WELCOME

Welcome to Semi-Intelligent Design - a blog about game design.

I'm Brit Baker - Lead Designer at Perfect Dork Studios. We're currently putting together a game called Box Macabre, which I'm very excited about designing for. In the months leading up to our planned release later this year, I thought it would be fun to blog about my views on game design. In a field as creative as the game development field is, the unique challenges presented to a game designer have always fascinated me. In order to help create an immersive and interactive world or story that a player wants to be in, a game designer might have to draw upon fields as diverse as storytelling, dramatics, psychology, logic, economics, history, mythology, and those are just off the top off my head...

It is the lot in life of the most successful people in the games industry to be such masters of detail that they create an experience, that if done correctly, is so engrossing that those very details do not even stand out. This keeps the reputation of whatever studio they work for as one which brings loyal players back with the certainty of a very fun experience.

And that is the main ferret the designer must er....ferret out when he brings his skills to the table. Yes that's right, The Fun Ferret. The level of detail a designer should invest is focused on one thing - how to have a communication with any number of players he mostly will never meet. How to communicate to them a story, a task, a quest, an objective, a cause, an experience of fun that they are the actor in, and create a certain relationship that is uniquely influenced by and influences all the other game elements simultaneously.

No biggie. But to distill it down, in my mind, the communications and relationships of humans are the meat of a game designer's job. Pretty sure I'll be coming back to that a lot....

So to wrap up the first post, some questions for discussion:

1. Let's say a blogger used a game design blog to shamelessly plug his internet radio station, "The Head Bakery". Is this or is this NOT a good design idea for a blog about game design ideas?

2. If the Fun Ferret had a name, what would you name him/her/it? Gosh, would it have a gender, or would it be an asexual ferret? No really, this could end up a blog mascot, these questions matter...