I recently watched a very good video on the youtube channel you’ve probably heard of: Game Maker’s Toolkit. It was a video about analyzing what you should and should not include in your game. Basically, make the mechanics to encourage actions that lead to feelings, with those feelings being the goal. But it never explains what those feelings should be.

How a Game Starts

When you start making a game, what are you making? What do you have and what does it do? I have a tough time coming up with an answer here. When I come up with a game idea, it’s usually a certain mechanic or theme I think is cool or sounds fun. But what do I do from there? What am I actually making? What am I seeking? Then only answer I can come up with is “a fun game.” So lets try and delve deeper.

What is Fun

Fun is very hard to describe, but it’s fairly easy to recognize. When I’m designing a game, I often have a gut feeling towards what is and is not going to be fun. Sometimes this is from experience, like avoiding certain mechanics that have a bad reputation, or that I know don’t combine well. But other times I know it’s going against the grain of the game. But how do I know that? I think I need to take a closer look at my games as I’m making them. I have to look closer at what draws me into designing the game, or that I expect would draw other players into playing it. I have to narrow it down to a particular source of joy within the game.

Common Themes

I tried doing this with other games I’ve enjoyed to get a feel for it. I’ve found there’s a lot of common ground. The first one is a feeling of power, especially building power. People love feeling powerful, it’s something games are very good at. Engine builders and many war games sell themselves on the idea of building power up so you can feel the momentum. Taking an action on turn 5 will feel bigger and better than the exact same action on turn 2 because of what players did. Similarly is the feeling of being smart. Games built around efficiency feel rewarding when you figure out the best way to use your resources and get rewarded for it. Even social games make you feel smart when you foil someone’s plans or carry out your own. The last major thing games tend to aim for is thematic stuff. Name your game’s theme, then try and get people to feel like they are in that situation. Make people feel like mad scientists, or adventurers, stuff like that. You can often go deeper than that, but it’s something.

But is it Fun?

This is the part that I have trouble with. You can find what the root of your game is, but is it fun? If your game is trying to let people feel like old timey oil barons, and you pick all the right mechanics to make it get that feeling across (as laid out in the video I first brought up), then what? Does that mean you’ve got a good game? Or is it just something you succeeded at? I have yet to gain a satisfactory answer to this question. I think there’s always going to be some amount of joy in a job well done and a game well designed, but how will you know if it’s a game worth making?

Conclusion

Okay, this article kind of ended up going in a strange direction. I didn’t mean for it to leave so much unanswered, but it was all I could do. My main point was to know what you’re doing and go for it. I just hope it’s something worth doing!