So I've thrown some ideas out from time to time. But I've never formally "designed a game". So right now, I'm reading, "Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Third Edition". And working through the examples. I haven't gotten very far in it though.
But I wonder, what have others done, to learn and polish their game design skills? Books, word templates, "real-life"? Please share your experiences and learning tools, if any.
Well, this is hard to answer. I'm just designing a single game in my spare time, but over several years now and these are my experiences:
First off all, it seems that game design is pure experience paired with lot of experimental test'n'try. And there's really little material about game design around compared to all the other stuff (art, coding). Some blogs or GDCs, maybe books more about either very special cases or very rough concepts. So, what is left is, that you need to invent the wheel again and gain your own experiences ?
If you don't like the experimental way, you should base your game design on existing,working design. This sounds like cloning, but to be honest, when you design a new car, do you invent the wheel and engine every time or doesn't you take existing, proofen concept as foundation ? The final game design of a working and enjoyable game is eventually a compressed version of someone else experiences, experiences which you should utilize to create something new and experiences which would likely not be gained by a single game designer.
The second important experience is, that for me up-front design never really worked. If you clone someone else design, a up-front GDD could work, but once you try to change or mix different aspects, you need to test it out. I have thrown away lot of design ideas after implementing them, and I was often really suprised, that some features opened a new door to other game mechanism.
Currently I'm at the state, that a game idea, is really only a temporary idea at the horizon I try to follow. I try to implement the foundation to this idea and test it out. Then I evaluate the result and reiterate it, trying to improve it (agile game design). Nowadays I would never tell the public about not yet working game design ideas, the risk that this will not work is really high, and this could really fire back , which happen to me and even to really famous and experienced veteran game designers too (Godus).
So, a practicable advice from a simple hobby game designer guy:
Start to work with visions, take working game design as foundation to support your vision and start to prototype this into a game. Then start to refine it over several iterations. Don't over-engineer an idea up-front, don't hold on an idea until it really works, don't try to protect your investment, if it doesn't work, dicard it.
So I've thrown some ideas out from time to time. But I've never formally "designed a game". So right now, I'm reading, "Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Third Edition". And working through the examples. I haven't gotten very far in it though.
But I wonder, what have others done, to learn and polish their game design skills? Books, word templates, "real-life"? Please share your experiences and learning tools, if any.
First, look beyond video games. Study gambling, board games, tennis, jet skiing, and so on. If you want to create games in the virtual world, you first have to understand games in the real world.
Second, you can create many games easily with paper and pen. You can draw on paper and create a board game; you can cut paper to create a card game; you can write rules and create a RPG, or even a Fighting Game; and so on. Making changes to your game with paper and pen is also super fast. This is the fastest iteration process for game design, having to program etc. will only slow you down. Once you have a playable game made with paper and pen; test, test, test, and test it more—user testing is super important in game development—then make changes as necessary.
I second nyaanyaa's suggestion of using pen&paper to experiment. Some programming is a great skill to have, too. Even if you aren't going to be programming a game, being able to write little prototypes to see how an rpg combat system will work out, or to see if a control mechanism for a rocket pack is fun, is a great tool.
Come up with mechanisms, and then "figure them out". What UI's are possible to interact with the mechanism? What other parts of the game would be affected, or would affect the mechanism? What would distinguish a bad player from a good player? Where will the mechanism break down? What weird strategies might be tried, and how would they work out? Is the mechanism feasible to build?
Play games, paying attention to design. Try to beat the same level with different strategies. Be critical: what works and what doesn't work? Why do the bad parts of the game that fall flat? Are there interesting mechanisms that get overused? How could you inject variety? Are there mechanisms that are overshadowed? Is the game too streamlined? Too busy?
Imagine variants. What if you wanted to slow down the player's walking speed 20%? What parts would become too difficult? How could you resolve that? What if you chose one of the side mechanics, say wall jumping, and made that the focus? How could you inject more strategic thinking? More lateral thinking? More twitch reaction?
Find where genre experts congregate, and learn from them. What is the jargon of fighting game experts? of strategy game grongards? What do they praise and criticize in a game? When they deconstruct a game; this attack needs to be 10% faster, this one is over-powered because it's paired with that one; play that game looking for imbalance they noted. Can you see it? Is it real? Are there other strategies to get around it? What ways could the imbalance be resolved, besides the obvious?
Like everything, being a good game designer takes thousands of hours of deliberative practice. Experiment, learn from the greats, learn from the failures, constantly be finding your own shortcomings as a designer and improve on them.
-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
Second, you can create many games easily with paper and pen. You can draw on paper and create a board game; you can cut paper to create a card game; you can write rules and create a RPG, or even a Fighting Game; and so on. Making changes to your game with paper and pen is also super fast. This is the fastest iteration process for game design, having to program etc. will only slow you down. Once you have a playable game made with paper and pen; test, test, test, and test it more—user testing is super important in game development—then make changes as necessary.
Also - you say you've just barely started Tracy Fullerton's book. What's the problem, why haven't you gone farther with it?
Because I just started it (and am still working through it), hence, I haven't gotten very far with it :)
I will watch the video. Thanks.
Well, I already wrote an article describing my standard design process, and there's a link to it in the sidebar of the design forum. In my own education I basically learned how to design a piece of visual art and how to design a story as two separate processes, plus several independent brainstorming techniques. I just used a combination of my art and writing design techniques to design games.
I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.
