This is so true. Having consumed video games for a long time, there are tons of things that I just accept as convention. Often, I feel like I’m just regurgitating other (better) designers experiences. For example, if you told me to make a Zelda game, I would start laying out parts of an action RPG: weapons, items & inventory, health system, etc. instead of focusing on trying to translate the human experience of being an adventurer with a wide world to explore. Part of it is not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I suppose. But I do need to start thinking more critically, and as you said, approaching things like a child.
Miyamoto discovered, much by accident, how to make a compelling game. It was a shot in the dark back then. Now, we can pull collective experiences together and maybe learn something new.
I’m gonna try and stop this before it gets too far because there is some conflation of design and designing.
design -ing (verb): the planning of systems
This is what a game designer does.
game- design (noun): the structure of systems and the interplay between them
This is what a game’s design is.
Game design isn’t the idea for a game but actually making that idea work. It’s very difficult and requires a lot of thinking through and evaluating it ie an evolving prototype. Even then, most of these designs will fail. Failure is normal.
If you want to stop the discussion this is probably not the forum (or at least thread) for you. The point of the GD forum is so those of us who are interested can have such discussions!
To me… the idea is very much a part of game design. If there is no idea then what are you designing? The idea is the seed, the central concept, around which all of the other design decisions are based.
This is significant. I think I’m even being befuddled here. Game Design is used broadly, it is so far been a catch all for anything related to the creation of computer, tabletop and board games.
The way I wish to interpet Game Design is “design of games”. It is a verb, it is something you do, a process. We can talk about how to go about this process, aims and goals of this process, techniques that work, etc.
What we should probably avoid is referring to a game’s “design” as a noun. We can get a lot of mileage out of addressing specific aspects of a game’s implementation of various concepts, it’s user interface, it’s responsiveness, it’s feel… but I think we should avoid saying things like “My game’s design” or “that game has a good design” or even “the design of that game” because we can get much more specific.
But design should be used as a verb. Again, game design should mean “the process of designing games”.
All of that only specifically applies to the development of computer games, not necessarily designing games.
Designing games is an under-appreciated art form (yes, I said that…) that really few people understand at all. You don’t need a computer to play games. Games come in many forms, riddles, puzzles, tests of memory and strength and ability. Games are playful things. Children are good at making up games, adults not so much.
We think too hard about it. It’s like thinking about breathing, you just muck it up.
Don’t know if I would go that far. People’s use of the word design(n) is frequently not valuable, but I wouldn’t throw it out. We are still discussing design if we talk about, say mediocre skill trees that don’t offer much (if anything) to other systems.
Most of design(n) is knowing how and why certain systems do or don’t work with other systems. Designers typically get the glory for their novelty, but it’s the trench diggers with actual understanding of design that cut out the bad and work on the good parts.
A good designer is part of the entire process, including working with the “trench diggers” and helping to make decisions about what is good and what is bad. Unfortunately, in today’s world, the cuts tend to be more about money and time than about what works.
Meant designer in the pre-production/planning sense, but what ev. Cuts do tend to be based on what isn’t currently functional and what would be high risk.
For me it is to understand Play (theory) and then put that understanding into context and structure it (into a game). Or maybe thats what a good game designer does in my world.
Game design well that can be defined as many things. From ideas to practical work. I had like three game design courses and i still don’t know really hehe.
In my past experience, the game designer has been involved throughout the process, not just pre-planning. In fact, I seem to remember a few that were a real pain! But I have come to appreciate them as I have done more design work.
I suppose when time is an issue, nonfunctional and high risk features would be the first cut. Makes sense from a business end. However, I have also watched games undergo so many cuts that they lose their design sense. The Sims series is a great example although I am sure other games, especially developed by large companies, have the same problem.
A good game design should build in possible cuts and have contingency plans for how the game might be impacted by such cuts. Otherwise, you can end up with an unbalanced mess that is no fun to play.
With books like that, it’s not surprising that you can’t quite define what game design is. Very lovely words, but I can’t quite understand how any of what he says is useful to making games. He spends much of his time specifically not talking about games, but about spaces… play spaces, this space, that space.
I think if he has taken three courses on game design and still doesn’t know it, then he has been failed by the teachers and their texts. We go to institutions of higher learning to…well, learn. The fact that he still doesn’t know the identity of the thing he studied on a basic level is rather troubling.
This is also a problem I have with some other game design books out there. They give ornate, academic language that is utterly useless. I’m wondering if an ‘Avoid these books on “Game Design”’ topic is in order as the evil counterpart to this thread?