Concept
Design intent
You might say: the experience we mean to make
Design intent states the target player’s experience and the design decisions meant to produce it before implementation details take over.
- What it does
- Gives observation a reference point for judging whether the system is working.
- Ask
- What experience and decision are we deliberately trying to create?
Parts
- Target experience: A target experience is a concise statement of the situations, feelings or choices the player should have, used as a touchstone for playtesting.
Sources
- Tracy Fullerton, Playcentric Design (ACM interactions, 2008), Playcentric Design, pp. 42–47: player-experience goals and prototypes
Called ‘playcentric’ design, it involves setting interesting player-experience goals, building a rough paper or digital prototype that attempts to achieve those goals, testing the prototype with players, evaluating the results and integrating feedback, and then doing it again.
- Robert Yang et al., The Level Design Book, Layout: define a player experience goal before drawing, then plan pacing
before drawing a layout, define at least one player experience goal
- Celia Hodent, Developing UX Practices at Epic Games, slides 3, 6–7 and 44–45: intended experience, target audience and user-centered testing
So UX is all about making sure that your user is going to experience the game the way you, as a designer, intended.
- Steve Swink, Game Feel: The Secret Ingredient, Context; Polish; Rules: goals for intended feel and physical impression
design should include game feel. Game feel needs prototyping too
- Ian Schreiber, Game Design Concepts, Level 5: Mechanics and Dynamics, The Process of Design; Use of Feedback Loops; Homeplay prediction
the desired experience emerges from our rules.
- Tynan Sylvester, Decision-Based Gameplay Design, Decision Recognition, Evaluation, and Design
Game designers need to not only understand how decisions create a computer gaming experience, but also need to be able to create an experience that includes lots of unique, difficult decisions with strong feedback.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Design intent" (design-intent) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal