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4) If your programming staff refuses, then use as much money in your budget as possible to hire the most expensive name talent. Even though this has never been shown to sell more games, yet definitely does detract from the cash you'll have for real game-related improvements, do it, by all means.

Like Patrick Stewart for the very small five minute segment of Uriel Septim of Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion.

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SMART MARKETING

1) Start calling your game a "breakthrough", "epic adventure" and "masterpiece" two years before its official release.

2) Advertise "hundreds of new monsters", "thousands of cool upgradeable items" and a "massive multiplayer option".

3) Announce your game "to be released in time for Christmas".

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4) Mention how this game revolutionise the genre.

5) Over-hype the game up till the point of mentioning non-existent features

6) Every advertisement for any blockbuster RPG must include the song "O Fortuna" in the background.

7) Every preview movie released contains spectacular ingame movies. Showing gameplay is not recommended!

GEOGRAPHY

1) The Chosen One's Village must always be in the Western part of the world map.

2) The North Pole inhabited by polar bears and stupid mead-drinking Vikings is five minutes walk north from the Chosen One's Village.

3) The sun-scorched Southern Desert inhabited by nomadic merchants is five minutes walk south from the Chosen One's Village.

4) The Evil Adversary Lair is located in the inhospitable Eastern Region accessible only in Chapter 4.

5) The Evil Adversary prefers wastelands, smoky volcanoes, half-ruined Fortresses in the middle of nowhere and ancient underground passages leading to desecrated Temples.

6) Extermination of a local fauna gives a lot of XP. It is fun too.

7) Swimming under water (including freezing coastal waters dotted with icebergs) in full plate armor is perfectly natural.

Game Environment

1) If in temperate areas, must include lots of foliage and trees up till the point of dragging the overall game performance no matter how weak or powerful your computer is.

2) The fauna must be interactive (a.k.a. you can pick the flowers and any useless shrub you see).

3) All villages have houses made of wood or brick with straw roofs. Castles are always found in larger cities.

4) Always have extremely long view distance to let the player enjoy how far the eye can see, which in turn, also affects overall game performance as well.

5) All animals (except deers and smaller animals) are hostile to you and instantly attack on first sight.

Game Environment- Continued-

-If a deadly poisonous animal or insect exists in real life, it will be at least a thousand times the normal size in the video game.

-There's only one human, but there's also eight thousand versions of elves.

-If a traveling bandit stops you and demands all your money and you have none, instead of killing you like a normal one would, he will instead grow a sad face and complain about how even a robber can't get a days worth of money in in most cases (Actually had this happen to me in oblivion).

-Animals never actually appear in the appropriate wilderness. A timber wolf will always be in the temperate forests, black bears can be seen near beach areas as well as mountain tops, and wild boars will roam anywhere yet there's no such thing as wild horses.

Game Environment -Continuation-

- Trolls and ogres are found everywhere. Sometimes placed near a treasure chest but most of the time, scattered around the map.

- Animals may attack each other and also attack human NPCs even though they're minding their own business.

- Traders are nowhere to be seen travelling from one town/city to another even though towns and cities are re-stocked with supplies and equipment on a daily basis.

The Trade and Mercantile of every town-

-Shops will always have infinite gold and yet have a limit to how much they will pay for something.

-A barter system will either be completely absent or so insanely complex that it'd be better if it were just absent.

-Though the game says "Thousands of different items you can buy," in reality it's thousands of different versions of the same items, I.E. Iron Hammer, Rusty Iron Hammer, Low Quality Iron Hammer, Damaged Iron Hammer, Masterwork Iron Hammer, Superior Iron Hammer, Thick Iron Hammer, Fine Iron Hammer.

-No matter how advanced the society, if not equal to or more technological than the modern age, gold is the main currency. Every time.

-Even with encumbrance, you have infinite space in your inventory, defying the laws of physics of a torn and tattered backpack.

-Gold Never has weight.

- Paper money is nonexistent.

- When it comes to healing, there are always more than one item that fulfils this need. Herbs, potions, flowers, grass, meat, etc..

- You will always sell an item at half price (or less) no matter how expensive or cheat that item is.

- Items on sale are never put out on display and instead, confined to the shopkeeper's pockets.

- Shops or merchants never offer discounts on their goods.

- The main character can only buy/sell from the merchant or shop. Everyone else lack this ability.

Name of characters

- Always the funny sounding names such as Shaak'Ti, Real'nok, etc.

- You'll never come across anybody with regular names.

- The main character's name is never mentioned by NPCs.

More on dialogue:

Dialogue options must include a 'How do I know I can trust you?' option to create an illusion of choice when you're putting your life in the hands of Mysterious Stranger No 1 who you've just met in the enemy's stronghold and has decided to help you for no good reason.
Mysterious Stranger No 1's reply must be totally devoid of logic and be generally retarded. Choosing said dialogue option must be totally without consequences for anything whatsoever.

Lehiff wrote:More on dialogue:

Dialogue options must include a 'How do I know I can trust you?' option to create an illusion of choice when you're putting your life in the hands of Mysterious Stranger No 1 who you've just met in the enemy's stronghold and has decided to help you for no good reason.
Mysterious Stranger No 1's reply must be totally devoid of logic and be generally retarded. Choosing said dialogue option must be totally without consequences for anything whatsoever.

Except that this is almost never the case. "How can I trust you" makes perfect sense in any game as well as real life, and most of the time the logic is "Well you don't seem to have a choice at the moment" which if in a life threatening situation, trust seems rather worthless over a good blade.

--Healing--

1. Most of the time, Eating some kind of flower herb will cure you even though it would more than likely be poison.

2. Make Healing your character not a wound problem but a simple math problem. No broken bones will ever befall your character, but a minus forty hit points will.

3. In an open ended RPG, more powerful potions are almost never available until you're level 40; even though the more powerful potions have less of a cure than your current level 1 character's hit points.

3A. In a linear RPG, potions always come in a degree of sizes that are available by the higher towns only (starting town = lesser potion of heal, town before the final dungeon = Max heal potion) even though a lower level character would be more likely to make use of potions than one of a higher level with a healer companion.

4. In most games, no matter how severe an injury, no matter how close to the brink of death, an eight hour sleep will devoid all diseases, and cure all your wounds.

DesR85 wrote:Name of characters

- Always the funny sounding names such as Shaak'Ti, Real'nok, etc.

- You'll never come across anybody with regular names.

- The main character's name is never mentioned by NPCs.

- It does not matter whether NPC's name Shaak'Ti or John, because all names in a game must be unique: you can bet your last gold piece on it.
The only exception is name Darryl ( the sweet kobold trio Larry, Darryl and Darryl).

- While all names are unique, faces are not. You can travel all across the universe and encounter the same familiar faces (or mugs) wherever you go.

- And sometimes, some of the unique names (especially last names) are derived from words strung together and most of the time, they sound stupid.

-- Every town has a few traders and a blacksmith.

-- Every corner is populated by a hooker.


The Chosen One is their only customer.

Good idea:

Every guard will tell you that there's nothing to see, and you should move on.

Every noble you encounter will show the same attention to subtle class distinctions exhibited by Thurston Howell III.

Lady Dragonfly wrote:The Chosen One is their only customer.

Mind you, the chosen one is the only one in need of uber armor or weapons. The guards?

Sponsored by the village council.