Game design idea circles

During the whole process of TGP 2, GD team is struggling with game design ideas. In the prototype phase, they were not satisfied with the idea that making a Mario Kart clone and they really wanted to make a brand-new game. But when they tried to develop the initial idea, they met a lot of difficulties coming from technical and design itself. For example, the idea about “customization through gameplay” is abandoned after POCT. The reason is the complexity of technology and too much workload for artists. Many ideas share the same problem and process: At the very beginning, them looks like good ideas, and GD team believes it can make our game better or solve the problem we have. Then they announced in front of the whole team. But it is against by other teammates or blocked by objective reality (the time, the technical ability, etc.). Then GD team has to change it again. The new change, on the other hand, causes almost the same reaction just like the former. And what makes this circle worse is that the people in the team lost the truth to GD team and the game in some degree. 
Finally, what left in the game design or gameplay, is so simple or barren that you hardly find any interaction between players or fun from racing itself. In another word, what if the GD team focuses on refining gameplay from the Mario Kart? Sometimes imitation is so important that you cannot do creation before you finish this step. Also, the idea is cheap; execution is everything. GD team doesn’t know much about what the team can do and what they can’t.

 

Unconscious design
As for me, the unconscious design’s definition is the design action without much consideration. The most common unconscious design is “Our game should have this feature because all the FPS/RPG/RTS games have this.” In our game, the most obvious example is the initial controlling features: boost, brake, and shift. 
This design causes several problems: First, the Chevrons’ placement is always on the side of the arc, which radius is bigger. If not, the player is hard to see the Chevrons from distances.  Second, if the Chevrons on the right side, the player always turn to the left side vice versa. But for this reversed arc, you cannot meet these two conditions at the same time. It causes the player has no time to prepare for the turn or inconstant chevrons placement.

The isolation of teams

In the first point “Game Design idea circles,” I mentioned that some people have very strong opinion against GD’s ideas. One of the reasons behind this internal friction is the lack of the sense of “we are one team.” The most people think that they belong to Environment/ Track/ BPACK/ AI/ Physic/ UI/SFX team but not the Guildhall TGP2 team. They ignored the fact that these teams are not isolated but working for the one game. The most terrible word I heard was when Theodore talked with me about retro, he said: “we have bad impression for Track team.” This comment doesn’t help the situation but destroy our team and game. The teammates mean that you not judge other people but help them.