Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design by Ernest Adams & Andrew Rollings

Author:Ernest Adams & Andrew Rollings [Ernest Adams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Game Development
Publisher: New Riders
Published: 2003-04-30T21:00:00+00:00

Figure 9.6. Battlezone and Quake III.

Non-Shooters

Many games—particularly in the early years of the industry before commercial pressures intervened to the levels they have today—were non-violent. This proliferation of non-violent games with strange themes is often likened to the early days of the movie industry, where creativity was the highest driving force, before the big money moved in.

Today, most games seem to be aimed at the typical male 25-35 demographic, but there are still notable exceptions. As we've already stated, the non-violent games seem to appeal more to the female demographic. One of the reasons for this, we feel, is that by removing the easy option of violence, the designer has to think a little bit harder about how to provide the gameplay hooks.

Notable “non-shooter” action games include Marble Madness, Lode Runner, Pac-Man, Chuckie Egg, the Mario games, Q*Bert, Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2, Pong, Donkey Kong, and Frogger. All these games have the same non-violence motif running through them (although the latter two are arguable). The primary reason for this is because the games were (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the game) designed to be appealing to children, particularly in the case of the Mario series of games.

Frogger, shown in Figure 9.7, was originally a highly successful arcade game released back in 1981. The aim of the game was to get the world's only non-swimming frog family across a busy road and a logging river infested with crocodiles and fickle turtles. From these humble beginnings sprang one of the most successful series of remakes of all time. Hasbro's remake of Frogger (also shown in Figure 9.7) sold millions of copies, and was a mainstay of the software charts for many months after release. Interestingly enough, the developers focused on keeping the gameplay virtually unchanged, and just updated the presentation, increasing the variety of the levels available to the player. Frogger 2, released several years later, introduced a more structured game, while still remaining faithful to the core gameplay of the original.

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