intentionality

I’ve been hanging around in a lot of game design spaces in the last year or so, mostly to see what the “state of the art” is. Most are not well-organized. Most lack any kind of vision or direction, so they are largely regular folks talking about what they are doing. This means that many if not all develop their own unwritten axioms of design that the loudest present espouse.

I don’t talk much in these spaces but I listen because this is interesting and, in varied spaces, somewhat…well, varied. And also not. When I do participate I try to frame my advice in such a way as to avoid disparaging the assumptions at work and so have been zooming in (or out, I guess) on general design principles.

Gnolls are a little thick and in heat of battle may attack their own shadows.

For example, if someone is building a roll-to-hit-roll-for-damage combat simulator, that’s what they want to build. Me coming in and saying “well how about we find a way to also address the soul-shattering horror of being forced to be a murderous sociopath all day” is not actually all that helpful. And certainly unwelcome. So my first rule is: whatever they are trying to build, I’m only useful if I help them build that as well as possible. Helping them make something they don’t want is not helping. It’s paternalistic bullshit, really.

So in trying not to be an asshole but craving the contact of communication, I have to develop some ideas that at once are useful and also do not deny specific choices just because I dislike them. I need to separate what I like from what’s a good way to design.

Fortunately there is a way to talk about design that isn’t that loaded. I was worried that in generalizing it would become too simple but it isn’t. And it’s mostly familiar: this is restating stuff that’s been said before. Let’s say it again.

First, design intentionally. Every rule you write, stop and think “why is this here?” Make everything you make on purpose. This is how you avoid cargo-culting something together and instead genuinely make what you really want to make. And maybe discovering that the game you want to make already exists since you’re echoing all of it.

This of course forces you to wonder what you want to do. People often say this is the first step but honestly the question “what is your game about?” comes off as antagonistic sometimes, especially if the designer hasn’t thought about summarizing the game’s intentions. Often their intentions are not yet coherent — they never thought to even think about it. The question asked directly is, again, a little paternalistic: I know better than you what needs to happen next.

But if you agree you should design intentionally then the question “what is my intent” is going to come up internally, whether explicitly or as the aggregate of all the “why am I making this rule?” questions. I think people are far more open to wondering if their game is indeed “about” something if they ask themselves first.

The next derivation is worth guiding to. If you have a hundred rules and you have thought about why all each exists, it’s natural now to wonder if there are common purposes and, more interestingly, conflicting purposes. Do the rules all help each other do what you intend them to do? This is “coherence” to me. When the rules support each others’ intentions. When you lack coherence you have rules that either have unrelated reasons for existing (these might be subsystems — maybe you have coherent subsystems in a much more loosely organized framework) or work against each other (and this is unsatisfying and as soon as you see it you’ll want to either fix it or make it a feature but not likely just leave it alone).

Make things on purpose.

Try to understand your purpose.

Intend your level and structure of coherence.

Once you decide that these are good things to do when designing you can start thinking about ordering them into a workflow but honestly that’s yours. I hate people telling me what my workflow should be. You will figure out your workflow. When you start thinking along those lines you can ask for advice (not from me — my workflow is crazy) and when you ask you’re generally ready to receive.

So: first do things intentionally. Everything else follows.