blog.edmundito.com

The Secret of Monkey Island is still my favorite game because it’s a game where no feature was neglected more than the other. The team focused all of its efforts on every feature, and the quality of the production made a quality game.

For me, an excellent game has a good polish of the following features:

• Gameplay
• Story (good story or story creation methods)
• Art
• Animation
• Music (and sound)
• Interface (the way the game is presented, including UI and controls)
• Performance (as software)

At the very least, it should have a good polish of the bold features, assuming that the other features will not be in the game. No feature should be left behind. No feature should be neglected. These features should compliment and not fight against each other (i.e. story vs. gameplay). And it’s better to make a small game with a good polish of these features than an ambitious game with one or many of these features washed out. Finally, the team should have people qualified and focused on (a.k.a. “directing”) each and every one of these features.

Sadly, in the real world, the focus on polishing these features don’t make the game sell. But for a team to be proud of what they accomplished, though, it’s different.