Pointless Lexical Debate: Designing or Inventing?

I have alwayse though of it as "Inventing" new mechanics, and "Designing" the actual game. But I would just as easily accept someone elses use of the words.

So long as the intent of the comunication is maintained (the meaning), what words, etc that you use is not important.

*snicker snicker*

IMHO we definitely "design a game".
the "invention" follows after clever design.

richard garfield "designed" magic the gathering.
and by doing that, he "invtended" the CCG genre.

Designing : Create something from elements that already exist.

Inventing : Create something that did not exist before.

and I'll add :

Discovering : Finding or understanding something that was already existing but was unknown to mankind.

I've got to pick some nits:
Discovery is not a pertinent description for the process of creating a game. If one discovers a game and "borrows" from it to create a new game, that is simply part of the design process.
Inventions are not necessarily brand new. They just get patents if they are first into the PTO (Patent and Trademark Office).
Consider Thomas Edison. He is called an inventor. yet much of his work was based on ground-breaking concepts discovered by others.
In fact, his work was mostly the efforts of his employees.
Edison's strength was his ability to get his stuff publicized better than them. He also introduced mass production to his inventions.

He was reincarnated as William H. Gates III

Mitch

I know that "discovering" is no really related to games. I placed it there because in science, some people confuse "Invent" and "Discover". So I place it there to see the relations with the other words.

I'm working on a game. Different part of the work flow is designing (make a game design), graphic design, implementation, rule writing, testing and prototyping.
Sometimes (not so often) when I'm designing I have to invent a new mechanism (mostly a detail in a mechanism) or a new technique to make everything work.

// Johan

Hi,

I like Dragonchill's point about being toymakers. I never thought of that. As well as Johan mentioning all the individual parts of creating a game. However, I think the original question was what do you call the process as a whole? We can label the individual processes, but what is the whole called? (Like the forest and the trees thing.) Is it designing? Making? Inventing? Creating? Or what? Personally, after thinking, and comparing, I still thing designing is a better way of putting it. imho

Live long and prosper, Qundar out.