IGDA co-founder Ernest Adams was in town to deliver a fascinating and fun presentation on game design entitled "Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!" The name of the presentation comes from game designers' tendency to consume lots of junkfood while on the job, so if they add an aggravating or bad game design element, they are denied their Twinkies.

Ernest's presentation took a look at many famous games and the things they might have done to meet a "Twinkie Denial Condition." A 14-year veteran of the industry, Adams has it boiled down to five basic categories--Bad Conceptual Design, Bad Game Mechanics, Bad User Interface, Bad Programming, and Bad Content.

These categories covered a wide range of things that Ernest feels are aggravating, outdated, silly, or just plain wrong. Many were things that have always annoyed lots of gamers that you can probably readily identify with. The lack of a map, lack of a proper saved game system, the obligatory pointless maze, and so on. There were also many things that you might not have thought of before, or maybe have seen so much you no longer notice them. Like come to think of it, it is kind of strange how I can use my gun to blow open an oil tank and find a health pack waiting inside, isn't it? Or how I might be carrying a rocket launcher with 20 shells, but for some reason I still have to use a key for that wooden door?

Interestingly, Ernest did not cite a lot of what you would call "bad" games during his presentation. In fact, most of the ones he examined were tremendous hits with the game-buying public and game critics. One such game denied a Twinkie was Diablo, for its "Monty Haul" tendencies--you spend a lot of the game gathering up loot, running back to town to sell it off, repeat. Ernest was not trying to say that Diablo was a bad game; just that perhaps this element could be changed to something more imaginative to make it even better. Another huge seller and gamer favorite named was Grand Theft Auto III, for its mute protagonist.

The games were denied their Twinkies in good humor, and Ernest would often discuss their strengths as well (such as GTA's revered "if you can see it, you can probably use it" factor). He was also not afraid to deny himself a Twinkie. Madden 64 was criticized for its repetitive and limited audio comments--a game he worked on.

Ernest's "sermon" (as he cheerfully described it later) did go into more than just what not to do. "My writing on game design does not entirely consist of bitching," he joked. He pointed to Brian Moriarty's "Harmony" concept as something that game designers should be shooting for. Moriarty delivered his "Harmony" speech at the 1997 Game Developers' Conference lecture "Listen: The Potential of Shared Hallucinations." You can read a reprint of it on Gamasutra here.

Ernest was also in town to run a paid game design workshop, which was held the following Saturday. There he took teams of attendees through six months of game development in five hours. He's on quite a tour at the moment, stopping to give lectures and training sessions all across the eastern US and Canada--schools, companies, and of course, his brothers and sisters at IGDA.

The members of IGDA Toronto wish to thank Ernest Adams for dropping by to chat with us. And thanks to Micheal Stead of the International Academy of Design & Technology, who loaned us the space for the event.

Ernest begins the Twinkie Dialogues	At the end of the night, Ernest draws a name in a raffle to win one of his book on game design
Ernest at the Saturday workshop	Workshop participants go through six months of design in five hours

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