I recently helped Circuit Stream craft their Game Design Bootcamp - a 30-week course for aspiring game makers. It was awesome to revisit the big picture of the art of game design - something I don't get to do often.
The bootcamp was developed into 6 sections:
Game Design Foundations
Prototypes with Unreal Engine
Game Concept Development
Gameplay Design
Game User Experience (“Game Feel”)
Capstone Project
Working with their learning designers we built out the course into learning objectives, assignments, and resources for individual instructors to add their own style and personality.
Over the course of this consulting project, I managed to revisit and refine some processes I still hold true and wanted to share those insights. Game Design changes with technology, culture, and players. But some principles are timeless.
Game Pillars and Values
I find often designers focus too much on the rules and mechanics of a game, and forget to ask themselves what their game is really trying to say as an expression of an idea, message, or aesthetic. A game should have a clear purpose and a vision, not just a list of systems and features.
That's why I push game pillars as vital in the design process following a successful prototype. They are the guiding principles that capture the essence of the game experience, and distill a "fun" prototype into a simplified and pointed definition of why it is fun, and how that fun is to be scaled across a greater experience.
This requires some intuition and vision, but they help the designer and the team to focus on what matters most, and what makes the game unique and memorable.
They set the boundaries and the direction for the game project.
I like Charlie Cleveland's (Subnautica/Moonbreakers) definition:
Pillars are the foundation of all development. They are called pillars because they "support" the planning and building of your game, especially when other people and disciplines are involved.
Charlie as supplements this with a second idea, which was new to me: Values:
Values are ideologies for the whole game. They're useful for areas your pillars don't cover. They often represent the values of the team or company building the game.
You can read Charlie discuss Pillars and Values using Subnautica as an example over at his excellent blog.
Goal Loops & MDA Framework(s)
Players work towards goals, and they do so on a number of timescales. A great game has satisfying moment-to-moment gameplay paired with a sliding scale of well-paced goal loops. What is the player trying to do 10 seconds from now? 1 minute from now? 10 minutes from now?
The length and frequency of these cycles vary depending on your game and genre conventions, but players encounter these different goal loops to as they build their "chain of interesting decisions" - and designers should have different perspectives at different time scales.
Micro Loop
Simple actions that make up the primary interface with the user. Controlling the character, interacting with the environment. These are the "words" of the Game Design and the primary realm of "Game Feel", where a Designer should be particularly sensitive to user experience.
Example (Myst): The player explores the environments, interacts with objects and puzzles, and discovers clues and hints.
Small loop
The most immediate goal for the player resulting from combinations of moment-to-moment interactions. Get to that platform up there. Defeat that enemy. These are the sentences of the Design, and the realm of Mechanics.
Example (Myst): The player solves a puzzle or finds a new area to explore, advancing the story and unlocking new possibilities.
Medium Loop
The paragraph of sentences that follow the mechanics. Finish the level. Unlock a new skill. This where Mechanics are supported and further juiced. Personally, I would call these "Systems" where a network of mechanics are extrapolated into networks of relationships.
Example (Myst): The player completes the major challenge of the Age, such as activating a machine, linking to another world, or finding a page.
Long Loop
The chapters of the game design. This is where Player Personas play out to really dive into the psychology of why someone plays the game or where the Game Pillars culminates into a meaningful experience.
Example (Myst): The player discovers the final Age, learning more about the history and fate of the characters and the worlds.
Goal loops can be further dissected and understood with the MDA framework, or, my new personal favourite: SSM.
Breaking down Goal Loops using these frameworks reveals how Goals translate into a Aesthetic experience through dynamics. It can reveal how your game is tied back to the Game Pillars and Values and identify possible gaps between the current design and your larger goals.
Hooks & Anchors, Market Research
Unless you are purely in it for the art (which is perfectly reasonable if your bills are paid elsewhere) or business problems are well beyond your paygrade, then at some point you need to assess the viability of your game and evaluate the risk of your production scope.
Ryan Clark of Brace Yourself Games does a fantastic job in summarizing the concepts of Hooks and Anchors (brief aside to mention I deeply miss the weekly Clark Tank live streams). To designers I would boil it down to two core questions for their designs:
What genre are you operating in? Even if you are doing something fresh, players still need a sense of how it plays and what to expect.
What is the unique and simple thing that excites players about your game? It should be succinct, and easily digestible, whilst evoking some curiosity of imagination.
While this may seem purely of the realm of boring old "marketing", answering these questions can provide fundamental design insights in terms of your players, their expectations, what is new to them, and what genre tropes you will be engaging in.
Market research can also help ground your scope. If "average" success in your genre space is $50,000 - you should be scaling your design to match that. It's OK to spend years on a game that has a long shot of making a big return - just know that's what you are getting into and know that the Stardew Valleys of the world are rare.
To Sum Up
Bringing a world of game design thinking into a single 30 week course is difficult. On the one hand you want to spark joy and excitement in designers and not bog them down in the business of it all.
But on the other hand, there are realities of the industry - especially for indies - and early exposure to navigating this should hopefully stop at least one new designer from setting out to build their MMO as a first game.
Ultimately, I'm happy that the course put prototyping, playtesting, and iteration at the forefront. Some things in games are timeless, and there is no theory for a fun prototype.