thread: 2005-06-24 : John Kim on Craft and Innovation
On 2005-06-24, Matthijs Holter wrote:
Sometimes it takes two to make a great game. Tweet/Laws in OtE, Tweet/Rein*Hagen in ArM, Petersen/Stafford/Willis in Ghostbusters, etc. I have a strong suspicion that game designer teams composed of one visionary and one mechanics person work especially well - one person to do most of the dreaming, another to make it accessible to the world.You see this in music some times. From Lennon/McCartney (one a misfit visionary rocker, the other a smooth melody maker) to the Throwing Muses' Hersh/Donelly (one a manic depressive, the other a pop queen), some of the best bands manage to make different sensibilities interact as a whole.
That's why I think some of the most visionary designers have the most unreliable output. They need a producer, a co-designer of equal skill, but different sensibility, to really shine.
