100 Things a Game Designer Should Know

Hello Design Buffs!

Please enjoy this compilation of lessons I have learned throughout my lifelong career as a game designer at Zynga, Glu, and Starting up two thriving game companies in India (Bombay Play & Moonfrog)...and yes we are always hiring Game Designers.

Some of these 'design things' are wholly practical, while others are abstract and metaphorical to the extent they might seem...strange!

But I assure you reader, each point is important and has story to tell.

So let's take a deep breath...

1. A deep belief that game making is a meaningful pursuit, and is worth the commitment the career path demands.

2. The importance of creating five games before you get hired.

3. Why it’s productive to play bad games for hours that are no fun at all.

4. The relationship between a person's emotions and digits on a spreadsheet.

5. Ability to detect the roots of grievance in crying children and raving adults alike.

6. How shooting a gun is similar to feeling texture of paint on canvas.

7. An awareness that every few months you become out of touch with what is cool.

8. How an author hooks a reader within the first sentence, paragraph and chapter of a book.

9. How the bias of a Dungeon Master affects the Dungeons and Dragons player experience.

10. Narrative techniques and why point 51 is worth the wait.

11. The flick and slide of a fresh pack of cards.

12. Common mistakes beginner orienteers make.

13. An acceptable level of explanation.

14. The lesson that lies behind the goat puzzle of Monkey Island.

15. Behaviour of a glider in Conway's game of life.

16. The atomic elements that produced taverns full of dead cats in Dwarf Fortress.

17. The 7 principles of universal design and their applications in software.

18. Methods of reducing, grouping, contextualising, accelerating and expressing vast complexity in simple ways.

19. The power of Schema theory, design gestalts and object affordances.

20. How to entertain 30 children for an hour with a ball and two broken tennis racquets.

21. How card games: Magic the Gathering, Yu Gi Oh!, and Pokemon Trading Card games appear the same yet differ.

22. What it feels like to meet your soulmate online for just a day.

23. How it feels to build a sand castle and compare it to others at the beach.

24. The joy of having a secret den.

25. The favourite cartoons of children around age 12.

26. Chess and what makes the most common openings popular.

27. How to create the sound of a footstep in snow in your bedroom.

28. Why a woodpecker's tongue is shaped that way.

29. At least half of the twelve principles of animation.

30. The official rules of the game of Ur… and the unofficial rules you just made up.

31. The temperament of a horse.

32. How sunlight penetrates dust.

33. The atmosphere of a pc bang, during the day and late into the night.

34. The art of war, tactics employed at the Battle of Trafalgar and other naval/land skirmishes between 1700-1945.

35. What it feels like to go 0-60 mph in 10 seconds or less.

36. How to play baseball or cricket with a book.

37. Why losing is enjoyable if it leaves you with a fun story to tell.

38. Ludonarrative dissonance, its causes and cures.

39. The timely and concise communication of effective teams in high pressure situations, inside and outside of games.

40. How a series of random dice rolls can create an an unexpected journey beyond all imagination.

41. How to protect your shoulder and wrist from repetitive strain injury.

42. The nooks and crannies of Summoner's Rift, Dust 2, Coagulation & Facing Worlds. 

43. The pleasure of immersing your hand in thick paint before smearing it on a wall.

44. How to leave the computer now and again to go for a walk.

45. How to write a Vlookup, and why Match Index is superior.

46. How to get a Particle System to behave.

47. Methods of juicing, and knowing when you are going to need more than juice.

48. The tactics and formations of arsenal football club during Arteta's term.

49. The appeal of fishing.

50. An appreciation for Ikea instruction manuals.

51. Why this point has to remain a secret, until point 95.

52. What it’s like teaching a beginner to play golf.

53. What it feels like to run through every floor of a history museum as fast as you can.

54. The properties that affect the handing of a race car.

55. The formulas that define player retention & engagement.

56. Mechanics and variables of Coyote time. 

57. The plow, plant, and harvest loop of farmville. And how loops make games infinite.

58. How the Tamagotchi was designed to exploit human psychology, stimulating love and subsequently stimulate guilt.

59. How deeply ingrained reciprocity is to our human condition.

60. All the methods your friends and coworkers use to blame and deceive each other during a game of werewolf or mafia.

61. Frantic loss chasing and the gambler's fallacy.

62. Knowing why you become far more likely to do something after you tell someone you will. Even when there are no consequences.

63. The comfort and security of knowing all the rules in a virtual world separated from the chaos of life.

64. How to convince your friends to play-test your paper prototype for the 3rd time.

65. Why people log-in to online worlds during the countdown to the new year.

66. A categorisation of your friends and family into Richard Bartle player types and Nick Yee’s player motivations. 

67. The difference between persistence vs skill in a game of mastery.

68. Basic functions and structure of code, preferably knowledge of one language.

69. The signal your neighbours are trying to send when they mow their lawns and trim their neat hedges.

70. The excitement and terror of squeezing the trigger on a high caliber handgun.

71. Knowing when someone wants to hear a story or a game design.

72. Ability to explain how your game is special in 30 seconds.

73. How to teach with actions not words.

74. How parents give their children the illusion of choice.

75. Ray-casting and its common usages.

76. The difference between true gamification and rewarding mundane tasks with arbitrary points.

77. Why games are probably not the best medium for solving all the world's problems.

78. Decision tree of a poker bot.

79. Why you liked your favourite high school teacher.

80. How to dispassionately evaluate your childhood fantasies for commercial viability.

81. How to mature yet never lose your childhood.

82. The feel of grass on your bare feet under a blue sky.

83. How football could theoretically be played with two balls, four goals, and potential edge cases.

84. The deep culture of bug catching in Japan.

85. Why your writing skills are probably not as good as you think they are.

86. Diligent, tireless revisioning of your design documentation after every meeting.

87. Giving credit to the person who gave you an idea.

88. How the most ridiculous and outlandish design choice might actually be the right one.

89. How a blindfold instantly transports you into an alien landscape.

90. Why a cheap laugh is easy to pitch, but as a game concept may be doomed to fail.

91. How attention can be attracted both positively and negatively.

92. The ability to thank someone for their feedback, no matter the circumstance, every time.

93. An empathy that develops for the designer of every game you play.

94. Camera placement, field of view and movement relative to player inputs and actor state.

95. Why an adventure never truly ends, irrespective of the authors intention.

96. Reasonable fall distance and satisfying jump height.

97. How fun it was back in the day to sit down with real people and just play together.

98. How to give power with reasonable constraints.

99. How to describe the sound progress makes.

100 .The wisdom to design for everyone, not just yourself.