Game Design Disciplines
The word Game Design is difficult to define as it incorporates many disciplines. Disciplines that all need to work coherently. The game you work on should be visually stimulating to the player, so a game designer incorporates the use of visual arts. You want to “wow” your audience so this discipline of game design is extremely important. Another way you can “wow” your audience is to develop creative game mechanics to increase the chances the player going from point A to point Z will have the best experience possible between point B and point Y. A game can be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, but if it’s not fun or enjoyable to play, well then it’s not a game at all.
There are other disciplines of game design which include game programming, or the writing of the game code in whatever language the studios game software uses. Programming involves a lot of experimenting with game design ideas. Not all things are possible and it’s from programming a studio can test the limitations to see what you can or cannot do in your game. Although not designing the actual game, programmers are still involved in creating the overall design as are artists.
Every game needs a story right? What would be the point of Mario shooting fireballs at flying turtles if there was no Princess to save? OK, it would still be fun to shoot fireballs at flying turtles with or without the Princess but the point is, there are a lot of stories to tell and telling a story through games is becoming more popular each year, some of which are starting to compete with major motion pictures But there are many topics and emotions that have yet to be presented in game form. So storytelling would be another very important discipline in game design that you need to keep in mind. Along with the story comes the audio and sound effects applied to the game design. It’s very common now for games to include film quality sound production. When you break a glass window pane in Halo 3, it sounds real. When you fire an M16 in Call of Duty 4, the sound is realistic. When you hear something creeping up from behind you in a survival horror game and it sends chills down your spine, you realize how important a role sound plays in a game. All these game design disciplines, the artistic visuals, game mechanics, programming, narrative of a game and the audio, all must work together. If you alter one discipline in the game design process, you will most likely need to change another, making the game design process complex and time consuming.