When a Designer designs a kettle, what does he think? Is it easy to hold without getting burned? Does she keep the tea hot for a long time? Is it easy to serve tea with her? All these, and many other questions, are pertinent questions when you imagine the design of an everyday object and they boil down to: are the characteristics of this object fulfilling the function that was assigned to it?
Of course there are features that go beyond functionality. Visceral, behavioral and reflexive factors, as discussed by Donald Norman, are a set of elements that directly and simultaneously impact the experience of using an artifact. While some of these meanings obviously arise from the user, from their past experiences and preferences, another is, as expected, designed by someone, and that someone is the Designer.
What do kettles have to do with games, though? Both have a Purpose. We’re not talking about defeating the Boss, saving the princess or moving to the next level, but something deeper, more essential, and that is the foundation of the project. We can call this by several names: Game Essence, Core, X. In this, and later articles on this topic, we will adopt the term Experience Proposal.
What do kettles have to do with games, though? Both have a Purpose. We’re not talking about defeating the Boss, saving the princess or moving to the next level, but something deeper, more essential, and that is the foundation of the project. We can call this by several names: Game Essence, Core, X. In this, and later articles on this topic, we will adopt the term Experience Proposal.
The Experience Proposal is what defines Game Design as an actual Design performance. Recapitulating what was discussed in the previous text (which you can find at this link), the Game Designer is a technical role within the team, which aims to understand the interactive experience that is being suggested by the project, within the expectations of its audience and the team, and design the artifacts used to make this possible.
In short, the Experience Proposal is what the game aims to convey to its users. The cornerstone under which the Designer must orbit all the artifacts of the project, making that proposed experience count.
If in an initial view, for example, Games and Kettles do not have a clear relationship, the maxim of the initial question about whether that object is fulfilling the function that was determined for it is something that unites both. And if in the case of the Kettle this function is determined by its purpose (from Greek, Telos), in a Game, its purpose is internal to the product, defined by the Designer and the team, since as an entertainment product (we are not talking about of Serious Games at that moment), the Game has an end in itself (therefore, AUTOTELIC).
Okay, philosophies aside, what does this mean for development?
In the first moment of conceptualizing a project, the essential step is to understand what kind of Experience Proposal you and your team are trying to convey. Not Gender, Not Mechanic, Not Narrative, Not Visual. Experience Proposal.
This, in a Design-oriented approach, means establishing your problem to be solved. Your goal that needs to be achieved by the product. Your goal. Be it “Living a Survival Adventure” or “Creating a Collaborative World where Players need to share resources”, through “Instigating Horror and Revulsion” to “Considering decisions in an ever-changing environment”. All of these are valid Experience Proposals and based on them the development process can continue.Now, if you now have an Experience Proposal for your project, it’s up to you to solve the problem you got into and created to solve. How about “Living a Survival Adventure”? How to convey this to your user?
It’s time to think about what artifacts you have on hand for this. As a Designer, it’s important that you understand the rules of the media you’re dealing with, just as it’s important that you know how to break and subvert them when necessary and interesting.
Given your Experience Proposal, think about what you can apply so that your product delivers exactly that. What narrative will be used? What mechanics reinforce your idea? Which ones don’t reinforce and should be discarded? What type of Core Loop delivers the proposal you want?
The process of a Game Designer when conceptualizing, structuring and documenting a project is to list and elaborate these diverse artifacts according to how they reinforce their Experience Proposal, as well as reinforce themselves, creating a synergy that makes the cohesive game, which later facilitates the team’s understanding to develop, the players’ understanding of their learning curves and immersion in the world, the pitch and presentation of the project to investors and publishers (since their game can be summarized in a cohesive way from its Experience Proposal) and even expansion of the project, which are based on the same foundation, but create ramifications on how to approach the proposal without becoming dissonant.
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At the same time, if you’re not contributing to the Experience Proposition or reinforcing the game’s other artifacts, that component, as interesting and fun as it sounds, probably shouldn’t be in your project in the first place.
Following this kind of approach is a matter of habit. Submitting the creative aspect to problematization and thinking not only about the product but also about how this is serving its audience and the company’s interests are complicated issues to apply from the beginning, but with a focus, it is possible to understand that game development, in Game Designer’s work, is in fact a technical and project effort much greater than having good ideas and thinking about fun moments.
Thinking about your user, how he will feel using your product and how you will deliver it to him is an activity that requires mastery of theory and practice in equal measure and, although we feel isolated as Game Designers in some times, there is another area of expertise that, if not the same as ours, has so many similarities that, particularly, I like to treat it like a sister (or perhaps a Father): User Experience Designer.
But that’s for the next chapter.
