Tools
Design Pillars
Establish a few core experiences in your game to guide your process of design and production.
WHY USE THIS?
Design pillars are used to create a cohesive experience throughout your game. By choosing 3 to 5 core experiences that you want the player to have, you will be able to prioritize the most relevant systems and make sure they reinforce each other. Design Pillars can be used at the first stages of designing your game.
HOW TO BUILD YOUR PILLARS
Step 1: Write down your options
Meet with your team and list the main emotions and activities in your game. If your concept is still in an early phase, list what everybody thinks the game will provide.
You can use sticky notes to visualise all your options.
Step 2: Look for patterns
Discuss the proposed options and try to find common themes between them. Group them by categories.
Step 3: Narrow it down
Highlight which categories have the preference of your team with a decision-making technique such as dot-voting. Try to select a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 categories.
Step 4: Describe your pillars
Give each pillar a name and a description. These are the foundations upon which you will build all your systems.
As an example, here are the four pillars from The Last of Us:
- Crafting: your best survival strategy in a depleted world with scarce resources.
- Story: a linear game centered on the survival of the two main characters.
- AI partners: you partner with Ellie and other AI characters to stay alive in a hostile post-apocalyptic world.
- Stealth: combat is made difficult to encourage stealth strategies.
Notice how these 4 pillars reinforce each other and drive design choices.
Next step:
Reference:
Max Pears http://www.maxpears.com/2017/09/02/design-pillars-the-core-of-your-game