A few years ago, when I asked a coworker why they got into game design (they’d previously been an engineer), their response was, “I want power. You guys get to make all the decisions.”

On the surface, it seems like a sensible thing to say. You see Cliff Bleszinski or Will Wright out there, talking about their games, and these guys are the “visionaries” - at least, that’s how it’s pitched to the public. Who comes up with guns attached to chainsaws, or creature creators that let you build whatever you can imagine, right? These guys are the creative powerhouses behind their games, and if you’re in their position, you’ve got *control*… right?

Now, I’m no cliffyb, or Will Wright. Far from it. But for me, hearing my coworker say that they wanted to go into game design because they wanted power was a strange thing.

To me, design has always been a “service position.” In general, game design is broken up into a couple different sub-disciplines. You’ve got system designers, who build the mechanics of the game. You’ve often got level designers, who create the actual experience that the player will interact with, and you’ve got the lead designers, who both set the tone of the game, and effectively act as the design team’s manager.

What I mean by  “service position” is that at each stage of the process, the designer is rarely in “power” - rather, they are in service to some greater force. Let’s start at the top.

Building a game is essentially a giant resource management game in itself. You’re creating something - you’ve usually got a deadline and a budget. Maybe a target audience, and a platform you’re working on. As a lead designer, you have a handful of really important goals:

1. You need to figure out what the game *is*.
2. You need to get people psyched about making it.
3. You need to make sure you can build it with the resources you have available.

Just to take an example - when we were first looking at making a game for the Palm Pre, the biggest question was, “What should we make?” On one hand, we had the immense luxury of making that decision ourselves - we weren’t handed a specific set of marketing goals, or a demographic to target. We could make whatever we wanted.

But when you step back a bit, you really … can’t. Or rather, you shouldn’t. Your platform has certain things it’s good at. The original Playstation, for all its vaunted power, was a relatively lousy machine for doing 2D games. The PS3’s controller has a giant dead spot in the middle of the analog stick, so making games that require high degrees of precise input can highlight the console’s flaws. On the Pre, Mojo has some very positive aspects (rapid development, a familiar language), and some negative ones (limited access to the underlying hardware).

In addition, unless you’re in a very, very privileged position, you’re working with limited resources. Limited people, limited money, limited time. This isn’t a bad thing. It can help give your game form. It forces you to concentrate on what’s important and what’s not.

Look at Duke Nukem Forever - 12 years in the making, and never released. Why? Because the developers (at least until the very last moment) never had to say “no.” Why was Star Wars better than the Phantom Menace? Why was Metal Gear better than Metal Gear 2? Because free of restrictions, you don’t have to find creative solutions to your problems, and you’re not forced to take a look at what you have to cut away to get to the core of what you want to make.

Building the best possible game is as much, if not more, about knowing what that chewy center is. Knowing what the experience you want to convey to the players is - building that - and eliminating everything else.

One of my favorite games in recent years was an action-adventure called Ico, for the PS2. Greatest game of its generation by leaps and bounds. It was emotionally engaging despite virtually no dialog. It was epic despite taking place in what amounted to a single setting with only two main characters. It knew what it wanted to focus on - the emotional bond between the two main characters in the game, and it stripped away anything that didn’t serve that purpose.

Can I say that Word Ace or Taxiball is similarly minimalist? Absolutely not. But what I can say is that we knew where the “core fun” of the games were, and we never sacrificed that. We cut a lot of things in the process of making the games, some of which will be added in over time (particularly in Word Ace (and Card Ace)), some of which are better left on the cutting room floor (no, we don’t actually have a “cutting room”). But the games work, I believe, because we took the time to figure out what was important about them, and to make sure that as we developed the games, we focused on the things that emphasized the particular fun, and eliminated things that didn’t.

With Word Ace, for instance, when we were playing it with cards, an absolutely critical component of the experience was the “IN YOUR FACE!” moment when you pulled out a great word. The great word was satisfying in itself, but the booyah! moment - that moment of interaction between players - was something we couldn’t lose. That led to the development of the emote system, which is one of my favorite things in the Ace games.

The point is - there are some people who have the ability to be visionaries. Who have the resources or the stubbornness to build their singular vision. But to me, a good designer builds the right game for the right circumstances - good design is about maximizing… everything. The platform, your resources - finding the “fun” in that and making sure that everything in the game serves that fun. It’s not a position where you lead - it’s a position where you listen. You listen to what the engineers think you’re capable of. You keep up with the state of the art, to know what your competition is doing. You research the future - you can’t design for now, your game’s not coming *out* now - you’re designing for months, sometimes years in the future. You try to understand who will be playing the game. When they’ll play it. What they’re looking for.

You take all that information, and if you listen, it’ll tell you what you should make.

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More later, time permitting (if there’s interest - want more? Leave a comment.).

Topics to come: How do you find “fun”? What *is* a game, anyway? Why designers who don’t play games should find another job.