Steinmeyer Blog on Game Themes

#1 Who is Steinmeyer? I am not familiar with him.

Well in terms of themes, I think puzzle games with themes are not a hard and fast rule. The strength of Marble Blast is that it has solid gameplay and there are goals in the levels and a timer to beat. Monkey Ball is great fun, but not because it has monkeys and some jungle settings in it. I mean, that to me seems stupid. You could make Marble Blast space themed, and it wouldn't be any better. Its not like Marble Madness, an obvious inspiration for Marble Blast, had a great theme, it wasn't even brightly coloured and cosmetically appealing, it simple had a really tough puzzle element to it and great marble controls. That made it fun, it was a challenge. It was a puzzle game and that is what they are about.

I liked Marble Blast, and it was fun for a while, I missed the difficulty mostly, when compared to Marble Blast and similar titles. I liked Monkey Ball alot, because of the difficulty, but when telling people about either game I would never hold their themes accountable for either success or failure in any area.

Cheers!
Ian

#2 Here is his his rap sheet, but he is mostly known for Railroad Tycoon 2 and Tropico.

I think his point is kinda valid as far as that a strong theme can enhance the average game. Could Marble Blast have been better with a stronger theme? Maybe. I'm not much of a casual game player, so i can't really say anything more than that.

#3 We are "ouching" all the way to the bank. Marble Blast is not actually a casual game. It is much harder and deeper than that. I know all about adding character to games, but I also know when I want character and when I don't. When a product is on a short time frame and its real mission in life is to sell back end technology, you don't dork around adding "character." When you are Sega (at the time about a $800M per year publisher), you can have the time to add all the character you want.

Blogs can now be like opinions, i.e. everybody has one. They also have other things that I won't post about here.

-Jeff Tunnell GG

#4 I would say a game like X, or X2, would really suffer if the space theme was weak. But I mean, a theme in puzzle games?! Its like saying Tetris would suck if it didn't have Russian dancing music... well, now that you mention it, I really did like that music. ;)

Let me put it this way, if you put a monkey inside the rainbow coloured marble, and gave Marble Blast jungle backgrounds and a deep jungle rif, would it be that much better? I think first of all I would wonder wtf I have a monkey inside my marble when its called 'Marble Blast', not 'Theres a Monkey in my Marble'.

I am a proud owner of Marble Blast and I like it because it is fun. It didn't make me play it for days on end, but then it was a cheap title, that gave me some fond memories of Marble Madness and set out what it designed to do. Monkey Ball was a riot in multiplayer mode, and was truly difficult in some ares resulting in lots of fun. Plus the game types were great and it had alot of variety. But then my friend payed £40 for Monkey Ball...

Ian

#5 I won't play Tetris because I grew up during the Red Scare.

#6 I really think there are a lot better ways he could have proven his point. I'm not quite sure how he can even compare the single player of Monkey Ball to Marble Blast. I don't know anyone who plays single player Monkey Ball for fun, it's always something you slog through to unlock the party games. I find the levels to be relativly uninspired, I find the camera to be annoying (though this has serious fps-player bias, and I realize that), and, quite frankly, I think the "character" is really stupid and annoying. Yeah, I love hearing a monkey squeal like a school girl every time I do something; it really makes my gameplay experience so much better.

I would actually put forward that the reason he played Monkey Ball for 20 mintues and Marble Blast for 20 seconds was that he was either not playing the single player Monkey Ball, or that he sucks at playing games and can't control the camera in Marble Blast, because that IS a problem that we need to address. I would say that the camera control is way more critical than having a squeeling monkey and insanity-laced cutscenes with an annoying themesong and Dole-sponsored bananas.

#7 Phil's definitely more of an RTS player.

Didnt read his blog, but I think he's more of a casual game player...

#8 Well, I liked both titles ... and really I thought Marble Blast had more single player gameplay ... the level design was more dynamic and the use of powerups was great.

Hmmm, still he makes a valid point, Marble Blast with a theme (like perhaps a story mode as seen in Seth's Puzzle Boxes) would be better than Marble Blast without one.

#9 Your muddled professor has lost his marbles. Now you have to find your way back to him!