Quote from ForbiddenDonut on August 27, 2011, 11:13 pm

Pardon me, Satchmo, for I respect your comment, but I don't quite understand.

How does Miss Stabby and Kim Swift being female separate their designs from male designer products? I don't quite see the connection - I more or less base their quality of work on their exceptional ability. In relation to another hobby I quite enjoy, architecture, it would be giving Zaha Hadid credit for her amazing architecture on her gender.

That isn't to say I don't want women in the industry - if any person, regardless of gender, has a passion, they should be unrestricted. I just don't see how someone, especially if they have never heard of these people, could immediately correlate the designs to a female designer's perspective, rather than developed skills and talents.

I mean no insult, sir. I'm just curious.

Quote from satchmo on August 28, 2011, 12:33 am

I do think the female brain works differently than the male brain.

Girls generally talk earlier than boys, and girls almost always potty train before boys (average age for girls is 2 1/2 years; average age for boys is 3 years).

Women consider the emotional impact of their level design on the player more than men. Of course, it's not always true. There are some male mappers who seriously ponder how their maps will touch the player on an emotional level. But in general, I do say this is not the case.

Even before I found out that Miss Stabby is a woman, I was struck by the fact that her maps focus less on game mechanics but more on social and emotional interaction between the NPC and the player. Once I found out her gender, I realized the reason behind this difference.

Again, that's my own interpretation.

Quote from ForbiddenDonut on August 28, 2011, 2:23 am

An interesting perspective, Satchmo. We know the female mind and the male mind works differently, but as for its input in design - I am not sure if I am quite convinced. The game industry, like architecture (again), is a male dominant field. I am glad that more females are going through school or finding positions on teams to becoming game developers, because it is going to be interesting to see how (or if) it effects game design in general.

Returning to my original point, it seems to me (although this is at a really early stage) that Quantum Conundrum is a game more based on mechanics than on emotional interaction (in comparison to Portal). There is no problem with this, but I am not favorable with deciding a game's qualities based on something like gender. I've met many female designers (I'm apart of a few mod teams at my university and on this community) and the range of designs that come from them go from really hardcore stuff that developers like Frictional Games or Visceral produce to games like Cooking Mama or Spore. Understand that I only brought this up because I can't really quantize the work done by my female colleagues as much as I could to work done my males. It's all a matter of taste and opinion.

I wish I could continue this, because this conversation does interest me, but I'm afraid that my power will be going out soon. Hurricane Irene is currently passing over NYC and things are getting crazy.

Quote from NuclearDuckie on August 28, 2011, 3:38 am

Honestly the gameplay doesn't look like much - it's just a 3D phsyics-based translation of the kind of dimension switching that has already been done to death in simple flash games like Time Fcuk (to pick one example).

The mechanic doesn't really have any flexibility to it; it's reduced to whatever the developers can think of for any specific level. In fact the "mechanic" is really just the ability to switch between dimensions. The player doesn't have any control over what use they will be.

As for the overall design ... well, I can remember thinking that magic bouncing paint in Portal 2 was taking things to a silly level.
If I recall, didn't Swift leave the company after she was told her idea for Portal 2 wasn't fun?

Quote from satchmo on August 28, 2011, 2:13 pm

I hope you and your family are okay with Hurricane Irene, FD.

Quote from rellikpd on August 28, 2011, 4:33 pm

Holy crap... That looks bad ass! I am totally interested (i love a good puzzle game).

I don't really get the mass mess of "eh looks like a rehashed portal" comments though... because its a FP-3d puzzle game?
I mean. That's like saying Eh, TF2 looks alot like Quake.. ya know, because they're both first person shooters.. and as far as it having some similar puzzle elements as portal.. that's because alot of those puzzle elements in portal are not new to portal itself. example: Blocking a laser to turn on/off something in your way is an OLD video game puzzle element.

I think it looks really new an inventive. I love the idea that the rooms/levels are completely changeable thanks to different "dimensions" and you get to see how you changed them thanks to the dimensional changes.

Quote from xdiesp on August 28, 2011, 7:15 pm

If I designed games, every one of them would have the dagger of time from prince of persia.

Quote from Marise on August 29, 2011, 2:41 pm

It does look more whimsical than Portal, if only because of the design. The first thing I thought of was Wallace and Gromit.

Quote from xdiesp on August 30, 2011, 6:00 pm

Reminds me of Soul Reaver, but this one hasn't the absurdly cool animations of the world geometry twisting ominously as you enter the realm of the dead. RARR.