Designing For Hand-Me-Downs

BioWare’s Damion Schubert has penned an entry to his personal blog that talks about the importance of developing PC games so that they’re playable on “hand-me-down” computers.

Tangent aside, MMOs are all about reaching social critical mass. About your virtual world being the place to be. Accessibility is key, and while for most designers this means silky smooth tutorials, intuitive UIs and a candy-coated level 1 to 10 progression, the very first accessibility test is whether or not your game runs at 4 frames per second in character creation on a machine that was top of the line just 3 years ago.

His reasoning applies to more than just MMORPGs. Graphics aren’t everything, as the popularity of MUDs and DOSBox can easily attest to.