What IS Game Design?

News & General Discussion
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If you look around the Internet or even on the Unity Forums you will find all things lumped under Game Design.

Somewhere over the past x number of years people began writing articles about Game Designers without understanding what that actually meant. I think the media is largely to blame.

They wrote things like to become a game designer you need to be a programmer, an artist, be able to design a fun game, create sounds, compose music and market your game.

That is not a Game Designer. That is a lone wolf Game Developer. The bit where they said design a fun game… that is the design part. There are game designers for the overall concept, designers for the play mechanics, designers for the levels.

A sound / music artist is not a game designer… but they can be.
A programmer is not a game designer… but they can be.

So, what is Game Design if it is not Game Development?

Game Design to me is…

Coming up with the general concept for a game, defining the core play mechanics, the ultimate goal(s), the enemies & other obstacles, the secondary and tertiary play mechanics, the victory and failure conditions.

Play Mechanics or Game Mechanics are a primary focus of game design. Put simply, a mechanic is a way the player can interact with the game world.

Jumping is a play mechanic. Collecting coins is a play mechanic. Discovering hidden rooms is a play mechanic. The experience resulting from all of the mechanics is the Game Play Experience. And that is what Game Design is all about.

These days Game Design is often something tacked on as the developers focus on making shiny graphics. Other times a programmer comes up with some cool FX and quickly tries to build a game around it. In my opinion, the game design should come first and be the top priority. It is the most important thing.

What does Game Design mean to YOU?

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To me game design is more fundamental than any of the concrete disciplines (art, sound, music.) It’s the art and science of creating the underlying experience for the game. By necessity, it requires elements from all aspects of game development, since none exist in isolation. However, where game design differs from general development, is that game design deals with the underlying mathematic and art direction at the same time; game design provides the purpose that the implementations make happen.

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Right, so a lot of people confuse ‘game designer’ with ‘game developer.’

I wrote something about this on AltDev a while back, but the site is down…

In essence, the distinction I make is that game design deals with what the game should be, while game programming deals with how to implement the design.

Some important consequences of this in practice:

  • Design is not exclusive to game designers. For example, the game’s art style is part of the design, but the game designer would usually delegate most of it to the art director. The art director might come up with stuff and the designer say ‘no, not like that,’ but ultimately the art director designs what the art will be like in the game.
  • Game designers do not only do design - they also get involved in programming, in the sense that they often need to refine a part of the design to break down how it works, i.e. instead of just saying ‘there’s a health system’ they need to give details about how health works, if there’s a shield, how health is recovered, etc. I consider this the initial steps of programming because it’s the same process as taking a part of the design and breaking it down into classes/variables/etc, even though usually there’s no actual code involved.
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Game design is the common element of all games: video games, board games, sports, etc. It’s about creating an interesting, interactive experience through rules and atmosphere.

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Awesome. It sounds like we are all on the same page. Game design focuses on the interactive experience the player has while playing the game. It has fundamentals such as the basic concept, it has specifics such as mechanics, goals, rules and obstacles, and it defines or at least heavily influences the other aspects such as the locale, the “sight and sound” of the game world.

Thanks!

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The artistic expression? Not sure if its the same thing as implementation.

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IMO, a game in its simplest definition consists of three parts: one or more players, a goal that the players are trying to achieve, and a set of rules that defines how the players can achieve this goal. So to me, game design is the creation and balancing of the rule set, and is not limited to just video games.

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Game Design: An iterative process of refining play mechanics with the goal of making the game more fun for the player(s).

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Game Design is this thing where you design games.

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This a fine example of the game design process (History section)…
http://presskit.on3games.com/sheet.php?p=bucketball_factory

from this new game listed here.

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As long as we’re on the same page, let’s try to do something that needs to be done. Whereas in the past lone wolves have tried to hog the glory and be the ones credited with defining this field, why don’t we join together and create a unified game theory?

The worst that can happen is utter failure.

I think this thread could be the cornerstone of the whole theory, if it’s done right.

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Will there be cake?

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We’re having a philosophical debate about sand. Lets try to keep things serious, alright?

… Cake… pfft…

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I think the poster of that topic brings up a common misconception that Game Development = Game Design, which has a degree of value for this discussion. While we’re (rightly) telling him to take that question elsewhere, I think as designers, people trying to ascertain motivations and ways to harness said motivation, there’s a ripe topic for the picking in that.

And, we can philosophize about sand. Is philosophize a word?

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You just wrote it. I read it, I know what you mean. I think it is, or at least should be.

Don’t you remember what happened the last time we were promised cake?

It is. It reminds me of how The Legend of Zelda was designed with the idea of starting you off defenseless and scared, and later returning to the same places without fear.

Simplicity is key, you almost have to clear your mind and become like a child who sees wonder in everything.

We adults tend to assume many things, so we overlook the details of what things are… bouncy, metallic, hot, cold, etc. Instead we say “that is coffee”, when really it is “dark, aromatic, hot, smoky, steamy”.

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Maybe I’m no professional but to me the idea of completely separating design from actual implementation seems a bit theoretical. You would have to be a really good designer for it to work first time around.

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A game is, first and foremost, played in the mind. You manipulate various tactile elements, sometimes it’s all verbal, but ultimately a game is a mental experience.

As such, any game can be designed by closing your eyes and imagining.

Actual implementation comes next, once the design has a form in the mind.

At this point, you may return to your mind palace and redesign. Design happens there. Implementation happens in the real world.

It’s not theoretical, any more than knowing what you want to say before you begin speaking is theoretical.

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Misterselmo hit the nail on the head. And Kryger your point is also valid. The key is just what Misterselmo said, design, implement, play test, (re)design, implement, play test. Design is very much an interative process.

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I think what I will ultimately argue is that a game design is separate from its implementation and presentation.

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If we attempt to formalize the design process, I suppose we should go back to the very beginning.

The seed for the design itself. From my own experience, the initial ideas come from various places.

Sometimes I am simply day dreaming and think “that could be a cool game”. Other times, I learned how to do something, a technical breakthrough so to speak, and ideas were formed around how to use it. Of course, the most well known example of that is probably the old Castle Wolfenstein. The programmers were playing around trying to create and render a 3d environment. Finally, most often, my inspiration comes from other games (usually old games). The original idea starts with something like “this would be a lot more fun if…”

Books, movies, hobbies and many more things can produce that initial seed.

Where do your ideas come from? And do we want to try to accomplish the goal Mrselmo presented?