From the start of a concept to the little tweaking and balancing at the end of a development cycle a designer is bombarded with choices. These choices have great or small effects on how a game is experienced. These choices can be made by gut-feeling, experience, testing or based on design. Although all these options are valid and will ultimately help the designer to make a decision, I want to talk about making decisions based on the design of a game.
Choices are all around us, and if we are in charge of designing a game than even the sky isn’t the limit. So, in this sea of choice, how to make the right decision?
Design is nothing more than limiting choices before they are raised. Great design sticks to these limits, even if –due to these limits- seemingly unsolvable problems pop-up.
Continue reading ‘Emotional focus as design tool’
What makes a good game designer? How is it possible to judge a game designer? The game design profession is traditionally not something that you’re hired for straight out of school. Game designers start out as programmers, testers or any other field within the game development process. As game designer you’re responsible for the core experience of a game, of its rules, goals, progression structure, balance and feel of the game.
Usually it takes a lot of experience in the game industry to know what makes a good game and what makes a bad game., if it is at all possible to define one. Industry professional, academia and fans of games all struggle with the same question that a game designer is supposed to know by heart!
But if that’s not enough, what other – and maybe more tangible - skills should a good game designer own? Or at least strive to possess?
Continue reading ‘Designing a good game designer’
As a designer of games I always strive to have a deeper understanding of what it is that I’m designing. What are games? What is play? What is fun?
My latest attempt at answering these questions started at the Tale of tales website. The discussion was actually on a different subject but for me it turned into a discussion about games and toys. I believed that one of their projects was more of a toy then a game. But then I started thinking; what is the difference exactly?
I believe that the main difference is in the kind of play that the experience allows. As I found out, players can have different levels of authorship over the actual play experience. With toys for instance, players have full - or at least a lot - of authorship over the experience. Players decide how play is experienced, what is being played and how it is played.
Continue reading ‘Scale of authorship’
