Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game that is fun, challenging and meaningful to play. A game designer decides the rules, goals, challenges and experiences, while a whole team of game development professionals turns those decisions into a finished product. To work in that team you need its shared vocabulary, an understanding of its careers, and a clear idea of the different types of design that go into a game.

For an overview of the wider industry, see Jobs in Animation and Game Design. This post zooms in on the game development team and the design disciplines inside it.

Common game design terms

Term	Meaning
Mechanics	The rules of a game: what players can do and what happens as a result.
System	A collection of mechanics that work together to produce a result, such as an economy or a combat system.
Avatar	The icon or figure that represents the player in the game.
Engine	The core software that runs the game: graphics, physics, sound, input (for example Unity, Unreal, Godot).
Platform	The console, device or system a game runs on (PC, phone, console, web, VR).
Prototype	An early playable version of a game or part of a game, made to test an idea.
Rapid prototyping	Techniques for making quick, rough prototypes so ideas can be tested early.
Playtest	Testing a game with real players to find problems, bugs and unclear design.
Bugs	Errors in the design, code, art, sound or writing of a game.
Milestone	A point in the schedule where something significant must be finished.
Alpha	A stage where the main features are in the game but it is incomplete and buggy.
Beta	A more stable version, often tested by outside players to find remaining bugs.
Gold	The final version, ready to be released to the public.
Feature list	A list of the game’s key features, often its selling points.
Game jam	An event where developers plan, design and build a game in a short time, often 48 hours.
Zero-sum / positive-sum	In a zero-sum game one player’s gain is another’s loss; in a positive-sum game everyone can gain.

Careers in game design and development

Career	What they do
Programmer	Writes the code for gameplay, graphics, physics, AI, tools and online features.
Artist	Creates concept art, characters, environments, textures, animation, visual effects and UI graphics.
Designer	Designs rules, levels, systems and player experiences; writes design documents and balances the game.
Producer	Manages the schedule, budget and team; keeps everyone on track and communicates with publishers.
Tester (QA)	Plays the game systematically to find and report bugs and usability problems.
Composer	Writes the music that sets the mood and reacts to gameplay.
Sound designer	Records and creates sound effects, ambient sound and audio feedback, and places them in the game.
Writer	Writes story, dialogue, character backgrounds, quest text and UI wording.

In small indie teams, one person may play several roles. Watch these professionals describe their paths into game-related jobs:

Types of design in games

World design

World design creates the big picture: the setting, history, geography, cultures and rules of the game world. A world designer decides whether the game happens on a floating island, in a future city or inside a computer, and makes sure everything in that world feels consistent.

System design

System design creates the rules and mathematics behind the game: how damage is calculated, how much items cost, how experience points work, how fast enemies spawn. System designers use spreadsheets to balance the game so it is fair and interesting.

Content design

Content design creates the individual things the player meets: characters, items, quests, puzzles, vehicles and missions. If system design says “weapons have power and speed”, content design invents the specific tools, each with its own numbers and personality.

Game writing

Game writing covers story, dialogue, character backgrounds and all the text in the game, including tutorials and item descriptions. Game writers must write for choices, repetition and different player paths (see Story Arcs, Game Scripts and Storyboards for Interactive Games).

Level design

Level design builds the spaces where play happens: layouts, obstacles, enemy placement, puzzles and the pacing of challenges. We practised this in Level Design: Planning the First Three Levels.

User interface (UI) design

User interface design plans the menus, HUD, icons and controls that let players understand and control the game. It draws on the interaction design ideas in Module 1 and is explored further later in this module.

Example

Imagine a small team making a farming game set on a Caribbean island:

• The world designer creates the island’s villages, seasons, market days and folklore.
• The system designer sets how fast crops grow, their selling prices and how rain affects them.
• The content designer invents 20 crops, 10 tools and the villagers’ requests.
• The writer gives each villager a personality and writes their dialogue.
• The level designer lays out the farm, the market and the forest path.
• The UI designer designs the inventory, calendar and money display.
• The programmer, artist, composer, sound designer, tester and producer bring it all to life and on schedule.

Exercise

1. Create a glossary card for ten game design terms from this post, each with a definition and an example from a game you know.
2. Make an infographic of the eight game careers, showing one skill and one tool for each.
3. Choose a game and describe one decision from each of the six types of design.
4. Which career or type of design interests you most? Write a short paragraph explaining why and how you could start practising it now.

Next: The 10 Core Dynamics of Games Explained (With Examples)

Syllabus link: This post is relevant to the CAPE® Animation and Game Design Syllabus, Unit 2: Interactive Design and Game Development, Module 2: Game Design and Development – Specific Objective 1 (“define the common terms associated with game design”); Specific Objective 2 (“state the types of careers in game design”); Specific Objective 3 (“state the types of design associated with games”); Specific Objective 4 (“explain the different types of design”).

Attributions to media used in this post:

Drawing Cats on Wacom Intuos3 A5 graphics tablet – Global Game Jam Berlin 2014.jpg – Iwan Gabovitch – CC BY 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Tiled-screenshot-terrain.png – Thorbjørn Lindeijer – CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

GGJ LA 2015.JPG – Kevin Wong – CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

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