I believe that games should entertain players, while
inspiring new perspectives and insights about the world around them. Game
design should be the way to deliberately create game-play experiences, but to
do this a designer must be fluent in his or her design practice. The purpose of
this manifesto is to explore a set of standards that would shape the conduct or
attitude of a designer’s practice.
In her post, Respecting
Design, Claire Blackshaw[1] describes something I recognized myself when I
first entered the industry and continue to recognize in many anecdotes from
students that are novice game designers.
In her blog post the essential question is, “Why is it so hard to earn
respect as a game designer?” In fact this issue seems to bother many game designers.
Not too long after I started to write this manifesto, I noticed this article
had been posted on lostgarden.com ‘The
Declaration of Game Designer Independence ‘. [2] While the declaration hits upon many vital points, my
interpretation of the underlining message was a call for respect. Yet, “In most
respected professions a vast amount of research, basis of knowledge, or method
of thinking is required to advance in professional grade problems.”[1] [3] To
gain respect, designers need to be able to demonstrate their abilities clearly
and convincingly. In other words, if they want their independence they will
need to revolutionize their practices in order to earn independence.
My general approach to this issue has been to use and
collect game design methods, but beneath this approach is a doctrine that makes them
work for me. In a tribute to the 7 virtues of Bushido (The Way of the Samurai) the following seven topics of this manifesto has become my Way of the Desamurai.
The heart of development is
game design
Game design is fundamental to game development, not
only because it affects the resulting game-play experience, but because of its
influence on the most crucial aspects of game development. In my opinion these
are time, cost and synergy (synergy meaning the development team’s moral,
enthusiasm, energy and trust). A game designer should be able fit the design to
the available time, resources and synergy. Therefore the ability to estimate
this is essential. As such, a designer cannot use the lack of resources to
explain a poor game-play experience. In the end it’s about achieving the most
with what is available.
Refine over redefine
All game design and development should be iterative. A
designer’s job is to iterate as many times as needed to nail the aims of game
design (game mechanics, play mechanics and game-ply experience). Iterative
design is not a continuous experimentation until the designer stumbles upon the
ultimate game through trial-and-error. Iterations should be about refining
while avoiding a lot of redefining, if too much redefining occurs then pitfalls
like feature creep occur. Instead the designer should strive to reach the
desired game-play experience in shortest number of iterations.
Knowing the
design
Knowing
the design is the most fundamental task of the game designer, which means
knowing how the core- and progressive- mechanics work, how the play mechanics
should feel and having a sense for the game-play experience. Lacking intimate knowledge
of the design can lead to a loss of team synergy and generally making excuses
as to why it’s not fun. If you want to have respect as a game designer you should
know the design inside out, after all if you don’t know the game, who does?
The
Trans-medial game designer
A game
designer should be able to design all sorts of games not just video games. [4] Games
are trans-medial, meaning they transcend any one medium. [5] They exist as
video games, board games, card games, physical sports, social games, and
ubiquitous systems. A designer should avoid be only a ‘fan boy’ designer who only
designs games for his/her favorite genre or media. Once a game designer
embraces the fact that games are trans-medial, it will open your eyes to a
wider application of your game design skills.
Have you
ever been experienced
Ideally,
game design should be an occupation that inspires lifelong learning. Any
designer that maintains this attitude soon finds that they become a
jack-of-all-trades, as they collect experiences and knowledge about design and
the media in which the design was developed. A game designer should above all else play
all sorts of games, not just his/her favorite, and be able to critique these
games beyond terms such as ‘fun’ and ‘good game-play’. My belief is that good
game design comes from being able to portray a game-play experience, therefore
even if a game is a sequel or a clone, a designer should treat the design as
unique and with respect. In these cases just adding new features and mechanics
to an existing game without understanding why the game worked worked in the first place is a
recipe for poor design. Furthermore, genre categorization is
terminology best reserved for sales and players, as a game designer should be
able to understand games in terms of game mechanics and systems. By
understanding the mechanics the designer always starts from scratch and applies
mechanics as needed and not because of genre conventions.
Design vs. Game
A game
designer should always remember that the game design is not the game and the
game is the design. I know this sounds weird but game designers tend to confuse
what is designed and what is built, and then believe these should be the same. The goal
of all design activities should be aimed at making a game with the best
possible game-play experience. Therefore a designer needs to realize that much
of his work is expendable. That is because most of our work is only foot work,
and in the end there is a good chance of it being scraped, changed or not being
implemented.
Listen,
Explain, Inspire
The ability
to communicate is critical. Good communication begins with listening to others,
and as a designer this means listening to your players, development
team, publisher, etc. The next aspect of communication is knowing how to
provide the proper explanations that will help others implement the design,
while providing clear argumentation for your design choices. The final aspect
of communication is about inspiring others which means promoting the design to
the development team, producers, players, etc.
