How To Make A Good Game Setting

I talk about how to make a good setting for a computer game, and more specifically, what questions your setting should be able to easily answer.

[toysoldiernerio]

You could have made a masterclass, but you gave this to us all for free. Thanks so much for the great advice Tim.

[Mudtek]

Been watching your content for days now after coming across it. This is gold for us new indie devs who have no professional AAA experience - appreciate all the content Tim!!

[ladams]

It has long been my belief that mainstream game players are far more willing to navigate a complex game than they are typically given credit for, but it is key to introduce those complexities in a way that is approachable and doesn't feel like more trouble than it's worth.

[stringblues]

I found it interesting that Fallout 3-NV had a starting level and then asked if you wanted to edit your character before continuing. The player will have the opportunity to experience their character build and settings and then change them without disturbing the continuity of the game. As a player I like it when more opportunity of choice is added to a game without it making it too convoluted.

[TonkarzOfSolSystem]

One addition to what Tim finishes saying at 8:30 is that NPCs also help define the player character based on how they react to them. Which is something that shows up in a lot of Black Isle and Obsidian games.

[carsonrandolph]

My Grandad passed this week. It made me want to pursue my passion/dream of game design because we only have so much time. I'm scouring all of your videos to help me with overarching concepts as I build my first game. Thank you for making these videos, Tim!

[sealsharp]

Timestamps for the Questions:
02:12 Is it easy to explain?
03:32 Can you tell an interesting story in that setting?
04:45 Is the setting reactive?
05:56 Can you come up with interesting quests to do in your world?
07:21 Do you have interesting characters in your world?
08:25 Is your setting evocative?
10:10 (Optional) How mainstream is your idea?

[DonInfierno]

When you said you saw comments like "They don't do that anymore" about technical writing, it breaks my heart as a writer. So that's exactly why I'm unemployed!

[RudolfsLab]

Your video content is absolutely golden. It's very rare to find people with quality information & experience in the games industry, especially for free from the internet. I currently do game dev as a pretty serious hobby and this content gives incredible encouragement 😁 Thanks for your work ✌

[bittersweetblueberry]

So I designed a ttrpg. It’s really short so it forced me to be really efficient and evocative with my world building.

The biggest lesson I had to learn was to how to build the world around function.

I had little space for “lore.” So most of my world building was done in the mechanics, in the gear choices and in the random tables.

Essentially the point is that when world building think about how the world would be experienced through the players perspective. And how to express that world through the things the players regularly interface with.

[nutherefurlong]

There's also that distinction between a setting that's good for a type of game and a setting that's good for a story, at least for me. Like there are settings that might work well for literature but their game space might be more limited, especially if player choice flexibility is key to the design.

Making homebrew settings in RPGs I make sure to remember that players may not WANT to participate in the things I find the most interesting, so I have to have enough connective tissue to let it bear the weight of their decisions.

Sort of wonder what the Dark Souls pitch would have been :)

[gtabro]

6:30 it’s like hearing someone summarise Starfield’s “quests” 💀

[Kadwid]

Professor of gaming, obtained professorship by making the best games I've ever played. It is an honour and pure value listening to your thought process.

[bluemooninthedaylight]

About the appeal of exploring a post-post apocalypse touches on something that's similar to the appeal of horror, in seeing the familiar become unfamiliar. There's something uncanny about seeing the world that we know change terribly. It also invokes awe, both in the positive awesome and negative awful. Like, the world of Silent Hill is a hellscape set in a mundane resort town, something that I recognize but also find unknown, even horrifying, and yet, I cannot wait to explore it.

[mus_cetiner]

What you say about game design, narrative and world-building is 101 tenfold that peeps really need to listen and write down to make interesting games. I totally agree with you.
That elevator pitch is so important.

[Anubis]

With what you were saying about mainstream considerations, I've always thought of it as 'complexity vs. accessibility'.

A complex game is not necessarily a deep game and vice versa, but complexity increases the time and investment required to learn the game.

Accessibility means it's easy to pick up and play with little or no investment. You can have accessibility and depth coexist, as long as you as you say, "lower the slope".

I think a lot of big RPGs in recent years really struggle with that notion the most. A great example of all sides of this is the Elder Scrolls series.

Skyrim, which ditched a lot of its deeper mechanics and simplified others. It's accessibility was great, and created many new fans of the series, but it's often looked down upon by many as being too shallow or dumbed down, especially by fans of Morrowind and Oblivion. Once you get a feel for the game, there's nothing left to learn or master. Without depth of mechanics, it relies on the rest of the game to hold your attention, be it story content or challenging combat.

On the other hand you have Morrowind; unforgiving, unstable, unbalanced... almost begging you to break the game's mechanics through deep knowledge and exploits of its systems. But it rewards those who do with an experience unlike any other to this day.
Not an easy game for casual players to enjoy, but still highly regarded by fans and players who like to take the time to learn the mechanics of a game.

I believe a great game should strive for both accessibility and depth, and it's one of the reasons I became a fan of your and Troika/Obsidian's works, as they tend to strike a good balance.

[sword]

Hey TC.

Would you be up to make a video about specific types of design documentation?

Example:
-A quest design doc.
-Mechanic doc
-Pitch doc
-Level design
-Dialogue
-Characters
-Etc

Looking for structure, tips, layout and etc.

[YarblekRW]

I just discovered these videos and I am very grateful that they are here. I have picked up an old project I started in the 80s - a C64 assembly RPG and am at the point that I need to flesh out the setting. I feel like I am in a bit of a trap where I always define the story arc and thereby, the setting, by looking at an arc I want the players to experience rather than a concrete story. These videos are helping change my mindset!

[canadianbacon]

Hey, Timothy! I've really loved the Fallout series. I've actually taken the New Vegas scripts and turned it into a tabletop game for practicing French. The branching dialogue trees and the complexity of the story makes it ideal for having players read and have to understand what they're being presented with to make decisions. It's a really engaging way to help learn a language. I really appreciate your work on the series. You helped make possible one of the best unintentional language learning tools in existence. Thank you! :D

[froghammer]

Some of the rules I follow when creating setting, story, characters or mechanics:

1. Give yourself restrictions that force you to creatively think around the limitations you've set on yourself.

2. Avoid tropes and reused cliches (or at least as much as possible) in EVERYTHING: the characters, story, music, UI, etc.

3. Hook the user so that they're constantly chasing after a valuable reward or goal. This can be done in every vertical of the game. It must feel valuable.

4. Don't be afraid to discuss your ideas with others. You're doing yourself a disservice trying to protect your ideas.