Design – Art or Science

Ghostcrawler you have let me down with your comments, but let me explain.

Design though from my prospective is wondering about the nuances of design. Maybe it might be my Business Degree and how they always talked about business and its process as a scientific process, much as I earned a Bachelor of Science and not a Bachelor of Arts. However to say design is a matter of science would be too limited, creativity as a big part of my design, probably comes more from my artsy self, terrible but still there.

Computer Game Design, like probably a lot of design is as described by Wikipedia. “Game design is the process of designing the content and rules of a game. -- “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Design

Why do I mean you let us down though? It is becoming increasingly clear and alarming so that you rely on the art of game design and tend to lean away from the science of game design.

However a game as massive as WOW, I can’t imagine you ignore the science; for instance strategic planning. However for a more pointed example and our concern, we examine a few words.

“Unfortunately the one really hard encounter in the game is a dragon that does” Ghostcrawler

I of course don’t mean to examine your words, but I am hoping we all can learn from this example. I really do want to learn, I am not putting you down as a game designer. I think you and Paul Barnett are in the top two for the field. However saying unfortunately implies an accident, like you didn’t realize this would be the case. If you say your design goal is to

“If I need to say it again, the goal is that you can have any of the four classes as your MT, so long as that player has sufficient skill and appropriate gear and is backed up by a raid that knows what the blank they are doing.” Ghostcrawler

This goal is to have all 4 tanks being similar, doesn’t help when you yourself say well we didn’t count on the DK being the spell damage tank, and the Druid being the Physical damage tank. Block tanking, on the fast quick hits is great, however we accidently made the content favor two over the others. I hope this accident like an industrial accident isn’t shrugged off as a natural disaster, one in which you as a company can’t contain yourselves.

With the science of design, we must realize our choices and our decisions need to be just that, planned and executed and not just accidently thrown together and hope it works.

I feel that these design ideas are not as laid out and planned for as you seem to think they are.