The art of game design summary

1. Art of Game Design

2. Preface - Game Design
- Game design is about making decisions, and writing down thoughts makes it
easier to communicate and discuss with people about your choices.
- Don’t neglect old games, they have principles that have been around for
decades or centuries. Underlying principles that make modern games great
originates from these traditional games.
- Take in knowledge from other fields, unique and innovative ideas may have
originated from other fields such as music, art, architecture, film, science, etc.
- Game design is a lifelong adventure, improvements to one’s self of game
design is arduous and requires constant questioning.
- Deck of Lenses (Android/iOS) can help in game design by asking questions
that a designer might need to ponder on.

3. Chapter 1 - Designer
- Designers should be confident, and they will fail often. Don’t be afraid of
failure and instead embrace it, as only with experience will you learn.
- Designers should not shy away from aspects that they are not familiar with.
- Designers should dabble with lots of skills, such as : Animation,
Anthropology, Architecture, Brainstorming, Business, Cinematography,
Communication, Creative Writing, Economics, Engineering, Games,
History, Management, Math, Music, Psychology, Speaking, Sound
Design, Technical Writing, and Visual Arts.
- The most important skill of a game designer is “Listening”. Only by listening
will a designer be able to identify a problem and act on it.
- Five major listening objectives are: Team, Audience, Client, Game, and Self

4. Chapter 1 - Designer
- Animation, give life to worlds you create
- Anthropology, study and understand your audiences’ desire
- Architecture, build the relationship between people and spaces
- Brainstorming, come up with hundreds of ideas
- Business, have a better chance of making a successful game
- Cinematography, deliver a emotionally compelling experience
- Communication, understand, resolve disputes, and uncover truths
- Creative Writing, create fictional worlds and the story therein
- Economics, understand usage and flow of resources
- Engineering, understand the capability and limits of technology

5. - Games, inspirations and raw materials for your ideation
- History, draw references from historical events
- Management, working together towards a goal with your team
- Mathematics, important in a lot of systems and designs
- Music, immerse your audience, bring emotions and soul out
- Psychology, understand what makes your audience happy
- Speaking, be confident in presenting ideas and collecting feedback
- Sound Design, convince the player that their mind is right
- Technical Writing, create documents that details your plans
- Visual Arts, know how to impart the feeling you want to experience

6. Chapter 1 - Designer
- Team, know what your team is capable of, from programmers to artists to
sound designers, and plan around it.
- Audience, communicate well with your audience and understand what they
desire from your game.
- Client, understand what your client needs from their game
- Game, know the ins-and-outs of your game to understand issues and
strengths
- Self, introspection and understand of what you think that a good design is

7. Chapter 1 - Designer
- Two types of gifts a person might have
- Minor gift, that is the inherent ability to excel in a certain field. The person
might not like doing the things associated with the gift.
- Major gift, that is the passion and dedication towards a line of work. A person
with a Major gift would strive to improve through constant toil and hard work.
- A major gift is much more important than a minor gift. As everyone with a
major gift will be talented one day or another.

8. Chapter 2 - Designer Creates an Experience
- A game designer’s goal is to create experiences for people to enjoy. Games
are only one of the means to deliver these experiences to your audience.
- Experiences delivered from other linear medias are also similar to the one
games do, with the difference between having control over the pacing or not.
- Psychology, Anthropology, and Design are all tools that can be used to
understand the human mind and craft experiences.
- Psychology is used to understand a person’s behaviour and understand
rationales of action to reaction
- Cultural anthropology is used to understand how people live their life and
what they experience.

9. Chapter 2 - Designer Creates an Experience
- Design, all kinds of design have principles about what people experience. But
it is important to learn from other disciplines of designs to understand how to
convey experiences.
- Introspection is an important tool for game designers as we want to deliver
experiences, henceforth we try to understand experiences and attempt to
make decisions from there.
- Introspection has many fallacies, which are false conclusions and unrelatable
experience.
- False conclusions can appear if one takes their experiences at face value
without undergoing rigorous questioning. But game designers care more for
what feels “true”.

10. Chapter 2 - Designer Creates an Experience
- Unrelatable experiences means that game designers can often fall into traps
when designing. This in turn can make designers take extreme positions on
designing games such as “Only for the like-minded” or “Never trust personal
opinions”.
- “Only for the like-minded” stance can cause traps such as the game not being
a worthwhile investment due to a designers unusual taste, probable conflict
with team, and limitation of audience and genre
- “Never trust personal opinion” stance can cause traps such as being forced to
make decisions before there are any playtestable games, likelihood of
throwing a good idea away, or not being able to playtest enough.

11. Chapter 2 - Designer Creates an Experience
- Introspection begins with knowing what you like, dislike, and why both exists.
- Dissecting emotions creates concrete words to be used for suggestions, the
more you dissect your experiences, the more you’ll be able to create and
deliver experiences.
- Introspection can be difficult when done while doing a process (Heisenberg
Principle), thus you can instead attempt to dissect your memories, do more
than 1 takes, sneaking glances, or observe silently.
- Analyzing memories is best done when you remember them vividly, allowing
you to understand more of the experience that you are analyzing.
- Doing more than 1 take of an experience can let you have more chance to
think and analyze experiences.

12. Chapter 2 - Designer Creates an Experience
- Sneaking glances can be useful when you are having a hard time
concentrating on analyzing an experience. Affirming yourself to the
experience can help with focus and leaves with clearer experience.
- Observing silently is the hardest trick to do, it is about unconsciously
analyzing an experience while you are doing it.
- There are essential experiences in every experience you want to deliver,
being able to convey and show these essential experiences is how players
are able to immerse themselves more.
- A design should contain an essential experience that a designer wants to
deliver, without it, it would be harder to pinpoint what a game really needs.

13. Chapter 3 - Experience Takes Place in a Venue
- Venues are places in where we use technology, there are three types of
venues: Private venues, public venues, and hybrid venues.
- Private venues are venues which you spend your time by yourself or
surrounded by people you trust.
- There are three types of private venues: The Hearth, The Workbench, and
The Reading Nook.
- The hearth symbolizes our human nature to find comfort and conduct
recreation near a fireplace or a TV.
- The workbench symbolizes a specific location for you to tackle problems.
- The reading nook symbolizes a personal location to unwind, relax, and take
comfort in our own pace.

14. Chapter 3 - Experience Takes Place in a Venue
- Public venues are places for you to take part in an activity which you can’t
experience at home.
- There are 3 types of public venues: The Arena, The Theater, The Museum
- The theater symbolizes a place where people gather to experience some
something together. People tend to be able to focus on their feelings if other
people are feeling similarly as well
- The arena symbolizes a place for people to compete for public record. Often
the arena and theater are together.
- The museum symbolizes a place where people experience and unwind by
learning something new.

15. Chapter 3 - Experience Takes Place in a Venue
- Hybrid venues are a mix of privacy and openness
- There are 3 types of hybrid venues: The Gaming Table, The Playground,
Anywhere
- The gaming table symbolizes a medium (table) where people play games in.
Can be done both privately and publicly.
- The playground symbolizes any place that people might gather for
improvisational play.
- Anywhere symbolizes games that can be played almost everywhere. It is
usually defined by simple rules, and short time commitment needed.
- Venues often overlap with each other, but nonetheless it is still important to
understand it’s properties as it does not change very much with time.