Hello everyone! I'm a college student taking classes on game development. I've learned quite a few languages (C++, C#, Python, and Java are the main ones) and I have some decent experience in Unreal Engine. I'm really hoping to get into the field of game design, my favorite thing to design being boss fights (although I love class design too!).

My question to any professional game designers out there is: How do teams decide what will make the cut? I know everyone has a whole lot of ideas on what should and should not go into a game, and game design is an extremely collaborative job, but when there are conflicting ideas, or if there are too many ideas to be able to fit in a game, how is it decided which of these ideas to go with and which to scrap?

Thanks for any responses, I look forward to seeing the perspective of someone with experience in the field!

You've got a budget, you need to decide where to allocate the resources. That's it, really.

Much of it comes with experience, learning what is essential versus what is optional. Good designers know both. Certain elements are key to the gameplay, certain other elements are key to the feel. Often the key emotional components are not key mechanical components, so the designer needs to recognize both. Then the designer needs to recognize what are nice, things that contribute but aren't essential.

Start with a big list, sort it. Keep it updated and sorted as time goes on.

One effective approach is to start with that list, get estimates for what they all cost, and go through it until you run out of budget. Anything below that mark gets cut. It's often good to do that in a range, these top x things are green and low risk, this range is yellow and might get worked on, the rest is red, wish list that won't be accomplished. It works well for everything from bi-weekly sprints to overall feature wish-lists.

While working on the Sims Store, with each person creating hundreds of items we got pretty accurate at estimating the amount of work as time went on. Designers could come up with their wish lists and each item would get an effort score from each groups, Effects, Animation, Modeling, Engineering, Sound, (so FAMES) score. Designers knew how much of each resource they had to spend, so could allocate them accordingly. For example, the designer could put together a set of features that were animation heavy for one game object, but would need to compensate with another object that is light on animation. Similarly one object could be engineering heavy with a lot of code complexity, but the next would need to be engineering light. Plenty of good ideas were cut because there wasn't time in the budget from a given discipline. There were also lots of little suggestions of easy or nearly-free features that could be thrown in when someone knew there was an easy gain in the system that could be leveraged.

Algorju said:
I'm really hoping to get into the field of game design, my favorite thing to design being boss fights (although I love class design too!). My question to any professional game designers out there is: How do teams decide what will make the cut? I know everyone has a whole lot of ideas on what should and should not go into a game

This isn't a Writing question, so this is moved to a more appropriate forum.

frob said:
You've got a budget, you need to decide where to allocate the resources. That's it, really. Much of it comes with experience, learning what is essential versus what is optional.

Some teams have what's called a “change control board” - team leads work to discuss change requests and feature additions and their impact on the schedule and budget. Sometimes it's a game's producer or director who decides what change requests to permit or deny.

Oh, that's one of my least favorite methods.

Regardless of the method, somebody has to look at the features, the budget, and ultimately decide yes or no. It can be designers, producers, team leads, directors, or a committee, but in the end, it either fits in the budget of time and money or it does not.

Another alternative is that they don't decide to cut the features. Instead of deciding to cut, they instead push for crunch. Basically, “please work for free because we went over budget on time / money”.

Regarding prioritizing:

Sit down, and look at the player experience from first “new game” to final “success!” What are the minimum features absolutely necessary to get from A through Z? Those don't get cut. For example, in a 3D action adventure, “walking around” doesn't get cut. But do you have to support shooting? What if you turned the game into stealth-only, and only enemies could shoot? That would save on asset production and shooting UI production. Weigh the fun of shooting, against he cost. How about climbing? Can you instead build ladders, ropes, and vines that the player walks up to, and “press triangle to climb,” and play a canned animation, or just jump-cut to the top? That crafting-upgrades system – is it really necessary, or can you get an upgrade handed to you at the end of each level / sequence / checkpoint, and get most of the “aw yeah, upgrade!” feeling anyway?

Also, features that “are there” but actually need a lot of support to make them really work, might be cut, because of the cost of the support. Maybe you have a jetpack, but it requires lots of scavenging and constant finding fuel for it to avoid making it unbalanced, and perhaps you don't have any of those systems in place yet? This puts the already-developed jetpack higher on the cutting list. It might feel “done” because it works with cheat codes, but it's not “done” when looking at it from “first frame to final credits.”

Regarding crunch:

Crunch made sense in environments where people had ownership stake in the studio, and/or got royalties out from the game. If you make the game more successful, you make more money, so it's not “work for free” as much as it is “work for the possibility of profits for yourself.”

Studios that don't offer royalties, don't offer ownership, but still demand crunch, have a much tougher sell to make IMO. Skilled developers are in high demand.

So I did this interview with Lou Castle once and he said

“Decide what your game is NOT. ”

Doing that effectively can guide all development.

Really honing down what your core experience is and sticking to it.

Stick to your design docs even though it may be hard and frustrating at times.

Try to keep a manageable scope and never cross past it too much.

If anyone is curious, here it is:

Thank you all for your experienced viewpoints! The big theme I can see is keeping track of what to develop from the start, staying focused on the important things and then adding extra features when there's that extra time, and also knowing that some features may be scrapped because of their interaction with everything else (or lack of interaction, depending on the context!). This was all extremely informative!

Don't forget budget.

Scope to your budget and schedule

If you don't really have a budget or schedule,, create one for yourself.

That was the #1 mistake I made, I just said, I'll put in “whatever it takes” but I didn't really look at my limits and abilities. And jump forward 10 years, I don't have the full capitol I need to support what I've built. yet, meaning I need to be very careful where I spend my money, and on whom I spend my money. and TIME!

Game dev cost me so much, and I almost lost everything several times. Living on that edge is not healthy or sustainable.

If you find yourself sacrificing more and more in the pursuit of your dreams, you need to sometimes stop, and prioritize and balance yourself out accordingly.

If you don't. pray you have good insurance and social services to catch you. I did Thank God.

Algorju said:

How do teams decide what will make the cut?

With an agreed upon ranked list of what is most important.

1. Time to market
2. Extensibility/mod support
3. Robustness/bug prevention
4. Consumer demand
5. etc