Objectivity and Education (Insider, November 2018) (Patreon)

So, there’s something I routinely get wrong. And it’s high time I figure out a problem to the solution and avoid making the same mistake over and over again in 2019!

(I feel like I’ve maybe talked about this before - but I still don’t have a good answer for myself so I’m saying it again).

The issue is this:

Most YouTube channels are just about the creator giving their opinion on a subject. When a YouTuber says they hate The Last Jedi or love Fallout 76, we know they’re just giving their own personal thoughts on the subject. It might be backed up by strong arguments, good evidence, and historical context - but ultimately it’s a subjective viewpoint.

And that’s largely how I’ve tackled things too.

Except, I know that GMTK is regularly used as an educational resource. Videos on level design, puzzle development, detective games, and more are shown at schools and universities. And developers get in touch every week telling me how my videos have influenced their design.

This is truly wonderful. It’s my favourite thing about doing Game Maker’s Toolkit and makes my job very rewarding. I get warm fuzzies whenever I hear this stuff.

But combining subjective viewpoints with education doesn’t really fly… does it? If people are coming to my videos for advice, you’d hope that they’d get unbiased, objective thoughts. Not just some random dude’s feelings.

For example: my recent skill tree video reflects my own views on what makes trees great. But plenty of people won’t agree with my findings (and they have made their feelings very clear in the comments!). They love big skill forests! They think those granular 5% health skills are fun dopamine hits! And so on.

But can I even make objective videos? Teaching game design isn’t like teaching maths where there’s a single universally accepted answer for 2+2. The question “what makes a good skill tree” or “how should platformer levels be made” or “how do you make a detective game” has a million different answers, which come down to the tastes of the audience and the goals of the designer.

I could try to only use positive examples from good games, and negative examples from bad games. But, then again, “good” and “bad” are subjective opinions. I’m going to use Mario games as examples of good level design and platforming mechanics, but some people hate those games. And OpenCritic suggests I should say Red Dead 2 is amazing and worthy of emulation, but I personally think that game is pretty rubbish. 

I could try to incorporate everyone’s views, but that wouldn’t be much fun. What makes a good skill tree? Well, depending on who you ask, a million different things! Welcome to my hour long video. 

I think I just need to be more careful about my wordings.

My videos can sometimes come across as “one size fits all” solutions. Even though I don’t actually believe this.

You see, I assume that most people know that advice like this won’t be applicable to every game, situation, audience type etc - and should know to disregard it if it doesn’t fit their project. But maybe I need to make that clearer. 

I need to talk more about how every design decision is made to fit the needs of the game’s experience, pace, idea, and so on. What makes a skill tree work in Path of Exile is different to Doom. I touched on this at the end of that video, but it’s not sufficient.

I should talk about this more in the videos, or just make the videos much more specific. Not “what makes a good skill tree?” but “what makes a good skill tree for a big 3D action game?”. I shouldn’t have even mentioned games like Skyrim, The Witcher, and Path of Exile - only if there’s good lessons to be learnt from other genres.

And I think I could better express that it’s my opinion. I don’t think I can get around the fact that my videos will be subjective, so perhaps I should just accept that, clearly state that this advice comes from a personal viewpoint, and not lose too much sleep.

Anyway. Would appreciate your thoughts!

Cheers

Mark