One of the skills that make a game designer instantly hireable is the deconstruction of games. It is no easy task to complete, since the first instinct is to end the job once we have identified the core loop, the secondary loop and maybe some unique feature.
I have seen too many times teams copying from here and there after a quick deconstruction and the result is something like
Not cool huh?
A good deconstruction looks for the audiences of some game and wants to really empathize. Having a document with the core features is nice, but having empathy maps, customer journeys and personas at the end of it is key for the success of a project.
- Play the game for the right amount of time
- Look for its update logs: you need to know where developers put the highest efforts
- Read reviews and study them
- Look for streamers, those are free playtests
- Join Discord channels and Reddits to spot the interesting and pain points
- Run playtests of your competitorsTry to interview core Players
With all those insights, build your Player. Forget demographics, focus on behaviors and needs!
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