Gamasutra - News - Tips from a combat designer: Fibonacci game design

Interesting article on how to know when to say "stop, no more", and how to use the golden ratio in game design.

Gamasutra - News - Tips from a combat designer: Fibonacci game design

Making a comparative analysis

Unless you are inventing a totally new genre, when you're designing a feature, chances are that someone has already done something that at least remotely looks like what you're trying to achieve. Incidentally, if you are making a game of a crowded genre, it is wise to look at what the competition has done, in order to not make the same mistakes and/or nick the interesting ideas. That's why you usually do comparative analysis (that's the part where you can say that your job as a designer consists in "playing" video games).

Methodology articles

Yet another introduction to what should be a recurring kind of articles.

These will be a bunch of articles in which I basically explain how I organise my work as a designer.

I feel like I need to emphasize that whatever will be presented in these articles is my way of approaching game design. By no means I will be trying to say "this is THE way it should be done", and if I ever do sound like I do, it will be most likely because I will assume it is common sense :).

If you don't agree with anything I write, please leave a comment and I'll be more than happy to discuss that in order to improve.