Good designers like good design; etc

[Ellie]

We were discussing this elsewhere and I thought I'd bring it over here.

My thought is that good designers appreciate good design. If you are knowledgable in architecture and graphics and such, you will appreciate a well designed website or object or whatnot, and will scowl at badly thrown together shitnits.

On the other hand, if you are an average joe, the sort of person who would create a shitty geocities site, at the same time you will be able to appreciate other shitty geocities sites. (Replace geocities with something of the time I guess? A bad tumblr? A freewebs templated site? A bad wordpress design?)

Once you become a good designer, game maker, etc you find it hard to play any games and use any websites which aren't created by a good designer. Try playing a shitty RTP RMXP game now, it's horrendous. If however you are the sort of person who'd make one - i.e. the target audience = the creator et al, then professionally designed things can often look overthought, or indeed "badly designed". They don't cater for the needs of the client.

What is your thought?

 

[Meness]

I disagree on the game making front. I aim to make well designed games, but I always have fun playing "shitty RTP RMXP" games. They're not shitty to me. Well as long as there is proper English and I can understand what to do

On websites however, yes :x

 

[gRaViJa]

I'm a professional (web)designer and i can't stand shitty rtp games. However, i do like good rtp games. Of course rtp graphics aren't amazngly good, but if they are worked well with i have no problems playing or using them.

About websites: if i see comic sans ms, bevel&emboss effects or freewebs websites, i don't even bother navigating them, i just leave.

 

[Venetia]

I don't know about noob designers disliking "good" designs ... If a design is good, it will look good to the majority of its intended market (and then there will always be a small minority of people who just hate everything for no actual reason--a sad reality).

but until a person understands/comprehends the technical aspects of a thing, they will be more accepting of said thing's technical shortcomings.

if a person who knows nothing of design types up a notice in ALL CAPS BRUSH SCRIPT, then sees the same, typed in Helvetica etc., they may be able to subconsciously note that the latter LOOKS better, but will not really comprehend why.


think of it like cooking. a noob cook will cook a bowl of plain Kraft macaroni & cheese and toss in some croutons, and it's a masterpiece. but if you LEARN the ins & outs of cooking/serving, that wouldn't suffice as something you'd put out at a party--it'd be embarrassing.


learning a thing allows you to use the Scoff! ability, which costs 0 MP, and is auto-activated every start of battle.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Well, I guess this is related to ignorance is bliss, right? Before you know something is bad, it won't bother you. I guess for something like art or a game you might be able to talk about "Well, who is right? Is it good or bad?" but there are some cases where good design is just good and bad design is just bad. A poorly designed programming language will hurt your productivity, even if you don't know it *cough* Java *cough*. A poorly designed website makes it hard to find information, even if you don't know it. A poorly designed building will KILL EVERYONE INSIDE WHEN IT BURNS TO THE GROUND AND THERE AREN'T ENOUGH EXITS even if you don't know it UNTIL EVERYONE IS DEAD!


That being said, the worst thing is bad design from people who think they have good design *cough* Java *cough*

 

[RavenTDA]

Things designed badly aren't always bad. Sometimes something is so bad that it becomes awesome. Ever watched a B movie on purpose or played a horrible game that you know was put together bad? They can provide some pretty awesome laughs.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

I don't think being so bad it's funny counts as being good :P

 

[seven]

I'm wondering if a certain amount of esoteric-ism is also involved?

Like, continuing your "bad rtp game" analogy: the difference between a good game and a bad game on this site used to be how much you recolored and rearranged the rtp, and how many custom graphics you used. But if you brought in a good game designer who has never used rm*, the remixed rtp isn't going to influence their decision about which game is better.

The difference between this and ~comic sans~ is that the change being made doesn't really improve anything; it'll win you respect within a peer group of designers, but the change is ultimately negligible and meaningless. No one is going to know subconsciously that your game is better, because it isn't. A small reference group and a bit of tunnel vision leads you to make pretentious and superficial changes that won't benefit you later.

I'm not sure if my point is getting across at all, but tl;dr: good designers (and also bad) want specific things that their audience isn't going to care about.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

I'm wondering if a certain amount of esoteric-ism is also involved?

Like, continuing your "bad rtp game" analogy: the difference between a good game and a bad game on this site used to be how much you recolored and rearranged the rtp, and how many custom graphics you used. But if you brought in a good game designer who has never used rm*, the remixed rtp isn't going to influence their decision about which game is better.

The difference between this and ~comic sans~ is that the change being made doesn't really improve anything; it'll win you respect within a peer group of designers, but the change is ultimately negligible and meaningless. No one is going to know subconsciously that your game is better, because it isn't. A small reference group and a bit of tunnel vision leads you to make pretentious and superficial changes that won't benefit you later.

I'm not sure if my point is getting across at all, but tl;dr: good designers (and also bad) want specific things that their audience isn't going to care about.

Actually, I think you are misunderstanding what we mean by "bad rtp game" We don't mean necessarily that using the RTP is bad, because art isn't the most important part of game design. I think what they mean is just a poorly designed game using RTP default gameplay, and then having a crappy cliche story that isn't interesting, hard to follow etc. etc. the things that are bad design regardless of how the game is made or what the art is.

 

[seven]

Actually, I think you are misunderstanding what we mean by "bad rtp game" We don't mean necessarily that using the RTP is bad, because art isn't the most important part of game design. I think what they mean is just a poorly designed game using RTP default gameplay, and then having a crappy cliche story that isn't interesting, hard to follow etc. etc. the things that are bad design regardless of how the game is made or what the art is.

I was just using it as an example to help explain my point; don't take it too literally. This:

good designers (and also bad) want specific things that their audience isn't going to care about.

is what I was posting about, I hope. Good designers do appreciate good design, and that's fantastic, but sometimes we get it wrong and start judging things on criteria that are only visible from our view point. Game designers aren't the only people to do this, certainly; this could also apply to writers, painters, composers (especially composers, I think!), pretty much any art form.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Right, and now you are getting kind of into what I said in my post a couple days ago. You might be able to make a case that it doesn't matter as much for art, however, you can also get into things that may only be noticed subconsciously. People have reasons for liking one thing over another, even if they can't explain them or aren't concsciously aware of them.

Then, there's also other design that, even though someone might not realize it, it's definitely bad. Such as the case with buildings and programming etc. etc.