Game design is a creative process that involves imagining a game concept, defining how it will work through elements like story, rules and gameplay, and communicating the idea to developers. It draws on both artistic and scientific principles. While there is no single process, successful games often share common elements like core mechanics, storytelling and interactivity. An important part of design is creating documentation like a high concept document, treatment, or in-depth script to plan and guide development. Effective game designers draw on skills like imagination, analysis, math competence and technical writing.

1. WHAT IS GAME DESIGN?
Presented By:
Sayed Ahmed
Consultant
Just E.T.C Technologies Inc.,
Winnipeg, Manitoba
sayed@justEtc.net

2. DEFINE GAME DESIGN
 It’s a process that involves
 Imagining a game
 Define how it will work (the story, the interaction, the
rules)
 Define the elements of the game
 Conceptual
 Functional
 Artistic
 Others….
 Communicate the idea to the design team
 What does a game designer do?
 Perform all the above tasks

3. DESIGN ARTS OR SCIENCE
 Neither purely arts nor purely science
 The imagining of ideas and concepts, and making
the game aesthetic belong to Arts
 However, to be a great game, the game also needs
to function well. Though it’s not purely science but
to implement the functionality, concepts from
science and math are highly used
 Games are crafts with highest possible level of
elegance

4. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGN
 Game design is
 creative and imaginative
 where inherent talent also plays a very important role
 And hence, Game design cannot be represented as
 strict step by step procedure or rules or processes
 However, game design is not a random process either
(knowingly or unknowingly).
 We may be able to identify some similarities (common/basic
components/concepts/principles) in the successful games
(may be genre dependent)
 And device some common principles that hopefully will lead
to good game design
 Can work as guidelines for the novices (or checklist for the
more experienced)

5. KEY ELEMENTS OF GAMES
 As there is no perfect rule
 One way of seeing game design is
 Identifying common elements in a genre of games
 And Create games in that genre with similar elements but
different story, or graphics goals
 Or find out the genre of your game concept, identify the
common elements of that genre, compare, think, innovate.
Make the game more interesting
 Your ideas, stories can be great but it also needs to have
some of those common and useful elements
 Publishers usually do not go for the very innovative ideas but
want the idea similar to a recent hit with some more twists
 The successful games are successful – there is a reason
behind this

6. KEY ELEMENTS OF GAME
 Common elements
 Rules of the game (your concept should have rules)
 The player’s role
 The challenges
 ….
 Two games can have many common elements but
 different settings, rules, strategies, and balancing
 Many games have the same/similar play mechanics but
with different graphics
 Identifying common elements
 does not to encourage you to imitate/create cookie-cutter
games
 but to ensure that all essential elements are covered

7. GROUND RULES FOR GAME DESIGN
 Game design can be broken in three specific area
 Core mechanics
 Storytelling
 Interactivity
 Core mechanics
 Storytelling
 All game has a story
 The game itself can be a story like princess of Persia
 The player can create the story (the way he plays and reaches
the goal)
 Talk about Narrative and non – narrative
 No story, the player creates the story
 Linear narrative, non linear narrative

8. INTERACTIVITY
 Define how the interactivity will work
 Graphics
 Sounds
 User Interface
 Poor interactivity can ruin a game
 Wire wind for example
 Use right click, icon based menus, select options to proceed
 Interactivity includes the user interface as well
 Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mario 64 for Wii

9. IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN DOCUMENT
 All game companies now want a design document
to be written
 The design document may not include all ideas but
can write down the decisions
 Many ideas come from lunch meetings
 If a feature is not written down
 Someone has to create it on the fly
 Different team member may work to different goals

10. TYPES OF DESIGN DOCUMENTS
 High Concept (2-4) pages
 Game treatment (10-20 pages)
 Game script (50-200 pages)
 High Concept (2-4) pages
 Got a great game idea? Write a high concept document.
Will be used to express the idea to the publishers to
fund the game
 Covers
 Premise of the game
 Intended audience
 Genre

11. GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT
 Game Treatment
 Analysis of the Competition
 How your game is different
 A document to sale your game
 Some business and development details
 Game Script
 Bible of the game
 Game design decisions
 Creative, conceptual, and functional
 Does not include how the game will be implemented in
software
 The design document may help you to play the games in
paper – brainstorm, get feedbacks
 A cheaper way to evaluate the game

12. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGNER
 Requires both
 Talent
 Skill
 Skill Set
 Imagination
 Still if you do not have a talent for it, you can grow and improve
(through exercise of imaginations)
 Forms of Imagination
 Visual and auditory
 Dramatic
 Good character plot, motivation, emotion, climaxes, and outcomes
 Conceptual
 Relationship between ideas, their interactions, and dependencies
 Basic knowledge of the technical capabilities of the platform

13. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGNER
 Analytical Competence
 Able to recognize good part and bad part of a design.
 Self criticize and improve
 Take opinions, and process those opinions
 Mathematical Competence
 Some math concepts are essential
 Aesthetic Competence
 Writing Skills
 Technical Writing
 Fiction Writing
 Manual, Background Material, Character Description
 Dialog Writing
 Audio voice cover and cinematic materials

14. ANATOMY OF GAME DESIGNER
 Drawing Skills
 Ability to Compromise
 Consider customer or publisher interests and adjust
 Compromise to the limitation of the platform

15. REFERENCES
 Fundamentals of Game Design, 2nd Edition, Ernest
Adams, Prentice Hall, 2006, ISBN-10: 0131687476.
ISBN-13: 978-0131687479
 http://computer.justetc.net