Make Better Games

The 100xGDD is the document that details every feature of the game in the most specific design level. Since this document is the one that’s more used through the project, let’s call it just GDD when working with our team and leave the “100x” part for design theory.

The main goal of the GDD is to communicate the game vision to the whole dev team and so, its importance grows as the teams gets larger.

This document has to be easy to read, accesible, flexible enough to adapt design changes and well structured so it’s easy to navigate.

My experience different tools/formats for GDD:

Word document: no one is going to read it, just you and only while you write it.

Spreadsheet: yeah, I’ve seen this. This is just wrong. Don’t even think about it.

Wiki: you can’t see a clear overview of all the contents and some specifications are hidden in secret link paths. Also, it’s not easy for the team to notice the last changes as they have to explicitly check in the last changes section.

Trello: completely dynamic, distributed, with many structure possibilities and easy to use. Also, a breeze to use colaboratively. This is the best tool I’ve found so far for a GDD. Use it.

When using Trello for a GDD, you’ll have to keep in mind that the board will not reflect a process, but a product and hence, the column division should be made in terms of modules, not phases.

I like to keep my fun centric approach and use the following columns for every associated type of fun:

Script (Learning Fun)

Economy (Ownership Fun)

Catalog (Aesthetic Fun)

Algorithms (Expression Fun)

Structure (Challenge Fun)

Funnels (Activity Fun)

Return (Social Fun)

Mockups (Immersion Fun)

You can use this or any other division you think may suit your game, for example by contexts (Main Menu, World 1, World 2, Minigames…) or by departments (Art, Dev, Marketing…).

Whatever the choice, be sure that the whole team gets familiar with the GDD and doesn’t hesitate to colaborate on its development.

People love to leave their mark in the world. We pick brands that fit our “style”, listen to the music we love... draw, write, read, share, watch, play, build... everything according to our personal taste. We love to feel unique, to be special ad to let everyone else know. When we do it, we get Expression Fun.

This kind of fun has two directions:

Introversion, when you express yourself inwards and develop your inner self through different activities. The best way to make a game good in this way is to give it depth, that is, to make the possible choice scenarios for the player as many and interesting as possible so he can experience and learn about the game world. The player expresses itself by finding and using new patterns within the game mechanics (e.g.: Chess strategies).

Extroversion, working the other way around, expressing yourself outwards, through some medium and against some element. A good game requires the game to allow the player to leave its personal signature on the world so it can share the uniqueness of its self, that is, too have customization. This can be something as simple as a time attack record or as complex as a fully customized character. The player expresses itself by interacting with game elements and leaving a personal signature (e.g.: Minecraft creations).

When you are designing a game, you should balance both these aspects of the personality, since we all have both in different proportions. They both have in common that they give the player freedom to express itself, either through actions or into objects.

We’ll talk more about emergent design and customization, but for the time being, just remember:

Here is an important rule if you want to make a living creating games: the game is for the player, not for yourself.

If you want to show off your skills, make a portfolio, a youtube channel, a blog or any kind of personal project, but don’t bring yourself as the focus when you create for someone else.

It’s common to see this problem come up in any kind of team project, specially those who lack a strong direction or have a weak design and communication. 

The sympthoms arise differently depending on the pacient:

Programmers focusing on showing all the features they made in huge drop-down menus or any other straightforward solution, with no usability whatsoever.

Artists not focusing on blending their own style with the game’s, but instead showing off how good they draw/model/animate/whatever.

Musicians highlighting the presence of sound above other elements aiming for protagonism.

Designers making weird experiments. The design is also a mean to an end, so keep it behind the curtains.

Here is a good rule I’ve found to be true in top games:

Aesthetic Fun is the fun that comes from enjoying beautiful stuff. Beautiful is a very special word, as it’s meaning is different for every person so to be more specific: stuff that pleases because of its composition.

We talk here about aesthetic in a broad sense, not only visual aesthetic but also sound, smell, taste, structure or any other kind of beauty you can think of.

This kind of fun is one of the subjects of art so there’s a lot written already on the topic but yet so little you can take for granted. If you want to “synthesize” Aesthetic Fun, you’ll have to develop a strong sense of whatever aesthetic you want to develop.

The following are some directions I follow when looking for good aesthetics:

Theme: this is the meaning and message of you creation. Having a solid theme will empower creativity in design stages and allow interesting elements to arise. Strong themes make the game stand out from the crowd and attract attention and usually come from original mixes (e.g.: “shovel + knight” or “plumber + mushrooms”).

Coherence: if you have a good theme and a clear vision of what you want to achieve, all the elements should work towards reinforcing that vision. When something is out of place, it immediately calls the player attention in a negative manner, but also when a lot of things are out of place in the same way, a pattern arises and it’s positively accepted again. The key here is to make intention prevail over randomness.

Cohesion: think of elements in you game holistically instead of like a sum of parts, in other words, try to smooth the seams between different features of the same element (e.g.: if you make add a ball to your game, make the graphics, sound and animation click with each other). Cohesion also helps greatly improve Immersion Fun.

Resonance: when different elements change or reinforce their meaning when put next to other ones, resonance happens. Resonance add new scales of meaning and increases the interest of the different elements and the game as a whole.

These rules may seem a little abstract but there’s not much you can take as a general rule since this is one of the most specific types of fun. Trial and error most times works though ;)

Remember this golden rule for the Aesthetic Fun:

We humans are greedy bastards. Since we had use of reason, we found that gathering resources, shelter, friends and any other stuff improves the chances of survival against the environment.

Unfortunately, this got out of hand somewhere in the way, but that’s a topic for another blog, let’s talk about where’s the fun in Ownership Fun.

Phase 1: Wish

We don’t want just random stuff. We pick the stuff that we like the most and that connects to our values. This is commonly referred as perceived value and is core to marketing. We could call this the “package”, there are many ways to make a product appealing, but they all fall in one of two categories:

Rarity: is the value perceived in something just because it’s hard to find, like when stamp collectors want a rare stamp.

Utility: is the preconceived idea of the use the product will have when it’s finally acquired.

Different customers have different appeal for these two, in all the shapes they come in, but they have in common they are wanted for some reason. Good marketing always knows that reason and builds over it.

Phase 2: Achievement

When you finally get something you wanted, you get the second rush of Ownership Fun. This is the shortest phase, but also one of the most exciting ones. It’s what makes shopping sprees a thing and the rush you get when you get a promotion: the fun of earning something new. It comes in two flavors:

Resources: getting stuff that allows you to get more stuff (e.g.: promotion, salary, winner lottery ticket, roulette price...).

Goods: getting stuff you want to have (see previous phase).

After you acquire something and depending on what it is, you may have fun using it, but that falls in other types of fun in our classification (e.g.: a guitar -> Expression Fun).

Phase 3: Collection

Ok, you’ve finally achieved whatever. You’ll eventually use it, get tired of it or just abandon without using at all (because, you know, it was fun to buy it... but now it’s “meh”).

Does it have any kind of Ownership Fun left? It sure does:

Lots of “tiny” things: we like to make big piles of stuff we will seldom use or even won’t use at all if they are part of a pattern or interesting in big numbers (e.g.: collectible card games and money).

Few "big” things: we also like to keep things that are important to us, like stuff that help us keep memories (e.g.: wedding rings) or that have a big value, because they show status (e.g.: jewelry).

There’s no black-white here but a gray scale, perceived as some blend between social status and self-expression since no other one has it, and It’s important to notice that the collected stuff doesn’t necessarily has to have any value at all for other people, just the person who is collecting it.

A good example is the achievement systems implemented in modern games: no one will probably pay a dime to buy another player’s achievement, but that player will be the proud owner of it.

Remember this golden rule for the Ownership Fun:

This post works as a blend between two concepts we already talked about: the Colors of Fun and the Zooms of Game Design, explaining how to use them together and how to apply them in practice.

When we talked about the Zooms, the general idea was to progressively move from abstraction (i.e.: general view/zoomed out) to concretion (i.e.: detailed view/zoomed in).

When we talked about the Colors of Fun, the point was to classify or divide different kinds of experiences into recognizable categories.

The point of both these metaphors is to establish a language, but they need a practical application to be useful when synthesizing games. The chart above gathers the proposed tools for the Fun-Driven Design framework.

Here is a brief description of these tools, which will be detailed in other posts:

Learning Tools

The Synopsis (1x): a quick overview of what’s the game about.

The Plot (10x): a general brief about the story development and backdrop.

The Script: fully documented dialogs, storyboards, scenes.

Ownership Tools

The Features (1x): a description of remarkable features of the product.

The Valuables (10x): goods achievable in-game and their exchange rates.

The Economy (100x): the flows of resources and transaction flow balances.

Aesthetic Tools

The Theme (1x): the core of the artistic message of the game.

The Game Feel (10x): general guidelines about the game “look & feel”.

The Catalog (100x): a list of all the art assets needed for the game.

Expression Tools

The Rules (1x): games are simplifications of reality via these.

The Mechanics (10x): the inner workings & dynamics of combined rules.

The Algorithms (100x): the detailed description of the mechanics.

Challenge Tools

The Goals (1x): the main objective of the player in the game.

The Flow (10x): how does the player navigate through the game.

The Structure (100x): how does the challenge evolve through the game.

Activity Tools

The Pace (1x): how does time, speed and rythm influence the game.

The Loops (10x): what events repeat cyclically (info->action->result->repeat).

The Funnels (100x): what points of the experience leak engagement.

Social Tools

The Target (1x): who is this project for.

The Relations (10x): how does the target interact with other people.

The Return (100x): how does the player return value or refer users.

Immersion Tools

The Interface (1x): how does the player interact with the world.

The Contexts (10x): where and how does the player act.

Learning Fun (our green Color of Fun) is the process of discovering the unknown and the way to feed one of the most characteristic human features: the curiosity.

It should not be confused with academic learning which focuses on the acquisition of new skills of any type as a mean to an end (e.g.: being competent to work in the future). Learning Fun is an end by itself, to satisfy the inner wish to get to know something.

Just to be sure we are on the same page before continuing, some examples of this kind of fun:

When you watch a movie or read a book and you want to learn how it ends, that’s learning fun.

When you are playing a game and you want to discover every optional path, that’s learning fun.

When you are exploring a place to see what you can find, that’s learning fun.

When you see a link and wonder what’s on the other side, that’s learning fun.

If you stare for a few mins to what’s on the previous link, that’s learning fun.

This concept of “Learning Fun” is the sum of what Marc Leblanc calls narrative and discovery. I see them as two sides of the same kind of fun: narrative is the expectation to know and discovery the act of knowing.

Stories are the most common way of enabling this kind of fun, since they are very common in our culture, but there are other ways to enable it like complex topologies, emergent mechanics or simply vast amounts of content... Any kind of system that makes you wonder “What comes next?” is subject to this fun.

Learning Fun is one of the best ways to enable a good sense of progression and to improve long-term engagement. Use it when you want to develop deep experiences. You can use storytelling, secrets, surprises, worlds, riddles, quests, puzzles... Anything that triggers curiosity will “paint” this fun into your game.

Remember this golden rule for the Learning Fun:

I’ve come to believe that the earlier a phase is in the development roadmap, the most critical it is. One of these early stages in the Fun-Driven Design framework, is the prototyping phase.

The main focus of this phase should be looking for and finding the maximum amount of problems that could arise later within the project and gathering info to maker proper decisions about them.

How to prototype successfully:

List a number of critical issues that could arise later in the project.

Define a series of prototypes to quickly test out those particular issues.

Write down a list of questions for each prototype to answer.

Build the prototypes as fast as you can and test your questions.

Repeat from step 1 until you have a solid understanding

Trash every prototype, DON’T develop them into the final product.

Execute the project

The last one is probably on of the most important. I’ve seen many projects fail because they were built on top of a quick-and-dirty prototype (just to be clear: that’s not a problem, they should be that way) and collapsed under their own weight.

This process is nothing new at all, but it seems to be forgotten at some degree, probably because of the non-stopping world we live nowadays. The idea of getting to the final feeling of a very specific feature is also known as “vertical slicing” in the development community.

The point of the prototype is to experiment and find out if an idea or hypothesis is correct. In order to do that you can create any kind of prototype you come up with, but there are common solutions that may save you some time and give some structure to your process.

Prototyping techniques:

The Concept: when you want to test feeling and curiosity fun, the concept is the way to go. This piece of work should focus first on setting up the unique mood of the game, second in being beautiful. The concept is usually graphic piece, but it can be also descriptive or aural.

The Toy: this is the way to go when you want to test expression and skill fun. The only way to tell if a experience is fun is to actually test it. The toy should give a good insight of the interaction experience, focusing on user input and game output (feedback).

The Machination: these are basically feedback diagrams and they work great to test operation and value fun. The concept and tool was developed by Joris Dormans and it’s a great way to test economies and dynamic systems. It’s a powerful tool, but takes some time to learn how to use it properly.

The Game Draft Doc (1xGDD) is cool and that, but its still an overall idea of what the game should be. It’s ok as the design document for small projects like game jams, but it should be further developed for bigger projects.

Once you have a draft of what you think your game should be, you should move on and prototype a few of the core concepts, see if they are fun and, if they are, move ahead to the next step: the Game Description Document, or 10xGDD.

If you want to get serious with your game, you’ll have to describe the major features of your game. The 10xGDD takes a similar approach to the 1xGDD, but this time, instead of fitting the whole game into a single page, the idea is to divide the game in “areas” and then fit every one of them into single page abstracts. The resulting document should ideally be no more than ten pages.

This division could be done in many ways: by department, game parts or any other criteria you choose, just be sure to aim for an even division.

Again, I’ve made a template, with a division based on fun type for the Fun-Driven Design Framework. Feel free to use it, just make sure you make cool games ;)

The first step in creative processes is usually the so-called “amazing idea” that comes out of nowhere. Unfortunately, our brains are made in such way that most of the stuff coming out of them is automagically assigned that “great” tag.

There are ways to fix this, the most common one is a small dose of reality or the opinions of other people (not always guaranteed to work though).

Writing down the details of the idea helps to do a reality check, hence the 1xGDD or Game Draft Document. This is a fancy word for “write down your idea in a single page” and its important, since as you describe the major features the problems will arise.

I’ve made a 1xGDD template for myself around the areas of the Fun-Driven Design framework. It makes a division of 8 areas, one related to one different Color of Fun:

Synopsis: usually the first thing you come up when coming up with an idea, a brief description of your game (e.g.: a game about a plumber who jumps over turtles to rescue the princess).

Features: the most remarkable features of your game and what makes players want it before even having played (e.g.: you can pick up different pickups like tanooki costumes and fire flowers to gain different abilities).

Theme: the game ambience, background, mood, feeling, culture and others that give it an original personality (e.g.: the mushroom kingdom, an alternate world where different garden animals rule and is connected to the real world through pipes).

Rules: the gameplay restrictions. Games are always simplifications of reality through the use of rules/restrictions (e.g.: you can move left and right and jump. Jumping over enemies damages them, hitting block from beneath breaks them.).

Goals: the player objectives though the game (e.g.: get to the endo of each level, rescue the princess at the end of the last one).

Pace: the rhythm and speed at which the experience develops (e.g.: quiet-paced gameplay, with time to take decisions before taking action, but accelerating when executing them).

Target: the type of player you are aiming this game to (e.g: players aged 3+ who like toony aesthetics, and accessible gameplay).

Interface: how does the player interact with the game (e.g.: the player uses the standard NES controller to jump and run and gets all the game information through the TV set screen and speakers).

For the 1xGDD keep always in mind the golden rule:

If your idea doesn’t fit in one page, it won’t fit anywhere.

We had already talk about how to divide design documents into different “zoom” levels, we’ll learn now about when to use each kind of document inside a very special production roadmap: the “Fun Driven Design” framework.

Let’s focus on the design-intensive parts and leave the other ones out for this (marketing, support, publishing...).

This production scheme alternates between production phases (white) and design phases (grey) but is also meant to be iterative inside each phase itself. It’s an approach somehow in-between the classical 100% ahead planning and the more modern iterative schemes (agile, etc...).

Let’s take a closer look to each phase:

Problem Definition: first of all, a game is made for a reason and with some objectives. These could be defined by a client, by yourself, by the team or anyone else. The point here is to know in detail why are you doing this, and what do you expect to achieve with the project.

Draft (1xGDD): a simple design draft doc describing the overall features of the game. This document should be polished and repeated until satisfying enough. This is a good stage to get input from the whole dev team or even complete drafts from them.

Prototyping: when the 1xGDD is solid enough and the team is happy with it, its time to prototype gameplay mechanics and other features and to develop the artistic concept of different elements. Again, making as many propositions and iterating until needed. The point here is to have the best idea of what a small part of the game will look like, what is also known as a vertical slice. Quick and dirty is the key to this phase, just be sure to NOT build over the prototype after.

Description (10xGDD): time to make the idea more solid. This time with a zoomed-in version describing the types of content, actions and other features present in the game. This document should include at least enough info to enable the pre-production phase.

Pre-Production: here we build the foundations of the final game. We don’t focus on amount of content, but use placeholder assets and focus on building a strong foundation. Keep in mind modularity and fexibility though, since product requirements are always changing. The approach here should be the opposite of the prototyping phase, that is, horizontal slicing, slow and steady.

Detail (100xGDD): details are everything, time to take care of that. This phase could take place parallel to pre-production. The designer should specify the specifics of every game feature. Some extensive documents will come out of this work, giving shape to this doc.

One of the hardest parts of game design as a game develops is to be able to keep a fresh view of the project once you’ve already become familiar with it. At some point it’s near impossible, and thats when any kind of fresh feedback is more valuable than ever.

When designers reach that point and feedback starts flowing in, there are two common reactions to it:

Explanation: the player points out at something and the designer explains why is it that way, but the player still doesn’t like it. This is specially noticeable when the designer is familiar with the anwser, which means the issue has arised several times and it’s not getting addressed.

Self-criticism: the player points out at something and the designer tries to understand what’s wrong with the game or what the game is not communicating well to the player. You should always focus on what the players are trying to tell instead of what they are saying.

The first one is just designer narcissism and leads to crappy games. Don’t do that.

The second one is listening, and will greatly help you improve your game if used correctly.

I use this template when gathering feedback because:

The playtime fields tells a lot more about engagement than a simple “Yeah, it’s very fun” (specially when coming from a friend).

When players describe the game in a tweet you get a feeling of how people will talk about your game.

It separates positive and negative feedback, which then compared is also a good measure of how good was the user experience.

It includes a ranking of the different areas, so players don’t rate 5 stars everything just to fill it up.

One of the most common problems I’ve seen in unexperienced game designers is “the million page problem”, that is, when you develop a game design document (GDD) in such detail right from the start that the only one who ever looks at it back again it’s you and only you. This also means that the design will be rigid and hard to redirect when feedback arrives.

One solution I specially like is to make a layered approach, with different levels of detail. This is more friendly to approach for any member of the team and allows better for changes. I came up with the concept of “game design zooms”, as it fits exactly what I mean here:

1xGDD: a general, single page design document where you can get the overall idea of the game. This doc could be used for propositions in the beggining stages and to introduce new people to the project when it’s in advanced stages already. It is a good way to go for game jams too where you don’t have time for a more detailed design.

10xGDD: a more developed version of the GDD. Its better to think of it as a collection of single page summaries for every area. This document will be the base for the pre-production fase, so the focus should be on listing all the types of features, not the features themselves.

100xGDD: the most detailed version. I’ve found Trello to be the best way to handle this one because of it’s dynamic nature and the possibility to allow team members to provide context focused feedback. You can use one column per each section of your 10xGDD.

The best way to use this method is to alternate between design and production, not design everything ahead because that’ll lead to more and more hard to fix errors in the production phases.

I’ve always liked the idea of classifying different kinds of fun. After stumbling upon many different models (see end of post), I’ve decided to make my own classification.

The 8 Colors of Fun:

Learning Fun: The fun you get from good scripting, storytelling, dialogue, humor, drama, comedy... The power of discovering stories and information. You can find this in some books, movies, TV series and movies.

Feeds curiosity.

Ownership Fun: This is the kind of fun you get when you achieve something new or acquire new stuff. Common in games with lots of items, achievements, upgrades and similar systems.

Fills greed.

Aesthetic Fun: This is the fun associated with harmony and pleasure of the senses. You get this when you feel something beautiful, either visual, aural or by any other way.

Enables pleasure.

Expression Fun: This is the kind of fun you get when you feel your actions have an impact inside the game's world, when you feel free to go a billion ways. Examples: improvising when playing a musical instrument or playing with Lego blocks.

Allows creativity.

Challenge Fun: You get this kind of fun when the right amount of difficulty is put into place, for example in a Tennis match between two players of similar skill. Be careful though: if too much power is granted to the player, the game gets boring. 

Empowers competitiveness.

Activity Fun: The kind of fun you get when you turn your mind off and let the time go by. Typical of casual games, Sudokus, and other mechanic tasks.

Palliates boredom.

Social Fun: The kind of fun you get for sharing an activity or interact with other people in any way. Common in team sports, social games and ranked games, leagues, etc...

Battles loneliness.

Immersion Fun: The kind of fun you get for diving into the game's universe. A good interface is key to achieve this, but also player connection to the game universe, like in some IPs (Star Wars, Pokemon, LotR, etc...).

Allows fantasy.

Comparison to other models:

Marc LeBlanc’s “8 Types of Fun”: I liked the number of categories and most were definetly well placed, but I believe the term “Aesthetic” was misplaced, “Discovery” was conceptually too close to “Narrative”. “Submission” was also a weird one.

Maslow’s, “Hierarchy of Needs”: all the levels except “physiological” blended well enough with my model:

Safety = Learning + Owning = Owning knowledge/items

Belonging = Community + Immersion = Being part of people/world

Steem = Aesthetic + Expression = Being/Seeing something unique

Self-Actualization = Challenge + Activity = Improving skills

Bonus track, “Biblical Sins”: Ok, I had to show this one because it did fit so nicely. It has some flaws (specially with “Lust” and “Envy”) but you can imagine the equivalent:

Greed: wanting to increase your ownership at all costs.

Glutonny: excess of pleasure.

Pride: excess of expression.

Wrath: what you get after playing Super Meat Boy (after challenge).

Sloth: doing the easiest activity.

Lust: wanting to be in social situations more often than not. The sin is more specific here (you can hang out with your friends and family as much as you like! :D).

Envy: wishing for a fantasy to fullfill.