Derek Yu Quotes

Everything in Spelunky was designed with a similar sensibility, where we're trying to draw out the personality of each area, of each monster, from very simple actions and things that they do. And when they all come together, you get this complexity that's very interesting, and that makes every time you play in this randomized environment fun— because you start to see — over time — all the different patterns that can arise. [...] That's the emergent gameplay that comes out of it.

To make a world feel really real and immersive, you have to take a step back. And you have to try not to guide the player so much — and show them everything — because that is the fun part about games— discovering things on [your] own, making [your] own mistakes. That's what gives the games meaning. When I feel like someone has their hand on my shoulder, and they're just pushing me around, I feel like I'm losing a lot of the meaning of games, which is that joy of discovery.

I often compare the process of finding and working with teammates to dating. In any big project, you're not just looking for a set of artistic and technical skills to fit your own, you're also looking for someone who shares your creative vision, who communicates well, and who will be as passionate and dedicated about the project as you are in the long run. [...] Ultimately, if you're planning on releasing a commercial video game, you are looking for "marriage material"— a committed, stable partner you can get along with for a long time.

The best games come out of a mutual respect between the creator and the player. The player does not demand a certain experience from the creator because they trust in the creator's expertise and because they want to be surprised. A personal creative vision cannot bloom without the freedom afforded by that trust. At the same time, creators must trust in the curiosity and abilities of their players. Continuously interrupting play to steer players with direct text messages and other obvious hints not only infantilizes them, but it also reveals the creator's insecurity in their ability to design games.

The key to making a challenging game that's not frustrating is to give the player all of the tools that they need to overcome the challenge— and never make it the game's fault that they lost. [...] Roguelikes give you lots of those tools, so even though they're really tough, it's always fun.

This is a straight-up religious problem: the idea of the player and the developer. Because I think [for] some developers, creating a game, it's a little universe— they don't want to be a part of that universe. They want the player to play and just experience the universe as created, and not be involved. And then, I think there are other developers [who] do want you to know "Hey— I designed this! My fingerprints are all over this." And then, there are players [who] I think want to play games basically as the "atheists" of that game world— where they want to just experience the world as-is, with all of its flaws and all of its ugly warts. And then, there are players who play, and because they know that there is a designer behind all of it, they want to basically pray to that deity of the universe to change it for them! [...] I think it has to do with fundamental differences in the way different designers want their game to be experienced, and also fundamental differences between different players and how they want to treat that relationship between the player of the game world and the designer.

I'm obsessed with finishing as a skill. Over the years, I've realized that so many of the good things that have come my way are because I was able to finish what I started. [...] Irrespective of how big the project was, each one I finished gave something back to me, whether it was new fans, a new benchmark for what I could accomplish, or new friends [whom] I could work with and learn from.

A degree is a piece of paper that says you can do something in theory— game developers want to know that you have enough passion to do real work, regardless of whether you're being graded on it. And if you're thinking of going indie, it won't matter what other people think— you'll simply need that passion to succeed or else you won't.

That's how you make [a] game feel truly alive: you cut out the mundane stuff! [...] I think this pursuit of "realism" to make games feel more immersive— it's kind of a dead end.

The more I play and create games, the less convinced I am that the difficulty of games should be thought of in terms of a linear or exponential ramp upwards where, as the player gets stronger, you need to make the opposition increase proportionally in strength. [...] While some form of escalation certainly feels good in a challenging game, [there's] something futile and perhaps nihilistic about endlessly cranking a single knob that goes from easy to hard. Rather, I believe it makes more sense to think about difficulty in terms of the game's overall pacing. Difficulty should ebb and flow, and make room for other aspects of play.

I tend to think about my life in terms of games. "This is the Aquaria point of my life." "This is the Spelunky point of my life." As to what [Spelunky] actually represents — what does that time mean to me — I think: coming more into my own, as a game developer, and figuring out how it was I want to work exactly. I feel like I learned a lot with Aquaria, and I'm super proud of that game, but Spelunky was where I feel like I hit my stride.

Miyamoto and Tezuka, at least when they were designing the early Mario games— I've seen interviews where they describe the genre that Mario is in — and that they're working in — not as platformers but as "athletic games". [...] When I read that, that really changed the way I saw these games— and I feel like it captures the spirit of them much better than "platformer". Even the platformers that Mario has inspired afterwards don't feel as much like "athletic games" [as] the Mario series itself. And one of the iconic Mario songs by Koji Kondo is called "Athletic Theme", which plays into that.

Feeling stuck? Push forward. Start working on the next level, the next enemy, the next whatever. Not only is it helpful for motivational purposes, but you want to get a sense for how your whole game will play out. Just like writing— you don't want to go through it sentence by sentence, making sure every sentence is perfect before you move on. Get an outline down.

Video games are an artform that's so limitless. In making a game, a big part of the process is putting these limiters on the game itself, so you can actually finish. And I think feedback is a great way to figure out what those limiters should be. It's a way to scope and rescope your game.

One of the most fun things about games is learning. It's learning the game and getting that knowledge for yourself about this little world. The only way you can really do that is by figuring it out yourself. If the game tells me something before I get a chance to learn it myself: 1) that's really annoying, but 2) it robs [me] of that experience.