The Importance of Definitions in Game Design

The games industry is notorious for overloading arbitrary terms used throughout game development. This makes it very confusing when it comes communicating with others. In my personal experience in leadership roles, I’ve encountered the issue of communicating ideas with other designers. I would explain a design our game needed clearly and concisely, but upon receiving the fruits of the request I would realize that what I said was not nearly as clear and concise as I thought.

The team sizes for the games I’ve worked on range from teams of three, up to larger scale teams of thirteen. Being in a leadership role required me to get better at communication with both other designers and other disciplines entirely. In doing this, I learned about the importance of defining terms, and how the more specific the definition is the easier it is to communicate with others.

Imagine working on a team where you’re asked to design a level. The instructions you’re provided with are as follows:

· Level occurs midway through game

· Medium in length,

· Focus on action-shooter gameplay.

Hopefully this scenario is more extreme than most have experienced, but it’s likely that many designers have dealt with vague instructions like this. I know that I have! Provide five designers with the above instructions and you’ll get five fundamentally different levels. Although different levels from different designers should be expected, having levels that are fundamentally different is bad. Levels must be designed with their sequence in mind, so as to control the introduction of mechanics, rate of difficulty increase, and, hopefully, achieve flow.

How could this happen when the designer was provided with specific criteria to create a level? This is because the criteria are not defined. Even more specific words that lack proper definitions cause issues. If asked to create a long-range combat engagement, the level designer wouldn’t know if that means the level section should have long sight lines, or if placed enemies should rather have long-range weapons. Without specifically defining what a ‘long-range combat engagement’ is, it can be difficult to properly communicate what is needed for the game.

Defining terms early on ensures that all designers are on the same page and can create complementary designs. Once a designer knows that a long-range encounter includes long-range…