The ability to design rules, systems, and experiences for games. Defines the game designer's growth path in seven levels, from ideation to system design, balancing, and live operations.
Game design is the ability to craft rules, mechanics, narratives, and economic systems that deliver meaningful choices and fun to players. It combines sub-skills such as core loop construction, level design, numerical balancing, UX optimization, and live service operations. Understanding player psychology and data-driven decision-making are the key factors that distinguish higher-level designers.
You can distinguish the core components of a game — mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics — and understand the basic structure of a game design document (GDD). You begin consciously analyzing rules and fun elements while playing existing games. You can organize simple ideas into documents, but cannot yet consider feasibility or balance.
What Comes Next
If you've checked off most of this list, you're ready for the Practice stage, building prototypes yourself and validating fun through playtesting. Schell's Book of Lenses approach suggests consciously observing MDA elements while playing existing games and documenting those experiences to build your design intuition.
Systematizes 19 key skills and 6 knowledge domains for game designers, providing the basis for setting the depth and scope of required competencies (design, programming, psychology, math, etc.) at each level.
Defines level 4-5 competencies (system development management, animation development, professional advisory) within the SFIA 7-level responsibility framework, used for setting upper-mid level boundaries.
The canonical textbook for game design, with over 100 design lenses (mechanics, narrative, psychology, technology, playtesting) providing concrete behavioral evidence for checklist items.
The foundational academic paper establishing the MDA (Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics) framework, providing scholarly evidence for the L1 checklist MDA distinction items and design analysis perspectives across all levels.
