I'll go ahead and say that I love the Unlimited Saga comments. I personally couldn't get into the game but still felt drawn to it like it was something special, for some reason, and I regret selling it back to the stores.

On the other hand, it's use of psychology is irrelevant to game design, and don't even get me started about that physics comment, which rubbed me the wrong way as a first year college student at the very least. I see nothing here that would help you as an independent game developer, or as a big-shot developer for a company. It's just praise for Unlimited Saga and company marketing strategies, such as the budgeting, finance, and marketing aspects of a title, not game design. Aside from 'target your audience', which is pretty much common sense.

Even then, the fact that the article mainly discusses market success and 'target your audience', along with the successful examples and why they succeeded in targeting the way they did, had nothing to do with game design but game marketing. Market appeal does not make or break the game design. I'm sure there have been [m]any games [that] didn't succeed at all, even by the company's standards, yet can still be considered well-designed and fun to play. For example, NiGHTS into Dreams. Not a commercial or market or advertising success in any sense of the word, but it was recognized for the unique experience that it was, even by 'casual gamer' magazines. It's hardcore fans didn't make the game, and 'targeting your audicence' didn't make the game good. It was just a good game that unfortunately due to Sega's advertising faux-pas and the Saturn's poor exposure did rather poorly. NiGHTS just simply didn't compete much on a commercial level with the PSX and Nintendo's new Mario 64 come Christmas time, despite how much fans of NiGHTS wish it had.

But even then there's exceptions to what defines 'good game design.' I used NiGHTS, yet I have friends who are at best cynical about NiGHTS (one even says it makes him physically sick to watch it, due to the gameplay). Not everybody likes the same thing or thinks its fun. In which case, if you're going for any type of success at all, you might very well need to go for FFX's 'appeal to casual gamer' success, especially if you want to be a successful commercial game designer (games that don't sell == no work, no matter how fun they are). If Unlimited Saga not only received low scores in all magazines but then not even some fans bought it, I doubt even this author would be using it as a game design example. In fact, he may be simply using it because of his own bias towards the game (which I completely understand).

It is for 1) the use of marketing to define success and 2) the use of the audience's subjectivity to determine this market success, that I say this article really has very little information at all useful for a game designer.

...er...maybe I talked too much....

EDIT: in retrospect I didn't realize you were 'the author' of this article. Um...I might have been a little more lenient in retrospect.

I'll go ahead and say that I love the Unlimited Saga comments. I personally couldn't get into the game but still felt drawn to it like it was something special, for some reason, and I regret selling it back to the stores.
> Check out my general FAQ at GameFAQs then. Everyone who came asking for help at its forum there are always referred to it. :) The good news is that 9 out of 10 people who gave it a second chance (and read my FAQ :P) do stick with it and finish a character or two... then there're those madmen who complete this biggie 2-3 times... 0_o;

use of psychology is irrelevant to game design
> 'All good game designers have a keen understanding of what makes for good gameplay as well as an insight into psychology of the motivation for players to go on with a game. It is this context you need to build on to be a good games designer.' ~ QANTM College. Yep. :)

I see nothing here that would help you as an independent game developer, or as a big-shot developer for a company. It's just praise for Unlimited Saga and company marketing strategies, such as the budgeting, finance, and marketing aspects of a title, not game design.
> The point of the 'article' is to convey the message to my friend that he should know these things if he wants to take a leading role which the game designer often does in independent development teams. Nevertheless, according to the Gamer Maker Data Magazine, budget-contraints have a huge effect on game design. For example, without such contraints, for a fighting game, you may be able to spend 20 months working on 20 characters (1 month per character. However, you are only paid to work for 12 months. This means that 6 of the characters must be cut from plan? Won't that affect the rest of the game and everything has to be rebalanced? It just doesn't work.

In an ideal world though, game design shouldn't be affected by such things, but reality is different. Part of the reason Unlimited Saga ever got made is because the Square-Enix could financially take the risk since they already made so much money from the FF series (then there's Akitoshi Kawazu's long-standing acceptance as a respectable game designer).

Market appeal does affect game design, but to a certain extent. Look at the Final Fantasy series. The reason more of these games are designed this way is because of the success of its predecessors. Why are lots more RPG games based upon the RPG formula started by Final Fantasy 1 and not Dragon Warrior? Part of the reason is because of market appeal, although that is obviously not the sole cause.

However, it's a great point that you made. Although market appeal does have an affect, it does not make or break the game.

In retrospect, the article seems like an unfinished foundation that leads to an abrupt conclusion. I could've dwelved into how the innovative designs of Unlimited Saga had incredible depth and complexity. For example, the MP system is implemented to limit the use of special abilities. This can be overcome by spending countless hours collecting money to buy exceptionally expensive MP-restoring items. This is a tedious process. To remedy the problem, the Reel system is used instead. It functions exactly the same as the MP system to limit the use of skills, but it relies on the player's reflexes and timing instead. This implementation adds a new dimension to game. The Reel system adds action to the usually cognitive-only gameplay. This removes the tedious process of collecting cash and wasting them upon consumables and replaces it with a more engaging one. Very effective.

On the other hand, I've already discussed those points with him beforehand. This was intentionally written only for my friend.

It's a pity though. Unlimited Saga's greatest problem is having an abyssmally pathetic US manual and next-to-non-existant in-game documentation. You guys should learn from this. ;P

Aside from 'target your audience', which is pretty much common sense.
> I'm pretty sure from first-hand experience that more things are common sense for more than half of you guys here. The sad reality is that your everyday dude doesn't have a clue about the importance of focusing on the target audience - exactly the point I was trying to emphasize to my friend there.

I don't think you understand what 'by all accounts' means.
Of course not. :P I was biased.

Woof.