Year 9 2008 (continued)
The next trap I was tasked to work on was what was referred to as the IV trap. This trap had a lot of design elements put into it for a relatively complex puzzle. This time, I wasn't in the meetings involved in actually designing it, and just got the final notes with a few sketches. I thought I'd read through this design doc and try to walk through the puzzle in my head so that I could visualize what it was supposed to look like and feel like to the player. As I played the puzzle in my head, I noticed a few things... like what would happen if the player went in different directions then the designer thought? Or how was the player supposed to know how to even play this puzzle? And how does the player win anyway? These seemed like fundamental things that the designer must have known about, so I sent him an email.
I never really got a satisfactory answer for any of these things. He was busy designing other stuff and finally, after several email and in-person conversations, I just said, "whatever" and created the artwork. Low and behold, when it was play-tested, no one could ever beat it. Not even me, who made the thing! It was put on the backburner and I moved on.
While I never would tout myself as a great designer or anything, I thought I'd try mocking up some gameplay to see if they liked it. I had the advantage of the art skills so I figured I'd be able to get across what I was thinking by just showing it. Lock-picking was a large part of the game, and I knew people would be doing it often, so I started designing some lockpicking mini-games. I must have designed about 6 different mini-games where you used the two sticks to manipulate the picks and make it into a game to unlock the pins within the lock. Fallout 3 had already come out by this point, and I was impressed with their lockpicking game, so I didn't want to copy it. So my designs were a bit different from that.
While it was said that they liked them, none of them were ever used. Instead we went with some sort of color-match minigame that was on a wheel interface. I was disappointed, but oh well, I'm not the designer.
Batman: Arkham Asylum comes out and the design of the cryptographic sequencer is EXACTLY what I was trying to do... oh well.
Let me pause here and talk about the company and my input. When I was interviewed, I was specifically talked to about my ability to have input on a game. It was very encouraged for me to give ideas and critiques and so on. So, when I started working, I took that encouragement to heart. As I play-tested the game, if something felt off or was confusing, or if I just thought it was downright bad, I said so.
It seemed to get to a point, however, that I was viewed as a negative person. The designer even about bit my head off when I started talking to him about pacing and whatnot. Not that he felt pacing wasn't necessary, it's just that he didn't want to change the pacing that was there. Eventually, the designer left the team. I kept looking for his replacement but he never came. SAW just didn't have a designer any more.
That's not a good thing.
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