"one page" what's important when designing a game

(reposted from the 'Geek with permission)

As a thought exercise in my game design class I asked the students to write a one-page list of "what's important when designing a game" (any game). And I did it myself, as well:

What’s important when you’re designing games
Lewis Pulsipher - November 29, 2005

• Know your audience! What do they like?

• Know your objectives! What are you trying to achieve?

• Design is “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”, especially if you also develop the non-video game.

• Writing usable rules (or doing the programming) is the hardest part.

• Write everything down (and back it up).

• Playtesting is “sovereign”. No matter what you think about how the game will work, only efficient playtesting will actually show how it works.

• Ideas are cheap (easy); a playable game is much harder to create.

• No game can satisfy all tastes.

• Players must be able to influence the outcome of the game by their choices amongst non-obvious alternatives–otherwise it’s not a game (though it might be a story or a toy or a puzzle).

• Be willing to change the game again and again.

• Hardly any idea is original...but ideas can be used in new ways. And there’s almost always a new way to treat any subject (many, many ways to do real estate–Monopoly is only one).

• Games are supposed to be fun. But “fun” means different things to different people.

• Keep in mind the nine fundamental structures of games:
Theme/history/story
Objective/victory conditions
Movement/Placement (1 at a time is the norm)
Sequence (taking turns is the norm)
Conflict resolution/interaction of “entities”
Economy/resource acquisition (norm is none in boardgames, card draw in cardgames) Information availability (norm in a boardgame is all info available)
“Data storage”/Information Management (often a board/map)
Player interaction rules (the players, not the objects)

• The road to the complete game:
1. Ideas,
2. Playable ideas,
3. Prototypes,
4. Play solo,
5. Playtest,
6. Fully written rules,
7. Keep experimenting.
8. “Blind” test.