The Technical Side: Designing the Game

Now the tools. Part IV is about the game itself: how to take stock of what you're working with, how to build the foundations everything else stands on, how to make content that keeps giving instead of running out, and how to structure a game so that it never has to end.

Game design is about meeting the needs of every party involved: the purpose, the human player, the technology, the people building the game, and the business that keeps them going. Everything in this part is a way of doing that more reliably.

One more time, and I mean it: everything here is worthless without the purpose-based mindset from Part II. These are methods, not rules. Each one is only right when it serves the purpose of your project. If a method in this part doesn't serve your purpose, don't use it. You have been warned.