How Ratchet & Clank Taught Me Game Design

Ratchet & Clank is a 2002 Action Platformer originally released for the PlayStation 2. It's gone on to spawn an extensive series and while much ahs been analysed about it, with this video I want to go back to basics, as well as tell a more personal story. Ratchet & Clank was a very important game to me growing up and it is where a lot of my love of games and game design came from. I've been doing a lot of design in the last few months and when I replayed Ratchet & Clank recently, I was ultra aware of a lot of rules which the game consistently followed. With this video, I want to express my love for this game, as well as explore some of the lessons which really clicked for me. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 0:00 • Intro 03:40 • Lesson 1 - First impressions matter 06:02 • Lesson 2 - Try to not leave the player without options 06:59 • Lesson 3 - When locking content, get creative 08:35 • Lesson 4 - Don’t hate your characters 09:31 • Lesson 5 - Don’t fight the controller 10:48 • Lesson 6 - Make Standarization your friend whenever you can 13:53 • Lesson 7 - Parse out the tutorial 17:03 • Lesson 8 - Play to your strengths 18:56 • Lesson 9 - Quiet Time. 19:46 • Lesson 10 - Players like to feel smart, let them 21:17 • Lesson 11 - Dynamism 22:23 • Lesson 12 - Good & Bad Difficulty 23:09 • Lesson 13 - Please don’t use Invisible walls 23:51 • Lesson 14 - Save it for the sequel 27:10 • Lesson 15 - Theming 29:04 • Lesson 16 - Payoffs 31:13 • Lesson 17 - Gimmicks are far from inherently bad 32:44 • Lesson 18 - “Optional” should not excuse “underdeveloped” 34:38 • Lesson 19 - Appreciate the whole animal 35:38 • Lesson 20 - Don’t undermine your game 39:31 • Lesson 21 - Gameplay is not the thing in-between the story, it is the story 40:52 • Lesson 22 - Deviate from the norm, don’t replace it all together 41:53 • Lesson 23 - Scale strength with Skill 45:37 • Lesson 24 - Try not to waste the player’s time 46:21 • Anti-Lesson 1 - You can always pace it better 48:05 • Lesson 25 - Embrace glitches and oversights when they’re good 49:40 • Lesson 26 - Diegesis and Believability 51:23 • Lesson 27 - Don’t solve a big problem with another big problem 52:15 • Lesson 28 - Know how to say goodbye 56:13 • Lesson 29 - Games excel at different things, and it is very rarely a good idea to ask a game to do something it isn’t good at 57:10 • Lesson 30 - The game hits different people differently ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Promoted Videos: Resident Evil:    • The Horror You Must Touch • Resident Evil ...   Bloodborne:    • Bloodborne • Analysis (Full Commentary).   ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Footage Suppliers: World Of Longplays:    / @worldoflongplays   Maklocke:    / @maklocke   ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Patreon:   / medievalmegaman   Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/aesiraesthetics Essays&Espresso:    / @essaysespresso8637   Discord:   / discord   Play my game: https://aesiraesthetics.itch.io/snail