Designing from the Gut
While I was in school learning how to be a game designer (at USC’s Interactive Media Division), I took a film editing course my senior year; partially just for fun and partially to have a backup in the film industry in case this whole game design thing fell through. The professor would always tell us to “edit from the gut”. In essence, don’t over-think your editing choices, just go with what feels right. Being a bit of an introverted thinker, I didn't really understand this at first. I tend to put a lot of thought into my editing choices; I would always try to rationalize why a particular take or transition should work. It took me a while to learn how to make decisions based on intuition rather than logic.
So what the hell does this have to do with game design, you ask? Well I’ve been working sporadically on an indie game in my spare time. Going into the project, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted the game to be. Unfortunately, as development progressed, the game turned out to be not very fun to play. This is not uncommon, as no game is perfect in its first iteration. I figured it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some tweaking. The problem is, I stuck with some bad game design choices for a long time. I kept stubbornly rationalizing why my vision should work, even though I felt like it was hindering the player's experience. Now that I realize this, I will have to go back to the drawing board and re-design some of the core gameplay mechanics.
Like most creative endeavors, both film editing and game design are really more art than science. I believe it’s good to put some thought into your game design, as long as you don’t allow your mind to censor what your gut is telling you. After all, your audience will either have fun with your game or they won't; you’ll never be able to rationalize your game design choices to them. Thoughts?