Almost everyone who has played a game has also come up with ideas for games of their own. Many people take this even further and want to make their own games so they can share their ideas and potentially create something completely new and unique. This is great and I\u2019d encourage anyone with a desire to do so to make their ideas become reality, but there\u2019s a big issue that must be addressed if you want others to enjoy your creation, and that is mindset. Specifically the difference in perspective between \u201cbuilding your idea\u201d and \u201cdesigning an experience\u201d, the key difference here being methodical and conscious decisions about how the player will experience your game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s relatively easy to \u201cmake\u201d some mechanics that sound cool and throw them together, but this rarely ever results in a fun experience, especially for anyone besides the creator. To truly \u201cdesign\u201d an experience you need to understand what makes something fun so that you can leverage that knowledge to create better systems. You need to understand what the individual (who is likely not yourself) wants from your game and how you can give them the tools to create an enjoyable experience. In doing so, your decisions become more deliberate and you can analyze and test if a given change accomplishes your goal. If not, then you can step back and find a different solution, eventually resulting in an experience that is refined and enjoyable to those who play it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A good example of this can be found in mods for existing games. Oftentimes there will be large mods which have massive amounts of community support and are often recommended over the base game. These mods have been designed and built by members of the community for <\/em>members of the community, and build upon the base game in interesting and unique ways. On the other side of this, if you look through mod catalogs you\u2019ll find all kinds of weird mods that do things you\u2019ve never thought of, but also you never really wanted and still don\u2019t even though it exists. These kinds of mods highlight two important things, the first being that there are people out there who want very different things than you, especially because they took the time to build said mod. The second is that these are good examples of \u201cbuilding an idea\u201d and not \u201cdesigning an experience\u201d. While the creator probably accomplished their goal of building the thing they wanted, the mod doesn\u2019t really appeal to the larger community and as such probably won\u2019t be used very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All that said, you can absolutely always make something for yourself for fun. It doesn\u2019t have to be big or even unique if it\u2019s something you want to make, but if you ever want to turn game development into a career or even just want other people to like the things you make, you\u2019re going to have to learn to design for someone besides yourself. At best, you\u2019re making games for people similar to yourself. At worst you\u2019re building things for someone who is nothing like you and has completely different interests. The reality is that if you want your game to be successful, you\u2019re going to have to learn to design for both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost everyone who has played a game has also come up with ideas for games of their own. Many people take this even further and want to make their own games so they can share their ideas and potentially create something completely new and unique. This is great and I\u2019d encourage anyone with a desire … Continue reading Building Experiences: “Making” vs “Designing”<\/span>