This page gathers links to the best, most insightful game design articles I’ve found. All are highly recommended.
10 Game Design Pitfalls
Gamasutra Staff
A comprehensive look at common game design process failures, with good advice for solutions and for avoiding these problems in the first place.
40 Ways To Be A Better (Game) Designer
Raph Koster
A short-but-invaluable compilation of game design best practices.
About the Ego
Corvus Elrod
Corvus Elrod of BoRT nails the game designer’s role in the industry.
All For Games: An Interview with Warren Spector
Brandon Sheffield
I have a great deal of respect for Warren Spector’s work, and it really comes from just one game: Deus Ex. This is a wide-ranging and in-depth interview filled with great little nuggets, but chief among them is Spector’s idea of “linked sandboxes”.
Avatars Aren’t Tokens
Raph Koster
An astute observation of the psychological and subliminal effects of avatar design on player behavior. Discussed through the lens of an MMO, but applicable to any character-driven game.
Basics of Effective FPS Encounter Design
Steve Gaynor
This article looks at FPS encounter design in great detail, through the lens of F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2. It’s a subject I rarely see covered with such a direct focus, which is odd considering the contemporary popularity of the genre.
Carmack Talks Rage, Other Stuff
Jim Rossignol
This is a series of video interviews with John Carmack and Polish games magazine CD-Action, made known to me (and now you!) via the excellent Rock, Paper, Shotgun. When I say “interviews”, I really mean “John Carmack blabs about whatever the hell comes to mind for half an hour, and it’s totally awesome”.
Constructing Artificial Emotions: A Design Experiment
Daniel Cook
Explores methods for evoking complex emotions across a wide spectrum, building from a most-fascinating experimental game concept through a variety of scientific sources.
Designing the Solution Space
David Rosen
Applies the concept of “solution space” in machine learning, to game design. A short article, but densely-packed with information and lots of helpful visual aids.
Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach
Bill Fulton
As Bill Fulton so succinctly puts it: “Some gamers are fuckwads.” This in-depth article explores how to address that problem, by explicitly designing social experiences.
Game Design Essentials: 20 Difficult Games
John Harris
The first in Gamasutra’s “Game Design Essentials” series. Analyzes and provides design lessons for 20 particularly-difficult games.
Game Design Essentials: 20 Open World Games
John Harris
The second in Gamasutra’s “Game Design Essentials” series. Analyzes and provides design lessons for 20 open-world games.
Game Design Essentials: 20 Unusual Control Schemes
John Harris
The third in Gamasutra’s “Game Design Essentials” series. Analyzes and provides design lessons for 20 games with unusual control schemes.
Game Design Essentials: 20 Mysterious Games
John Harris
The fourth of Gamasutra’s “Game Design Essentials” series. Analyzes and provides design lessons for 20 games in which exploration and discovery — the uncovering of the mysterious — play a pivotal role.
Game Design Sketchbook: Testing the Limits of Single-Player
Jason Rohrer
Jason Rohrer tackles the problem of why classic games like Chess and Go are infinitely replayable, while modern single-player video games are not, and proposes a solution by way of integrated competition.
Game Theory Applied to Game Design
Wolfire Games
Analyzes the place of rock-paper-scissors mechanics in game design.
Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs
Richard A. Bartle
This article details Bartle’s classic taxonomy of gamers: Achievers, Explorers, Socialisers, and Killers. Focused on MUDs but adaptable to many other genres and styles of gaming.
Know When to Stop Designing, Quantitatively
Aza Raskin
This is not explicitly a game design article; rather, it addressed the broader topic of human interface design. Specifically, how to quantify the efficiency of an interface, and use that information to improve it. It’s absolutely brilliant, and with a little lateral thinking, is easily applied to nearly all aspects of game design.
Love Transcending Death: Challenge Versus Story in Calamity Annie
Gregory Weir
A design analysis of Anna Anthropy’s indie game, Calamity Annie, and its unique combination of punishing difficulty and fluid, engaging story. Presents the idea of decoupling a game’s story from its formal rules, to prevent these elements from cannibalizing each other.
The Making Of: Deus Ex
Edge Magazine
Because Deus Ex is one of my favorite games ever, on any platform, here’s a brief-yet-fascinating making-of on that game. Imagining some of the locations and plot points that they cut is particularly interesting. There could’ve been a moon base!
On Will Wright’s Team, Would You Be a Solvent, or the Glue?
Adam Bryant
An interview with Will Wright from the New York Times, discussing team-building and the personal and social side of management.
Post-It Note Design Docs
Dan Cook
An interesting alternative to the traditional game design documentation process, explained in detail.
Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
Henry Jenkins
MIT professor Henry Jenkins addresses eight common myths about the highly-politicized but ill-supported “negative effects” of video games and game culture.
Ten Ways to Improve Developer Efficiency
Joe Ludwig
Joe Ludwig succinctly outlines ten things to ensure rapid iteration in game development. Speaking from experience, from working with none of these to working with most of them, I have to say his analysis is spot-on.
Video Game Climaxes
Richard Terrell
Richard Terrell classifies and analyzes several types of climaxes for video games: how to build them up, how to deliver them right, and what it means for the overall game experience.
Ways To Make Your Virtual Space More Social
Raph Koster
Koster makes the case for downtime in virtual worlds and MMOs as an enabler of socialization, and then provides numerous concrete examples of methods for increasing the frequency and quality of social interaction among players.
