[MUD-Dev] the design process

[Matt Mihaly]

Say, I was wondering if some of the bigger commercial people (anyone
from Sony, EA, Microsoft, even Mythic, etc) could expound on the
design process for games of that size.

For instance, in Achaea, every significant design decision goes
through me, and I personally design all the major systems, down to
writing most of the text (On the other hand, I'm considerably more
removed from the content-building process, which is largely taken
care of by others.)

For instance, Dave Rickey designed, I believe, the economic part of
DAoC, while some other guy (the company president maybe, if I recall
properly) designed some other systems, and yet other people designed
yet other systems.

Or take Raph, working on Star Wars: Galaxies. In a project that
huge, how much detail work do you do, Raph? I presume you have other
designers helping you, but what do they do? How do you work it all
out? Do you say, for instance, "Ok, I'd like a Mandalorian Knight
class that is fairly mobile, has cool gadgets, can fly fighters,
etc." or "Design me a closed (haha) economic system in which the
principle way of earning money is managing NPC employees." and then
just approve the final result?

In other words, how broad are the strokes the lead designer (or
creative director) generally paints on your team? (I'd imagine it
differs widely.)

--matt

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