Which game design tools should you use to design your next game?
A new study has found that the best way to design a new game is to start from scratch.
The study, conducted by game designer David McNeil, found that designers need to “imagine” what they want the game to be, then draw it from there.
In other words, they need to start out with something very basic, and then develop it into something that’s as unique as they can.
The result?
Game designers can come up with cool designs, but they have to get the fundamentals right.
The research, conducted at the University of Sydney’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, also found that players tend to “take longer to fully understand a game design problem than a user who has spent more time learning it”.
“When you get to the point where a game has to be fully understood, you can start to see what it is,” McNeil said.
“You see what the player is doing in the game, and you can see what they’re seeing, and that’s where the magic happens.”
“We found that people spend significantly more time understanding a problem when they’ve played the game and seen it in action, and they tend to spend more time with it as they play it, which is a good sign.”
McNeil said the study’s findings are “interesting, but we’re still a long way from a comprehensive understanding of game design”, and that more research is needed.
“We do know a lot about game design from other research, but that’s the first step,” he said.
McNeil has been working on his PhD thesis on game design since 2013, and said he’s been working towards a game that combines elements of puzzle games with real-time strategy games.
“I’m pretty interested in games that combine puzzle elements with real time strategy, so it’s definitely something that I’d like to work on,” he explained.
“It’s something that my research focuses on, and I think I’ve managed to come up the next step of making it something that people can really understand.”
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