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Game Career Guide Feature: Twenty Essential Design Questions
by Staff [PC, Console/PC]
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April 14, 2009
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Educator and designer Lewis Pulsipher returns to GameCareerGuide with a feature on the questions young designers should be posing to themselves during the creative process, questions which will help shape the direction of the game itself -- checking against established and tested concepts in game design.
Says Pulsipher, "The following are questions, or "decision points", for a designer to consider after he or she has established a framework. It should be most useful to people who are learning to design games. This list has grown as I've tried to come up with a set of questions that can be used to define and refine the nature of a game (whether non-electronic or electronic), once we have settled on the structural choices.
"What's the difference between the structural elements and these questions? A designer must choose something within each of the structural elements, or there is no game yet (not consciously choosing is itself a default choice). On the other hand, he or she can ignore any of the following questions, but other elements in the game will create some answer to each as the game is developed. Yet many of these questions are as important, in the long run, as those fundamental structures. As a designer, I'd prefer to answer the questions initially rather than stumble into an answer, but others may have a different point of view."
The questions range broadly, but offer jumping off points for discussion -- from fundamental concepts such as "What is the genre of the game?" to the more nuanced "Is the game 'ruthless' or 'nice' (a competition or an entertainment)?"
To read the full feature, published today on Gamasutra sister site GameCareerGuide, click here.
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