Game Decisions

decisions - bluediamondgallery

I have read through a lot of very helpful articles that give insight on what it's like to develop games and show many examples of what works and what doesn't.

The first article I read was Social Design Practices. This article has a great section named "Big design insights" which I found really informative although it is solely based on MMO's. There are many examples of what to do to make the design process easier and more interactive. 

• Don't build a big world first, create all systems necessary to support something big and then focus on designing.
• Social design is key and it drives retention and engagement.
• Use proper terminology when it comes to social design and interaction for larger groups. 
• Minimize designs that require huge impersonal groups.  
• Use Dunbar's layers to determine the level of collaboration your audience will supports. 

I really liked the advice of building with social interactions in mind as one of the main ways you get your game to grow is by word of mouth. Building for the potential of making it very easy for friends to play with each other is a great idea. 

I have also read more information on other sources that I found helpful. This book discusses many of the types of game design which go a lot more in depth about just how broad game design actually is. These are the basics of game design but they are something I hadn't really read before. Here are some types of design examples. 

• World Design: Overall backstory, setting and theme of the game. 
• System Design: Creation of rules and patterns. 
• Content Design: Creation of characters, items and puzzles.
• Game Writing:  Dialogue, text and story. 
• Level Design: layout and placement of maps. 
• User interface: How the player interacts and how they receive information back from the game. 

A Theory of Fun goes in detail on what makes a game fun and how you should go about building your game with this in mind. It talks in detail on how the brain works which is something you need to consider when developing a game or anything for that matter. It has a very large section about game theory and how there are many different definitions of the word "fun".  I think reading books like this would be very beneficial for any new game developer so it should definitely be something of interest to anyone interested in game development. 

As you can see there are many decisions to be made when developing your game, so think carefully and plan ahead!