Art, Science, or Craft?


Many people consider game design to be an art, drawing on a mysterious wellspring of creativity possessed only by a talented few. They think of the "big names " in the game industry ”Peter Molyneux, Brian Moriarty, Roberta Williams ”as artists , and they admire the vision and originality that such people bring to their games . They imagine that game designers spend their time indulging in flights of imagination , and they ignore or are not even aware of the long and painstaking work that real design requires.

Other people who are more mathematically oriented see game design as a science. They concentrate on the methodology for determining the best rules of play, the intricate procedure of balancing a complex game. They think about equations, relationships, and the flow of resources. Game design to these people is a set of techniques, a process of thought.

We believe both of these views are wrong, or at least incomplete. Game design is not purely an art because it is not primarily a means of aesthetic expression. "Artistry" comes into envisioning the initial concepts and ideas, but once that is done, it's time for the real work of defining and refining how the game will function. Nor is game design purely a science; it doesn't posit hypotheses or seek truth. It's not bound by rigorous standards of logic or formal methods . The goal of a game is to entertain through play, and designing a game requires both creativity and careful planning.

Interactive entertainment is an art form, but like film, television, and theater, it is a collaborative art form, with no single person entitled to call himself the artist. In fact, most designers don't think of themselves as artists at all. Designing games is a craft , like cinematography or costume design in Hollywood. A game contains both artistic and functional elements: It must be aesthetically pleasing, but it also must work well and be enjoyable to play. The greatest games combine these attributes brilliantly, achieving a quality for which the only word is elegance . Elegance is the sign of craftsmanship of the highest order.



Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design
ISBN: 1592730019
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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