The Holy Grail

The four parts#

The Holy Grail of game design, the best way to make a game design, is this:

1. Understanding of technology.
2. Understanding of human beings.
3. A clear purpose for the project.
4. Plus: taking into account any business needs.

In other words:

1. Understand the platforms and tools you develop with, along with their capabilities and limitations.
2. Understand how a human being thinks, behaves and works. Know human nature.
3. Be fully aware of what the purpose of the project is. Why bother making it at all?
4. Take inventory of the time, resources, money, hardware, software, expertise and support that can realistically and concretely be put into the project, without any doubt. And know how to make sure you survive it, as a person, a team or a company, so the project gets finished without burnout, bankruptcy or some other management failure.

The first three are about game design, the effort to make the best possible game. The fourth is unfortunately a necessary management part that controls the scope of the project. It pulls in the opposite direction from the best possible game experience, but without it the game can't become a reality at all, so it must be treated as another critical need to satisfy alongside the other three.

What a perfect design looks like#

So a perfect game design is one where the needs of all four parts are satisfied:

• The platform and technology are kept within their operating limits, never overdrawn or bent in ways they can't support.
• The human player is respected morally and treated well, and the interface and controls are designed to be as convenient as possible for a human being.
• The project has a clear purpose that's in line with fundamental human needs, satisfying them without violating them.
• The logistical, management and business requirements for sustainable, successful operation are taken into account, to plan how big and complex the project can afford to be.

All four parts are critical. They're interconnected and depend on one another. Success is only possible when all four are satisfied, and if even one of these pillars is neglected or fails, the whole project risks total failure.

Put another way: game design is finding the best combination of art, technology, purpose and available resources. You bring together knowledge of the human mind, knowledge of technology with its strengths and limits, and the capabilities and limits of whoever is making the game, and you look for the solution that meets the needs of every party involved at the same time. The player, the platform, the purpose, the people building it and the business that keeps them alive. Perfect game design meets the needs of the human side, the technology side, the purpose and the business side all together, without compromising any of them.

The mindset side and the technical side#

There's a mindset side to this and a technical side, and both are critical to a project's success. The mindset explains how to think, relate and decide when making design decisions. The technical side explains the step-by-step methods for building a successful project, along with a collection of tools that are indispensable.

The rest of the book follows that split. Part II is the mindset: purpose, human beings and how a project's purpose is found. Part III shows what happens when good intentions run into reality without it. Parts IV and V are the technical side: designing the game, and building, sharing and growing around it.

There will also be further explanation of why this works, plus extra topics, warnings and opportunities that all matter in the grand scheme of things, so please pay attention to all of it.

One last time before we start, because it's the most important thing to remember: the technical side is useless without the mindset. A tool in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they're building is just a faster way to build the wrong thing.