't need to add another sentence saying "NOTE: I am not a prophet bearing truth from on high, but am actually a person who plays games and posts thoughts about them online." Information that incredibly obvious doesn't need to be spelled out on every post.

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I guess this depends on their knowledge of Rubberband AI. Like, without knowing their experience with games at all, if they just said "rubberband AI is bad and this game has it, and that's why I hate this game", I'd have a generalized understanding of their opinion, but not really know how to contextualize their opinion of the game.

Does the game have rubberband AI in a localized sense? In a macro sense? If it's a racing game, how much "come from behind" do the AI cars have? Would they rather the other cars drive like they are on rails? Or do they want SOME rubberbanding (wherein the other cars react to the player, but can't just hyperdrive speed in the last lap if they are vastly behind)? Does the player want zero variability in AI finish times? If so, would they feel better just driving time trials? Do they want other cars to be around them at all? How do they feel about rubber banding in other games? Do they feel cheated in Half Life 2 or Dead Space when they smash a box and it has ammo for a gun they are running low on right now, vs last time they came to that checkpoint and there was no ammo in that box? Do they feel cheated when an enemy shoots them regularly for 15 damage but when they have 12 HP left, when shot by an enemy they end up with 1HP remaining? Do they feel like their skill doesn't matter when they play any other game with randomized or procedural elements? Do they only want rubberbanding when it assists them as a player (which would still nullifies their own skill based winnings...if they even noticed)....

Like, all of this can be alleviated if they said something like:
"I was playing this race and I got third place with a finish race time of 2:03, but then the next time I played, I got to first place only at the end of the last lap but ended up winning with a time of 2:33. Clearly it doesn't matter how well you race, it's all about how you game the system."

vs.

"AI is rubberband hell. Game is designed so bad."

 

[Tayaya]

Wow I wish I read what you had to say. You are right, but people are going to vote on the thread title quote, which is the opposite of what you said!

I think in this industry there is enough prior art out there where people don't have to know the technical ins and outs of making games to be able to go "this could have been done better.... here is game X that does the same thing in a much more well executed way." A bad game is a bad game, and most of us can explain why without having to resort to such broad strokes as "it sucks" or "It's boring." Even those of us who have never touched a dev kit.

 

[Łazy]

Clearly 50/50 if not 100/100. Hmmm...

Basically, everyone is wrong an right about their feedback on game design.

You can have what seem to be great/terrible ideas but for some reason would make a game sell more.

But there's also ideas you love and work great but just are not appealing at all to most people, meaning if you want it, the game as to be niche and there's almost no way around it.

Or what about the artistic sense from the developer. You would like X or Y but removing/adding some features might actually change the experience and neither make it better but just "not the same".

Even for details some would say are obvious I could find disagreeing opinions. An easy one is about UI or menus. I saw UIs I or other people liked a lot and people hating it, the opposite being true.

There are certainly a few... "as close as possible to objectivity" game design choices but the frontier between obviously better and just appealing to more while not being better is sometimes thin.

 

[diegov]

Similarly, saying "this fight is badly designed because it's got a bullet sponge enemy" is like saying "This painting is poorly done because it has too much blue." You gotta go a little deeper than that if you're going to criticize the design.

Click to shrink...

I think the issue is that design is a constructive discipline; choosing to call something "bad design" then, as you mention, requires that we explain how it is that it was badly designed (ie, the process of design that led to the result) which is something most of us wouldn't know that much about.

But judging the design process is not necessary to express an opinion, as a consumer or even as a critic. And as a player that opinion could even be more relevant than that of the designer, if all their great design effort ends up buried under a pile of issues that stop people from appreciating the work (a good postmortem digging up all that good design that got buried is always interesting though!)
Also critics often appreciate things that the designer might not even appreciate themselves, or bring in personal stories that relate to the work they're reviewing.

So I'd say the opinion of a player or critic is absolutely valuable and cannot be disqualified just because they are not game design experts, but the conversation would be clearer if people who are not really doing game design analysis didn't use language that implies that they are.