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Game Development

Figuring Out How Your Game Should Be Played

As this will be my first actual post here, I feel I should make this clear: Most posts here will be on my own thoughts and opinions on game development or related topics. They would be based on my own knowledge and understanding at the time of posting. I do not plan to treat them as absolute facts nor do I plan to do too deep of a research or provide sources. Treat them as my own ramblings or spiel if you want, as I will only be writing whenever I feel like it and I do not want to turn this into a chore.

When developing a game, it is actually important to figure out how your game should be played. Notice how “should” is highlighted here.

What this means is you, as the game developer/creator/designer, need to understand how an average player is intended to play your game. This is important because it will influence how the game itself is designed.

This should not be mistaken as deciding how a game is played. When you decide on how a game is played, you’re basically telling your players that there is only one way to play, which more often than not, is just being condescending.

An example of this would be back during the earlier days of Diablo 3, where the development team *cough*JayWilson*cough* often makes changes and tweaks to the game simply because players were not playing the way he intended them to – that unless the game is played in a way that he thinks is correct, he will make sure whatever it is you are doing will be made unviable. This is what we want to avoid unless we have a specific goal in mind.

How Your Game Should Be Played

As I said above, the reason why it’s important to figure out how your game should be played is because it will directly influence how the game itself is designed.

On the surface, this seems a no-brainer; of course you would know how the game would be played – you’re the one making it! But, do you?

Let’s break it down a little…

What is the core mechanic(s) of your game?
Let’s use classic Mario as an example. The core mechanic of a Mario game is to get from point A to point B. This is the most important element of your game and can never be neglected or the game simply cannot be completed.

How is the core expanded by other components/mechanics of your game?
These would be the different obstacles (enemies, pits, lava, etc) & power-ups (coins, mushrooms, etc)

How is this information relayed to your players?
At the very start of the game, before you even start moving, you see Mario standing on the left side of the screen looking towards the right. You also see an enemy moving towards Mario. Also within view are shining “?” blocks. Just by looking at the screen, a player would instinctively know they need to head towards the right of the map. After all, they want to get to the mysterious golden box and also take out the enemy in front of them.

This is a great example of how core and expanded mechanics are used to guide players from the get-go, showing players how the game should be played… But it is not the only way to play it…

And really, there are probably more considerations to think about depending on the game you’re trying to make but these 3 will always be at the top of the list.


Figuring out how your game should be played allows you to set up your pieces in a more instinctive layout which greatly helps with the overall feel and flow of your game. Your players may not even notice it, but if you move any of these pieces away, it becomes obvious that something is not quite right. Imagine if the camera started with Mario centered on the screen with no enemies or blocks in sight. You may figure out where you’re supposed to go after moving left and right, but that is extra time and steps taken for players to figure out the game on their own.

But perhaps we’re jumping a little too far ahead since having a solid idea of how your game should be played is also incredibly important during development.

It is not unusual to make changes to a game while still in development. In fact, it would be very difficult for anyone to come up with an idea and stick to it without making any changes at all – and before anyone gets confused, figuring out how your game should be played does not mean coming up with an idea and setting it in stone. It’s actually the opposite.

It provides you more freedom to make changes to your game with more confidence that it would improve your game. Because you already know what your core gameplay is, it becomes easier to figure out if whatever changes you’re looking at actually makes any sense in the first place. Without this knowledge, you may end up going back and forth, spending valuable time and effort towards a dead-end you could have easily avoided in the first place. This also helps prevent a scenario where you try to add too many things, leaving you with a heavily disfigured chimera that no one can describe even if they tried.

Let’s go back to Mario again.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, made it very obvious how Mario should be played and as explained above, did very well in showing that to the players. The majority of players, especially those unfamiliar with the game, most definitely played the game this way; run to the right, avoid pits, fireballs, lava and a variety of enemies. Find and defeat the big bad boss, save the princess (or not), then continue with the next level.

However, it was not the only way to play the game. For example, players could easily bypass enemies and other obstacles by running on the blocks at the top of dungeon levels. (Notice how despite having most, if not all, expanded components of the game being ignored here, the core mechanic is still in play?)

Mario also contains many secrets, including hidden coins, sewers and perhaps most importantly, shortcuts to other levels. With these, players started to do speedruns, attempting to clear the game in shorter and shorter times. And as more and more players started doing this, more efficient routes were found and shared.

Now perhaps one could argue that, there was nothing Nintendo could do back then to stop players from doing things they didn’t want them to, or that the rate of information spreading was so slow most players wouldn’t know about it for years or decades.

All reasonable arguments, but it doesn’t change the fact that Nintendo have continued to embrace and adopt this culture of allowing players to do what they want even if they do impose certain limitations (understandably) due to the nature of online social presence. Just look at Super Metroid, arguably the very first true game with speedrunning in mind, rewarding players with shorter completion times.

So figuring out how your game should be played is something any and every developer/creator needs to think about, if not from the start of coming up with the idea itself, then at the very least, from the moment you decide to seriously consider taking an idea to completion.

You want to have a good understanding of how your game is meant to be played, so you can design your game with that in mind, which in turn allows you to pass that information to your players so they can enjoy it in such manner, but also allowing players freedom to play as they see fit without completely breaking off from the gameplay.

Yes, these are very broad statements, but I strongly believe once you’ve given some thought on how this applies to your own game, you would start to understand how this can help your game development going forward.

You don’t have to be perfect, either. No one is. If we go back to the start of Mario, there were no indication that we had to jump on the enemy to defeat it! New players back then most likely had to die a couple of times before they figured it out…

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