GDC slides: What Disneyland can teach you about game design
Found via a spied-upon conversation between Deus Ex: Invisible War and Karmastar designer Harvey Smith and God of War's David Jaffe: slides from this GDC talk I now regret missing (though it appears BB's own Cory Doctorow didn't), in which Pac-Man World, Maximo and God of War designer Scott Rogers explains that everything he knows about game design he learned from Disneyland.
Even without Rogers' overlying explanation, there's a lot to be gleaned from the slides, from Disney's use of 'weenies' -- distant landmarks to orient and draw the player into your world -- storytelling via your environment, and building anticipation through landscape lulls.
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Inverse Square
#1 – 10:31 AM August 3, 2009
I'm sorry, but Scott Rogers is not a good man to learn anything about game design from, and I'm frankly rather frightened by the idea that he would give presentations that people would be listening to.
I know I sound really arrogant, but really, I'm on my knees at the moment, because I am begging you to read this: http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=73
Iridium
#2 – 9:04 AM August 4, 2009
I'll have to agree with Inverse Square (#1) - This talk was pretty shallow and derivative. All the great game designers have been taking inspiration from WED and Disneyland for decades now, and all of the 'deep' lessons that Scott presented in his talk at GDC were actually pretty remedial ones. I've personally seen about four different formal presentations on this *exact* topic (disclaimer: I've been a game dev for about 14 years) at various conferences and workshops, and one fantastic talk on the topic by that the Creative Director (VP) at Imagineering hosted internally to Disney Interactive. A lady design gave a talk about 'theme parks' and game design at the Austin Game Developers Conference last year that was really about Disneyland too; her inspirational examples really had left me thinking, since they were about big online games and communities.
In contract, Scott's talk was like his games; kinda bland and a bit derivative.
Scott Rogers
#3 – 4:08 AM November 18, 2009
@ Inverse Squared (#1)
I'm afraid you must have me confused with someone else as I worked on the first God of War, not the sequel.
In fact, I didn't see a single game that I was involved with the design of reviewed on your site.
Best,
Scott Rogers