Some fans have asked me what elements do I think is essential for a good game to have? Well, I think the answer to this question is that the game must be well designed. So I’ve put together a list of ten simple rules for how to design a good game, and this is the list I try to follow as a game designer.

1.      All games should have a premise, theme or focus determined from the start. All games should have a target audience. Don’t just design a game system without any central concept and then plug in some flavor text, because you will just end up with a system that is far removed from the story concept and that will break the suspension of disbelief in the player. They will try to understand why they have to, for example, fly through hoops in a Superman game (Superman 64). Come up with the concept of the game first and then design the rules around that concept.

2.      ‘Verify and Validate’ at every step of the design. Constantly ask yourself what the game is supposed to be about and if the current design is making that happen. Ask yourself if the game is fun, and every time you add a new idea or mechanic, double-check to make sure the game is still fun even with these changes. Remember that no matter what game you make, all games are entertainment. If a game fails to entertain its target audience then the game is badly designed.

3.      Do not design the rules of the game to simulate a virtual world. Games are not virtual worlds; they are social activities; even a single player game requires the player to socialize with artificial intelligence. Games are, fundamentally, about learning new rules and applying those rules to overcome challenges. Essentially, the rules of the game tell the players how to behave. Do not design the game mechanics to promote behavior that detracts from the game being fun and enjoyable for the target audience of that game.  

4.      Kill your darlings. Do not fall in love with any game mechanic or idea. Any idea or mechanic that hurts the gameplay should be changed so it has synergy with all other game mechanics / ideas. If the idea cannot exist in harmony with the rest of the game design, it should be scrapped. Save it for a different game.

5.      Don’t overwhelm your target audience with too many choices. What is “too many choices” really depends on who your target audience is; obviously, a strategy roleplaying game should offer more choices in a given situation than a 2d platformer for young children. But everyone can be overwhelmed with choices, and when this happens it can result in a player being too afraid to do anything or trying to generalize too much. Again, game mechanics are supposed to lead players and tell them how to behave. When you are dealing with multiplayer games like MMORPG, you don’t want people to take half an hour doing something like trying to decide what spell to learn while everyone else is waiting on them to decide so the raid can continue. Look up “Paradox of choice” to learn more. The summarized version is that the more choices you offer a player, the longer it will take for them to make a decision. With respect to your target audience, don’t overwhelm the players with unnecessary choices, especially if most of the consequences of the choices aren’t fully explained to the player.

6.      Understand your target audience. A lot of games have crashed and burned simply because the designers didn’t understand what the target audience of the game wanted. This can be seen in the numerous game sequels which have been ill received by fans of the franchise. Also, you cannot understand your target audience if you haven’t played the same games they do; don’t design an online fantasy roleplaying game for people who like fantasy roleplaying games if you’ve never played World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons or Final Fantasy. You need to know what experiences the players have already had and how they felt about those experiences. It’s actually more important to play the games they disliked than the ones they liked, because the design flaws in bad games tend to be more obvious than in games which were successful.

7.      If your game is going to be plot heavy, then write a good story. A good story means characters the player will build an emotional attachment to. The biggest reason a story sucks in a game is because I the player don’t care what happens to the in-game characters, let alone what they have to say to me. I skip through cutscenes and skim dialogue boxes because I just don’t care about the flavor text because the writers and designers have failed to give me a reason to care about the characters. A perfect example is City of Heroes; many of the quest giving NPCs are supposedly really powerful heroes, yet here they are sending me, some superhero noob, to go fight villains and delivery messages while they stand in one spot all day. Why should I care about what those lazy bastards have to say when they aren’t even willing to fight alongside me or even pretend to act like a mentor? Because the NPCs were designed to hand out quests as if they were a quest pez dispenser that is how the players end up treating them.

8.      The game should not require the player to read numerous essays in order for them to learn how to play; the design of the game should teach players how to play while they are playing. Any game mechanic that is not intuitive and requires lengthy explanation from a forum post or a website page should NOT be part of the game, period. People play videogames to relax from work or school and not to do additional homework.

9.      Listen to player feedback, but make sure the feedback is coming from the target audience of your game. If you’re making a game based on a comic book, don’t ask people who don’t like comics to test the game; ask people who are passionate about comics to test the game. If you’re making a MMORPG, don’t ask people who rarely play MMORPGs to test it, and certainty don’t ask people who haven’t played many MMORPGs or don’t play MMORPGs often.

10.   Make a good game. A good game is a game that will positively challenge and occasionally surprise its own creators. The key words are, “positively challenge”; a game that frustrates its own creators will certainty frustrate the players, and a game that bores its own creators will bore the players.