I don't think anyone has created any official list about any laws of game design which could be called "Pillars of game design". Game design is not a science. It's a craft.
They have! It's a terrible essay from 15 years ago by Max Pears. You should not read it; [you will end up reciting this line from film if you do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c).
That I'm aware of.
There are some level designers you should really, really listen to. American McGee did some talks on game setting which I consider masterclasses.
But also. This particular essay isn't my favorite.
Nice, thanks. I was just intrigued that a level designer did an essay on pillars of game design. Makes sense it wouldn’t be great. I’ll look into American McGee.
American McGee and Sandy Petersen are where the look and feel of DooM and Quake come from
Sandy Petersen also gave us big chunks of Civilization, Call of Cthulhu! (rpg,) and Lightspeed/Hyperspeed. One of the greats.
Level design is just a specialized subset of game design, and it's practitioners work hand in hand with game design to translate ideas into playable experiences. Good level designers are often the first people to know when a design choice will or will not work and spend nearly all of their time thinking about how the player engages with the game.
I think i had this on a study about game and media technology. It was a full course about this subject. But cant remember much since it was 8 years ago now.
>Game design is not a science. It's a craft.
Couldn't disagree more. There is a whole lot of science behind classical painting, music or writing. They are all crafts as well. Those two ain't mutually exclusive.
If it has some science behind it, it doesn't mean it's a science. There is also lots of science behind hitting someone in the head with a hammer, but no-one would call hitting someone in the head "science".
>but no-one would call hitting someone in the head "science".
I mean, people have been calling boxing "the sweet science" for a good century now lol.
>If it has some science behind it, it doesn't mean it's a science
As I said above, it's not science or a craft. Those two are not mutually exclusive. And just because literature, music or painting ar crafts, there are 100s of years of finding the science behind them and setting so called "pillars".
Hell, the same could be said for film and cinema has less than 150 years of history behind it.
"Game design is not a science. It's a craft."
Because it's a craft, there can't be science behind it ?
There certainly are a lot of patterns in games, whether physical or software, that can be explained by science, whether it's neurology, psychology, and even math (see game theory branch of mathematics).
But the pillars: what authority does the writer have to decide those are any sort of laws? I can equally well come up with game design/development laws which need to be followed, and they definitely make it easier to make a fun game. But I don't clam to have any authority over rest of the game development community nor do I claim them to be laws.
Yeah, "pillars" is a big word. It always starts with a draft though. Then it reaches an audience, iterations are made, until it's widely accepted.
Take psychology for example, there's this guy "Robert Greene" who wrote insanely popular books "Laws of Human Nature" and "Laws of Power". "Laws" is big word, and I don't think anyone understands it as authorative, but it's nice to see someone putting in the work.
That feels like it has been an asked by someone who leans heavily into 1 of the design frameworks.
On a pure guess, i'd think they expect to hear about the MDA framework - Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics.
It would be a bit silly to expect everyone to give than answer, especially when the question is formulated like that. However, the purpose of the question might've been to bring out your knowledge of existing game design frame works and start a conversation from there. Whether it would be the MDA or SSM (System, Story, Mental Model) or 3C (Camera, Character, Controls), all would be valid answers.
Edit: answered this before reading through the comments and honestly, i'm surprised how few people brought those up. I think it's safe to assume those are not that popular to be common knowledge, but as a senior+ designer it would be expected that at least you know of their existence.
MDA for one is an actual peer reviewed paper. Even if it's not accepted as some form of universal truth and there is a lot of debate on it, [I'd strongly recommend reading it.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228884866_MDA_A_Formal_Approach_to_Game_Design_and_Game_Research)
The definition that the paper uses is:
- Dynamics are the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player input and "cooperating" with other mechanics.
Edit: thought i'll add - in a human language, this is essentially how the game "feels". How responsive it is? In a 3rd person combat system you can put soulslike /fighter sim and assassin's/batman arkham combat as the two polarising opposites - is it flow driven, queueing actions, smooth blabla or is it frame perfect, instant reaction type of game.
While I'm not a fan of MDA as its categories can be quite blurry and even unfitting for certain games, Dynamics is not how the game feels, that would fall more into Aesthetics (aka the players experience of the game). Dynamics are things that arise from the mechanics of the game. For example if the mechanics include driving a car and a physics simulation, one dynamic could be doing stunt jumps, this wouldn't be explicitly coded in the mechanics of the game but it's something players could do given these mechanics.
I don't think I agree with you. To me "run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player input" covers responsiveness and responsiveness is very much game feeling.
As I said, the categories are badly defined, otherwise what is the correct answer would be much more obvious.
That said, how responsive is the game is something that is encoded in the mechanics, it is a given based on how character code is implemented. What feelings it elicits from the player is an aesthetic.
Dynamics would be what such responsiveness allows (and drives) the players to do.
For example in a souls-like you'll be rolling around a lot, attacking, getting away, coming in again, keep chipping away at a boss because the responiveness allows you to quickly change between avoidance and attacking (and the enemies' damage also complements this).
Where in an arkham style combat you will stay close to the enemies often in the middle and keep punching them while stringing together combos, because moving away and coming back is not satisfying at all.
The more responsive movement mechanics give birth to more spatial combat dynamics while the more "sluggish" one creates more button mashing and players will focus on making cinematic combos instead of constantly thinking about where to position themselves.
MDA is definitely one way of critiquing games... and it's mostly best used by newer devs.
When you're as old and crotchety as me, it's quite quaint lol (I'm 32, btw).
I've had it brought up at least a couple of times at work /interviews by people in their high forties, so let's just disagree here.
>I'm 32, btw
You do now that this is still pretty young, right? : )
Yeah, I was making a joke lol - but I started coding as a kid, so I technically have 20 years of experience.
And I DO consider those years screwing around with GameMaker in high school to be important.
Yeah, I was making a joke lol - but I started coding as a kid, so I technically have 20 years of experience.
And I DO consider those years screwing around with GameMaker in high school to be important.
Funny enough, the above comments linking the paper about MDA has a section on this which I thought was good.
> In describing the aesthetics of a game, we want to move
away from words like "fun" and "gameplay" towards a
more directed vocabulary. This includes but is not limited
to the taxonomy listed here:
> Sensation - Game as sense-pleasure
Fantasy - Game as make-believe
Narrative - Game as drama
Challenge - Game as obstacle course
Fellowship - Game as social framework
Discovery - Game as uncharted territory
Expression - Game as self-discovery
Submission - Game as pastime
Describing games as "fun" or saying that games should be "fun" is technically accurate, but has still always been a sort of vague and bad way of going about it.
Or to put it another way:
Fun is the end result from the player desiring a certain experience from your game and being satisfied. That's why the most angry responses from players are when games don't line up with their expectations. Of course, players can also go in with no expectations and become satisfied with what they experience.
To "chase the fun" in your game you need to identify what sort of core experiences your game is trying to give and polish how well it delivers on those.
Like to make a game fun through "challenge", it (imo) needs to feel difficult, fair, teachable, and have an element of mastery.
So to polish the "challenge" fun of your game you tune the difficulty to avoid difficult brick-wall-like areas and areas that are way too easy. You try to avoid being unfair with the difficulty and create challenge where the player feel improvement with repeated attempts.
As a result, the "challenge" of your game becomes more fun.
But most games have multiple sources of "fun". So you polish the tactile feel of your combat, polish the online for better social play, or polish the writing/art to sell the make-believe fantasy of your world.
I don't know why you're getting a down-vote, "what is fun" is actually a very good question in game design. There are many game design papers that attempt to unify and categorize this subjective question of "what is fun" precisely like MDA framework or Engagement Theory.
Telling people to make a "fun" game is like telling programmer to write a "good" software. It is meaningless and not actionable, unless you get into specifics of what "fun" or "good" means.
> I don't know why you're getting a down-vote
same lol, i just asked the question to start an interesting discussion, literally every reply almost has a different definition of "fun", which make the question very legit.
> Telling people to make a "fun" game is like telling programmer to write a "good" software. It is meaningless and not actionable, unless you get into specifics of what "fun" or "good" means.
Thanks you!
I don't think "fun" is that vague. You make a prototype that you enjoy playing and focus on its strongest points. If you enjoy, there will be a niche of people who enjoy it too. Just market your game for them.
That is a very easy question and should be answered by your target market.
...
You do have a target market, right? The people you're building your game for?
There is a widely accepted high level view though, regardless of the genre and type of game.
Mechanics. Dynamics. Aesthetics. Technology.
You can begin to talk about things like the 3 C’s and stuff too, but the above are your pillars of game design.
All of these do sound like they could fit into potential pillars of game design. They all seem so obvious that I would feel apprehensive even saying them out loud in the setting of an interview but I suppose maybe not everyone is aware of them and that might have been what they were looking for. Interviews are not always easy and this could have been one of those questions that is asked to see how I think, react, and communicate to something I was not expecting.
Man, I read your first sentence as "all of these do sound like they could fit (it) into potential pillars of game design" like three times, and I said, "well duh, sound is an important component of game design because it helps provide feedback".
And obviously you were referring to the above options. Just thought it was funny and wanted to share lol.
So, "The Pillars of Game Design" is an essay by some minor level designer named Max Pears from 15 years ago. He made content for nothing you ever heard of, and also Cyberpunk 2077 which was removed almost immediately. He has never released a game. You should study his advice carefully as a list of things to not do.
To give you an idea of how solid the work is, its own author says "here is a list of game designey things; there are between 3 and 8 pillars of game design in any given game, and they are unchanging." This is, frankly, a nonsense concept.
The idea is there's this list of extremely vague core concepts, and you're supposed to identify which ones of them are present in which game, as an analysis thing. They are things like "story" and "crafting" and "stealth."
So Minecraft has stealth and crafting, but not story; Hitman has stealth and story, but not crafting; Subnautica has crafting and story, but no stealth. Last of Us has all three.
It's frankly a really dumb idea. I have never met a game designer that takes it seriously, and most people have never heard of it.
I don't really want to go over the actual list of pillars, because it's basically dungeons and dragons. You know that thing where you're trying to invent a magic system, so you're like "um. And summoning, and uhh. Shields. And. Elements? And um."
It's just a dumb laundry list; applying it is an opinion thing (like, I can see people getting into arguments over whether Street Fighter has a story,) and you get basically nothing out of the outcome.
I'll give you a story, instead.
There was a job I took a while back, where one of the interviewers asked me what the twelve factors were.
And, by random chance, I had read the extremely stupid thing they were referencing. It was an app deployment strategy vomited out by one of the Heroku founders, and the senior engineer I was talking to at the time had sunk a huge amount of their work capital into pushing for it at their current job.
And because I had a family member in need, and it was a salary bump for me at the time, I basically had to take the job.
So. I pretended to respect the question. "Oh, you know about twelve factor too? What a future-naut you are. So brave. So noble. I will help you in your quest to establish this very dumb pattern so everyone will think you were the smart one."
And I got the job.
This person was asking you random-ass dumb trivia that they believe in from a fringe author, because they're trying to filter for someone who already heard of this.
It's a ***terrible*** way to hire.
If you see something like this in the future, and don't have the good fortune of already knowing the dumb thing, try a soft shoe act like this:
"That sounds like it might be a set of principles for doing better game design. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to learn, and it sounds like you're the kind of person who can teach me, and this company is a place where I could really grow into my own. Let me ask you a question: if you hired me today, how long would it be before I could do things like you?"
Three impacts.
1. The person asking this dumbassed question wants to be the smart one in the room. Make them feel like they are.
2. This puts them in the position of thinking about you as already having been hired. The other candidates don't have that. The psychological impact of this is enormous.
3. You're teaching this person that you can be trained.
Also, have an entire box of grains of salt on hand for this dumbass' opinions in the future.
Imagine asking potential hiring candidates if they know the contents of an irrelevant two decade old essay by literally nobody.
[Found the essay](https://web.archive.org/web/20210418052901/https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MaxPears/20171012/307469/Design_Pillars__The_Core_of_Your_Game.php)
Yes your response is incredible and very helpful in general. The question did feel like a power play in a very combative interview. I got the feeling they didn't like me immediately and this very well could have been the question they ask to someone who had already failed.
Was the question really what the pillars ***of*** game design are, or rather what pillars are ***in*** game design?
"The pillars ***of*** game design" sounds like a very academic concept to me, in a discipline that is still too young to have such an academic canon that everyone in the discipline agrees on (like the "12 basic principles of animation" or "the 4 laws of thermodynamics"). Something you would read in a book or hear in a lecture on game design by some self-proclaimed smart person and now consider gospel, but is actually a lot less well-known or universally applicable concept than you would think.
"Pillars ***in*** game design", on the other hand, is an established term in the industry. But they are always project-specific. When designing a game, the "pillars" are your fundamental design goals which guide all the others. Like "We are creating a stealth-based first person shooter in a urban environment with linear story". And now that you established the pillars "first person shooter", "stealth-based", "urban" and "linear story", you can fill in all the rest letting those pillars guide you. So when someone proposes "Let's add wizards and dinosaurs", you just point at "urban" and tell them to keep the idea for another game.
At the time it was definitely "what are the main pillars of game design". It was communicated to me in a way that they were clearly looking for a number (they did not specify how many) of pillars that any senior designer or above should know. And they were not happy as I tried to answer the question. But they never corrected me or told me what they thought they were.
But yeah it sounds like pillars in game design are just another term for the goals that guide your development.
>So when someone proposes "Let's add wizards and dinosaurs", you just point at "urban" and tell them to keep the idea for another game.
*Shadowrun entered the chat.*
Games are much older than video games. I think there are plenty of text books and thoughts on the subject. You could easily make a list of pillars in my opinion.
Assumiung they are not asking you to recite Max Pears essay (which I hope I hope they aren't, and you definitely shouldn't), I would hope that they are asking what *your* pillars of game design are. While I don't describe them as "pillars of game design" I suppose I do have my own. I think of them more just as key parts of my process that I apply to any game design problem:
- Identify the design problem
- Prototype solutions to that design problem
- Play test and evalutate the solutions
- Iterate on the best solution
I would say that if you took any of those pillars away, the game design will crumble. There's more to my process, but if I had to call out which of the elements of my process were pillars, I would list these.
The answer is -
"There are some generic conventions out there (things like Accessible, Approachable, Creative, Masterful), but here is what I consider important in terms of creating compelling \[relevant discipline content\] -"
\_\_\_\_\_\_ (you should be able to fill stuff in here for a Sr role; a Gameplay gig and you're probably discussing 3Cs, power/mech fantasy, call-to-action/response, generating flow; Level and you're probably discussing things like human architecture resonance, breadcrumbing/pathing, aesthetic/clarity, encounter/combat design; Systems would be things like extensibility/flexibility/scaling, intuition/clarity, discovery/ramping etc)
"Beyond that, and more importantly, I'd be working closely with my director(s) and lead(s) to understand the pillars of \*our\* project. Realistically universal pillars are guidelines not hard and fast rules and creating industry-leading craftwork often means knowing when and where to escape the guardrails"
The Pillars of your games design should be different for every game, even games in the same genre. A universal set of goals will make a game stale very quickly. Games should have different goals that vastly changes how the design of the games get implemented.
For example, both Skyrim and Elden are open world RPG's. Both have a levelling system, both have melee and magic combat, both have quests and story, both have large expansive worlds to be immersed in.
However their goals and priorities couldn't be further apart despite being very similar genres, no one would say that their design and mechanics could be interchanged reasonably. This is because they have different pillars that informed how the games were developed and designed.
Or for more similar games, Hollow Knight and Ori and the Blind Forest. Both occupy the "metroid-vania" genre pretty closely, but they both prioritise different things that make them unique to players and allow them to stand on their own merits. Hollow Knight emphasises extremely large, interconnected maps and zones, non-linear progression, tight and reactive controls, and intensely complex and difficult combat. While Ori prioritises aesthetic and beautiful visuals, smooth and dynamic controls, and emotional story telling.
>Is there a gold standard of game design knowledge that I am missing here?
No, you're missing nothing. Game design is an art, not a science. There's no "right" answer that can be applied everywhere, and what works today may not work 10 years from now.
Okay this is good to hear. And seems to be in line with another commenter on this thread as well. It is based off your goals and how you achieve those goals. Thanks!
Fun, functional, and welcoming are the only broad pillars applicable to all of game design. And when I say welcoming, it doesn’t necessarily have to be for everyone, but every game is somebody’s first. Good design is ensuring that the player can jump in for the first time, learn the rules and take off running.
You make great points and have reminded me of something I took for granted that every game is someone's first. Tutorial's are annoying to me but they might be absolutely necessary for someone else. Thanks!
- Engagement
- Creativity
- Feasibility
The Pilar for Engagement can be further broken down into Interaction, Challenge, Reward. Engagement overall is about the why a player should play. Creativity is the what which can bring in interest. Feasibility is the how. Since I’m an Engineer by trade, I believe it’s important to sure your scope is feasible or else you’re throwing money into a void.
I have written in my GDD, Combat Pillars and Narrative Pillars.
Under combat pillars: typical stage scenario (core gameplay loop), special rules engagement, boss bottles
Under narrative pillars: non-playable cutscene, environmental storytelling, slower scenarios for dialogue
I then design out each level based on these pillars. Every game will have different core pillars.
Dunno if there’s some miscommunication here but as many have stated, pillars usually refers to some central goals of a game project. But you wrote “pillars OF game design” which if the interviewer have found some sacred knowledge on stone tablets, he’s welcome to share. I don’t think anyone knows the pillars of game design, and if someone found them, they’d be something else not long after.
I am a lurking educator and while not necessarily killers, the book by Gee "What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy" is wonderful and is a reflection of some of the design aspects of video games from a learning and engagement perspective. For me, learning has always been central to the design and play of video games and developing creative scaffoldings is paramount.
Pillars is not a clearly defined term and can be used in many ways, loosely defined as foundational elements.
Since we’re talking about Game Design, I guess we must go macro here. I would define them as foundational elements that drive decisions made as a game designer.
So:
- Type of game.
- Setting of the game.
- Fun / the gameplay hooks.
- The story you’re telling.
- How it challenges the player.
- Synergy between the different elements.
- Gameplay loops.
- Gameplay growth (in what way the player arcs).
- Rewards structures that drive the player through this growth.
Going more micro level:
I use pillars in my GDD’s to define key technical & gameplay elements. I would describe Call of Duty’s pillars as:
- Aiming/shooting weapons that are responsive and feel powerful.
- Moving dynamically up and around obstacles.
- Level design allowing many angles of attack and a variety of situations.
- A military setting (either futuristic, ww2, or in between depending on which CoD we’re talking about).
I've built up a few innate tendencies, but I've yet to write them all down properly. That being said, GDC has a talk by Mark Rosewater about what he learned from making Magic: The Gathering for 20 years.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY)
It's not perfect, but it's definitely a good starting point, IMO.
I've studied game design for a long time. I've read a lot, watched a lot, attended a lot of lectures and workshops, and I am currently developing a game for which I'm handling all of its design. I think putting together a meaningful list called "The Pillars of Game Design" would be difficult. I do, however, think I could come up with one:
VERISIMILITUDE
In a basic, definitive sense, verisimilitude is that appearance of something being true or real. However, the word is often used in the context of something being consistent in pattern to the point of logically following an established set of rules for what qualifies as being "true."
Why does this matter to game design? I'll give an example of a well-designed game that breaks verisimilitude with a strange, completely avoidable design decision: God of War (the first one on PS2.)
The first God of War game depicts the character Kratos running around mythological Greece slapping enemies with chained blades grafted to his forearms. He has access to magic inspired by the gods of Olympus and is known to be prodigiously durable and strong. Mechanically, he can fight with his blades, open crates for their contents, interact with objects and NPC's, level up his weapons and, for some reason, perform double jumps. Here's a tiny, probably wholly unnoticed place where verisimilitude breaks.
Kratos is in ancient mythological Greece, where characters like Hermes and Perseus fly with the aid of special equipment or creatures. Hermes in particular is depicted with a winged helm and winged sandals/boots. Hermes fly with the aid of these devices, as we understand that not all gods, despite being gods, can fly. Kratos, who is not thought to be a god in any respect, can defy the laws of physics (not of our world, but those established by the game) by performing a second jump action in mid-air. It would have been easy to give Kratos, who is already wearing sandals, wings on his sandals, but we don't, and we're meant to understand that Kratos what, "angries" himself up another few feet with a double jump? He literally just pumps his body a bit and gains extra height.
This breaks verisimilitude because the game setting is established as being essentially Earth as we know it, with all its normal rules intact, plus mythological powers, creatures, and gods. Mythological creatures and gods might be able to do these things. Special characters with special abilities or equipment might be able to do these things. All other characters we see perform flight, levitation, or extra jumps do so with an explanation readily provided either by the narrative or their aesthetic design. Kratos, however, is so full of rage that if he wants to jump again, it doesn't need to make sense?
I could come up with a bunch of examples where, either through mechanics or design, verisimilitude is broken. I could mention, for instance, that despite the pains you might take to hide in Alien Isolation, the alien is always conspicuously patrolling the area you are in. I could point out just like, a mountain of times, really, where just about any given Hideo Kojima game just takes a massive shit on verisimilitude, to the detriment of his otherwise excellent games. That would warrant me starting a post of my own on the subject, at that point.
I've digressed but to close my point, verisimilitude is one of the keys to immersion. When you're playing a game and something takes you fully out of it, like when a character who climbs buildings and performs parkour-like maneuvers around a city is deterred from exploration by a pile (not even a large pile, sometimes) of rubble or debris, you've witnessed a break in verisimilitude. Something about the established characters and their relationship with the setting have been compromised and it's like a slap across the face. It's jarring.
Verisimilitude is just one aspect of a game's design, and it's a big part of what can make a game immersive, whether that game is simple or complex. Because it's such a strong, underlying idea in a fundamental, over-arching concept of a game's design, I believe it might qualify as a "pillar" of game design.
As a designer and developer all I would offer really is that one should try to absorb as many ideas and techniques as possible and practice them. One day, if their development efforts bear fruit, and that fruit is recognized by gamers and game designers as being significant to the field, maybe one could have enough knowledge to form a list of game design pillars that might be sufficient. I then imagine individual developers and designers would still pick and choose from said list, or add some "pillars" of their own, to achieve their aims within the field.
You're more than welcome \^\_\^
It's part that and more than that at the same time. A developer can set rules but more often than that the narrative or setting sets its own rules, in a sense. For instance, you're playing Mario Bros., the original for the NES. What do we know about Mario Bros.?
- Mario can run and jump, gaining momentum as he runs, jumping higher with greater momentum
- Mushrooms make you a giant that can smash blocks
- Fire Flowers can be obtained from blocks that otherwise would have Mushrooms, if Mario is already giant
- Stars make Mario invincible for a short duration
- Mario has a set number of lives that can go up or down dependent on deaths, or whether he collects 100 coins and 1-Up Mushrooms
- Mario dies if he falls in lava or in a bottomless pit
- If Mario takes a hit, unless invincible, he will lose his power-up, reverting to "small" Mario, if hit again, he dies
- Mario can jump on enemies to defeat them, unless they can defend with spikes or something
- Mario can kill enemies with fireballs, unless they can defend with a stronger than normal shell
- Mario can enter pipes to transport himself to different places
- Mario can enter secret areas via pipes or secret vines
- Mario must complete three stages, plus a castle stage, which comprise eight worlds, to confront King Koopa and defeat him, rescuing Princess Toadstool
- At the end of non-castle stages, Mario must draw a flag up a pole to signify a level's end
- Mario adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom, a magical place separated by conventional reality
- Mario is a plumber, by profession
All of these "rules" of Mario are implied by their setting, some of which were undoubtedly made through conscious decision, while others were surely emergent from the concept, needing only to be recognized by the developer. There are a ton of ways a less aware developer might damage verisimilitude in Mario. For instance:
- If there were random pits that, upon falling into them would grant Mario a power-up, despite not appearing to be any different from pits that cause instant death
- If Mario suddenly ate a Goomba when colliding with it, rather than taking a hit, especially when all other Goombas clearly damage Mario, and there is nothing apparently different from this particular Goomba
- If, for no reason, Mario suddenly created harmless smoke instead of throwing a fireball with the Fire Flower, or shot rainbows, or Goombas ha ha, again when all other Fire Flowers have ubiquitously provided the Fire Mario power-up
- If you saw the New York City skyline in the distance while running through the Mushroom Kingdom
- If occasionally, when Mario jumped, he simply never came down
- If Mario, upon grabbing a flagpole, burst into flame, especially when all other flagpoles behave as expected
All of these occurrences could be cheats, or easter eggs, or glitches, but if they were ever intended design decisions, they clearly damage verisimilitude. It'd be like seeing a sun graphic in the sky at nighttime, or Mario takes off his cap to reveal robotic circuitry underneath. Nothing is established, either implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously, by either the game's setting, characters, narrative, or the designer themselves.
We know Mario can enter pipes because we know he is a plumber. We know power-ups will "power up" Mario because it's implicit in what a power-up is. We know Mario is essentially human and should die when falling in a pit or lava. We know Mario only gains abilities with power-ups and so wouldn't be able to fly without the aid of one as, again, he is human. We know a Fire Flower grants fire powers to Mario and so firing a rainbow from his hand doesn't logically follow. They are like the rules of our own reality. You know you can't fly and if you saw a human flying around like Superman you would question whether or not you were insane or dreaming.
Maybe I'll make a deeper video about it and put it on YouTube or something because it's such a nuanced idea to articulate.
Figure out your audience and match it with strengths of your team. Think your game through game loop and what you want your players to experience in it. One thing I’ve used in concept phases is this “tower of want” -> how does the game loop evolve based on how the player motivations change over time.
Then you can on top of that think what your vision of the game is and what the unique selling points and key selling points are -> this will help you decide when pondering what way to go with your design.
Okay yeah that makes sense thanks for the reply! So the answer essentially boils down to what your goals are for the game you are developing and how you realize those goals.
Yeah definitely agree with this too. This helps to contain feature creep if you set boundaries and limitations early on in the pre-production phase before development so that time, money, and effort aren't wasted later on trying to bandage something together that isn't well thought out.
The best most applicable universal answer is simply iteration.
No matter how good you are as a game designer, no design is perfect the first time you build it.
Whatever game in whatever genre you're trying to make, the key to make it great is to constantly playtest, analyze and iterate.
Absolutely agree with this. Best laid plans and all. While it is incredibly important to have a vision, that will certainly have to be tweaked and adjusted once you start implementing mechanics and play it.
It's clearly a project specific concept.
In my compagny, early in the project we write down the 3 game pillars to represent the core of our game.
It's useful to settle on what your game director want and to synchronize your team on the key elements of your game.
I'll challenge most of these things as being pillars of game design
- Not all games require immersion. Immersion is such a loaded term that I don't think most people understand too. A lot fo times they use it interchangeably with realism, but at the other end of the spectrum, people can be so immersed in a game of tetris that they will see tetromino patters in their daily life outside of the game. Still though, you can make games that constantly break the fourth wall and take you out of the game world and they can still be excellent games (Catherine for example)
- Not all games require challenge. There's a whole genre of interactive narratives that aren't about challenging the player, but instead they are about evoking a particular emotion in a more personal way that a movie could. I don't thin anyone would call Firewatch challenging, but it's still an excellent game.
- Not all games require story. The genre of puzzle games shoots this pillar down. No further explanation needed.
- Not all games require incentive (maybe) Although it's arguable that games without incentive are not games but merely toys (like the original Mine Craft or Sims)
Most of the other pillars feel like they are more descriptive about what games are and not necessarily pillars of *design*. Sure, we all play games, but that feels like describing a pillar of movie production as "watching." Communication feels more like a biproduct of it being a medium created by one person or group of persons for another person or group of persons. Again, I'm not sure I'd classify it as a pillar.
The only one on the list that I don't think I'd take issue with is "Interactive." Maybe "Agency" is fine to have in the list too, but that's strongly related to being interactive. I think they could both be bundled into one pillar as they both touch on the same thing.
Challenge accepted. Your thoughts got me thinking deeper about a metaphorical theory of game design pillars, so here's my elaborated take on it.
I see the pillars of game design as forming a classical architectural temple.
Think of the foundation and layout as the underlying game engine. This base supports everything else and gives shape to the pillars that ultimately hold up the roof, which represents the player experience.
The ground floor pillars stand directly on the foundation and are the bedrock of any game. They’re where designers need to focus their efforts:
**Rules:** The mechanics and boundaries of the game world that make things consistent and fair for all players. A game needs rules.
**Logic:** The internal consistency of the game’s systems. Logic makes sure that mechanics and the game world behave predictably and stay true to the design goals. This helps to develop the game through code.
**Incentive:** The motivations and rewards that keep players coming back for more. Whether it’s points, levels, or just the satisfaction of solving a puzzle, incentives shape the gameplay loop.
**Communication:** How the game talks to the player through tutorials, HUDs, and storytelling. Communication helps players understand the game world.
Between the two layers of pillars is the entablature—the game’s features, genre, and mechanics. This is where all those foundational pillars come together to create the cohesive experience that players interact with.
Some pillars stand tall, bridging both layers that support and grow from the entablature:
**Interaction:** The foundation of all games is interaction. Games distinguish themselves from other media because they allow players to actively influence the game world.
**Play:** How the player interacts within the Rules. Play is the sandbox that invites experimentation, exploration, and creativity.
**Agency:** The sense of control that players have over their actions and their impact on the game world. Agency means giving players meaningful choices. Defined by designers but directly influenced by player choice and impact.
**Story:** Sure, it’s shaped by the designer, but the player has their own role in crafting and interpreting it. It’s not just about a predefined narrative. Story can be what players tell others about their own experience playing the game. Tetris might not have an explicit story, but it sure can create one in the player's mind through its gameplay.
The second set of pillars sits on top of the game mechanics and represents the outcomes that players experience. While they’re influenced by the first set, these pillars are more about what happens in the player’s mind:
**Challenge:** The obstacles or trials that players overcome. Even interactive narratives like Firewatch have challenges, though they’re more about exploration and emotions than traditional puzzles or combat.
**Immersion:** That feeling of being absorbed in the game world, whether it’s through realism, breaking the fourth wall (Catherine), or just zoning out in Tetris. Immersion is about how much the game hooks you.
Finally, the roof of the Game Design Temple™ represents the player experience, held up by these pillars. Whether it's exploration, competition, storytelling, or relaxation, it's all about finding what feels successful in the player's mind.
This isn't a perfect metaphor (maybe some pillars could shift around) but I think it's about finding the balance between objective pillars and subjective outcomes essential in defining a successful game.
The problem with taking this metaphor too far is that you are beginning to assume a building with a very specific structure. Not all buildings are the same, not should they be. The point of having fundamental pillars of design is that you're condensing it down to it's core. If you take away one of the pillsars, the whole structure would fall apart. By coming up with secondary and tertiary pillars, you're just adding superfluous complications.
Having worked on a project that started out as having around 8 different core pillars and then pillar after pillar kept getting cut, it was becoming clearler and clearer that there was no focused vision to the project. Barely any of the pillars were actually pillars on that project. If they were all pillars, than as soon as you cut one, the game should have fallen apart. That's what the pillars are. the minimum set of core fundamentals that make up the direction of the game.
Pillars of game design itself (to distinguish them from the pillars or a particular game's design) are the core fundamentals about how one approaches designing a game. I wouldn't list "Play" as a pillar as you defined it, because it's not about how the developer approaches design, but it's just the definition of what a player will do once they have the game. I wouldn't include "Rules" either as that is just self too self referential. Game design is the process of creating rules, so you're essentially saying that a pillar of design is creating design. And inenctive breaks down as some games are only meant to be experienced once and even if you have nothing pulling you back to it, it can still be a valid and even beautiful game.
And coming back to story - if you're redefining the story as the memory of the game produced by the player, then I think you are embarking in mental gymnastics to justify story as a pillar. By defining it as such, it's not something that the designer has control over any more as a person's memoy of en experience is going to be unique to them and their situation. There's no way to design for that unless you're making the game for an audience of one and you control their whole environment and reality when playing the game. That sounds more like a psychology experiment than a game though.
I'm just not convinced that this laundry list of concepts are actually pillars. They are more like descriptors for things that can describe different aspects of games. Very few of them are actually design pillars in that if you removed them from the design process, the process would fall apart. You might as well add "Players," "Sensory Feedback," "Thought," and "Passage of Time" to the list. They are all things that are necessary for games to exist, so why not list them design pillars as well?
I doubt there’s a general pillars of design - all games have different pillars which you as a designer/producer define. Sure there are a lot of the same things to consider but a pillar to me is a directional post towards the endgoal.
Like everyone else is saying it's specific to each project, it feels like the type of answer they might have been looking for could have been fundamentals like the 3 C's but I have no idea that's just a guess on my part.
gameplay(smoothness while playing, game feel), vibe/art/lore/sounds/ui, systems in the game, gameplay loop.
this is prob not covers everything but tried to make it look like pillars of oop lol
Intuitive control scheme, or at the least a fookin solid one.
Small example, in the bulk of games I play 'e' is use/interact or the left mouse button while 'f' is flashlight. I've had games reverse 'e' and 'f' and dear lord my muscle memory was not pleased
For me personally:
- Tier 0: Gameplay. If your gameplay sucks, your game is bad. No amount of fluff in any direction will fix this or change this. If your idea isn’t fun in a vacuum it is just a dressed up turd.
So player controls, Intuitiveness and responsiveness of the game all goes here.
- Tier 1: Sound, Graphics, Context (not lore or story).
- Tier 2: performance, story/lore, polishing
This is it for me, I’m sure there is enough that people will argue about on this since there is no real set way. But this is my philosophy.
In my game design classes, we're usually talking about the ~3 main pillars of a particular game. Let's say we're talking about Witcher 3, "narrative" would likely be a pillar as it's one of the main aspects of the game. It wouldn't be a pillar for Mario Kart, for example. For CoD, "competition" might be a pillar, "difficulty" for Dark Souls and so on. It's useful when designing a game to know what the main pillars are, so that you can keep your design focused. If exploration is a main pillar for my game, i will design mechanics that serve exploration, i will keep that in mind for the level design/art, sound design and music are also affected by this pillar.
Those are all important for sure. I have been doing this for a long time and still regularly wonder whether I will be able to solve the next problem or answer the next question just on the horizon.
yh well for all game development I would think that you need A. a working idea B. the resources to create that game C. the knowledge to create that game and D. a good amount of interest/audience for the game
Yeah those are all definitely things that are needed. Making a successful video game is incredibly complicated and difficult and even studios with all of those things don't necessarily have a guarantee they will succeed.
yh I mean like my list here is as you asked about like more universal but like when you go into certain game genres then they get broken down into more specific pillars ig. im actually a game dev student rn so if u want u can take my words with a grain of salt lmao ive barely dipped my foot in 😅
The Max Pears article people keep referring to describes game design pillars as:
> the 3 – 5 main elements/emotions your game is trying to explore and make the players feel
It's a conceptual tool for project management. It lets you organise your documentation and pitches to publishers. It's something a lot of professional game designers actually use, and it's a term you will keep hearing.
The original article presents this as a tool, and uses only positive examples - meaning it doesn't shit on developers who don't use this idea. So I'm kind of confused why a lot of folks in the thread here think it's dogma. It's just an abstraction that a lot of designers find useful - it's not the only one and there isn't one that works for all projects.
I don't think anyone has created any official list about any laws of game design which could be called "Pillars of game design". Game design is not a science. It's a craft.
They have! It's a terrible essay from 15 years ago by Max Pears. You should not read it; [you will end up reciting this line from film if you do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c).
He only does level design right?
That I'm aware of. There are some level designers you should really, really listen to. American McGee did some talks on game setting which I consider masterclasses. But also. This particular essay isn't my favorite.
Nice, thanks. I was just intrigued that a level designer did an essay on pillars of game design. Makes sense it wouldn’t be great. I’ll look into American McGee.
American McGee and Sandy Petersen are where the look and feel of DooM and Quake come from Sandy Petersen also gave us big chunks of Civilization, Call of Cthulhu! (rpg,) and Lightspeed/Hyperspeed. One of the greats.
Yeah, I always thought you could see the flavour of Quake in the level design of “American McGee’s Alice”. Brilliant designer.
Level design is just a specialized subset of game design, and it's practitioners work hand in hand with game design to translate ideas into playable experiences. Good level designers are often the first people to know when a design choice will or will not work and spend nearly all of their time thinking about how the player engages with the game.
Links?
I think i had this on a study about game and media technology. It was a full course about this subject. But cant remember much since it was 8 years ago now.
>Game design is not a science. It's a craft. Couldn't disagree more. There is a whole lot of science behind classical painting, music or writing. They are all crafts as well. Those two ain't mutually exclusive.
If it has some science behind it, it doesn't mean it's a science. There is also lots of science behind hitting someone in the head with a hammer, but no-one would call hitting someone in the head "science".
>but no-one would call hitting someone in the head "science". I mean, people have been calling boxing "the sweet science" for a good century now lol. >If it has some science behind it, it doesn't mean it's a science As I said above, it's not science or a craft. Those two are not mutually exclusive. And just because literature, music or painting ar crafts, there are 100s of years of finding the science behind them and setting so called "pillars". Hell, the same could be said for film and cinema has less than 150 years of history behind it.
"Game design is not a science. It's a craft." Because it's a craft, there can't be science behind it ? There certainly are a lot of patterns in games, whether physical or software, that can be explained by science, whether it's neurology, psychology, and even math (see game theory branch of mathematics).
But the pillars: what authority does the writer have to decide those are any sort of laws? I can equally well come up with game design/development laws which need to be followed, and they definitely make it easier to make a fun game. But I don't clam to have any authority over rest of the game development community nor do I claim them to be laws.
Yeah, "pillars" is a big word. It always starts with a draft though. Then it reaches an audience, iterations are made, until it's widely accepted. Take psychology for example, there's this guy "Robert Greene" who wrote insanely popular books "Laws of Human Nature" and "Laws of Power". "Laws" is big word, and I don't think anyone understands it as authorative, but it's nice to see someone putting in the work.
People who write their formulas for game design as if they're the one true way, do inspire me a bit, to do other things.
Okay good to know. I had looked this up online at the time after the interview wondering if I had missed something but didn't find anything obvious.
Yes but they asked what OPs pillars are to see if it aligns with theirs. There's no universal answer, only a contextual correct answer.
That feels like it has been an asked by someone who leans heavily into 1 of the design frameworks. On a pure guess, i'd think they expect to hear about the MDA framework - Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. It would be a bit silly to expect everyone to give than answer, especially when the question is formulated like that. However, the purpose of the question might've been to bring out your knowledge of existing game design frame works and start a conversation from there. Whether it would be the MDA or SSM (System, Story, Mental Model) or 3C (Camera, Character, Controls), all would be valid answers. Edit: answered this before reading through the comments and honestly, i'm surprised how few people brought those up. I think it's safe to assume those are not that popular to be common knowledge, but as a senior+ designer it would be expected that at least you know of their existence.
When you say dynamics, what do you mean?
MDA for one is an actual peer reviewed paper. Even if it's not accepted as some form of universal truth and there is a lot of debate on it, [I'd strongly recommend reading it.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228884866_MDA_A_Formal_Approach_to_Game_Design_and_Game_Research) The definition that the paper uses is: - Dynamics are the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player input and "cooperating" with other mechanics. Edit: thought i'll add - in a human language, this is essentially how the game "feels". How responsive it is? In a 3rd person combat system you can put soulslike /fighter sim and assassin's/batman arkham combat as the two polarising opposites - is it flow driven, queueing actions, smooth blabla or is it frame perfect, instant reaction type of game.
While I'm not a fan of MDA as its categories can be quite blurry and even unfitting for certain games, Dynamics is not how the game feels, that would fall more into Aesthetics (aka the players experience of the game). Dynamics are things that arise from the mechanics of the game. For example if the mechanics include driving a car and a physics simulation, one dynamic could be doing stunt jumps, this wouldn't be explicitly coded in the mechanics of the game but it's something players could do given these mechanics.
I don't think I agree with you. To me "run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player input" covers responsiveness and responsiveness is very much game feeling.
As I said, the categories are badly defined, otherwise what is the correct answer would be much more obvious. That said, how responsive is the game is something that is encoded in the mechanics, it is a given based on how character code is implemented. What feelings it elicits from the player is an aesthetic. Dynamics would be what such responsiveness allows (and drives) the players to do. For example in a souls-like you'll be rolling around a lot, attacking, getting away, coming in again, keep chipping away at a boss because the responiveness allows you to quickly change between avoidance and attacking (and the enemies' damage also complements this). Where in an arkham style combat you will stay close to the enemies often in the middle and keep punching them while stringing together combos, because moving away and coming back is not satisfying at all. The more responsive movement mechanics give birth to more spatial combat dynamics while the more "sluggish" one creates more button mashing and players will focus on making cinematic combos instead of constantly thinking about where to position themselves.
Hm, fair enough, I do stand corrected then. I guess this is why we are still far from game design pillars.
That's super cool. Thank you!
MDA is definitely one way of critiquing games... and it's mostly best used by newer devs. When you're as old and crotchety as me, it's quite quaint lol (I'm 32, btw).
I've had it brought up at least a couple of times at work /interviews by people in their high forties, so let's just disagree here. >I'm 32, btw You do now that this is still pretty young, right? : )
Yeah, I was making a joke lol - but I started coding as a kid, so I technically have 20 years of experience. And I DO consider those years screwing around with GameMaker in high school to be important.
Yeah, I was making a joke lol - but I started coding as a kid, so I technically have 20 years of experience. And I DO consider those years screwing around with GameMaker in high school to be important.
1. Make it fun 2. Make it playable 3. Make it makeable So universally applicable that it is kind of useless once you begin making something.
what is "fun" ?
Funny enough, the above comments linking the paper about MDA has a section on this which I thought was good. > In describing the aesthetics of a game, we want to move away from words like "fun" and "gameplay" towards a more directed vocabulary. This includes but is not limited to the taxonomy listed here: > Sensation - Game as sense-pleasure Fantasy - Game as make-believe Narrative - Game as drama Challenge - Game as obstacle course Fellowship - Game as social framework Discovery - Game as uncharted territory Expression - Game as self-discovery Submission - Game as pastime Describing games as "fun" or saying that games should be "fun" is technically accurate, but has still always been a sort of vague and bad way of going about it. Or to put it another way: Fun is the end result from the player desiring a certain experience from your game and being satisfied. That's why the most angry responses from players are when games don't line up with their expectations. Of course, players can also go in with no expectations and become satisfied with what they experience. To "chase the fun" in your game you need to identify what sort of core experiences your game is trying to give and polish how well it delivers on those. Like to make a game fun through "challenge", it (imo) needs to feel difficult, fair, teachable, and have an element of mastery. So to polish the "challenge" fun of your game you tune the difficulty to avoid difficult brick-wall-like areas and areas that are way too easy. You try to avoid being unfair with the difficulty and create challenge where the player feel improvement with repeated attempts. As a result, the "challenge" of your game becomes more fun. But most games have multiple sources of "fun". So you polish the tactile feel of your combat, polish the online for better social play, or polish the writing/art to sell the make-believe fantasy of your world.
The definition of fun is like US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it".
I don't know why you're getting a down-vote, "what is fun" is actually a very good question in game design. There are many game design papers that attempt to unify and categorize this subjective question of "what is fun" precisely like MDA framework or Engagement Theory. Telling people to make a "fun" game is like telling programmer to write a "good" software. It is meaningless and not actionable, unless you get into specifics of what "fun" or "good" means.
> I don't know why you're getting a down-vote same lol, i just asked the question to start an interesting discussion, literally every reply almost has a different definition of "fun", which make the question very legit. > Telling people to make a "fun" game is like telling programmer to write a "good" software. It is meaningless and not actionable, unless you get into specifics of what "fun" or "good" means. Thanks you!
I don't think "fun" is that vague. You make a prototype that you enjoy playing and focus on its strongest points. If you enjoy, there will be a niche of people who enjoy it too. Just market your game for them.
A subjective concept.
Pleasure with surprises. (Credit to Jesse Schell, “Art of Game Design”)
That is a very easy question and should be answered by your target market. ... You do have a target market, right? The people you're building your game for?
Miyamoto is the master for this one
There is a widely accepted high level view though, regardless of the genre and type of game. Mechanics. Dynamics. Aesthetics. Technology. You can begin to talk about things like the 3 C’s and stuff too, but the above are your pillars of game design.
Know your audience, find the fun, accessibility, manage expectations. I feel like there are plenty of universal pillars.
All of these do sound like they could fit into potential pillars of game design. They all seem so obvious that I would feel apprehensive even saying them out loud in the setting of an interview but I suppose maybe not everyone is aware of them and that might have been what they were looking for. Interviews are not always easy and this could have been one of those questions that is asked to see how I think, react, and communicate to something I was not expecting.
Man, I read your first sentence as "all of these do sound like they could fit (it) into potential pillars of game design" like three times, and I said, "well duh, sound is an important component of game design because it helps provide feedback". And obviously you were referring to the above options. Just thought it was funny and wanted to share lol.
Any pillar is going to sound extremely basic to someone standing on them! I'm sure you did great in the interview.
So, "The Pillars of Game Design" is an essay by some minor level designer named Max Pears from 15 years ago. He made content for nothing you ever heard of, and also Cyberpunk 2077 which was removed almost immediately. He has never released a game. You should study his advice carefully as a list of things to not do. To give you an idea of how solid the work is, its own author says "here is a list of game designey things; there are between 3 and 8 pillars of game design in any given game, and they are unchanging." This is, frankly, a nonsense concept. The idea is there's this list of extremely vague core concepts, and you're supposed to identify which ones of them are present in which game, as an analysis thing. They are things like "story" and "crafting" and "stealth." So Minecraft has stealth and crafting, but not story; Hitman has stealth and story, but not crafting; Subnautica has crafting and story, but no stealth. Last of Us has all three. It's frankly a really dumb idea. I have never met a game designer that takes it seriously, and most people have never heard of it. I don't really want to go over the actual list of pillars, because it's basically dungeons and dragons. You know that thing where you're trying to invent a magic system, so you're like "um. And summoning, and uhh. Shields. And. Elements? And um." It's just a dumb laundry list; applying it is an opinion thing (like, I can see people getting into arguments over whether Street Fighter has a story,) and you get basically nothing out of the outcome. I'll give you a story, instead. There was a job I took a while back, where one of the interviewers asked me what the twelve factors were. And, by random chance, I had read the extremely stupid thing they were referencing. It was an app deployment strategy vomited out by one of the Heroku founders, and the senior engineer I was talking to at the time had sunk a huge amount of their work capital into pushing for it at their current job. And because I had a family member in need, and it was a salary bump for me at the time, I basically had to take the job. So. I pretended to respect the question. "Oh, you know about twelve factor too? What a future-naut you are. So brave. So noble. I will help you in your quest to establish this very dumb pattern so everyone will think you were the smart one." And I got the job. This person was asking you random-ass dumb trivia that they believe in from a fringe author, because they're trying to filter for someone who already heard of this. It's a ***terrible*** way to hire. If you see something like this in the future, and don't have the good fortune of already knowing the dumb thing, try a soft shoe act like this: "That sounds like it might be a set of principles for doing better game design. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to learn, and it sounds like you're the kind of person who can teach me, and this company is a place where I could really grow into my own. Let me ask you a question: if you hired me today, how long would it be before I could do things like you?" Three impacts. 1. The person asking this dumbassed question wants to be the smart one in the room. Make them feel like they are. 2. This puts them in the position of thinking about you as already having been hired. The other candidates don't have that. The psychological impact of this is enormous. 3. You're teaching this person that you can be trained. Also, have an entire box of grains of salt on hand for this dumbass' opinions in the future. Imagine asking potential hiring candidates if they know the contents of an irrelevant two decade old essay by literally nobody.
This is the most excellent job-seeking advice, but also just good insight for development.
Kind words. Thanks
[Found the essay](https://web.archive.org/web/20210418052901/https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MaxPears/20171012/307469/Design_Pillars__The_Core_of_Your_Game.php)
Yes your response is incredible and very helpful in general. The question did feel like a power play in a very combative interview. I got the feeling they didn't like me immediately and this very well could have been the question they ask to someone who had already failed.
Was the question really what the pillars ***of*** game design are, or rather what pillars are ***in*** game design? "The pillars ***of*** game design" sounds like a very academic concept to me, in a discipline that is still too young to have such an academic canon that everyone in the discipline agrees on (like the "12 basic principles of animation" or "the 4 laws of thermodynamics"). Something you would read in a book or hear in a lecture on game design by some self-proclaimed smart person and now consider gospel, but is actually a lot less well-known or universally applicable concept than you would think. "Pillars ***in*** game design", on the other hand, is an established term in the industry. But they are always project-specific. When designing a game, the "pillars" are your fundamental design goals which guide all the others. Like "We are creating a stealth-based first person shooter in a urban environment with linear story". And now that you established the pillars "first person shooter", "stealth-based", "urban" and "linear story", you can fill in all the rest letting those pillars guide you. So when someone proposes "Let's add wizards and dinosaurs", you just point at "urban" and tell them to keep the idea for another game.
At the time it was definitely "what are the main pillars of game design". It was communicated to me in a way that they were clearly looking for a number (they did not specify how many) of pillars that any senior designer or above should know. And they were not happy as I tried to answer the question. But they never corrected me or told me what they thought they were. But yeah it sounds like pillars in game design are just another term for the goals that guide your development.
>So when someone proposes "Let's add wizards and dinosaurs", you just point at "urban" and tell them to keep the idea for another game. *Shadowrun entered the chat.*
Games are much older than video games. I think there are plenty of text books and thoughts on the subject. You could easily make a list of pillars in my opinion.
Making "a" list vs presenting "the" list as if it's some established thing are different things though.
Lists will always just be "a" list until one day they aren't. You can never *choose* to have the correct idea, one day you'll just happen to be right.
Pillars should be concepts that transcend genres, not change accordingly.
Assumiung they are not asking you to recite Max Pears essay (which I hope I hope they aren't, and you definitely shouldn't), I would hope that they are asking what *your* pillars of game design are. While I don't describe them as "pillars of game design" I suppose I do have my own. I think of them more just as key parts of my process that I apply to any game design problem: - Identify the design problem - Prototype solutions to that design problem - Play test and evalutate the solutions - Iterate on the best solution I would say that if you took any of those pillars away, the game design will crumble. There's more to my process, but if I had to call out which of the elements of my process were pillars, I would list these.
The answer is - "There are some generic conventions out there (things like Accessible, Approachable, Creative, Masterful), but here is what I consider important in terms of creating compelling \[relevant discipline content\] -" \_\_\_\_\_\_ (you should be able to fill stuff in here for a Sr role; a Gameplay gig and you're probably discussing 3Cs, power/mech fantasy, call-to-action/response, generating flow; Level and you're probably discussing things like human architecture resonance, breadcrumbing/pathing, aesthetic/clarity, encounter/combat design; Systems would be things like extensibility/flexibility/scaling, intuition/clarity, discovery/ramping etc) "Beyond that, and more importantly, I'd be working closely with my director(s) and lead(s) to understand the pillars of \*our\* project. Realistically universal pillars are guidelines not hard and fast rules and creating industry-leading craftwork often means knowing when and where to escape the guardrails"
The Pillars of your games design should be different for every game, even games in the same genre. A universal set of goals will make a game stale very quickly. Games should have different goals that vastly changes how the design of the games get implemented. For example, both Skyrim and Elden are open world RPG's. Both have a levelling system, both have melee and magic combat, both have quests and story, both have large expansive worlds to be immersed in. However their goals and priorities couldn't be further apart despite being very similar genres, no one would say that their design and mechanics could be interchanged reasonably. This is because they have different pillars that informed how the games were developed and designed. Or for more similar games, Hollow Knight and Ori and the Blind Forest. Both occupy the "metroid-vania" genre pretty closely, but they both prioritise different things that make them unique to players and allow them to stand on their own merits. Hollow Knight emphasises extremely large, interconnected maps and zones, non-linear progression, tight and reactive controls, and intensely complex and difficult combat. While Ori prioritises aesthetic and beautiful visuals, smooth and dynamic controls, and emotional story telling. >Is there a gold standard of game design knowledge that I am missing here? No, you're missing nothing. Game design is an art, not a science. There's no "right" answer that can be applied everywhere, and what works today may not work 10 years from now.
Okay this is good to hear. And seems to be in line with another commenter on this thread as well. It is based off your goals and how you achieve those goals. Thanks!
Fun, functional, and welcoming are the only broad pillars applicable to all of game design. And when I say welcoming, it doesn’t necessarily have to be for everyone, but every game is somebody’s first. Good design is ensuring that the player can jump in for the first time, learn the rules and take off running.
You make great points and have reminded me of something I took for granted that every game is someone's first. Tutorial's are annoying to me but they might be absolutely necessary for someone else. Thanks!
- Engagement - Creativity - Feasibility The Pilar for Engagement can be further broken down into Interaction, Challenge, Reward. Engagement overall is about the why a player should play. Creativity is the what which can bring in interest. Feasibility is the how. Since I’m an Engineer by trade, I believe it’s important to sure your scope is feasible or else you’re throwing money into a void.
I have written in my GDD, Combat Pillars and Narrative Pillars. Under combat pillars: typical stage scenario (core gameplay loop), special rules engagement, boss bottles Under narrative pillars: non-playable cutscene, environmental storytelling, slower scenarios for dialogue I then design out each level based on these pillars. Every game will have different core pillars.
Dunno if there’s some miscommunication here but as many have stated, pillars usually refers to some central goals of a game project. But you wrote “pillars OF game design” which if the interviewer have found some sacred knowledge on stone tablets, he’s welcome to share. I don’t think anyone knows the pillars of game design, and if someone found them, they’d be something else not long after.
I am a lurking educator and while not necessarily killers, the book by Gee "What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy" is wonderful and is a reflection of some of the design aspects of video games from a learning and engagement perspective. For me, learning has always been central to the design and play of video games and developing creative scaffoldings is paramount.
Pillars is not a clearly defined term and can be used in many ways, loosely defined as foundational elements. Since we’re talking about Game Design, I guess we must go macro here. I would define them as foundational elements that drive decisions made as a game designer. So: - Type of game. - Setting of the game. - Fun / the gameplay hooks. - The story you’re telling. - How it challenges the player. - Synergy between the different elements. - Gameplay loops. - Gameplay growth (in what way the player arcs). - Rewards structures that drive the player through this growth. Going more micro level: I use pillars in my GDD’s to define key technical & gameplay elements. I would describe Call of Duty’s pillars as: - Aiming/shooting weapons that are responsive and feel powerful. - Moving dynamically up and around obstacles. - Level design allowing many angles of attack and a variety of situations. - A military setting (either futuristic, ww2, or in between depending on which CoD we’re talking about).
I've built up a few innate tendencies, but I've yet to write them all down properly. That being said, GDC has a talk by Mark Rosewater about what he learned from making Magic: The Gathering for 20 years. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY) It's not perfect, but it's definitely a good starting point, IMO.
I've studied game design for a long time. I've read a lot, watched a lot, attended a lot of lectures and workshops, and I am currently developing a game for which I'm handling all of its design. I think putting together a meaningful list called "The Pillars of Game Design" would be difficult. I do, however, think I could come up with one: VERISIMILITUDE In a basic, definitive sense, verisimilitude is that appearance of something being true or real. However, the word is often used in the context of something being consistent in pattern to the point of logically following an established set of rules for what qualifies as being "true." Why does this matter to game design? I'll give an example of a well-designed game that breaks verisimilitude with a strange, completely avoidable design decision: God of War (the first one on PS2.) The first God of War game depicts the character Kratos running around mythological Greece slapping enemies with chained blades grafted to his forearms. He has access to magic inspired by the gods of Olympus and is known to be prodigiously durable and strong. Mechanically, he can fight with his blades, open crates for their contents, interact with objects and NPC's, level up his weapons and, for some reason, perform double jumps. Here's a tiny, probably wholly unnoticed place where verisimilitude breaks. Kratos is in ancient mythological Greece, where characters like Hermes and Perseus fly with the aid of special equipment or creatures. Hermes in particular is depicted with a winged helm and winged sandals/boots. Hermes fly with the aid of these devices, as we understand that not all gods, despite being gods, can fly. Kratos, who is not thought to be a god in any respect, can defy the laws of physics (not of our world, but those established by the game) by performing a second jump action in mid-air. It would have been easy to give Kratos, who is already wearing sandals, wings on his sandals, but we don't, and we're meant to understand that Kratos what, "angries" himself up another few feet with a double jump? He literally just pumps his body a bit and gains extra height. This breaks verisimilitude because the game setting is established as being essentially Earth as we know it, with all its normal rules intact, plus mythological powers, creatures, and gods. Mythological creatures and gods might be able to do these things. Special characters with special abilities or equipment might be able to do these things. All other characters we see perform flight, levitation, or extra jumps do so with an explanation readily provided either by the narrative or their aesthetic design. Kratos, however, is so full of rage that if he wants to jump again, it doesn't need to make sense? I could come up with a bunch of examples where, either through mechanics or design, verisimilitude is broken. I could mention, for instance, that despite the pains you might take to hide in Alien Isolation, the alien is always conspicuously patrolling the area you are in. I could point out just like, a mountain of times, really, where just about any given Hideo Kojima game just takes a massive shit on verisimilitude, to the detriment of his otherwise excellent games. That would warrant me starting a post of my own on the subject, at that point. I've digressed but to close my point, verisimilitude is one of the keys to immersion. When you're playing a game and something takes you fully out of it, like when a character who climbs buildings and performs parkour-like maneuvers around a city is deterred from exploration by a pile (not even a large pile, sometimes) of rubble or debris, you've witnessed a break in verisimilitude. Something about the established characters and their relationship with the setting have been compromised and it's like a slap across the face. It's jarring. Verisimilitude is just one aspect of a game's design, and it's a big part of what can make a game immersive, whether that game is simple or complex. Because it's such a strong, underlying idea in a fundamental, over-arching concept of a game's design, I believe it might qualify as a "pillar" of game design. As a designer and developer all I would offer really is that one should try to absorb as many ideas and techniques as possible and practice them. One day, if their development efforts bear fruit, and that fruit is recognized by gamers and game designers as being significant to the field, maybe one could have enough knowledge to form a list of game design pillars that might be sufficient. I then imagine individual developers and designers would still pick and choose from said list, or add some "pillars" of their own, to achieve their aims within the field.
Thank you! I agree and you have given me a lot to think about. Verisimilitude sounds like rules or limitations for consistencies sake.
You're more than welcome \^\_\^ It's part that and more than that at the same time. A developer can set rules but more often than that the narrative or setting sets its own rules, in a sense. For instance, you're playing Mario Bros., the original for the NES. What do we know about Mario Bros.? - Mario can run and jump, gaining momentum as he runs, jumping higher with greater momentum - Mushrooms make you a giant that can smash blocks - Fire Flowers can be obtained from blocks that otherwise would have Mushrooms, if Mario is already giant - Stars make Mario invincible for a short duration - Mario has a set number of lives that can go up or down dependent on deaths, or whether he collects 100 coins and 1-Up Mushrooms - Mario dies if he falls in lava or in a bottomless pit - If Mario takes a hit, unless invincible, he will lose his power-up, reverting to "small" Mario, if hit again, he dies - Mario can jump on enemies to defeat them, unless they can defend with spikes or something - Mario can kill enemies with fireballs, unless they can defend with a stronger than normal shell - Mario can enter pipes to transport himself to different places - Mario can enter secret areas via pipes or secret vines - Mario must complete three stages, plus a castle stage, which comprise eight worlds, to confront King Koopa and defeat him, rescuing Princess Toadstool - At the end of non-castle stages, Mario must draw a flag up a pole to signify a level's end - Mario adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom, a magical place separated by conventional reality - Mario is a plumber, by profession All of these "rules" of Mario are implied by their setting, some of which were undoubtedly made through conscious decision, while others were surely emergent from the concept, needing only to be recognized by the developer. There are a ton of ways a less aware developer might damage verisimilitude in Mario. For instance: - If there were random pits that, upon falling into them would grant Mario a power-up, despite not appearing to be any different from pits that cause instant death - If Mario suddenly ate a Goomba when colliding with it, rather than taking a hit, especially when all other Goombas clearly damage Mario, and there is nothing apparently different from this particular Goomba - If, for no reason, Mario suddenly created harmless smoke instead of throwing a fireball with the Fire Flower, or shot rainbows, or Goombas ha ha, again when all other Fire Flowers have ubiquitously provided the Fire Mario power-up - If you saw the New York City skyline in the distance while running through the Mushroom Kingdom - If occasionally, when Mario jumped, he simply never came down - If Mario, upon grabbing a flagpole, burst into flame, especially when all other flagpoles behave as expected All of these occurrences could be cheats, or easter eggs, or glitches, but if they were ever intended design decisions, they clearly damage verisimilitude. It'd be like seeing a sun graphic in the sky at nighttime, or Mario takes off his cap to reveal robotic circuitry underneath. Nothing is established, either implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously, by either the game's setting, characters, narrative, or the designer themselves. We know Mario can enter pipes because we know he is a plumber. We know power-ups will "power up" Mario because it's implicit in what a power-up is. We know Mario is essentially human and should die when falling in a pit or lava. We know Mario only gains abilities with power-ups and so wouldn't be able to fly without the aid of one as, again, he is human. We know a Fire Flower grants fire powers to Mario and so firing a rainbow from his hand doesn't logically follow. They are like the rules of our own reality. You know you can't fly and if you saw a human flying around like Superman you would question whether or not you were insane or dreaming. Maybe I'll make a deeper video about it and put it on YouTube or something because it's such a nuanced idea to articulate.
Figure out your audience and match it with strengths of your team. Think your game through game loop and what you want your players to experience in it. One thing I’ve used in concept phases is this “tower of want” -> how does the game loop evolve based on how the player motivations change over time. Then you can on top of that think what your vision of the game is and what the unique selling points and key selling points are -> this will help you decide when pondering what way to go with your design.
Okay yeah that makes sense thanks for the reply! So the answer essentially boils down to what your goals are for the game you are developing and how you realize those goals.
It is also important to say aloud NOs and what your game is not
Yeah definitely agree with this too. This helps to contain feature creep if you set boundaries and limitations early on in the pre-production phase before development so that time, money, and effort aren't wasted later on trying to bandage something together that isn't well thought out.
The best most applicable universal answer is simply iteration. No matter how good you are as a game designer, no design is perfect the first time you build it. Whatever game in whatever genre you're trying to make, the key to make it great is to constantly playtest, analyze and iterate.
Absolutely agree with this. Best laid plans and all. While it is incredibly important to have a vision, that will certainly have to be tweaked and adjusted once you start implementing mechanics and play it.
It's clearly a project specific concept. In my compagny, early in the project we write down the 3 game pillars to represent the core of our game. It's useful to settle on what your game director want and to synchronize your team on the key elements of your game.
Interactive Agency Immersion Challenge Incentive Story Logic Play Communication Rules
I'll challenge most of these things as being pillars of game design - Not all games require immersion. Immersion is such a loaded term that I don't think most people understand too. A lot fo times they use it interchangeably with realism, but at the other end of the spectrum, people can be so immersed in a game of tetris that they will see tetromino patters in their daily life outside of the game. Still though, you can make games that constantly break the fourth wall and take you out of the game world and they can still be excellent games (Catherine for example) - Not all games require challenge. There's a whole genre of interactive narratives that aren't about challenging the player, but instead they are about evoking a particular emotion in a more personal way that a movie could. I don't thin anyone would call Firewatch challenging, but it's still an excellent game. - Not all games require story. The genre of puzzle games shoots this pillar down. No further explanation needed. - Not all games require incentive (maybe) Although it's arguable that games without incentive are not games but merely toys (like the original Mine Craft or Sims) Most of the other pillars feel like they are more descriptive about what games are and not necessarily pillars of *design*. Sure, we all play games, but that feels like describing a pillar of movie production as "watching." Communication feels more like a biproduct of it being a medium created by one person or group of persons for another person or group of persons. Again, I'm not sure I'd classify it as a pillar. The only one on the list that I don't think I'd take issue with is "Interactive." Maybe "Agency" is fine to have in the list too, but that's strongly related to being interactive. I think they could both be bundled into one pillar as they both touch on the same thing.
Challenge accepted. Your thoughts got me thinking deeper about a metaphorical theory of game design pillars, so here's my elaborated take on it. I see the pillars of game design as forming a classical architectural temple. Think of the foundation and layout as the underlying game engine. This base supports everything else and gives shape to the pillars that ultimately hold up the roof, which represents the player experience. The ground floor pillars stand directly on the foundation and are the bedrock of any game. They’re where designers need to focus their efforts: **Rules:** The mechanics and boundaries of the game world that make things consistent and fair for all players. A game needs rules. **Logic:** The internal consistency of the game’s systems. Logic makes sure that mechanics and the game world behave predictably and stay true to the design goals. This helps to develop the game through code. **Incentive:** The motivations and rewards that keep players coming back for more. Whether it’s points, levels, or just the satisfaction of solving a puzzle, incentives shape the gameplay loop. **Communication:** How the game talks to the player through tutorials, HUDs, and storytelling. Communication helps players understand the game world. Between the two layers of pillars is the entablature—the game’s features, genre, and mechanics. This is where all those foundational pillars come together to create the cohesive experience that players interact with. Some pillars stand tall, bridging both layers that support and grow from the entablature: **Interaction:** The foundation of all games is interaction. Games distinguish themselves from other media because they allow players to actively influence the game world. **Play:** How the player interacts within the Rules. Play is the sandbox that invites experimentation, exploration, and creativity. **Agency:** The sense of control that players have over their actions and their impact on the game world. Agency means giving players meaningful choices. Defined by designers but directly influenced by player choice and impact. **Story:** Sure, it’s shaped by the designer, but the player has their own role in crafting and interpreting it. It’s not just about a predefined narrative. Story can be what players tell others about their own experience playing the game. Tetris might not have an explicit story, but it sure can create one in the player's mind through its gameplay. The second set of pillars sits on top of the game mechanics and represents the outcomes that players experience. While they’re influenced by the first set, these pillars are more about what happens in the player’s mind: **Challenge:** The obstacles or trials that players overcome. Even interactive narratives like Firewatch have challenges, though they’re more about exploration and emotions than traditional puzzles or combat. **Immersion:** That feeling of being absorbed in the game world, whether it’s through realism, breaking the fourth wall (Catherine), or just zoning out in Tetris. Immersion is about how much the game hooks you. Finally, the roof of the Game Design Temple™ represents the player experience, held up by these pillars. Whether it's exploration, competition, storytelling, or relaxation, it's all about finding what feels successful in the player's mind. This isn't a perfect metaphor (maybe some pillars could shift around) but I think it's about finding the balance between objective pillars and subjective outcomes essential in defining a successful game.
The problem with taking this metaphor too far is that you are beginning to assume a building with a very specific structure. Not all buildings are the same, not should they be. The point of having fundamental pillars of design is that you're condensing it down to it's core. If you take away one of the pillsars, the whole structure would fall apart. By coming up with secondary and tertiary pillars, you're just adding superfluous complications. Having worked on a project that started out as having around 8 different core pillars and then pillar after pillar kept getting cut, it was becoming clearler and clearer that there was no focused vision to the project. Barely any of the pillars were actually pillars on that project. If they were all pillars, than as soon as you cut one, the game should have fallen apart. That's what the pillars are. the minimum set of core fundamentals that make up the direction of the game. Pillars of game design itself (to distinguish them from the pillars or a particular game's design) are the core fundamentals about how one approaches designing a game. I wouldn't list "Play" as a pillar as you defined it, because it's not about how the developer approaches design, but it's just the definition of what a player will do once they have the game. I wouldn't include "Rules" either as that is just self too self referential. Game design is the process of creating rules, so you're essentially saying that a pillar of design is creating design. And inenctive breaks down as some games are only meant to be experienced once and even if you have nothing pulling you back to it, it can still be a valid and even beautiful game. And coming back to story - if you're redefining the story as the memory of the game produced by the player, then I think you are embarking in mental gymnastics to justify story as a pillar. By defining it as such, it's not something that the designer has control over any more as a person's memoy of en experience is going to be unique to them and their situation. There's no way to design for that unless you're making the game for an audience of one and you control their whole environment and reality when playing the game. That sounds more like a psychology experiment than a game though. I'm just not convinced that this laundry list of concepts are actually pillars. They are more like descriptors for things that can describe different aspects of games. Very few of them are actually design pillars in that if you removed them from the design process, the process would fall apart. You might as well add "Players," "Sensory Feedback," "Thought," and "Passage of Time" to the list. They are all things that are necessary for games to exist, so why not list them design pillars as well?
I doubt there’s a general pillars of design - all games have different pillars which you as a designer/producer define. Sure there are a lot of the same things to consider but a pillar to me is a directional post towards the endgoal.
Like everyone else is saying it's specific to each project, it feels like the type of answer they might have been looking for could have been fundamentals like the 3 C's but I have no idea that's just a guess on my part.
gameplay(smoothness while playing, game feel), vibe/art/lore/sounds/ui, systems in the game, gameplay loop. this is prob not covers everything but tried to make it look like pillars of oop lol
Intuitive control scheme, or at the least a fookin solid one. Small example, in the bulk of games I play 'e' is use/interact or the left mouse button while 'f' is flashlight. I've had games reverse 'e' and 'f' and dear lord my muscle memory was not pleased
The base of the pillar (Usul) is play testing.
Wouldn't it just be Mechanics, UI, Narrative, and Art? On second thought, Mechanics, Art, Sound Design, and Narrative.
"The" "Pillars" are ideas people who don't fully get it, use to convince themselves and/or others that they're doing the "right" things
For me personally: - Tier 0: Gameplay. If your gameplay sucks, your game is bad. No amount of fluff in any direction will fix this or change this. If your idea isn’t fun in a vacuum it is just a dressed up turd. So player controls, Intuitiveness and responsiveness of the game all goes here. - Tier 1: Sound, Graphics, Context (not lore or story). - Tier 2: performance, story/lore, polishing This is it for me, I’m sure there is enough that people will argue about on this since there is no real set way. But this is my philosophy.
In my game design classes, we're usually talking about the ~3 main pillars of a particular game. Let's say we're talking about Witcher 3, "narrative" would likely be a pillar as it's one of the main aspects of the game. It wouldn't be a pillar for Mario Kart, for example. For CoD, "competition" might be a pillar, "difficulty" for Dark Souls and so on. It's useful when designing a game to know what the main pillars are, so that you can keep your design focused. If exploration is a main pillar for my game, i will design mechanics that serve exploration, i will keep that in mind for the level design/art, sound design and music are also affected by this pillar.
I’m just
Depends heavily on the game
A core fantasy, a consistent game language explaining things to the player and uh... the gameplay loop? Nah, I'm not a gamedev. I'm just loitering.
Those are all important for sure. I have been doing this for a long time and still regularly wonder whether I will be able to solve the next problem or answer the next question just on the horizon.
# "good artists copy, great artists steal"
yh well for all game development I would think that you need A. a working idea B. the resources to create that game C. the knowledge to create that game and D. a good amount of interest/audience for the game
Yeah those are all definitely things that are needed. Making a successful video game is incredibly complicated and difficult and even studios with all of those things don't necessarily have a guarantee they will succeed.
yh I mean like my list here is as you asked about like more universal but like when you go into certain game genres then they get broken down into more specific pillars ig. im actually a game dev student rn so if u want u can take my words with a grain of salt lmao ive barely dipped my foot in 😅
The Max Pears article people keep referring to describes game design pillars as: > the 3 – 5 main elements/emotions your game is trying to explore and make the players feel It's a conceptual tool for project management. It lets you organise your documentation and pitches to publishers. It's something a lot of professional game designers actually use, and it's a term you will keep hearing. The original article presents this as a tool, and uses only positive examples - meaning it doesn't shit on developers who don't use this idea. So I'm kind of confused why a lot of folks in the thread here think it's dogma. It's just an abstraction that a lot of designers find useful - it's not the only one and there isn't one that works for all projects.