Derek Yu Quotes

I want people to play around with [Spelunky 2] and not focus so much on "beating" it. I think it's a difficult concept for people to wrap their head[s] around. [...] It is a hard game, but the challenge is really just a backdrop for people to play and experiment.

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.

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.

When it comes down to it, I feel like art should never be compromised for any reason— especially not to satisfy a certain group of people. [...] There was no compromise for Spelunky.

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.

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.

Unsurprisingly, not everybody likes spiky games! [They're] like bitter or spicy food— [they're] an acquired taste that you have to build up. [...] It can be hard for people who don't like spicy food to understand why spicy-food fans love it so much. If you're just starting out on your spicy-food journey, you can't taste the flavor— just the heat and the pain. Similarly, spiky games generate a lot of enthusiasm from their fans, but for people who aren't there yet, they can just seem hard.

Mario made more sense to me, thinking about it as an "athletic game". Even little details like Charging Chuck— there are just random sports characters that are in the Mario universe. And the fact that — at the end of a Super Mario World level — there's that bar that goes up and down, and you're trying to hit it— it kind of feels like hurdles. The fact that there is a timer in the game. [...] It all comes together to make each Mario level feel almost like a race where you can also explore.

That might be the core of game design to me— making connections from every part of the game to every other part of the game. [...] I think it's been really fun to be able to do Spelunky Classic, Spelunky HD, and now, Spelunky 2. And it really feels to me like seeing the evolution of a lot of our favorite childhood franchises and seeing how they've grown up, and being inspired by that.

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.

I focus as much on the process of making games as the games themselves, because I have the experience now to know how hard game-making is at any level. I don't just make a game because I want to make the game; I make it because it's also the right time to make it and the right people are around to help me make it. I never assume that a game is going to get made out of sheer will. A lot of the decisions that you make in the conceptual phase will either help you or haunt you, once the development starts.

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.

A lot of design decisions that end up having a big effect on the gameplay start as thematic decisions. [...] It's like in chess, how the knight is the only piece that jumps, and that just makes sense-- you're on a horse, and the horse can leap. Those kinds of links-- they're things that game developers think about a lot, and it's not just a bunch of abstract rules. It matters what the game is about story-wise, character-wise, et cetera.

I've started to think of myself, personally, as a "work in progress" that will never reach completion— but in order to keep progressing, I have to release games. [...] You're releasing a game, but you yourself are not "done". And so, I think that takes some of the pressure off for me— to think about things that way. And in general— to think about art and life as this cyclic thing, because you're going to keep going and make more things, so just put out what you've got and do the best you can. It's not a final judgment of you, as a person and an artist, when you release a game.

I think my word is "flow" for game design, because I think you want your game to flow, and I think you want your game development process to flow. To me, that means everything starting from a central idea, and then layering on top of that to have a very coherent experience. I think if you develop games that way, [it'll come across] to the players, and they'll have a similar experience that's really smooth.