i'm a big fan of game maker's toolkit. mark's "boss keys" videos on zelda's dungeon design were genuinely very influential on my own dungeon designs in SLARPG (i can't tell you how many times i rewatched the link's awakening one), and i think the channel's only gotten better as he's sought to include more quotes from devs and frame more things as "here's this design problem, and here's how these different devs attempted to solve it and why they made the decisions they did." less prescriptive, more emphasis on how game design is about problem solving with no objectively correct solutions that will please everyone
still, i feel very conflicted about this latest video of his
this was born out of a desire to create a list of 100 games in a sort of "game design canon," games that every prospective designer should study and be able to refer back to, with mark asking his followers to submit suggestions via a form. but he quickly realized it would be better to frame it more subjectively, since a list of only 100 games will never be able to cover everything. the end result is basically a video of 100 games he himself refers back to in his work for their interesting design decisions, with brief descriptions of what's interesting about each one on a design level. it's a solid video, and the way he frames some more divisive games as merely interesting and invites viewers to form their own opinions on their design decisions is good. he'll also present games with completely conflicting goals, for instance praising both doom's gory ultraviolence and undertale's meta pacifism. again, he's not trying to present a list of examples of how games SHOULD be made, but rather a wide variety examples of how they CAN be made, and how different creators with different goals can do so many different things with the medium
but still... i think what strikes me is that the list (which you can also view on backloggd if you don't want to watch the whole video) is just so boring. there's tons of great and influential games on this list, including some of my all-time favorites, but with a very small number of interesting exceptions it's basically exactly the list you would expect a game design video essayist in his 30s to make. dark souls! zelda! journey! new vegas! the stanley parable! far cry 2! deus ex! the walking dead! portal! hitman! there are so few unexpected deep cuts here, but even as a very broad list there are some huge, glaring exceptions, particularly when it comes to older releases and japanese games. there are only 15 games listed from before 2000, for example, possibly due to the preference for games that can be purchased on modern hardware. of those 15 20th century games, there's only room for one sega game (crazy taxi). over half the list was released after 2010. there are only TWO JRPGs on the entire list - pokemon red/blue and persona 5. there is not a single square, enix, or square-enix game on the list
but also, it's like. he says himself that the list has many glaring omissions and that people should go out and play all sorts of stuff. even a two hour video with over 100 games listed (and many more referenced without being on the list proper) is barely scratching the surface of the medium. mark knows this. i think framing the video subjectively as 100 games that taught him something interesting about game design was the right call, as opposed to declaring these 100 games The Canon, but i still can't help but feel like it's a very safe and limiting list. like, do aspiring game devs really need to be told to go check out spelunky, dark souls, and super metroid? don't those kind of go without saying? or am i just not in the target audience for this video as a dev in her 30s who's been following game design discourse and watching channels like GMTK and errant signal for over a decade? idk
