Designing on intuition and gut feelings puts your game at risk.

You can’t clearly assess your game idea potential, you’re driven only by personal taste, and you keep arguing with the team about important decisions. Building a solid Game Direction makes you avoid all of that. You can make an informed decision about whether to pursue a game idea, and you have a lighting guide throughout all development.

This week, I’ll show you 4 huge benefits of building a Game Direction. If you are unsure about what a Game Direction is, you can check out the previous episode.

Having a Game Direction means knowing why your game exists in the first place.

‍

Here they are:

• You Can Clearly Evaluate Your Game Idea Potential
• It’s The Perfect Decision-Making Tool
• It’s A Strong Creative Push Inside Defined Constraints
• It Guarantees Your Game’s Internal Coherence

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

#1: You Can Clearly Evaluate Your Game Idea Potential

You can’t start Pre-Production without a good game idea.

Ideas a dime a dozen per sé, meaning anyone can come up with ideas, even good ones. But the real difference between a Game Designer and a random “Idea Guy” on the streets is the ability to understand if an idea is good.

How do you do it? You need to assess its potential, meaning how it relates to other ideas and what this implies in the whole game. The common mistake is jumping into Pre-Production and starting to develop the actual game.

This is too far too soon!

If you start from a Game Direction, this process is far safer and easier.

‍

The Game Direction Document makes you check your idea potential.

Practically speaking, building the Game Direction means filling out the Game Direction Document. We’ll see in a few episodes what’s in it. It contains all the information you need to decide whether to pursue your idea, modify it, or abandon it entirely. Also, if you choose to move into Pre-Production, you already have a clear Game Direction for the whole development.

Assessing the feasibility and potential of your ideas while managing the major uncertainties is a key step during the Concept Phase. Otherwise, you risk a full-blown disaster.

So, make sure to spend some time and lay out that Game Direction Document.

#2: It’s The Perfect Decision-Making Tool

It’s dangerous to make crucial design decisions with intuitions and tastes.

During a project, you’ll need to make many decisions, some of which will be very important. In those moments, totally relying on gut feelings and personal tastes is a huge mistake.

Moreover, everyone on the team has their own, so arguing is automatic anytime there’s a decision to make. Don’t get me wrong, discussing is always a good thing! Here, the problem is the metric you base your decision-making on is arbitrary.

Having a solid, well-structured Game Direction allows you to delegate decisions to it. But in what sense?

Of course, you’ll still have to make decisions, but you’ll do it with the Game Direction as the only metric.

‍

The Game Direction avoids unpleasant dictatorships in decision-making.

In teams where the Game Direction is fuzzy or, worse, it doesn’t exist, top-of-hierarchy people can make decisions based on personal tastes or temporary craziness. This doesn’t need to happen, and it won’t with a solid Game Direction.

It’s an objective metric and incontrovertible since the team established it at the beginning of the project. The Game Director (responsible and advocate of the Game Direction) will continuously check the game against the Target Game Experience defined by the Game Direction. This reduces useless “what is best for the project” discussion to virtually zero.

And push teams to discuss how to follow the Game Direction and not the whim of a team member.

#3: It’s A Strong Creative Push Inside Defined Constraints

Creativity is a matter of balance between freedom and constraints.

It’s well known that having constraints enhances creativity. It avoids putting the brain in front of choice paralysis due to the enormous amount of possibilities. But it’s also true (as the same paper itself says) that too tight constraints stifle creativity and innovation. You can’t help but converge on a few options since too tight limits prevent you from diverging.

So it’s pretty clear here that it’s a matter of balance.

‍

The Game Direction defines a constrained space that puts you in the perfect creative sweet spot.

As we’ve said in the previous episode, Game Direction defines a space of possible games. A potentially unlimited space, but much smaller than the entire space of all the possible games.

Its 2 components (Thematic Structure and Game Pillars) perfectly embody the creative balance you need. They give you a large enough space to creatively move around and generate interesting ideas. And at the same time, you won’t have to deal with an empty, boundless space lacking any creative foothold.

With a solid Game Direction, ideas will flourish much easier.

#4: It Guarantees Your Game’s Internal Coherence

A Game Direction-driven process makes everything inherently coherent.

We’ve already talked about Internal Coherence in a previous episode about Themes & Messages. I’m focusing in particular on what I’ve called the “Transitive Property of Coherence”. If A is coherent with B and B is coherent with C, then A is coherent with C. So if every game element (ideally, at least) is coherent with your Game Direction, then all elements will be coherent with each other.

This gives you a lot of creative power when it comes to matching, for example, gameplay and narrative elements.

This works for a specific reason.

‍

Coherence is always related to the Target Game Experience.

You must never forget that what matters is not the game itself but the experience generated. If you’re confused, take a look at the Theory of Player Experience.

Sometimes, two game elements might appear incoherent with each other if you look at them individually. But their coherence and logic will immediately take shape when considering the Target Game Experience (represented by the Game Direction). The experience the game wants to generate makes two apparently further apart concepts link.

This is guaranteed if bot elements ideas come from the Game Direction itself.

The Game Direction makes you safely sail on uncharted waters.

‍

Key Takeaways:

• The Game Direction Document makes you check your idea’s potential
• The Game Direction avoids unpleasant dictatorships in decision-making
• The Game Direction defines a constrained space that puts you in the perfect creative sweet spot.
• A Game Direction-driven process makes everything inherently coherent.