Insomniacs Ted Price Reveals the Four Secrets of Successful Games

Ted Price, the leader of the development team at Insomniac Games and a veteran of the gaming industry, has revealed to an audience at PAX Prime 2012 in Seattle the four core elements that can make a game successful.

The game creator, who has been making games for 18 years, says that any team needs to start by determining one thing they can do better than any of their rivals.

The rest of the game experience needs to be built around that core mechanic and to support it.

The developer also encourages everyone to make sure that the game they are working on is fun from the start, because art and audio can often mask that an experience has nothing to offer.

Price stated, “That's dangerous! That's putting off the inevitable. All the fun stuff -- story, character, visual - has to be subservient to fun. And once you figure out what's fun you have to prove it every single day.”

Game makers also need to define their audience, making sure that the mechanics are perfectly linked to the target players, offering quick satisfaction for mobile players, solid controls and camera move for shooters and viral elements if Facebook is the main playing medium.

Finally, the Insomniac leader believes that every released game should create a personal experience for each gamer, connecting him back to the men who created it.

He says, “The creation process should be an intensely personal experience. You are sharing your interests and experiences and putting yourself in everything you make.”

Recently, Insomniac Games announced a new title called Fuse, a cooperative first-person shooter that is essentially a re-imagining of the Overstrike title that the company was previously working on, according to inside source.

Players will have to use four characters and a range of weapons and items to infiltrate a number of enemy strongholds.

Via: Insomniacs Ted Price Reveals the Four Secrets of Successful Games