See your game through a different lens
When a design feels stuck, change the question you ask about it. Practice seeing the same moment through the player’s expectations, its decisions, and its emotional promise.
In this guide
Allow 30–45 minutes for the reading, interactive experiment, and a notebook exercise. Bring a prototype or use our Night Mail courier example. No account or code required.
By the end of this lesson
- Inspect one moment from several perspectives.
- Separate a design question from a favorite solution.
- Choose a revision with a visible tradeoff.
A question before a feature
Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design uses lenses: different perspectives for questioning a design. The useful habit is to inspect your assumptions before reaching for another feature. A lens directs attention; it does not pronounce a game good or bad.
Consider this Night Mail playtest: a courier reaches a junction, chooses the bridge, runs out of oil, and restarts. You propose a bigger reward for the garden path. Your collaborator proposes a brighter oil icon. Both changes sound plausible because you have not yet agreed on the problem.
Write the event without diagnosing it: the player took the bridge with two oil remaining. Now ask what they saw, what they expected, and why that outcome mattered. These questions can point to different experiments even though the original observation stays the same.
One junction, three perspectives
Try the original diagnostic cards below. Each perspective changes the question about the same junction. Choose an experiment and inspect what it would actually help you learn. These are our own prompts, not reproductions of Schell’s cards.
A fresh pair of eyes
The same observation: a player takes the bridge, runs out of oil, and restarts. What would you investigate?
Can a new player predict the bridge’s oil cost?
Let two good questions disagree
A larger warning might improve understanding and interrupt the quiet mood. A longer deadline might relieve stress and remove the reason to consider a shortcut. Neither observation settles the design. Name which experience matters most for this test and what you are willing to give up.
| Perspective | Question for Night Mail | Possible experiment |
|---|---|---|
| Understanding | Can the player predict the bridge cost? | Ask for a prediction before the first crossing. |
| Decision | Does saving oil make a later route possible? | Keep the signs, change the later route requirement. |
| Experience | Does the deadline support a quiet evening delivery? | Try a version with a visible sunset but no failure timer. |
Keep the situation while changing your view
Do not use a new perspective as an excuse to redesign the whole game. Keep the same junction and player audience while changing the question. Otherwise you cannot tell whether the perspective helped or you simply found a more attractive idea elsewhere.
An expert courier may need a difficult oil tradeoff. A first-time player may need to learn what oil does. Describe which player you mean. The same revision can help one audience and obscure a finding about another.
Make a three-question design note
- Describe ten seconds of your prototype using only visible events.
- Write one question about understanding, one about decisions, and one about the intended experience.
- For each question, name an observation that would change your mind.
- Choose one experiment. List a benefit and a cost before making the change.
- After a playtest, return to the other two questions. Did the repair create a new problem?
A brief to make your ownAt the first junction, test whether a new player can predict oil use before acting. Keep route costs and the deadline fixed. Record their prediction, chosen route, and explanation after crossing.
Carry a question into the next build
Your output is a decision note with a question, a test, and a tradeoff. It should help someone else understand why you changed the junction. When you later disagree about a feature, return to the player experience you were trying to learn about.
Sources & further reading
Sources for the ideas discussed here, plus further reading. The lesson’s examples and interactive exercises are original.
Put your idea to work with the Dashpop Game Engine. Describe a game, play it quickly, and shape it yourself. Start with one change you can test.