Research, Analysis and Ideation

There are three common sense things you should do if you follow good design practise before starting the design proper and that is RESEARCH, ANALYSIS and IDEATION.

The process can start with any one of these, and jump back and forth as necessary, but you should be doing this to make sure that you are making informed decisions and assumptions. DESIGN as I would call it comes after this and is the process of working out and planning exactly how things will work, how all the systems work and interact with each other, and that implementation achieves the desired aims. Now this sounds stupidly obvious, but time and again I have seen people jump straight in to designing systems and mechanics before going through this initial stage.

I feel fundamental to this, you should look to involve the whole team in this process if they want, you can’t force people but getting ideas and input from the whole team is vitally important. If market analysis, metrics feed into design decisions then why not fellow team members. Why should the whole team be involved in this process you may ask? Designers should just be doing this! Well one of a designers important responsibilities as I see it is to make sure the team are enthusiastic about the game they are working on, because quite simply an enthusiastic and motivated team produces better quality games.

The best way to do this is to involve the team in the design process, so that they are involved, have invested in it, and feel they are part of it not just spoon fed scheduled tasks. It doesn’t matter what people’s jobs are, how senior or junior they are, their opinion and input should be valued, we are all creative individuals, and the best ideas could come from anywhere and anyone. Design should not be about personal ego, the game and the team come first, the end goal is to create the best possible game that you can, and build the best possible team you can. Great teams create great games.

I have always found it is far easier to take people with you, than present a design that they have had no involvement in and then try to sell it to them, as no one is as motivated by this regardless of how cool the idea is. It is also essential to get input from different disciplines to make sure no obvious errors are being made, and that everything is realistic and achievable.

I have yet to hear a credible argument against this approach, and have consistently seen better results using this way of working. People talk about auteurs and visionaries, but my experience of this is just senior people taking credit for others hard work and ideas.

I am not talking about throwing out to the team every minor detail like should this button be blue or green. I am also not talking about design by committee, because you still need to design, but once you start designing you are in a much stronger position because you have done your research, you have analysed, and we have got as many ideas from as many sources before you start nailing things down.