Game design
Designs the rules, goals and challenges of a game, board or digital, so that playing it produces the intended experience.
What it deals with
A game designer controls only the rules; the experience appears when someone plays. That is why you design by playing and testing again and again.
Principles
Rules
They say what can be done and what you want to achieve.
Play
From the rules comes what people do when they play, which isn't always what was planned.
Experience
What you design, in the end, is how playing feels.
Applications in design
Use it like this
Make a playable prototype, even a paper one, from day one.
Avoid
Judging a game by its written rules without watching it played.
Don’t fall for it
Watch people play without explaining anything: what isn't understood on its own needs redesigning.
Concepts
- ConceptGamificationUsing game design elements in something that isn’t a game.
Connections
Authors and works
- 2003
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Brought together the foundations of the discipline by looking at games as rules, as play and as culture.
- 2004
Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek
Proposed the MDA framework (mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics) to connect what is designed with what is experienced when playing.
Sources
Original sources
- Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2003). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press.
- Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI (WS-04-04). AAAI Press. View source: Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004)
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