What makes a game “Good”?

This is the title of a long blog post that I came across this week which illustrates a list of game design patterns trying to find a way to define a “Good” game. The opening paragraph stands out to me:

As a game designer, I find it very appealing to center my work and my understanding of design around the precept that design can be ‘good.’ To do that, and not have it just be a matter of opinion or esthetic preference, there must be a rubric by which I can evaluate the design and know, not only whether it is valid or functional, but whether it is ‘good.’

The rest of the blog post lists some interesting game design patterns you can use to improve the game designer mindset, so it’s worth reading. However, I want to focus on the opening you just read because it triggers me to talk about a fairly common misconception about game design: There are “Good” or “Bad” Game Design decisions. Highlighting and understanding all the pitfalls that this apparently simple and innocent statement hides are a great way to sharpen our thinking and increase awareness about the Game Designer’s work.

So let’s jump right into it.

Game Design Is Not Science, But You Feel Safe Thinking It

“Good and Bad” are never objective properties.

When we say that a game is good design-wise, we mean that it’s good from our point of view, which means that we have standards about the design of a particular type of game, and we are comparing that game with those standards. After this quick process, we can judge whether that game has a good design. The problem is that different people have different standards in their minds, so they’ll come out with different perspectives and arguments about whether a game has a good or bad design. If you believe a standard can exist disconnected from a person, you’re just imposing your standards on everyone else.

Objective standards are just YOUR standards, and there’s a reason why you want them to be absolute.

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Enforcing objective standards it’s just a reassuring thought that you tell yourself.

If what you say or think about a game is objectively true (for example, that a game is good because it respects some “objective standards perfectly”), it means that none could argue about that. So this is strongly reassuring for you. You have no problem saying that 2 + 2 = 4 because you know that none will argue with that, but you’ll be much more cautious about saying something like “I like that movie” because someone could answer back to you, “It sucks!”. And the fact that I wrote “that movie” in the previous sentence and not an actual movie name tells you that this effect is real and affects even me that I’m writing about it in this very moment (and it tells that I’m just a bunch of human meat 🙂 as anyone else).

At the root of this thinking there’s a fundamental misconception.

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Game Design is not science.

It uses scientific discoveries to create models and tools that allow us to create better games and have more control over the design process. However, Game Design doesn't come out from a laboratory experiment. In the end, saying that a game has a good or bad design, it's an opinion that needs to be supported by logical arguments. So if you say that a game, or part of it, is good or not, you need to explain yourself and tell why it is that way. This way, the discussion can be proficient, and everyone can gain insights from it by understanding (and sometimes embracing) others' points of view.

But enough with generic principles, let’s go deeper into actual Game Design stuff.

There’s No Good Or Bad Design In Absolute Terms

The fact that some human creations are commonly labeled as masterpieces, doesn’t mean we have absolute criteria to judge them.

Many people are constantly searching for something to describe "Good Game Design" (we want to find those objective standards). But what do we mean by absolute? It means that a design decision can be right or wrong no matter the context, the game, and the designer's wants. However we cannot use great games of the past to judge other games since every experience is a unique and subjective world.

To this extent, it's good to clarify how a Game Designer makes decisions during the design process.

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Every decision made by a Game Designer is to shape the experience, not the game.

A Game Designer wants to achieve an experience for the player; to do this, he has to structure the best game that will make the player feel that experience. The game structure is how he reaches his purpose, which is a specific experience. So it doesn’t matter if the designer chooses to use an old gameplay system that is no longer common nowadays because if that’s useful to generate that experience, so be it. It should be clear by now that if you talk about some gameplay being old or clunky in absolute, you’re just talking about game design trends and not right or wrong design decisions.

Making a game design decision it’s all another story.

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The videogames history is a good teacher regarding this.

There are many cases where you can see that the choice of a specific gameplay system it’s not random, but it’s in line with its purpose inside the game. Let’s make an example to clarify it.

In the firsts Resident Evil games, the player moves by using the so-called Tank Controls, by which you first rotate the character and then move forward or backward; basically like a proper tank does. This system is clunky, slow, and sometimes extremely frustrating, so nowadays, it's far from common and generally considered "old design". However, in Resident Evil, that's an excellent design decision, not because it's an old game, but because the purpose is to generate a feeling of anxiety and disempowerment in the player chased by zombies. Using a more arcade and responsive movement system instead would probably have a detrimental effect on the final game experience (Resident Evil 6, I’m watching you 👁‍🗨).

And this is just one of the famous examples, but I’m sure you can find others in the games you played. I can think of, among many others, the absence of map indicators in Dark Souls that increases exploration and create a feeling of continuous discovery.

But let’s generalize the principle so we can gain insight from it.

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Judging whether a game design is good or bad means making it relatively to its purpose in a specific context.

The general concept here is that every game design element has a purpose, and there’s nothing good, bad, old, or new in absolute, but everything depends on what the Game Designer wants to achieve. If design decisions were good or bad in absolute, no one would need a Game Designer to make a game because there would be nothing to decide. Thinking in absolute terms is just an excuse to avoid making the effort to design a game that communicates what you want and generates a meaningful experience.

Ok fair, all good, but hold on a second!

If there’s nothing absolute, does it mean that everything counts?

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YES, everything counts as long as you have an experiential purpose.

It might seem disappointing but we go back at the beginning of this piece: it’s all about arguments in a case by case scenario. For every person who tries to come up with some objective criteria by which a game is good, there’s a specific situation that can destroy every single one of those criteria. Lists of good or bad game design practices are nonetheless a useful thing. However it’s important to recognize that a design practice can be bad or good despite the specific context just statistically speaking. For example, not giving any feedback to the player about what’s happening on the screen is bad design most of the time. But if, for example, you want to disorient the player to drive a particular message in a particular moment, then not having feedback and confuse the player in that moment is indeed a good thing.

The more you strive to find objective solutions to problems, the more you will regret your subjectivity to regain the control that allows you to create meaningful play experiences.

Don't ask for objective rules to solve your design issues; find tools & understanding to express your subjectivity.