Comments on: The Art of the Designers’ Note

By: Design Notes Again

Design Notes Again — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:24:09 +0000

[...] The first thing I did, though, was turn to the design notes. One of the constant themes of both Flash of Steel and Three Moves Ahead has been a desire to understand how game designers transform history into rules and what those rules say about the designers’ understanding of history. I love design notes. [...]

By: Where Do Ideas Come From?

Where Do Ideas Come From? — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:59:51 +0000

[...] written before about the decline of designer’s notes and forewords in game manuals. Even before the current scarcity of manuals, publishers were backing away from [...]

By: Training Camp

Training Camp — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:32:02 +0000

[...] Ramachandran is right, though, that a manual should add value to the game whether it be through historical analysis (European Air War or Great Battles of History), charts (Dominions 3) or personality (Pirates!). But this sort of thing takes time and money and few game developers have time and money. The whole idea of the “manual” is to teach how to use a product, and writing down a series of commands and unit descriptions is much easier than say, including a designer’s note. [...]

By: Troy Goodfellow

Troy Goodfellow — Thu, 25 May 2006 21:25:00 +0000

Thanks for stopping in Soren.

I can see time being an issue to some extent, but I don’t think it has to be a big barrier. Not all designers’ notes have to be epic works of nonfiction – simply a memo to the player about how and why things are done the way they are.

Rise of Legends could use a designer’s note, for example. I read a lot of stuff in previews of the game that would only add to the experience, I think. Why this Chariots of the Gods crap for Cuotl? What makes this combination of races attractive?

By: Soren Johnson

Soren Johnson — Thu, 25 May 2006 21:07:00 +0000

If a college friend of mine had not have gotten married in August, there is no way there would have been designer notes for Civ4 – I wrote them on the plane ride. It was litreally the only time I was not either working or sleeping during the last three months or so.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the scope of modern games and the rush to release is what has killed the designer notes. Civ I was a hard-coded game with no modding and no multi-player and no pre-release hype. Thus, I am sure it was a lot easier to find time to write at the end of the project than with something like Civ4.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 16:54:00 +0000

I think that Soren’s afterword has a lot of “game philosophy” in it, although we may just be disagreeing on the word “philosophy.” For example,

we needed a positive which also encouraged fewer, larger cities

and all the stuff on worker options tells me what they feel makes a better game and why.