General Principles of Video Game Design

Learn the general principles of video game design in this article. These principles can be applied to all platforms.

Find out about the basic ground rules of game design that you should know. In this article you will find out about planning, maintaining personal discipline and other principles about designing the games themselves.

General Principles can Only Get You so Far

Knowing the principles on video game design is important, however it is even more important to know how to make money from your games.

I recommend seeing the online video course "How to Make Money from Video Games" to find out how you can make
real money from games.

Learn How to Make Real Money from Video Games Now

Plan to Succeed

The most important part of designing and creating games is having a set plan from the beginning.

Don’t start making a game without one, but keep in mind that the plan will probably change over time as new issues and ideas pop up in the course of designing the game.

Plans are there to provide an overall structure to the design and development of the game. If you don’t have a plan your end result will be unpredictable at best.

It is especially important to set a plan that you can follow. It might feel good at the moment to make grandiose plans for your video game but you must make sure that you have the inclination and resources to follow through.

In short, make a realistic plan before starting on the game design itself.

Discipline is Key

Planning constitutes the overall structure in terms of video game design.

Following through the plan is another thing. When working on your own project with nobody telling you what to do it can be very easy to slip into laziness and procrastination.

As a result you need self discipline if you want to get anywhere with your plan.

The best way to build up discipline is to start with smaller projects and then increase their size until you are comfortable working with bigger projects.

Principles of Designing Games

These are the top areas you should consider first when designing and testing video games.

People usually play games for one reason: to have fun!

As such whenever considering ideas for the game the first thing you should think about is whether this idea will actually make the game more fun. This is a very simple but important point to remember.

This is related to keeping the game fun. There’s no point in being able to tout loads of “features” for your game if people will just get bogged down in the complexity.

Always aim to keep the game as simple as possible, regardless of whether it’s a shooter or a puzzle game.

You may have the greatest game in the world, but if people are struggling with the controls for the game they will give up in frustration.

Having good controls basically makes the whole game play a lot smoother, even if it has a bland design.

This is an important feature especially for competitive multiplayer games.

Make sure to devote some time to testing and balancing out the different elements in a game to make sure that there is no proverbial “instant win” button.

Good level design is a design that can challenge the gamer without becoming too tedious or frustrating.

Levels that allow for multiple strategies to be used are usually much better than linear one-path levels.

It’s undeniable: graphics and sounds are the first things a typical gamer sees when looking at your game.

As such it’s important to make a good first impression. Don’t go overboard though as your money can be quickly spent just on producing graphics and sound.

If you are planning on selling the game, then marketing is one of the most important aspects that you need to know about. There is no substitute to knowing the right information when it comes to marketing games.

Find out much more about how to make money from games below.

Thanks for reading this article. You now have a better understanding on how to design video games.

After you have had a chance to sit back and absorb this article, please send us your comments and suggestions - your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Want to make some real money from video games? You’re going to need the right information, or else your efforts will fall flat.

This online video course along with the included bonuses gives you the information you need to steer away from potential hazards and get you on the path to making real money.

Stop blundering into the same obstacles everyone else does when the vital information you need is at your fingertips.
Learn how to make real money from video games

Written By Damien D
No  part of this page can be reproduced on another website without the written permission from GameInnovator.com