u/WillingnessSoggy155

Hey everyone,

I’m a senior level designer with around 8 years of experience (AAA/AA, mobile), currently mostly working on more complex levels, missions, problems such as layered spaces, pacing, combat/readability, progression, encounter flow, player motivation, composition, and combining multiple mechanics into a cohesive experience.

Recently i was given a task to design multiple simple gym-style challenges based on basic movement. On paper, this sounds like it should be easier than designing complex levels, but I’ve found it surprisingly challenging.

Not impossible, just much harder than I expected.

I think part of the issue is that my brain has been trained for years to solve complexity.
I also noticed that my instincts sometimes work against me. I tend to reject ideas because they feel too obvious or too basic, even though in a gym context that may be exactly what’s needed.

I had to create a gym with different challenge variations and difficulty 1-5 where Crouch as a movement is a challenge. I started simply by asking a question:

“Can this one basic movement be a challenge, interesting, readable, and useful by itself?”

And then iterating on a combination of Text-2D drawing-3D blockout until i reached what is challenging to me. That proved to be totally wrong after the feedback session with my Design Lead (Game Design Director). Also, this task was done by a Game Designer too, and he did it much better than me. It was very "lean" designed but it worked well for that purpose. I also think that if this task was given to Junior LD, they would do it with ease.

I would like to hear your opinion on this. Have you encountered the same issue? How did you solve it? How would you solve it if you got it?

Cheers!

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately...

I’m currently working with a team of around 20 people on an indie/AA game, and we are preparing our first playable. We are still deep in the stage where we test out the actual game, direction, feel, systems, and execution, and try to set things in concrete which brings us closer and closer to our FP in late summer.

But whenever we talk to investors, publishers, or potential partners, one question keeps coming up very early:

“How many wishlists do you have?”

And honestly, i understand why they ask. Wishlists are measurable. They show market interest. They help predict launch potential. They are probably one of the few simple numbers people can use when trying to judge commercial risk.

But at the same time, it feels strange how much power that number has.

A game can be genuinely interesting, unique, well-designed, and promising, but if the wishlist number is low, it can suddenly look “unproven.” On the other side, a game with strong marketing, a great trailer, or a very clickable concept can look much safer before anyone has really played it.

Yes, we are trying actively to grow our fanbase, YouTube subscribers, wishlists (we are around 57k right now) but all of this worries me a bit as a dev...

Because wishlists don’t only affect launch visibility anymore. They can affect funding. Publisher interest. Team morale. Production decisions. Sometimes even whether a game gets the chance to properly exist.

And that creates a weird pressure for developers. I've been gamer for 31 years and 10 years in Game development from AAA-AA and Mobile, and i am now starting to wonder about the general direction the industry is going.

p.s. I am not trying to attack Steam, this can be about Kickstarter wishlists or YouTube subscribers, too. The point is about "Is a simple free like this powerful?"

So, what do you folks think about this?