My Guiding Principles
Maps. Landmarks. Compasses. Sextants.
All great tools for keeping you from getting lost. All are developed to help to keep you moving in the right direction when you have a destination in mind. The only problem is none are helpful if you are lost when developing a game.
Why Are design principles useful?
I’ve had the opportunity to play-test new iterations of games others have been developing that I’ve played previous versions of. Some have had significant tweaks, and others have just had minor refinements. After each playtest, I would ask why the change was made. Most of the responses described a direction they envisioned pushing the game or highlighted the type of gamer they designed the game around. Unfortunately, I had an answer or two summed up in one sentence… “I don’t know.”
When showing off your designs for playtesting or feedback, you will start to get a lot of other voices trying to help steer the game. This is because everyone wants to help! If you don’t have your principles defined, all the feedback you get will get you lost in the design.
This is why I believe it is essential to have those principles defined. You can use them to get yourself back on course.
Below I’ve taken the time to list out my five design principles. I refer to these when confronted with a potentially major change in a design.
The Guiding 5
“Easy” to jump into: Set up is often a barrier to playing a game. This influences what gets added to the game and often rewards game elements for serving multiple purposes. “Easy” to jump into also means that the rules must be easy to learn and remember from game to game.
There is a space to feel clever: Seeing a potential pay-off that can happen later in a game and working out the path you need to take to achieve that is (in my opinion) one of the best moments in gaming. The potential for that to happen in every game is a goal I design around.
Reward replayability: My goal for all my designs is to provide enough depth in games that begin to appear more after you play and to create a framework in the game to make each experience you have to feel different.
Theme-dictated mechanics: The spark for a game design for me usually starts with a mechanic that I find interesting. If the framework of the game works, I will quickly try to introduce a theme as soon as possible so it can allow for a deeper understanding of how the game plays.
Continuous Engagement: Downtime between turns should be limited, and reasons to stay alert to the game state while it’s not your turn are very important to include in the game's design. This keeps the game moving and everyone feeling that they are at the table for the same reason.
If you are interested in other designers sharing their principles, check out Jamey Stegmaier’s in the link below:
https://stonemaiergames.com/about/mission-statement/
What are some guiding principles that you have when designing or being creative?
