The Power of Game Design Analysis
By: Josh Bycer
Tags: Gaming, UX, Game Design, Videogames, Technology

The Power of Game Design Analysis

I have been running my own gaming site, Game-Wisdom, for more than eight years now. Over that time, I’ve tried to raise consciousness around what it means to study game design beyond reviews. That means looking more deeply at whether or not a game’s design actually works in more objective terms. Some consider that very concept impossible. Whether or not a game does well or poorly in terms of sales (and even reviews) isn’t necessarily a reflection on its actual underlying design in the way many might think.

In this piece, I want to delve further into this question of what it means to study and critique game design — and why developers should welcome this kind of analysis.

Measuring design

Several times in the past I’ve discussed what it means to review a game’s design and how that differs from a traditional “game review”. Here are the key questions a design analysis focuses on:

What is the developer’s intent? Are there any elements that get in the way of it? Does the game keep the player invested until the end?

The goal is to examine the gameplay to see if what’s there is enough to keep the player invested until the very end. Recently I touched on the idea of using achievements to track player progression in a game, and this is an extension of that idea.

A game reviewer may be a critic who approaches games from the point of view of the average player — this makes sense, and it’s why players read and watch game reviews. In this case, players are asking questions like “should I buy this game?” rather than “is this game well-designed to achieve its goals?”

Animation by ranganath krishnamani on Dribbble.

But analyzing a game’s design is somewhat different from writing a typical review. In particular, it requires a specific understanding of user interface and user experience design (UI/UX), game design theories and practices, and the broader video game landscape. When thinking about game design as a framework, it’s important to bear in mind that it involves both art and science. Reviews — as distinct from analysis — will tend to focus on the art rather than the science. This isn’t a criticism of game reviews. Rather, the point is that game developers themselves aren’t getting the full story if they only consider reviews when thinking about the reaction to their game. When we analyze the design of a game, we aren’t interested in how many copies were sold, how many accolades were earned, or if fans and critics are calling it “the best game of all time.”

Making a successful video game isn’t like wielding magic, nor is it a question of firing blindly in the dark and hoping to hit upon a pot of gold. When we cast a wide net and consider all of the games being released each month — both “good” and “bad” titles — we can start to detect patterns of success or failure. These patterns are hinting at a deeper truth that emerges when game design itself is analyzed through a more formal lens.

The role of analysis

Your video game is not special. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve spent building it, or if the idea came to you in a dream, or even if it’s the number one game being played on Twitch. There is no question, of course, that a creator has a special attachment to their project — especially in a field that overlaps so strongly with art and personal expression. But if you want to assess your game’s design — its success or failure on its own terms — then it’s necessary to be able to take an objective approach. This might sound obvious, but in practice, very few people are able to scrutinize their own work in this way.

There are tried and true methods for injecting objectivity into the analysis process, of course. Play testing is perhaps the most important component here. No matter what you think about your game, you can only know by putting it in the hands of potential players and observing their unvarnished reactions. Companies like Nintendo have been following a principle like this since long before UX itself was a defined concept or practice (interestingly, this has also led to the company’s famous ability to “upend the tea table” — to completely discard a game project even if it’s well into development, if the evidence shows that it isn’t succeeding at meeting its design goals).

Studying game design also matters. In my achievement analysis piece mentioned above, I pointed out that even critical darlings that might get nothing but praise can also suffer from horrible playtimes and completion ratings when you dig into their stats.

The thing is, game design issues aren’t hard to spot if you know what you’re looking for. When I say that I can examine the quality of a game within 30 minutes, that’s not me being concieted; that’s just how long it takes to spot these problems. Issues that drive people away from a game aren’t usually hidden under hours of otherwise-stellar gameplay. Rather, they tend to show up within the first few minutes of play. This is precisely why we often see such a huge drop-off of players within the first hour or so of a game. If an issue is annoying 10 minutes in, it’ll remain that way throughout the whole experience.

If I haven’t yet convinced you about the difference between game reviews and game design analysis, let me dig in a little further.

Game design analysis goals

The value of game design analysis may seem self-evident to many readers. But it has occasionally faced significant pushback, particularly thanks to fandom culture. People who attach their own worth to the products they consume can sometimes view legitimate criticism as a personal attack. Many of my design pieces on critically successful games have been attacked by fans. The most common complaints tend to be something like “You must not be good at the game to complain about it,” or “You’re just hating on something popular.”

There are many indie games with very fervent fanbases who see any judgment on a title as constituting an attack or insult toward it. A question around this came up on my Discord server about these kinds of games: does criticism even matter to the creators? If the fanbase is so hardened and so supportive of a game, is it even worth pointing out issues or flaws?

I would argue, of course, yes. No matter what game we’re talking about, there’s always an overall limit on the number of people available to buy and support it. Every issue or problem, however unintentional on the part of the developer, reduces the number of potential buyers. It’s sometimes the case that games with the most fanatical fans often struggle to gain traction in the wider market, resulting in low sales. In today’s market, there’s an abundance of choice for players. Nobody is truly stuck with a game they don’t like — the people who become annoyed by your game can refund it within two hours of purchase, and you’ll never see them buy a game from you again. Let that sink in for a moment.

If you can make simple improvements to a game that can double or even triple the number of eyeballs it’ll attract — or the actual number of people willing to play it — that could make an enormous different, especially for an indie studio. One goal of game design analysis is to detect as many pain points as possible so that they can be prioritized and removed, ensuring that the strengths of the core gameplay loop are on full display. Again, nothing about this process is magical; it’s simply about understanding what attracts and retains players. So many developers do not understand — or choose to ignore — the fundamentals when it comes to designing a game, and they can often be confused about why their game isn’t selling.

Releasing a video game is always risky. It’s up to developers to do what they can to mitigate those risks. Be it through strong design, play testing out problems, and marketing the game correctly — these risks can be managed. Show me any game where the developer isn’t sure why people aren’t buying it, and you’ll find the mystery can be solved within 30 minutes.

Criticism and analysis also matter from a continuous improvement perspective. Understanding why a game succeeds or doesn’t is essential for growing as a designer. The idea is to learn from mistakes, so that they aren’t continually repeated in game after game. Game design is a craft, and like any craft, growth and improvement are important. Being able to understand some of the fundamentals of game design — and the ability to recognize and apply a framework — also means that developers don’t need to always re-invent the wheel. They can leverage proven techniques and ideas that have a solid track record in the market.

Image by ranganath krishnamani on Dribbble.

Future of game analysis

In my view, game design analysis grows more important each year. The days where you could hope for a small number of people to find your game organically are gone. If you want your game to do well at all — let alone truly succeed — you’ll need to understand whether or not your design works.

It’s the reason why I look at the full library from a studio — not just their biggest hit — when considering how successful they are. We often see studios that have one really strong game still go out of business. Often, it’s due to one of two things:

Their first game was a critical darling, but it drove so many people away due to various problems that there was no fanbase for their other titles (or not enough fans to sustain the studio). They had a successful game but didn’t understand why it was successful, which led them to chasing other designs and burning out (or going through their finances) in the process.

Not every game designer is going to become the next Sid Meier or Hideo Kojima. Your primary goal as a game developer is to make games that allow you to keep making games. Remember, it doesn’t matter if you create the “greatest game of all time” if nobody actually plays it and you go out of business afterwards.

If you’re a game developer and you are interested in assistance with the kind of analysis I’m describing above, feel free to reach out to me.

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