You want to improve as a Game Designer by analyzing games, but you don't know how.

You find it hard to distinguish between passively playing and making a game design analysis. You find yourself playing while asking, "How am I supposed to analyze it?". An approachable and repeatable step-by-step framework could do the trick. With it, you'll enjoy the game even more since you'll understand the underlying mechanisms and why they're made that way.

This week I'll show you a powerful and actionable framework to analyze any type of game in 3 simple steps.

You can make many types of analysis; this is just one approach that focuses on design decisions.

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To effectively make a Game Design Analysis you need these 3 steps:

1. Target A Game Element
2. Evaluate The Context
3. Twist The Context

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Step #1: Target A Game Element

Ignore if something is good or not; focus on the why.

This type of analysis is not a review. You don't need to understand if a game is good; you can judge it (you'll do it anyway), but that's not the focus.

A game design analysis is about understanding why something has been done in a certain way. It's a matter of problem-solving rather than dictating whether it works. The outcome is finding interesting solutions you can "steal" to apply to your games.

This also increases your awareness of a specific game system's state of the art so you avoid designing game clones.

So what do you need to do?

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Play with attention and identify a game element as the target of your analysis.

It seems easy, but it’s not because especially well-constructed games are made to immerse the player, and you’re not an exception. Also, it should be obvious, but I feel the need to point it out: you need to actually play the game hands-on.

Some small things, especially if you have good analytical skills, can be grasped by watching, but an interactive experience without interaction is different. Don’t put yourself on a high horse just because you’re a skilled player to avoid missing out on things along the way. Separate the difference between being good at playing a game and being good at analyzing it.

To find a game element, you can search for literally anything:

• A small game mechanic
• An entire system (combat, movement, etc.)
• UI elements
• A narrative element (dialogue, environmental storytelling, etc.)
• Etc.

Pick something you feel has a significant influence on how you’re playing.

Consider your biases as a passionate player, like genre knowledge and the mere use of the controller. Don’t take for granted that anyone masters them as you do.

Once you have your target, let’s move to Step #2.

Step #2: Evaluate The Context

The Holy Grail of Game Design is the Player Experience.

A game must never be considered in a vacuum. It’s exactly like words in a language; you can not evaluate their meaning without putting them in a specific context.

The context of a game element is made of 2 parts:

• The Player Experience: the emotions and interpretations the player has.
• The other game elements: the rest of the game.

Evaluating the context means thinking about these 2 parts.

So, as a consequence, evaluating a game element is always subjective, despite many people calling for objectivity in game design.

But let’s see what this step is actually about.

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Compare the situation’s specific context with how the target game element has been designed.

Here it’s a matter of generating deep questions about the 2 parts of contexts.

To evaluate the Player Experience, ask yourself:

• Am I feeling a particular emotion about this element? Which?
• What property of that element triggered that emotion?
• Does this element convey a specific meaning?
• Does that emotion empower the meaning?
• Etc.

These questions will help you “see yourself playing the game”.

To evaluate other game elements, ask yourself:

• What’s the most efficient way I have to interact with the element?
• How do other elements interact with it?
• Do those interactions generate something interesting? What?
• Etc.

These questions will help you develop your System Thinking.

The main goal of this step is to understand why designers have made a decision and what problem it solves. There’s no fixed amount of reasoning you need to make here; spend as much time as you want thinking.

When you feel satisfied, you can move to the final step, where things get really interesting.

Step #3: Twist The Context

The Player Experience is king, but it will always be an assumption.

I hear some people (especially from game critique) talking about understanding the Design Intent. You'll rarely understand the Author's intent for any art work (not just games).

And it doesn't even apply if you can ask the Author directly because you will never have any way of knowing if he's lying. Even those who work on games full of dark patterns, loot boxes, and battle passes will tell you that the game is meant to "entertain players" (I even hate this term, more on that in the future). Yet, I would say it's hard to believe…

What you think is the Author's intent it's just your interpretation, and it's fine since interpretations are part of the beauty of an art form. However, as I said before, the intent (Player Experience) is fundamental in the analysis.

So what to do?

You need to do a sort of "if game".

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Change the context and look at your target game element.

By now, you should have the intended context and a target element. To make the analysis deeper and more usable in your work, you need to change the intended context with something different.

To make an effective change, you can manipulate one of the 2 parts of the context (or even both) I showed you in the previous step. Then ask yourself if the target element needs to change (and how) or even if you need to delete it. You can change the context as many times as you want to make the analysis even deeper. When satisfied, you can go back to step #1 and find another game element to analyze.

If you find something interesting and useful, take a note somewhere to avoid forgetting it. With skill and practice, this 3-part loop will happen quicker and automatically while playing.

A Modern Game Designer doesn’t passively play but actively experiences a game.

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Key Takeaways:

• Pick something that significantly influences the way to you play.
• Evaluate the specific context of that element.
• Twist the context and adapt the target element.