What makes a great game design?

We can argue over the technicality of making games, about the gameplay, art and technical trickery. But what makes a game a great game is the emotional element in it. The greatest game were designed with the phrase, man it would be awesome to play a game like this. It didn't matter after that if it was a text based game or an online multiplayer game on a handheld device. If it didn't address the emotional aspect, that game was gone.

So a great gameplay has to address the emotional elements like would it be fun, would it excite me, or would it make me angry or frightened or happy? For me, a game design would start with the emotional ambience first. What kind of music or movies or games I love, what would be an epic experience, what kind of ideas/theories/conspiracies/myths interests me,  Once you enter into that zone, that's when everything starts to flow, that's when you come up with the best ideas and maybe even have a revelation to come up with an innovative gameplay or an idea. You talk about things, you flirt with different concepts and then  you see a need and that becomes your point of focus.

Of course, that does not mean that the game comes purely from psychedelic ways of execution. It is very important to have necessary knowledge of the craft. You have to know about games and it's gameplay to execute your brilliant idea. Talent is superior but experience is wisdom, great games can never be made out of ignorance. However, the base of any good game have to be emotional.

Fun is, for the most part, the most important emotion that is required in a game. It is one single emotion that describes a game to be any good or not. But how do you know if your game is any fun? Well, most fun games can be described in a sentence and the game would sound fun in that sentence. Eg.
Killing thousands of zombies
Cutting fruits with a ninja sword
Aiming at pigs with birds
Indiana jones action adventure
Pulling the skull out of a guys head along with spinal cord attached to it!
Building an army and destroying other armies.
Police car chase
Planting bombs or counter terrorists preventing it to happen.

Fun, can never to too fast or too slow that would make the player loose interest in the game. There has to be an organic flow. Anything that requires an audience should have a pacing to it. It is hard to describe or truely understand pacing with a rigid set of rules, written on papers. However, to really know what pacing means we have to understand the organic flow of things. What I mean by organic flow is that, based on the elements around you, like emotions, pacing would vary and would effect the gameplay, thus effecting the pacing itself, while the game progresses. The flow comes naturally and it is this nature of the flow that makes the player play the game forever because it fits right in the real world flow of things. True fun in the game would only be achieved when we can find an organic flow in a game. This flow can be directed by mostly GUI and gameplay. GUI would be the HUD, menu design, placement of buttons etc. Where as, gameplay would be, the rewards and punishments, game features etc. Sound, maybe I'm wrong at this one, does not lead the flow but helps or accentuate the organic flow. Although I do think that having a lack of sound also contributes to the flow, ofcourse, not all the times. The visuals, on the other hand, does not directs the flow but it does help in overall fun element in the game. The kind of art style that is used, sets the mood of the game thus contributing in the overall experience of the game.

Most refined games are made by paying attention to details. No game can be fun or great without these refinements. Attention to detail does not mean to have things filled with details but to know the right amount, or the lack of it. It can be minimalistic or filled with details, it can have multiple colors or just mono chromed, it can have only one feature or plenty. It is the idea to give importance and equal respect to every part of the game design and the process. Playing the game millionth time, refining it and making it better with every iteration. Great games are never a one shot deal but a laborious process of refinements by iteration.

Lastly, you have to question every perfect game design and every Holy Grail. Break every rule, once you learn them well. Challenge every design, every theory because that is the only way to improve and innovate better design. However, by no means disrespecting any design or rule.

What is a game?

Before I start blogging about gaming and game design, we have to first figure out how do we define a game. There are many definitions and debates on games and it's classification. Is game an art? Does game teaches you anything? Does it effect the mental state or human behaviour and so on. In this post I'll express my views on what I think is a game.

It is very easy for me to be inclined towards the idea that games are an art form. Maybe few decades earlier I would have had a different opinion but with the advancement in technology, making games has been more of an art work than before. Some games like Journey or any game by Tim Schafer from Double Fine Studios are visual orgies.
Art suggests an idea like in a painting, a picture, a sculpture or a film. They might not be real, like navi's in Avatar or Tom and Jerry, but they suggest an idea that we believe in. Games, like art, suggest ideas. The idea that there is a demigod who is going to kill every God he can find, or the idea that you have to save a princess by killing every turtle and eating mushrooms as much as you can. Games are surrounded by these highly imaginative worlds and by great artists who uses there skill to bring these creative(sometime down right insane) possibilities to real world. So games are surrounded by, made by, and presented by different art forms, just like movies. Games, being a visual communicator, cannot be denied as an art form.

However, because of its commercial nature, it can't be just called an art. For art creation does not have any monetary motives at its core. Games, specially these days, have business model that are integrated inside the game design. It no longer has just fun element in game design but ways to buy or sell products within the game. Games, for the most part, is a product. The sooner we accept it, the better it is, for us, to understand its inner functioning and it's characteristics. Games are a product that gives you a set of problems. It gives you a purpose to involve yourself to a problem and finding a solution for it. Games aren't just a product, but an entertainment product. Just like a  movie or a any product that communicates visually, it has to entertain the audience or it's user. If there is no entertainment then solving the problem would not result to anything since its not a real world problem but a 'suggestion of an idea'.

Games are the best examples of causality, the idea of cause and effect. Everything has a purpose and for every action there is a reaction in the game world. This forms the basis of the gameplay, which is beyond the scope of art( unless we go into technicality of the art form where shapes, forms, values etc react with each other to form a balanced composition). So a game would be anything that gives you a set of problem to solve and the process of solving this problem would effect the nature of the game. There is a purpose to everything we do in the game. Although, this idea of causality comes by default to any design since it exists in real world and can not be avoided. However, having knowledge or senses of its existence would help us understand the core mechanics of the game.

Games also provides us with basic fundamentals of behaviour and nature of the law. Every game have a set of rules, which would be the only way to play that game. Thus introducing a form of law and order that is needed to be addressed before you enter that world. If you change the rules of the game, you change the very nature of the game, making it a completely different game within the same world.
The fundamentals of behaviour comes from the gameplay itself. How one solves the problem, the repetitive nature, the rewards and punishments, the progression and frustration. All these would show you the behavioural fundamentals. Having knowledge of these behaviours would help design the game better and leave the player less frustrated or angry.

So to conclude, a game would basically project three things to you, this is the problem, these are the rulers, now how will you solve it? A good game will make this process fun and solving the problem would eventually give you satisfaction.