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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Learn what it takes to design a video game, as a hobby or as a career!
Video Game Design For Dummies teaches you what it takes to design games from concept to completion. You'll learn the theory behind great gaming experiences, and you'll discover tools you can use to bring your game ideas to life. An experienced video game developer teaches you the basics of game design and how to motivate and engage players. Choose the right game engines and design tools for any project and get step-by-step advice on testing and debugging the games you've made.
Thinking of pursuing game design as a career path and want to know where to start? This Dummies guide has your back. With this easy-to-understand book, you can dip your toes into the world of video game design and see where it takes you. And if you end up wanting to release your game to the masses, you'll find everything you need to know, right here.
- Learn the step-by-step process video game designers use to create great games
- Design characters, worlds, and storylines that will keep players engaged
- Pick a game engine that's right for you and plan out your game development process
- Playtest your video game, then publish it and market it on social media
This book is a practical guide for beginners who want to start designing games and want to know exactly where to begin. Design a game from concept to completion, with Video Game Design for Dummies.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Video Game Design For Dummies®
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Part 1: Getting Started with Game Design
Chapter 1: Introducing the Art of Game Design
Discovering What Game Design Is
Looking at a Brief History of Game Design
Leaning Into the Fun
Preparing to Think Systematically
Diving Into the Game Designer's Mind
Constructing Your First Game
Chapter 2: Knowing Why Game Design Matters
Game Design Is the Glue of Games
Looking at Examples of Game Design
Understanding Player Motivations
Creating Meaningful Experiences
Designing Around Constraints
Navigating Legal and Ethical Considerations
Chapter 3: Overviewing the Game Design Process
Exploring the Phases of a Game's Design
Setting Design Intentions
Managing Scope
Chapter 4: Becoming a Game Designer
Learning What It Takes to Be a Game Designer
Putting Your Ideas on Paper
Moving from Hobbyist to Industry
Part 2: Exploring Game Design Elements
Chapter 5: Game Design Tools and Software
Gathering Design Tools
Learning Project Management
Chapter 6: Getting Into Game Mechanics
Understanding Game Mechanics
Digging Into How Mechanics Impact Gameplay and Fun
Exploring Examples of Game Mechanics
Chapter 7: Understanding Game Systems
Core Elements of Game Systems
Progression Systems
Social Systems
Economy Systems
Balancing and Iteration of Game Systems
Chapter 8: Incorporating Story in Games
Telling a Story
Designing Worlds
Chapter 9: Developing an Art Style in Games
Defining Art Style
Choosing Tools and Software for Art Style Development
Exploring Elements of Art Style
Considering Scope When Choosing an Art Style
Ethical and Cultural Considerations
Chapter 10: Creating an Engaging User Experience
Defining User Experience in Games
Finding Out Who Will Play Your Game
Designing for Your Players
Designing Interfaces
Looking at Examples of User Experience in Games
Part 3: Balancing Your Game
Chapter 11: What Game Balance Is
Defining Game Balance
Learning Design Guidelines for Game Balance
Digging into the Data in Games
Chapter 12: Analyzing Feedback and Making Adjustments
Knowing When to Start Playtesting
Exploring Types of Playtesting
Finding People to Playtest
Questioning Playtesters
Observing Playtesters
Sorting through the Feedback
Iterating on Your Game
Part 4: Designing Your Own Game
Chapter 13: Building Your Game Concept
Refining the Concept
Setting the Scope
Determining the Goals
Documenting Your Game
Finding the Audience
Chapter 14: Following a Step-by-Step Game Design Process
Designing from Concept to Launch
Acquiring the Skills Needed to Launch
Accepting the Final Release (Versus What You Envisioned)
Iterating on Your Designs
Improving through Player Feedback
Chapter 15: Finishing Your Game
Avoiding the Top Reasons Games Don't Finish
Making Decisions for Your Game
Estimating for Learning Curves
Keeping Your Game in Budget
Designing a Routine: A Survival Guide
Managing Your Time
Staying Consistent
Improving Your Productivity
Part 5: Publishing and Marketing Your Game
Chapter 16: Getting Your Game Noticed
Marketing Games in This Market Is Hard
Understanding Marketing and Its Importance
Building a Marketing Plan
Optimizing for Discoverability
Preparing to Launch a Game
Giving Your Game Life after Launch
Chapter 17: Publishing Your Game
Deciding How to Publish a Game
Publishing on Different Platforms
Part 6: The Part of Tens
Chapter 18: Ten Game Designers You Should Know
Ah Young Joo
Ian MacLarty
Grace Bruxner
Tim FitzRandolph
Timothy Staton-Davis
Anton Hand
Austin Grossman
V Buckenham
Elaine Gómez
John Bernhelm
Chapter 19: Ten Free Resources for Game Designers
GameDeveloper.com
How to Market a Game Blog
SteamDB
Assets by Kenney
Mixamo
Game Accessibility Guidelines
Global Game Jam (GGJ)
Ludum Dare
Game Maker’s Toolkit
Game Developers Conference (GDC)
Glossary
Index
About the Author
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 11
TABLE 11-1 Weighing Resources and Their Values
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
FIGURE 1-1: A screenshot of
Chief Emoji Officer
(the desktop version on Steam).
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4-1: Use a spreadsheet to keep track of game details.
FIGURE 4-2: Keeping a vision board to collect inspirations can help you develop...
FIGURE 4-3: Twine is a great tool to help you start planning your game.
FIGURE 4-4: Printing game pieces in progress can help you refine the game.
FIGURE 4-5: Spreadsheets can be an unlikely tool to understand what’s working (...
FIGURE 4-6: Yes, you can create a map of your game in PowerPoint.
FIGURE 4-7: Spreadsheets are actually quite versatile when it comes to game des...
FIGURE 4-8: Use prototypes to explore and test your ideas.
FIGURE 4-9: A fully interactive digital prototype can help you validate your co...
FIGURE 4-10: Testing player input for
Chief Emoji Officer
.
FIGURE 4-11: Include visuals you’re proud of to show off your skills in your po...
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5-1: Unity allows me to prototype fast and try out new ideas.
FIGURE 5-2: Unity offers a variety of different templates when creating a new p...
FIGURE 5-3: Organizing my icons in Figma.
FIGURE 5-4: Using a project management tool is essential to keeping your game o...
Chapter 6
FIGURE 6-1: An illustration of how the trust system works in Grift: Scam Tycoon...
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7-1: A spreadsheet showing the progression from level to level and some ...
FIGURE 7-2: A simple spreadsheet showing progression from level to level.
FIGURE 7-3: A logarithmic curve for leveling made in Google Sheets.
FIGURE 7-4: An example from Machinations, a simulation software for balancing g...
Chapter 8
FIGURE 8-1: You can use simple tools to create user flows for your games.
FIGURE 8-2: A top-down level layout, made with simple shapes in Google Slides.
FIGURE 8-3: The player notices a hungry alien locked in a cage.
FIGURE 8-4: The player grabs the alien and takes it back to the rocket to finis...
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9-1: Use rules for visuals to define attributes of characters in your ga...
FIGURE 9-2: Putting all your assets side by side can help you understand what d...
FIGURE 9-3: Color combination schemes can help you find a harmonious color pale...
Chapter 10
FIGURE 10-1: A user journey for a golden path, which is the intended path for a...
FIGURE 10-2: A persona can help you align with your team on who will play your ...
FIGURE 10-3: Use a storyboard to iterate on a visual user flow without having t...
FIGURE 10-4: Examples of interface types.
FIGURE 10-5: We included our puzzle in diegetic UI so that the main character w...
FIGURE 10-6: Use a simple style guide to keep colors, elements, and icons consi...
FIGURE 10-7: The device simulator is a useful tool for testing across mobile de...
FIGURE 10-8: A hierarchy of needs to help prioritize features and issues in you...
Chapter 11
FIGURE 11-1: The data storage we used in Unity for
Grift.
FIGURE 11-2: The associated spreadsheet we used to import values into the data ...
Chapter 13
FIGURE 13-1: Use a storyboard to help you visualize a player’s journey.
FIGURE 13-2: A simple core game loop.
Chapter 14
FIGURE 14-1: The various stages of game development.
FIGURE 14-2: An entire playthrough of a game we made in Google Sheets.
FIGURE 14-3: Just a few of the assets we had to create for the Steam storefront...
FIGURE 14-4: An illustrative example of each design process, the additive metho...
FIGURE 14-5: Character iteration, from the initial quick draft to the final ver...
Chapter 15
FIGURE 15-1: The visuals nodes of a short branching story written in Twine.
FIGURE 15-2: A sample from my developer log for
Watchmakers
.
FIGURE 15-3: Seeing progress you’ve made can be a great motivator to keep going...
Chapter 16
FIGURE 16-1: A social media post from when we launched our game,
Grift,
in New ...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Begin Reading
Glossary
Index
About the Author
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Video Game Design For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
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Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Introduction
Making a video game may seem like magic, but it’s just a series of practical processes, resourcefulness, and tech skills that lead to an end result: a published game.
This book is meant to reduce any confusion or ambiguity you may have around game design and provide the practical steps to making a game.
About This Book
If you’re curious about how games are made, this book will help demystify the role of a game designer. Drawing from my experience on both large and small teams, I focus on examples from my smaller projects, which are especially relevant for hobbyists and indie developers creating their own games, rather than those working within massive 100-person teams.
This book is packed with tips, real-world examples, and practical advice, making it perfect for beginners, indie creators, or anyone who’s ever wondered how to make a game and about the work that goes into it.
I organize the content into seven parts:
Part 1: Getting Started with Game Design. I cover what game design is, why it matters, and how to structure your design workflow. Then I explore some paths to becoming a game designer, what skills you’ll need for game design, and how to get there.
Part 2: Exploring Game Design Elements. Here I cover some of the most widely used tools for making games (including many free or low-cost ones) and some tips for managing your project. Then I get into the meat of it, including game mechanics, game systems, story, art, and user experience.
Part 3: Balancing Your Game. I cover what balancing a game means, as well as how to do so, including some processes for playtesting and collecting feedback.
Part 4: Designing Your Own Game. Here’s the fun part! All the steps you need to bring your own game to life starting from a concept. This book wouldn’t be complete without covering how to finish your game as well, one of the notoriously hard parts of the project.
Part 5: Publishing and Marketing Your Game. After you’ve made a game, it’s important to know how to find people to play your game. This part covers the top places where you can distribute your game and provides some tips and tricks I’ve learned from distributing my own games and games I’ve worked on.
Part 6: The Part of Tens. You can get into game design in many ways. This part includes ten game designers and their own paths to working on games, to provide examples of different routes you can take in the industry. I also provide a list of resources, including community websites, tools, videos, and more.
Glossary. I cover some of the terms I use in this book and common terms you may find in the business of making games.
I’m excited to provide you with this info in the For Dummies series because making a game has quite a few parts, and it can be pretty technically complex. As a game designer you may need a wide variety of skills. This For Dummies book provides a modular, easy-to-reference guide for making games, with many examples of my processes with the thought process behind them. The idea of making a game can be daunting, but learning about it shouldn’t be!
Foolish Assumptions
If you’re reading this book, I assume that you’re a hobbyist, student, beginner, or maybe even an indie looking to find more information on how other games came to be from another indie developer. I expect readers to be interested in the technical knowledge of making games, but maybe not technically proficient just yet. You may be dabbling in a side project and need some more support. A lot of this book is about the systems engineering that goes into design, but not actual programming engineering or coding.
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, icons in the margins highlight certain types of valuable information that call out for your attention. Here are the icons you’ll encounter and a brief description of each.
Marks tips and shortcuts that you can use to make your design process easier.
Highlights information that’s especially important for you to know.
Denotes bits of information that are more technical in nature but which can generally help deepen your understanding of a topic.
Tells you to watch out! It marks important information that may save you headaches and heartache down the line.
Beyond the Book
In addition to the abundance of information and guidance related to video game design that I provide in this book, you can find even more help and information online. Check out this book’s online Cheat Sheet: Just go to www.dummies.com and search for “Video Game Design For Dummies Cheat Sheet.”
Part 1
Getting Started with Game Design
IN THIS PART …
Dig into (just a little) history behind game development and how it became more and more accessible to many different people throughout the years.
Learn what game design is and what it looks like. Understand the importance of game design in creating games that players love to play.
Explore the phases of the game design process, what it means to be a game designer, and how to be intentional in your designs.
Discover how to become a game designer and develop a designer’s mind and the tools and skills you’ll need to do so.
Chapter 1
Introducing the Art of Game Design
IN THIS CHAPTER
Learning what game design is
Thinking like a game designer
Overviewing how game design became more accessible
Leaning into the fun
Making your first game
I’m so excited for you to dive into this book, break down the mysteries of game design, and maybe even start working on your own game. Maybe you’re just getting started or maybe you’re already deep into a project. Either way, this chapter can help you understand what game design really is, how it’s evolved, and how you can use it to design your games.
Discovering What Game Design Is
When I think back to all the work I’ve done on games and the work I see my colleagues doing, it’s clear that being a game designer means wearing a lot of hats. Sure, most jobs require a mix of skills, but a game designer is kind of like the general manager in construction. You need to know a little bit about a lot of different things. And the things you need to know differ from genre to genre. Because every genre has its unique elements, many game designers specialize in one area, like level design or progression, and build their expertise from there.
Game design is making a thousand little decisions that add up to one amazing experience, like the following:
Tweaking how many items drop from a chest
Deciding why some items are rare and making them feel special and hard to get
Designing levels that guide players without them realizing they’re being guided
Balancing abilities so that no one character or strategy dominates the game
Writing lore that makes players care about the world and its characters
Mapping out progression systems that keep players coming back for “just one more level”
Deciding how fast a character runs and how high they jump
Choosing the perfect sound effect for picking up a coin
Testing and re-testing mechanics until they feel “just right”
Creating tutorials that teach without boring or frustrating players
Ensuring that the game is accessible so everyone can play and enjoy it
Crafting choices that make players stop and think about the consequences
When someone takes on the role of a game designer, they are responsible for orchestrating all these decisions, building frameworks to guide them, and crafting systems that streamline the decision-making process. See Chapter 4 for more about what it takes to become a game designer.
Looking at a Brief History of Game Design
I frame this section around notable moments in history when game design and development became more accessible and how these changes shaped the way we make and play games, working back from today. I stick to the last 30ish years or so, just because the internet became mainstream and available in many U.S. households in that time frame. Ever since then, games have been growing at an exponential rate.
As of 2025, it’s incredibly simple to get started in game design. You can download game engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, or Godot for free access resources like free asset libraries, and learn new skills through platforms like YouTube.
Software like Blender (a free tool for 3-D modeling) or Procreate (for digital art) allows creators to produce their own assets, and platforms like Itch.io let anyone publish games for free, often within minutes. And once you publish a game, social media lets you promote it to people who may want to play it. The barriers to entry for game design today are time, practice, and dedication rather than expensive tools or access to industry secrets and publishers.
The result is an explosion of creativity and people who publish games:
More than 89,000 games were published on Steam as of January 2025.
Thousands of genres and user-generated tags describe a diverse array of experiences, from “frog detective mysteries” to “farming horror simulators.”
The democratization of tools and knowledge enables everyone to shape the industry, instead of a select few dictating what games are. Just like you can take many different paths to make a game, you also can define what a game is in many different ways. At the time that I’m writing this, the industry is having a difficult time. Many companies are doing layoffs, and larger projects are having trouble getting funded. But making games on your own and sending them off into the world has never been more accessible.
Time to go back in time, starting with 2016:
2016:
Pokémon GO
was released, which was a global hit. This game took advantage of what mobile phones have to offer like most other games hadn’t: portability to explore the world and their camera. Ingress, the game made by Niantic prior to
Pokémon GO,
has done this as well, but adding in Pokémon was lightning in a bottle for Niantic. For me,
Pokémon GO
inspired me to focus my graduate work on augmented reality (AR) and map-based mobile gaming. I eventually got to work with some of the people who made the first version of
Pokémon GO
when I designed
Peridot
at Niantic, a fortunate time in my career.
2014:
Facebook (now Meta) acquired Oculus, making VR a mainstream focus for tech and gaming. This acquisition has since really changed the VR landscape! For example, I was in a Target the other day and walked past an aisle end cap holding new Quests for sale. You never would have seen that in 2014. Alongside their hardware efforts, tools like Horizon Worlds and other accessible VR platforms are making it easier for smaller teams to experiment with VR and AR game design with a built-in audience.
2013:
The launch of the PS4 and Xbox One gave indie developers easier access to console publishing thanks to digital storefronts like the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Arcade. However, to this day, some friction exists in publishing on consoles due to factors such as platform-specific certification processes, higher development costs for console-ready builds, and strict licensing agreements. Additionally, console publishers often require developers to secure development kits, which can be expensive or difficult for people to access.
2010s:
Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing platform for new products, took off. This enabled board game designers and video game designers to post their game online and get some funding to work on their game. Big games like
Cards Against Humanity
came from Kickstarter. And it wasn’t until 2012 that Oculus launched its first Kickstarter for the Oculus Rift, sparking widespread interest in virtual reality (VR) gaming.
2009:
People became more aware that a small team or even a solo developer could release something that could become huge when they saw
Minecraft
. The developer, Notch, became a great example of a solo developer who achieved global success with a release on the internet.
2007: The launch of the iPhone and the App Store introduced a new era of mobile gaming. It wasn’t until 2009 that some mobile games become phenomena like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Mobile phones also introduced the free-to-play (F2P) model, allowing developers to monetize games through in-app purchases and ads, which is now big business.
Also in 2007, Facebook opened its platform to developers, leading to the rise of social games like FarmVille (2009) and Mafia Wars by Zynga. These games pioneered new ways of engaging players through social mechanics and microtransactions.
2003:
Valve did something really big and launched Steam. This made it easier for indies to release their games alongside all the larger studios out there. Back in those days, there were way fewer games being published on Steam. A year after release in 2004, only 65 games were published. But, obviously, that took off between then and now!
1990s:
Last, but certainly not least, the internet became accessible to lots of households in the United States. Dial-up became the standard for home internet connections, using telephone lines to connect to the internet. This enabled games to be created and shared with people outside of your household without a publisher. Dial-up began to decline in the 2000s with broadband internet, but I’ll never forget all the times my friends were over at my house playing some game we found on the internet, hogging the phone line from my parents.
Trekking back to today, top genres of games include open-world role playing games like The Witcher and cozy games like Stardew Valley. There’s been a rise in more niche genres in the last few years such as narrative-driven indie games like Disco Elysium, and experimental puzzle games like Gorogoa.
In the future, and with technology like AI and social platforms progressing, we can look forward to more dynamic gameplay, more cross-platform experiences, and better tools to empower both game creators and players/streamers.
You can learn a lot from the history of games and game development. I like to work on the beginning bits of a game and get it off the ground, so understanding how other teams started and what games looked like in the early part of their life has helped me set expectations for development and scope. Games like World of Warcraft (WoW) may be huge now, but when they first launched, they all had design problems (like loot that spawns on a world basis instead of on a player-to-player basis). The trick is that these problems aren’t game blocking enough to keep players from progressing and enjoying the core of the gameplay.
Leaning Into the Fun
Plenty of frameworks are available for deciding what goes into a piece of software or a game, but I’m about to say the quiet part out loud: Frameworks aren’t always the best way to create a truly fun game. I think the reason that many hit indie games these days were made by smaller or solo teams is that smaller teams have less red tape, which fosters creativity. A lot of the biggest hits were initially made by small teams. Take Grand Theft Auto for example; the initial team that worked on the first playable version was made up of 11ish people.
Instead of designing with strict rules or setting up red tape for yourself, making fun the priority should be your guiding principle when deciding which features to include. For every feature or concept you’re considering, ask yourself:
Does it fit the game?
Does it align with the theme or the core principles you’ve established? If not, shelve that feature or concept for later use (we call that “throwing it in the backlog” in the industry).
Is the team (or are you) excited about it?
If the energy and excitement are there, it’s likely worth exploring. Developers who are excited about something will put their heart into the design and implementation.
I almost added, “Do we have the skills to make it?” But here’s the thing — many great games were made by people who didn’t have the skills when they started. They learned as they went, driven by their excitement. Sometimes, the best features come from diving into the unknown because you’re genuinely thrilled about making them happen.
For every milestone I hit in my designs, I like to take a step back and assess where I can trim extra features to focus the game’s design and what the most fun part of the game is and why.
Preparing to Think Systematically
A game designer is holding a lot of interconnected information in their mind. They need an understanding of how the game’s systems (the rules, data, and calculations that make the game tick) work on their own and how they interact with each other. If you want to know more about game systems, check out Chapter 7. Every mechanic, feature, and interaction is part of a web of cause and effect, connected by feedback loops that shape the player’s experience.
Here’s what a game designer should think about when making a game (learn more about what a game designer does in Chapter 4):
The core loop and how all the other systems on top of it feed into it to make it rewarding to repeat over and over again
How systems can be broken down into smaller, more manageable systems
How variables impact the systems so that the systems are fair, challenging, and enjoyable
Designing systems for emergent gameplay and unexpected behaviors
Creating feedback for player’s actions using visual, auditory, or gameplay cues to let players know how their actions impact the gameplay
Systems that you may end up having to design may include
Balancing resources so that players don’t have a million old boots and not enough wood for what they want to build
A procedural system to spawn a new creature with a unique body, tail, and color every time
A progression system to level up a character as they complete quests
Diving Into the Game Designer's Mind
As a game designer, I’m often thinking about how to make patterns apparent in gameplay to teach players what to look out for in my games. I’m also thinking about how to lean into the theme and feeling of the game and how to make sure I think of features I have the skills to create. These are the top things that shape the way I design.
To get a sense of this in a practical way, in a branching narrative I published called Chief Emoji Officer (see Figure 1-1), my team and I wrote a big story in which players can make choices and explore the outcomes. In the game, players communicate using only emojis to navigate office politics, climb the corporate ladder, and make decisions that shape their career. But this wasn’t enough for us and this game, and we needed to think about how to create a core loop and really drive home the satirical mood of the experience.
FIGURE 1-1: A screenshot of Chief Emoji Officer (the desktop version on Steam).
So, we broke up this story into chapters, which helped us do the following:
Create a pattern for players.
There was a summary and evaluation at the end of every chapter of the choices, kind of like a score.
Increase the parody.
We used a system that was like an employee evaluation, aligning with our corporate satire theme.
Create a sense of progression.
As players moved from chapter to chapter, they discovered more unlockable content.
Write the story more quickly.
We didn’t risk an overwrite of each other’s work (we worked on separate chapters), resulting in less time to finish a chapter.
Game designers are thinking about everything from the feel of the tap of a button to how a story unfolds to reveal a big twist. My favorite game designers have been analytical, scrappy, and ready to build something to test their ideas.
They’re often thinking about
How to prototype an idea to experiment and try it out it quickly.
This may mean that you sketch something on paper, make a spreadsheet to test some game data, or even build something in a game engine. Learn more about prototyping in
Chapter 4
.
How players will perceive something and how it’ll make them feel.
For example, will a bright red button make players feel urgency? Does the sound effect for collecting an item feel satisfying?
Chapter 10
covers creating an engaging user experience.
How to improve features and systems based on feedback from playtesting.
If players consistently get lost in a level, designers may tweak the environment to add better directions. Learn more about collecting and reviewing feedback in
Chapter 12
.
How to use data to inform decision making.
If analytics show that most players quit at Level 5, for example, designers may analyze the difficulty curve and adjust enemy strength, add a checkpoint, or improve tutorial clarity.
Chapter 12
further discusses analyzing data and why it’s important to decision making.
It’s important as a game designer to be creative while also being practical. Have big ideas but be ready to trim them down to something more realistic and feasible. There may possibly be a compromise to that online-multiplayer game you want to make as your first game and something that you’ll be able to complete in a few months.
Constructing Your First Game
I’m excited for you to paw through this book and learn some theory and lots of practical knowledge on how to make games. This book may expose you to some resources you didn’t know about before and start you in a direction toward whatever specific niche of game you’re interested in making.
This book focuses on smaller teams and solo developers who want to make their first game. I include information from larger teams that I’ve been on, but I had the most fun and got to experiment the most on a team of two, Bodeville, an independent game studio I cofounded with a friend.
Chapter 3 provides an overview of the game design process, and Chapter 14 takes a deeper dive into that process. If you’re at the very beginning of your game-making journey, however, you can take these steps to get started:
Do your research.
Check out similar games in the genre you’re looking to make. Throughout the book, I often recommend that you research other games, but I dive into it in some detail in Chapter 4, which covers what you need to know to become a game designer.
Make a prototype.
This can be in a game engine like Unity, in a spreadsheet, or maybe even using paper on a table. Having a prototype allows you to fully explore the viability of your concepts. Chapter 5 covers tools and software; Chapter 13 covers creating and refining your concept.
Playtest it with your friends or peers.
Testing it early will get you quick feedback to let you know what’s working and what can be improved. Chapter 12 has details about this very important part of the process.
Maybe you have already started your game design journey and are looking for insight for whatever point you’re at. If one of the following points describes you, then check out the corresponding chapter to help you with that phase:
You have an idea for a game that you’re really excited about and want to flesh out the story:
Story and characters are important! Players will make an emotional connection to your game if you have a great story; check out
Chapter 8
for details about developing a story for your game that delivers a unique experience for players.
You’ve already started developing your concept in a game engine and you’re almost finished but hitting some roadblocks.
Maybe you're struggling with scope, polish, or final tweaks.
Chapter 15
covers strategies for getting to the finish line, prioritizing features, and managing your development process efficiently.
You have a game almost finished but need tips on publishing and marketing.
Once the game is built, you need people to play it!
Chapter 16
dives into marketing strategies, including how to promote your game and build an audience. For details on publishing options, like self-publishing or working with a publisher, check out
Chapter 17
.
You have a game concept but don’t know what tools to use to get started.
Choosing the right tools can be overwhelming, but
Chapter 5
breaks down different game engines, design tools, and software options to help you get started. The most important thing is just to get started!
Have an open mind! Some things may not turn out like you expected them to, and they may turn out even better if you have an open mind to feedback and iteration.
When in doubt, make a prototype!
Chapter 2
Knowing Why Game Design Matters
IN THIS CHAPTER
Exploring why game design matters
Digging into what keeps players motivated and why
Learning what a meaningful experience is
Considering the legal and ethical parts of game design
Game design is the art of taking a bunch of random features and making them actually work together. Without it, you just have a mess of different features with no real connection. A leaderboard here, some achievements there, maybe a points system thrown in for good measure.
This chapter shows how game design holds everything together. I cover why features need to work with each other (not just exist in the same game), how to make systems feel meaningful, and why understanding what motivates players makes all the difference.
Game Design Is the Glue of Games
Game design as a practice is the art of gluing a bunch of features together to make something cohesive that has meaning. To do this, you’ll want to define the rules, mechanics, objectives, and generally why a feature or thing in the game exists.
When a designer (or just anyone dedicated to focusing on design) isn’t present in a project, I’ve seen it turn out the same way every time: A bunch of different features are thrown together that don’t work well together. Having been hired as an early/founding designer quite a few times, I’ve seen it often. But the point of hiring a designer is to have someone to focus on making the mess of features have meaning and exist cohesively and deliver a fantasy to the player. Anyone can do it; it’s just about having the dedication to focus on it and the willpower to make hard decisions and cut anything meaningless from the experience.
Game design isn’t about how well you can talk about how these things are glued together. Game design is the act of designing systems that work together by creating patterns, defining how interactions work, creating charts, and writing out content in spreadsheets, among many other design tasks. The act of designing also means finding the right conceit or fantasy and making sure all the features work within this conceit for the user. The designer’s job is to add meaning to all these features so that the user is never taken out of the fantasy or the world you’re creating.
Imagine a piece of software that has the following features:
A leaderboard to show players who did well
Achievements to reward certain actions
A points system to measure success
Individually, these may seem like great features, but without a connection between them, they don’t add up to much. It’s the way these features are connected that makes the software meaningful, useful, and cohesive. Instead of just thinking about each feature in isolation, consider how they work together to create a better experience:
Why the leaderboard motivates players to continue playing
Why certain actions grant achievements
Why players want to score points
Next to consider is what falls within a feature to make it work:
Does the leaderboard refresh weekly to give everyone a fair shot, or does it track lifetime scores?
Do achievements reward discovery or encourage perfecting a skill?
Can players track their points, and how do they understand how they contribute to their position on the leaderboard?
To design how these things work together, you’ll need to map out how they work by creating the following:
A diagram or chart to define how the leaderboard should behave, like what causes it to refresh
A list and categorization of achievements and their content
A spreadsheet of how many points players can collect over time and from which actions
There’s no one perfect way to glue all the elements of your experience together, and no one will be able to tell you the perfect solution to whatever problem you’re facing when you’re designing something. It all depends! It depends on the choices you’ve made as a developer up until whatever problem you’re trying to solve. It depends on the elements and constraints that exist within your game and the technology you’re using to make it.
Many people have given me feedback on my games over the years, pointed out potential solutions, or said “it would have been great if you added x.” But they weren’t there when it was made, and they don’t know the trade-offs or constraints that were present while it was being designed. Your special concoction of glue is unique to your creation. That’s what game design is.
I say the word meaningful often in this book. When I say meaningful, I mean that a thing like a player’s choice or a developer’s choice can be interpreted, potentially has a pattern, and has an obvious reason for existing. So, for example, imagine you’re a developer and you added flying to your game. To make flying meaningful, you’d need to use flying for something in that experience. Maybe to reach a high-up place, skip traffic, or to combat an enemy. Without a reason to fly, you don’t need the feature.
Looking at Examples of Game Design
To see how game design acts as the glue that holds games together, I’m highlighting the following games that have features coming together to create a cohesive experience:
Tetris:
The “glue” in
Tetris
is the way speed, spatial reasoning, and scoring interlock to create a satisfying, challenging experience. At first glance,
Tetris
is a straightforward game. The blocks fall, and then you fit them together to clear lines. Blocks fall at an increasing speed, creating pressure. Simple controls allow for focus on strategy rather than execution. Clearing lines and scoring points are the primary goals, but the real hook is the increasing challenge as the pace picks up.
Dark Souls:
A game known for being difficult, but the challenge is meaningful. The difficulty feels fair because every death teaches players something, making each victory hard-earned and satisfying.
Portal:
Portal’s
glue is between the storytelling and gameplay, where every element serves player’s progress and deepens the game world. The portal gun allows players to be creative and “think with portals.”
When I’m stuck trying to make a feature or system work with other systems and have meaning, I typically look at what other games in the genre are doing and “cut the fat.” If you’ve got a bunch of features, try to focus on just one, make it work really well, and remove some of the extra stuff.
Understanding Player Motivations
People play games because they’re motivated by the systems and goals they interact with. Maybe it’s the thrill of exploration, the satisfaction of achievement, or the joy of mastery. As a designer, part of your role is training players to understand how the game rewards them and when they’ll encounter punishment or friction in the gameplay.
When you’re solving problems in game development, it can be easy to lose sight of putting player motivations at the forefront of the design. To keep the proper perspective, step back every now and then and look at how your systems work together to integrate levers used to keep players motivated.
To create a motivating experience, you’ll want to include the following:
A long-term goal:
This enables players to know where they’re going and have something to look forward to. For example, completing the main storyline in a role-playing game or unlocking a cool item after hours of gameplay.
A short-term goal:
This helps players feel accomplished while progressing toward the bigger picture. For example, finishing a quest, collecting resources, or leveling up a character.
Rewards!
Nothing like a nice treat or a carrot dangle to get you to do something. For example, completing a difficult puzzle may unlock a hidden area or rare item, making the effort feel worthwhile.
Punishment or friction:
A little challenge makes the rewards even sweeter. For example, dying when falling off a platform forces players to think more about what jumps they’ll take.
And these concepts aren’t just for games! You may notice that your company’s career ladder has levels (the paycheck is the short-term goal), and your next promotion is being dangled right in front of you. Friction? Oh, that’s just your manager telling you that you’re not promoted this half, but you’ll get it next time!
Psychological aspects of gaming
In this section, I get a little more cerebral and dive into the psychological principles within the more mechanical concepts that I discuss in the previous sections. Part of your role as a game designer is to condition the player. That is, you’re training the player how to play your game by rewarding them when they do something right and punishing them when they do something … not quite right.
One of the systems in our game Grift punished players for chatting with a non-playable character if they didn’t have enough trust points. If they chatted three times, they were blocked by that character. We spent time tweaking how we signaled this to players and ultimately had the character threaten to block the player, when it became a stronger verbal threat with every passing chat. We relied on societal norms (at least in the United States) for this. For example:
First chat: “I don’t think I trust you enough to tell you about that.”
Second chat: “You’ve already asked me that, don’t do it again, or else.”
Third chat: “I’m blocking you, fool.”
But maybe if the players had trust with the character and chatted with them, they would get a monetary reward. The concept of this learning process that uses rewards and punishments to change player’s behaviors is called operant conditioning. It’s associated with behavioralists Edward L. Thorndike and B. F. Skinner, who challenged various animals with puzzles or patterns and observed how they learned to overcome the challenge. So, no matter your player’s species, this concept plays a huge role in influencing how players interact with your game and what keeps them coming back.
Rewards motivate players by reinforcing actions, making them more likely to repeat behaviors that lead to something beneficial. Different types of rewards include
Extrinsic rewards:
These are tangible incentives like coins, power-ups, new skins, or loot boxes. For example, completing a quest earns gold or a shiny gear upgrade.
Intrinsic rewards:
The satisfaction that comes from personal achievement or mastery. For example, the pride of solving a difficult puzzle or nailing a tricky platforming sequence.
Social rewards:
Recognition or interaction with others, such as leaderboard rankings, community praise, or a belly laugh from a joke that landed better than you would have thought.
Punishment discourages actions or choices that hinder the game flow. They don’t necessarily have to feel harsh, but they should encourage learning or better play and can be either positive or negative:
Positive punishments:
Do something wrong, and the game adds something unpleasant to discourage you from doing it again. In
Elden Ring
, attacking a helpful NPC turns them into a deadly enemy.
Negative punishments:
Mess up, and the game takes away something you like. It’s a bummer, but it teaches you to play smarter. In
Animal Crossing,
if you neglect your town, your favorite villagers might pack their bags and leave.
Rewards and punishments are most effective when delivered quickly, with positive or negative reinforcement the player can understand.
Think about the pace of rewards and punishment when you’re designing a game. Give players rewards after every set action (like killing a boss) so they know when it’s coming. Throw in some random rewards, too, to keep things surprising. Mix it up!
Although operant conditioning focuses on voluntary, conscious behaviors that are influenced and shaped by their consequences, respondent conditioning refers to learning through involuntary, reflexive responses triggered by a stimulus. You don't have to learn these behaviors. This could be something like the following:
Pulling your hand back from a hot stove
Jerking your leg when the doctor taps on your knee
A low health sound making you feel a sense of urgency
Responding to the rhythm of a beat game
A great flow for conditioning players is to show them how to do something, let them try it, reward them for good behaviors, and set them back for poor behaviors.
Types of player motivation
Motivation in games comes in two flavors: intrinsic and extrinsic. One comes from the heart, and the other comes from all the shiny stuff you can collect.
Intrinsic motivation is powered by what the player enjoys or is interested in. Players with intrinsic motivation play because they genuinely enjoy the activity. Intrinsic motivation is about
What drives them:
Interests, values, and that inner spark.
Why they stick around:
The activity itself is the reward, even if they’re not making progress.
Example:
A player may keep exploring every nook and cranny of an open-world game just because they’re curious, not because they’re trying to win.
Extrinsic motivation is powered by outside factors. Players with extrinsic motivation want rewards ($$$), recognition, or a sweet pat on the back for their efforts. Extrinsic motivation is about
What drives them:
The loot, the badges, the leaderboard glory.
Why they keep going:
They want the rewards, achievements, or praise that comes with success.
Example:
Grinding levels in an RPG to get that flaming sword or aiming for 100 percent achievement completion.
Great games tap into both types of motivation. They give players the freedom to enjoy the experience just for the fun of it, while also dangling some tasty rewards to keep them moving forward.
Creating Meaningful Experiences
Games don’t always have to be fun in the traditional sense. They can be engaging by being meaningful. Having meaning is particularly important in a manufactured game because as players, we’re trying to find patterns and make predictions. Games are so great because they’re in a controlled environment. In a world in which most of the things that happen to us are by chance and out of our control, this can be a nice escape.
Meaning in games can take many forms, such as
Having a lot of choice and agency:
This means players have the freedom to make decisions that impact the game world, their character, or the story. These choices should feel impactful, with clear outcomes or consequences, reminding the player that they have influence in the world.
Making people feel emotion:
They can craft moments that evoke feelings like joy, sadness, fear, or even frustration. Games like
The Last of Us
or
Heavy Rain
come to mind.
Giving players a challenge to overcome:
Maybe the game tests player’s skills, creativity, or perseverance. A well-designed challenge engages people and offers a sense of accomplishment when they beat it.
On the flip side, an experience may not be meaningful because
The player doesn’t know what the point of the game is, or maybe they are confused.
The game lacks agency, like it’s too linear or on-rails. The player might feel like their actions don’t matter.
The mechanics feel stale and static. If the core mechanics are repetitive or haven’t evolved, gameplay can feel dull.
If the rules, lore, or environment of the game aren’t consistent or don’t make sense, it can break the player’s immersion.
The player isn’t getting feedback about which actions to take to progress, and they feel lost.
Rewards are monotonous, very same-same, or lacking value.
A meaningful experience comes from intentional design choices. Your player should feel involved, challenged, and emotionally connected to the world and the story.
Creating agency and immersion
Immersion is the feeling of being fully absorbed or lost in a game, in which players forget about the real world and become completely engaged in the game world. Having the power to make choices and affect their environment to feel like they’re a part of the story will increase the immersion of an experience.
Some ways to offer more immersion in your designs are as follows:
Offer branching choices that affect the narrative or gameplay. If I went back and redid Chief Emoji Officer, I’d add more branches and choices. This doesn’t mean that your game needs to grow wildly in choices, though. Agency or a sense of unlimited choices can be cleverly faked.
In games like The Walking Dead by Telltale, for example, many of the choices may seem like they lead to different resolutions, but in the end, they all branch back into the same narrative path. Sometimes, players just want to feel like they had agency.
Allow players to change the world in some meaningful way like unlocking areas or changing the environment.
Civilization does a good job of this because you can discover new areas and build on the newly found land.
Let players control their pace, whether through exploration, decision-making, or customizing their characters.
An example of this is in
Red Dead Redemption,
in which you can do a lot of side quests or explore the desert while you hope you don’t get killed by a cougar.
Something to keep in mind when adding lots of choices or agency is that the amount of content you need to make will also increase, and you may need to account for how large your systems or user interface are. For example, if we had added 100 more choices to Chief Emoji Officer, we would have needed to add more written narrative and more unlockable emojis, endings, and more information to the chapter summary. Adding more agency can increase the scope of your game. (I introduce scope in Chapter 3 and discuss it further in Chapter 13.)
Making players feel something
Emotion is a huge part of why players get invested. Whether it’s joy, sadness, or fear, create moments that make players care about what’s happening.
Some ways to make players feel something are as follows:
Craft scenes and narratives that focus on character development or emotional stakes. See
Chapter 8
where I discuss creating a compelling narrative and building believable worlds.
Use sound and music to set the tone. An intense beat in a fast-paced scene can create a lot of tension.
Create dilemmas that make players question their choices and feel invested in the outcome.
Balancing challenge
A well-balanced challenge keeps players engaged. If it’s too easy, they’ll get bored. If it’s too hard, they’ll get frustrated. The sweet spot is where players feel challenged but capable of overcoming obstacles with some effort. Different audiences and genres tolerate more friction, so balancing the challenge of your game typically has to do with who you expect to play your game. Someone who plays Dark Souls may have a higher capability for challenge over someone who’s expecting Animal Crossing.
Some ways to balance challenge are as follows:
Start players on simple challenges and gradually introduce harder obstacles as they learn a strategy for beating them.
Give players the right tools to succeed but let them experiment and discover how to use them effectively. This also gives players agency to choose their strategy.
Provide ways for players to learn from mistakes and keep going without feeling like they’re stuck.
