designed that makes use of the physics for puzzles and player movement. Of course,
the designer does not need to use every piece of technology that a programmer feels
compelled to create, but it is always better to have your gameplay work with the engine
instead of fight against it. Often, when a project is using a licensed game engine, that
technology will have been chosen with a certain type of gameplay in mind. The
designer needs to seriously consider how far she should deviate from that initial tech-
nology, for it is surely going to be easier to make the engine perform tasks for which it
was intended instead of pushing it in directions its programmers never imagined. For
instance, the oft-licensedQuakeengine (in all its various incarnations) was created for
handling an indoor, first-person perspective, fast-action game involving a lot of shoot-
ing. Though some teams that have licensed that engine have tried to push it in different
directions, one of the most artistically successful licensees thus far, Valve, retained
much of the standardQuakegameplay that the engine excelled at for their game
Half-Life. Certainly Valve added a lot of their own work to the engine, technology that
was necessary in order to do the type of game they wanted. But at the same time they
did not try to do something foolish such as setting their game primarily outdoors or
using only melee combat, at least not in their first title with the technology. When tech-
nology is handed to a game designer who is told to make a game out of it, it makes the
most sense for the designer to embrace the limitations of that technology and turn
them into strengths in her game.
The technology can also limit what sort of story can be told. Without a sophisti-
cated language parser, it is going to be difficult to tell a story in which players need to
communicate with characters by typing in questions. Without an engine that can handle
outdoor environments reasonably well, it is going to be difficult to make a game about
mountain climbing. Without robust artificial intelligence, it is going to be hard to make a
good game about diplomacy. Without streaming technology that allows for the playback
of large sounds, it will be hard to have huge amounts of dialog and hence hard to have
characters whose dialects are important to the story. Without the ability to have large
44 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea
The designers of
Half-Lifesmartly used
the indoor first-person
shooter gameplay
established byQuake,
the engine licensed for
the game’s creation.
Pictured here:Quake II.