Game Design Process part 1: Introduction

Do gigantic successful games just happen, or can their approach be explained? Are the games that make us laugh, feel, and enhance our lives with the results of the developers getting lucky, or careful making a game? Is there a way to describe successful games to understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and then apply them to our own game design process?

I believe that the answer to these questions is yes: a game’s design and development can be taken out, studied, and perfected in a reliable fashion. Successful companies like Nintendo, Valve, Zynga, and Blizzard would agree. Known game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, and Peter Molyneux would likely agree as well. These companies and developers have found ways of looking at games that lets them consistently have hits year after year after year. By the time you get to the fourth and fifth blockbuster, it is no accident.

Through analyzing countless independent and corporate titles for some time now, I’ve come to believe that there is a standard way of designing and studying games. Changes in the industry don’t disrupt it. New companies, new genres, and new controllers don’t change it. Independent or corporate, these rules are the same. These are systemic laws that are unchangeable. Developers ignore them at their own risk.

This approach is called the Game Design Process. In my opinion it is made up of five different components: The Base Experience, Basic Mechanics, Reward and Punishment Structures, Long Term Motivation, and Creative Layout. All games have aspects that can be represented in the Process, and through it, it is possible to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of any game for the purposes of study and improvement on future games.

This article will serve as an introduction to my concept of using the Game Design Process and as an archive for me and not only, to get used to it and master it. From there I’ll focus on the most influential part of the Process, the base experience.


An Overview of the Game Design Process

The Game Design Process is a concept that can be used to analyze and formulate games and their development. By using it to firmly define the component of both successful and unsuccessful game titles; we can gain a great understanding of what makes the game good, or what caused it to fail. Once I put my ideas in a single concept, we will understand that, developers can use the Process to find a design approach for their own games.

The Game Design Process can be used to break down the systems that comprise different games and determine the aspects that make them what they are. As stated, the Process can be made up of five major components:

- Base Experience – What is the player experiencing as they play the game?
- Basic Mechanics – What does the player actually do?
- Punishment and Reward (P&R) – What behavior within the game is encouraged or discouraged?
- Long Term Motivation – What causes the player to continue to play?
- Creative Layout – How is the setting represented through sight and sound?

In my future posts I’ll be applying the process to several game titles as illustrations, as well as delving into the specifics of each of the five components. For now, let’s get started by going into the most important of the five components: the Base Experience.


What is the Base Experience?

“I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” – Confucius
At the center of every game is the Base Experience. This is the feeling that, in my opinion, every game is trying to give, the inner emotion that the player is going through as they play. The Base is important, because conveying an experience is the purpose of every game. Games that have a well defined Base Experience and are able to bring it to full force more often enjoy critical acclaim and financial success.

Examples of solid Base Experiences can be any moment or period of time the developer chooses. It can also be an abstract feeling.

- Fight as a soldier in war (Call of Duty)
- Be a healthy person who is getting in shape (Wii Fit)
- Feel like a clever adventurer (Legend of Zelda)
- Be a sociable farm tender (Farmville)
- Live the life of a different person (The Sims)
- Be a vigilante or a criminal (Grand Theft Auto)

All of life is an experience. Games specialize in taking a slice of life and then allowing the player to feel and exist in that slice for a period of time. Books, film, and other media attempt to do the same thing, of course. They drop the reader into a short lived romance, or allow the viewer to observe a struggle. Games go one step further in demanding that the player take action and be a part of the experience.

A game that succeeds in delivering its core experience will be able to predict how its players will describe it before they open their mouths. The development team will be intimately familiar with their desired Base Experience, and their decisions during production will reflect that familiarity. Games developed with a strong loyalty to their Base Experience are admirable works of art.


Effective Base Experience Example: Modern Warfare 2

I'm successful. Deal with it.

Call of Duty is an astonishingly profitable series. When MW2 released was dubbed the largest and most aggressive game launch in terms of advertising the industry has ever seen, resulting in over 4.7 million units sold in the first day alone. Clearly they have found a Base Experience that is popular and have been able to stick to their guns, making sure that everything in the game was married to that Base.

Modern Warfare 2 has a very firm Base Experience: being a soldier in war in the present day. This is the feeling that all players should have when they play the games. Among other games in this genre, they are the undisputed winner in terms of both sales as well as critical acclaim.

 Everything in the game, the bombers soaring overhead (Visual), the game scoring structures and weapons (P&R), the ranking systems and promotions in multiplayer (Long Term Motivation), all of these aspects serve to boost this Base Experience.
At each moment, we could ask ourselves, “How does this make us feel?” The answer would be the same: they all make us feel like they we are a soldier in war.

Making a player feel as though they’re in combat with terrorist organizations while in actuality they are sitting on their couch in their living room, holding a game controller. This trick of the mind is only possible by a specific and precise Base Experience that is supported by the other four components of the Game Design Process.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 represents the power, grip on players and market share of a game that is completely faithful to its Base. By being able to describe its Experience and then analyze its implementation of that experience against the Game Design Process, its wild success should not be surprising.

Beyond Development: The Base Experience in Marketing and Sales

Source: Kotaku

The Base Experience is at the center of the Game Design Canvass because it influences each and every other aspect of the game. The game’s Base Mechanics, P&R , Long Term Motivation, and Visual Layout all draw their meaning and their compass from the Base Experience. If the Base is flat or unpopular, then so will be the rest of the game. Thus, not only do development teams have an interest in the game’s Base, but the game’s marketing also heavily draws on it.

When a game is completed and ready to be shipped to or downloaded by players around the globe, the first question that needs to be answered for the customer is “How is the Base Experience?” If someone is told that a game is “good”, they aren’t likely to purchase it based on that review alone.

A player needs to know what they’re getting into so they can ask themselves if that’s an experience they’d like to participate in. Is it a ninja adventure? Is it a walking in a valley? Whatever it is, the Base Experience becomes the marketing voice to sell the game. The bullet points on the back of the game’s box or on the top of each online review will be directly related to the game’s Experience.


Define the Base and Move Forward

Ultimately, a game lives or dies by a correctly chosen Base Experience, and the success of failure of its implementation through to the other four aspects of the Game Design Process. The Base Mechanics, P&R, Long Term Motivation, and Visual Layout all take root in and draw their meaning from the Core Experience.

This is why defining the Experience of a game is so vitally important for development teams. It is the task that should be done first. If the first attempt was wrong, then adjustments must be made and the rest of the project must be altered as a result. Letting any of the other four components drive the development of the game is a mistake that can lead to stunning visuals or a gripping story that mean nothing.

If the Base Experience of a game is not one that players will enjoy, then the best implementation in the world will not make it a successful title. The graphics, music, and sound (Visual Layout) could be praised in a review, but the overall enjoyment of the game may and will be low.

However, if a game’s Base is well defined, everything points to creating that Experience for the player, and it is an experience that players desire, then it will be difficult to call the game as anything but a success.