This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.
Years go by, tools come and go, but the spreadsheet remains the most useful and irreplaceable tool in any good game designer’s kit. When I start working on a new project, I open a spreadsheet.
In practice, I put into a table what’s already there: the mechanics that exist, the numbers in play, the things the team has already built.
There’s always a moment in a project — especially on the big ones — when nobody really knows which direction things are heading. Putting everything into a table is the best way to find out.
The designer as ethnographer, not as lawmaker — that’s sometimes the most useful version of a game designer there is.