Game Design Research
20 Essays & Development Logs
Featured writing
3Creating Player Stories: Full Talk Transcript
The TGDC 2021 talk and audience Q&A: designing player stories through identity, motivation, challenge, trade-offs, and outcomes.
Researching Player Freedom Through Risk–Reward Design
Risk preference, failure, gameplay loops, and checkpoints: an analysis of Dave the Diver and a Flappy Bird design thought experiment.
Designing Multiplayer Games Around Cooperation
Cooperative design through capability symmetry, objective dependencies, timing, and group size, drawing on prototypes and game examples.
Prototyping & teamwork
3Consistency in Design Language: Reducing Ambiguity
Starts with disagreements and communication costs within a project to examine consistency in design language and player experience.
Lost in Blue: Iterating from an Idea toward a Playable Reality
Preserves a NExT-era exploration of how squad cooperation and PvP shooter prototypes evolved.
From Tabletop to Mobile: Prototyping an Original PvP Game
Follows Duel Tavern from cards and a board through tabletop iterations, player testing, and mobile implementation.
Systems & genre research
3Creative Methods in Game Design: From Frameworks to Tabletop Practice
Connects mechanics and narrative, KRS, MDA, OODA, SCAMPER, and examples from mods and personal projects.
Methods and Principles of Game Content Production
Examines quality standards, graybox validation, and frequent testing as a project moves from systems design into content production.
Cooperative Multiplayer Design: Symmetry, Goals, and Synchronization
Uses diagrams to compare ability symmetry, skill requirements, goal decomposition, and different degrees of synchronization in cooperation.
Independent games
6Why Not? Failure and Choices in Original Game Design
Reflects on the constraints of funding, strategy, quality, and commercial expectations in original game projects.
Small Steps in the Dark: Continuous Prototyping
Places video, art, paper, and playable prototypes along a shared path of exploration and rapid validation.
Polish and Care: The Final Stretch of Game Quality
Discusses the boundaries of polish, presentation, experiential detail, and the quality standards developers set for their work.
Origins: Where a Project Begins
I believe every game project has an origin: a producer or creative lead's desire to express something.
Prototyping: Finding the Core Gameplay
For such an experimental game, we knew from the outset that establishing the core gameplay would be difficult.
Starting on the Tabletop: The Origins of Duel Tavern
I have kept development logs for several of our previous games.
Early teaching & level design
5Monster Hunter Pacing: Key Moments and Cooperation
Starts with combat fatigue, compares solo and group pacing, and explores how level elements can support cooperation.
Making Mods: From an Idea to a Playable Work
A practical introduction to mod-making, proof of concept, independent creation, and learning design by building.
Designing Game Experiences: Cameras, Stories, and Player Actions
Connects the experience economy, cinematic language, character narratives, and player control to examine how game experiences are built.
Gameplay Design: Sources of Fun, Strategic Choices, and Player Experience
Starts with designing around a verb, then examines sources of fun, strategic exercises, and risk and reward.
The Level Design of Shadow of the Colossus
Examines how weaknesses, vulnerable states, route choices, and timing windows structure boss encounters.
Teaching & Methods
GAME DESIGN / RESEARCH & TEACHING
Turn design questions
into methods we can test.
Research, teaching and practice inform one another. Starting with the player experience, analytical frameworks help pose questions that prototypes and projects can then test.
Creating Player Stories
An exploration of how player stories and self-directed experiences emerge, using five dimensions: identity, motivation, challenge, trade-offs and outcomes.
Explore the method and practice ↗02 / 2016 · Methods TalkSmall Steps in the Dark
Prototyping as an ongoing process of discovery: from video, visual and paper prototypes to quick, playable experiments.
Explore the method and practice ↗03 / 2018 · Prototyping Case StudyFrom Tabletop to Mobile
Following tabletop iterations, player testing and a mobile demo, this case study shows how core rules move from paper to screen.
Explore the method and practice ↗04 / 2020 · Design Methods TalkMethods and Principles of Game Content Production
Distinguishing systems design from content production, this talk examines preproduction standards, graybox testing and ways to capture lessons from design practice.
Explore the method and practice ↗TEACHING
From practical experience to knowledge we can share.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Video Game Workshop · Methods for Game Design Innovation
Tencent Game Design Open Course · Core Gameplay Design
Industry Mentor for Graduate Game Design Students, Tsinghua University IDMT
Game Design Mentor, GA Game Academy
Past teaching and speaking engagements. These case studies are based on the original talks and course materials.