Game Design is Innate, not Learned

“Game design” feels like a hobby or a profession – or at least an aspirational one – that someone adopts only gradually after many years of playing games.

But I don’t think that’s really true. Many people are “game designers” almost from the moment they play a game for the second time. Children deciding what is out of bounds in the backyard, or how to compensate for a shorthanded team, is similar to hacking a game or creating homebrew; an intuitive and innate part of the social negotiation inherent in group play.

Bounce

When we were kids, my brother and I created a game that we named (aptly, if not distinctively) Bounce.

Bounce began with one player shooting free throws from several points, aiming at a basketball hoop attached to our garage. They would score points for each shot they made. When they eventually missed a shot, the ball would rebound onto our driveway. The other player could then field the ball, shooting it or tossing it to a different part of the driveway. The fielding player could touch the ball at any time from when it left the backboard until when it touched the ground for the second time; i.e., they could allow it to bounce once, but not more. 

Our driveway had a shallow slope toward the garage, so play tended to naturally drift back toward the hoop. If the ball bounced twice without being fielded, the player who didn’t have possession could start shooting free throws again, and the whole process would repeat.

The receiver of the ball could rebound and immediately shoot in mid-air. They could let the ball bounce once, then try to make a cleaner shot. Or they could toss the ball to a different part of the driveway, possibly setting up a difficult bounce for the opponent to field. There was tennis-like tension as players pulled each other in different directions, always trying to set up their own shot while denying a good shooting position to their opponent.

Duel Risk

I used to play games with a group of friends who were Risk junkies. I never thought of myself as such a big Risk fan, but I did sink dozens (hundreds?) of hours into Conquer Club’s custom maps years later, so what do I know?

One of these friends figured out an interesting way to hack Risk by replacing the die rolls that determine the outcome of battles with quick contests in video games. A game of Risk involves a lot of battles, so we would choose video games where two players could square off and very quickly determine a winner. 

Fighting games worked well, particularly if they were fast. This was the PlayStation era, and the Bushido Blade games, with no health bars and the possibility for one-hit kills, were popular. We also played the then-recently released Pong: The Next Level, with players choosing "home courts" they could specialize in when defending the Risk territories they controlled.

I don’t know that we ever named this game, but it had a weirdly compelling combination of the slow, dry, strategic gameplay of Risk; contrasted with the fast, frenetic, blink-and-it’s-over resolution of the video game matches.