Hullo and welcome to No Right Answers. I’m John Lethbridge and I’m a game designer. I’ve shipped multiple games from Indie to AA to AAA, in teams from 10 to over 1000 and it’s fair to say I’ve Seen Things.
When I started out I wanted to know what the rules of game design were. I wanted to know all the Dos and Don’ts. I wanted to understand the decision making process and have a list of concrete rules to follow.
What I discovered was that the more I looked, the more I found out the truth:
There are, quite literally, No Right Answers.
What that means is that the answers to the questions that come up in development are specific to the game you’re making, the creative vision, the constraints, the point in production you’re at, the systems and intended player experience. There is no silver bullet. No magic formula. And, almost always, the deeper you dig the more questions you have to answer that are specific to the game you’re designing.
So then, how are we not just hopelessly adrift in a sea of professional existential dread?
Well, while working at the crossroads of art and technology a little existential dread is to be expected from time-to-time, as professionals we use established genres as touchstones or starting points, apply or adapt design methodologies, and create, codify and apply our own individual internalised rules - which I refer to as Design Sense, a topic I’ll explore in the future.
My goal with this space is to provide an evolving set of thoughts, opinions and ideas, based on my ongoing experience, to add to the conversation about game design and development. It is my hope that you find this to be a useful collection of articles that not only inform, but inspire you to examine, and possibly even evolve, your own thoughts on the craft.