Hiya folks, As some of you already know, GameDev.net recently took over hosting the GPWiki. One of the things we want to do is extend the coverage of the wiki beyond game programming, to cover all parts of game development - naturally, this includes Game Design. Calabi posted in the wiki topic about how it's quite hard to know where to start with adding design information. I can appreciate that it's not terribly easy to just start writing articles when it's not clear how they'll fit into the organisational structure, so I'm wondering what you folks think. What kind of organisational structure should the wiki have for Game Design? The GameDev.net Articles and Resources section breaks "Game Design" down like so:

• General Game Design
  • Design Documents
  • Game Design
  • Psychology
  • Game Dissection and Analysis
  • Online Game Design
  • Character Design
  • Game Mechanics
• Writing and Story Development
• Postmortems
• Level Design

That's just one example of the way Game Design can be organised; what do you think? I, for one, think that there are improvements that can be made. Note that articles don't necessarily have to only feature in a single category, though they probably shouldn't appear in more than three.

Sure a little improvement. And I think that a wiki lends itself better towards the more academic game analysis and formal game theory. Plus that stuff should be more heavily promoted than it currently seems to be. Also a section on playtesting approaches/experiences might be prudent.

Well, OK. This gives us a list of "topic tags" to start with, with a couple of my own thrown in as well (in no particular order, to mix things up a bit):

• Postmortems


• Writing and Story Development


• Level Design


• Genre/Mechanics Analysis


• Playtesting approaches/experiences


• Puzzle Design


• Conceptual Design


• Game Design Patterns


• Character and Story Creation


• Game Design


• Academic Game Analysis


• Character Design


• Numerical Systems design


• Design Documents


• Formal Game Theory


• Psychology


• Online Game Design


• Game Dissection and Analysis


• Game Mechanics


• Movement and Controls Design


• Combat Design


• User Interface Design

What other topic headings might you expect to encounter within a game design resource? Do you know any resources (articles, tutorials, books, etc) that have content which doesn't fit into any of the headings on the list so far?

Once we've fleshed out that list we can start identifying which topics are duplicates, parent/child relationships, and so on, and hopefully a structure will evolve from that. I could already see a potential split between design of gameplay, design of emotional context (story/characters/setting/etc), and design analysis (postmortems, playtesting, etc), but I'm sure there are headings that don't fit that model very well.

Quote:Original post by JasRonq
edit: also, isn't "Postmortem" and "Game Dissection and Analysis" the same thing?

I would suggest that a postmortem is usually written by someone who worked on the game during development, while "dissection and analysis" would be done by someone outside of the development team.

Some more from folks on IRC:

• Game style


• User Navigation


• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)


• Video Direction


• Team Communication


• Organizational Skills


• Best Practices


• Legal Issues


• Introduction


• Outsourcing, consultants, and third parties


• Interaction design


• Dialogue


• NPC Design