I saw a Simple Product Design Worksheet the other day. It was a list of questions every designer should ask themselves. Questions about simplicity, honesty, and function.
The questions are brilliant. Believe me when I say that 90% of game developers never ask them. They are too busy chasing the next billion-dollar gold rush or adding features to a prototype that already feels like a collage of ideas. We need instead to stop sending out resumes (our feature lists) and start answering the fundamental “WHY“.
Look at the questions from the list:
- Who is it for? (“Everyone!” means no one. Find your niche and try to be specific.)
- What does it solve? (It’s entertainment, not a problem to solve, but you need to find the fantasy to fulfill.)
- What makes it simple? (Players may quit also for a simple: “The tutorial is just too long, sorry.”)
- What makes it honest? (Ouch. This hits hard in the F2P world. Are you truly respecting the player’s time, or just hiding the dark patterns?)
- How does it respect the environment? (I mean the competitive environment. Are you a “follow up” game, or are you offering something that respects the player’s limited attention?)
- Are you proud of it? (If you’re trying to avoid a low performance review because the vision is messy, the answer is no. And the players will feel it.)
The real gate to success isn’t opened just by a fancy pitch; it’s opened by radical simplicity and genuine pride in what you’ve built for someone concrete.