Category: Game Design

There is a trending voice on socials that says that “GDDs are not important,” and that “Who wants to read all of that text?” and so on. I am mostly a writer, and writing is important. Not because every piece we write needs to be shared among our team. But because it’s the best medium (and the cheapest) to have clear ideas.

When you learn how to write, you become a better communicator. You can also inspire others with short sentences on a Slack channel. But to arrive at that, you need to write a lot. One of the reasons I have this daily blog is this one.

I am applying to a Spanish government’s fund for video games, and I was faster in completing all the documentation needed because I have written a lot about my game in great detail. And I am continuing to do it every day as I play the build I have.

I like to read again what I wrote 3 months later and see how the game evolves. There are also documents that I want to keep updated with changes. Others that I like to print and have physical. It’s part of my love for the craft.

The most important skill for a creative person is writing. When you write well, you are able to inspire and explain concepts. I like to write and practice my writing skills. I am not a English native speaker, but still I love to practice my English writing skills and improve them.

I feel that I am more effective on paper than in person. Maybe because I am tall but not intimidating, I don’t know. With my words, I get more authority in what I say, or at least that’s how I feel.

There is a tendency to avoid too much documentation to read and share. I am very much against that, to me, words are important. Words matter a lot, and we should care about that part very much. Both design and tech documentation are very important.

Speaking of which, my game Pawtners Case is going forward. I found an Italian outsourcing company that is helping me with its development. They like to write, I am lucky to have met them. You can watch the last videos here on my Italian substack.

• creative: a person whose job involves producing original ideas or doing artistic work (Definition of creative from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus)
• creative director: a person in a company or advertising agency who is in charge of the work involving original ideas about how to design, advertise and sell products (Definition of creative director from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary)

I don’t know if Cambridge University is to blame, but there is a substantial difference between business and design/art in the concept of “creative“.

Concretely, in business, it is important to think about how to sell a creative product with original ideas. However, we often ignore this nuance when we focus on the more artistic part of our work.

It took me a while to understand that a game designer works for someone, not for players in general. In the sense that we have no control over what will come out at the end of the production process. What we have is the responsibility to facilitate this process, which is very different.

When you understand this and accept it, you live much better!

You are a game designer and for the first day you are on a new project. The game is not your idea, it belongs to a company that wants to improve its business. What do you do?

You play, that’s what you do. You play a lot, and you take notes. And you ping your colleagues and try to understand their point of view.

The rest will come, avoid jumping directly to solutions. Good game design is about connecting elements and removing superfluous. In the first stages, the risk is adding too much. A simple technique is to write down a story of a player playing your game from a first-person perspective.