Game Design


 Game design is the process of:
 Imagining a game
 Defining the way it works
 Describing the elements that make up the game. (conceptual, functional,
artistic, and others)
 Transmitting that information to the team that will build the game.
 Game: Art, Science, or Craft?

 Art
 The creativity that possessed only by a talented few.
 Game is an imaginations, is an aesthetic expressions.
 Science
 Concentrate on the methodology
 Game is a set of techniques, a process of thought.
 Craft
 The goal of game is to entertain through play, and designing a game requires both
creativity and careful planning.
 Game contains both artistic and functional elements, so can be enjoyable to play.
 Ground Rules of Game Design

 Core Mechanics
 Storytelling and Narrative
 Interactivity
Core
Mechanics

Storytelling
Interactivity
Narrative
 Core Mechanics

 Rules are the foundations of game-play.
 The core mechanics are the translation of the designer’s vision into a
consistent set of rules that can be interpreted by a computer.
 Is the “science” part of game design.
 Is the heart and soul of the game.
 Storytelling and Narrative

 All games tell a story.
 Narrative means that part of the story that is told by game designer or
author to the players.
 Narrative is the non-interactive, presentational part of the story.
 Narrative in games are often quite linear, unaffected by the player’s
action and unchanging from one playing to the next.
 Interactivity

 Interactivity is the way that the players sees, hears, and acts within the
game’s world.
 Presenting the gaming experience.
 Making the game playable.
 Interactivity starts at the user interface.
The Stages of the Design Process

The Concept Stage
 GETTING A CONCEPT
 DEFINING AN AUDIENCE
 DETERMINING THE PLAYER’S ROLE
The Stages of the Design Process (2)

The Elaboration Stage
 DEFINING THE PRIMARY GAMEPLAY MODE
 DESIGNING THE PROTAGONIST
 DEFINING THE GAME WORLD
 DESIGNING THE CORE MECHANICS
 CREATING ADDITIONAL MODES
 DESIGNING LEVELS
 WRITING THE STORY
 BUILD, TEST, AND ITERATE
The Stages of the Design Process (3)

The Tuning Stage
 feature lock.
The Stages of the Design Process (4)

The Game Design Documents
 HIGH CONCEPT DOCUMENT
 GAME TREATMENT DOCUMENT
 CHARACTER DESIGN DOCUMENT
 WORLD DESIGN DOCUMENT
 FLOWBOARD
 STORY AND LEVEL PROGRESSION DOCUMENT
 THE GAME SCRIPT
 Game Design Team Roles

 Game Designer.
 Level Designer/World Builder
 User Interface Designer.
 Writer.
 Art Director.
 Audio Director.
 Anatomy of Game Designer

 Imagination
 Technical Awareness
 Analytical Competence
 Mathematical Competence
 Aesthetic Competence
 General Knowledge
 Writing Skills
 Drawing Skills
 The Ability to Compromise
 Imagination

 Imagination is essential to creating artificial universe that a game exists.
 Imagination comes in various forms:
 Visual and auditory
 New buildings, trees, animals, creatures, clothing, people.
 Dramatic imagination
 Characters, plots, scenes, motivation, emotion, climaxes, and outcomes.
 Imagination

 Imagination comes in various forms:
 Conceptual imagination
 Relationship between ideas, their interactions and dependencies.
 Lateral Thinking
 Process of looking for alternative answer, taking an unexpected route to solve
the problem.
 Technical Awareness

 Is a general understanding of how computer programs actually work.
 Knowing the limitations imposed by the selected platform will result in
an achievable design.
 Analytical Competence

 Game design requires a keen logical and analytical mind, and the ability
to manipulate nebulous concepts with a high level of mental agility and
critical analysis.
 Mathematical Competence

 Designer must have basic math skills.
 Ensure that there are no dominant strategies or fighting units to
unbalance the game is actually quite math-intensive.
 Aesthetic Competence

 Designer should have general aesthetic competence and some sense of
style.
 Little fundamental of art:
 The Principles of Composition
 Colors Coordinate and Clash
 General Knowledge

 A base level of general knowledge is valuable for a game designer, as is
the ability to research what is might not know.
 The more source material a game designer can assimilate, the better the
final game design will be.
 Movies, books, encyclopedia are some source of game materials.
 Writing Skills

 This means being clear, concise, accurate, unambiguous, and readable
writing skills.
 Comes in several forms:
 Technical writing
 Fiction writing (narrative)
 Dialogue writing (drama)
 Drawing Skills

 Basic drawing and sketching is highly valuable for game designer.
 “A picture is worth a thousand words”
 The image will remain in our memories long after we forget the details.
 The Ability to Compromise

 The most important skill for a professional game designer.
 The game designer is constrained by genre and license.