Basic Principles of Game Design

How do you make good games? Huge question, but let's try to break it down!

● This video is loosely based on this awesome article:

● Paper on structural composition:

····················································································

········································­­·······································­·­····

► All content by Brackeys is 100% free. We believe that education should be available for everyone.

········································­­·······································­·­····

♪ "ES_Finding Freedom 3 - Peter Sandberg" by Epidemic Sound

♪ "ES_Hyperactive 2 - Anders Bothén" by Epidemic Sound

♪ "ES_Dress Code_Black - oomiee" by Epidemic Sound

[rezaka]

Fun cheats:
-In Bioshock, when the player recieves lethal damage, he gets a few seconds of god mode, leading to more "barely survived" moments.
-In Gears of War, the last bullet in a magazine deals 3x damage, leading to more "barely defended myself" moments.

[sykoo]

*...along with 200 employees of course!* LOL
That's a really good point I just want to tell those who come up like *hey so im basically making gta 5 in unity, and ill release it on steam next week*

[smokinjoeee]

I love how when he was talking about the importance of the player's role, that when he said "just running around doing tasks for the sake of it" he showed CoD footage.

[harold.geronimo]

Coding your own games is easier than you think... skip ad

[viv]

0:12 Dies in a video game.
*I can do this better*

[CouchFerretmakesGames]

Don't tell ME that I can't make an open world MMO RPG fantasy game on my own in two weeks!!!!

[Ludifant]

I like the three pillars.. I made 200 original games in the past 35 years. Possibly 30 I´d consider good ones.
And it is very easy to think of exceptions. It might be part of the appeal not to communicate something clearly (for instance in a hacker game or an alice in wonderland game), the player might start thinking differently halfway through the game (or actually learn something), maybe this was what you intended etc etc.
Others say the holy grail of gamedesign is to get an emotional response from the player (any response, so hate or fear works too..) I have watched a flood of things people say about games, gamedesign etc appear. Even the vocation of game-designer and the seperation of design/art/development.

I have yet to figure out one thing you can truly say for all games. Even for all games I made myself. Like most of these lists of rules for gamedesign, this is mostly true for most games.
Still useful, because 9 out of 10 games you'll make, there is some truth in this. And it´s always good to know which rules you are breaking now.

GameDesign has changed a lot in the last 35 years and one of the things that changed is that people overthink making games. It´s like with all the rules of fillm making. Great guidelines.. But follow them and you end up with something soulless, that might make you money, but...

Games just happened for me, most of the time. If I have one advice, it´s: be curious, be original,
but don´t try to be original. If you can do that, you figured it out.
If you are succesful, doing that.. that´s a nice bonus. I was moderately succesful for a while, but when I started to second guess myself, lots of the fun drained out of it.
So take it from a hasbin :) Just make a few games and see where it leads you, then you can write a book about it later.

[ttosu]

When I was 10 I began learning c++ and when I got into high-school I acquired java and SQl after attempting to learn game development I realised that it's not even the coding that's hard. It's making your own assets and visuals. Unlike software development which is just mostly pure code, game development requires much more than just scripting

[HuskyBuscuit]

My whole family says how good I am at drawing and said I should put it to use, that’s how I got the idea to try game design. I don’t have any equipment yet, I’m only 14. But my dad it’s helping me slowly to get to my goal

Edit: ok so I’m now 15 and Ik what the reply r on about, some of your are saying it’s about ideas and others are saying you have to be really good at art. I agree about the having good ideas and that and I’m currently thinking of ideas that would be good and fun to play, I’m also getting much better with my art. I’m doing my GCSES soon and once I do them I’m off to college. The college I want to go to has a course all on Game Design which is perfect 👍. If I do get to do this course it would give me a lot more ideas on what I need to work on, I’m also gonna take an art course to improve my art whilst doing game design bc Ik that will help me.

[oronk]

I'm doing ict in highschool and our teacher showed us this video in class. I find game design very interesting and I wish to pursue it in the future. I just wanted to thank you for making informative and entertaining content like this. You're inspiring people to take up game making.

[sonicjason]

Problem: bombs make your videos non-ad friendly
Solution: *exploding pineapples*

[quelorepario]

"Aha, I got it!"
* proceeds to make the Goat Simulator *

[GabrielDias]

It's so great to see you talk about game design, I really think you should make a separate video about each one of those themes. I see a lot of developers that know how to make games but don't really know how to make them fun, and if you can teach them that, you'll be one step ahead of pretty much every channel like yours.

[pikachufan]

Heres a tip on Graphic Design
Themming is Important!, Keep One Theme all the time, mix and Matching will cause you and the Player to not understand anything :>

[holmbergen]

8:27 Who's a good boye!? Great video as always Brackeys!

[dehrk]

"RULES ARE RULES!"
*Npc that ate 150 bullets gets killed in the cutscene with one round*

[jt....]

At 6:05 you were not smiling.

0/10 literally unwatchable.

[nxt_tim]

0:22 Geez, I always forget you looked like that popular dude in a typical high school film/series just a few years ago... :D
Keep it up! Your videos are both helpful *and* entertaining. I watch all of them even though I'm absolutely not interested in a topic just for the lulz :D <3

[sonofkabisch]

"He forgot the part about pre-order bonuses and day-one dlc." - All Game Publishers

[deependrasingh]

Never skip an advertisement when its on brakeys videos..i don't why i watch ur vids during my unviersity exams while i take break from study...Just keep teaching/entertaining us