Design Patterns in Game Design
Motivation
Design is fundamentally about finding solutions to problems. However, designers often find themselves reinventing the wheel, struggling with questions like: How were things done before? Why were certain design decisions made? How can we effectively reuse proven solutions?
The challenge lies in codifying design knowledge. While an effective and flexible design is difficult to get “right” the first time, experienced designers consistently create good designs. New designers are often overwhelmed by the vast array of design options available, while experienced designers seem to possess knowledge that inexperienced ones lack.
Expert designers typically don’t solve every problem from first principles. Instead, they reuse solutions that have worked for them in the past. When they discover a good solution, they use it repeatedly. This accumulated experience is what makes them experts, and these experiences can be recorded as design patterns.
Learning from Other Disciplines
The concept of patterns extends across creative disciplines. Compelling visual design requires practice and experience, naturally involving the study and critique of others’ work. As Pablo Picasso famously said, “Good artists borrow (from other artists), but great artists steal!”
Similarly, novelists and playwrights rarely design their plots from scratch. They follow established patterns like “Tragically Flawed Hero” (seen in Macbeth and Hamlet) or “The Romantic Novel” (found in countless romance novels). Even game players in chess, Go, and basketball rely on recognized patterns in their gameplay.
Understanding Design Patterns
Design Patterns vs. Design Guidelines
Design patterns differ from design guidelines in several key ways:
- Guidelines can be either abstract or concrete, but abstract guidelines usually don’t suggest how to solve problems, while concrete guidelines are often too specific to a particular interface
- Guidelines typically assume absolute validity, while patterns emphasize effectiveness within particular contexts
- Guidelines are useful for describing requirements, while patterns serve as tools for translating requirements into specific solutions
Patterns vs. Idioms and Vocabulary
Not every design idea qualifies as a pattern. Ideas that are too specific (like programming language-specific solutions) are called idioms, not patterns. Conversely, patterns cannot be too general—it must be clear how the pattern should be applied in context.
If techniques appear so frequently in a domain that everyone knows and uses them in almost any situation, they’re likely part of the basic vocabulary rather than patterns. In game design, this includes fundamental concepts like Player, Stage, Enemy, and Gun shots.
What are Design Patterns?
“Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.” - Alexander et al. 1977
Historical Foundation
Christopher Alexander’s Architectural Patterns
Design patterns originated with architect Christopher Alexander, who developed patterns for architecture in works like “The Timeless Way of Building” and “A Pattern Language.” His approach covered towns, buildings, and construction at multiple levels, creating networks that formed a comprehensive language.
A classic example from Alexander’s work is the Courtyards Which Live pattern:
Problem: Courtyards in modern buildings often end up unused, full of gravel and abstract sculptures. They fail in three ways: 1. Too little ambiguity between indoors and outdoors 2. Not enough doors into the courtyard 3. Too enclosed
Solution: Place every courtyard with a view to some larger open space, ensure at least two or three doors open into it, create natural paths across the courtyard, and include a roofed veranda or porch that connects the inside with the courtyard.
Pattern Format
Design patterns typically follow a structured format:
- Pattern Name
- Context
- Forces
- Problem Statement
- Solution (including solution sketch)
- Other Patterns to Consider
Pattern Languages
Alexander emphasized that patterns should be organized into logical structures forming pattern languages. These are more than just collections of patterns—they’re sets of patterns that fill out a design space and complement each other, with forces in each pattern explaining relationships with other patterns.
Design Patterns in UI Design
User interface design has adopted and adapted the pattern approach to address common interaction problems.
Extras on Demand Pattern
Description: Show the most important content up front, but hide the rest. Let the user reach it via a single, simple gesture.
Context: There’s too much content to show on a page, but some isn’t very important. You want a simpler UI but need to accommodate all content somewhere.
Solution: Ruthlessly prune the UI down to its most commonly used, most important items. Put the remainder into their own page or section, hidden by default. On the simplified UI, place a clearly marked button or link to the remainder, such as “More Options.” Many UIs use arrows, chevrons “»,” or ellipses “…” as part of the link or button label.
Responsive Enabling
Context: The UI walks users through complex steps, perhaps because they are computer-naive or the task is rarely done. You want to keep the whole interface on one page while maintaining stability.
Solution: Most actions start disabled—only actions relevant to the user’s first step are available. As users make choices and perform actions, more disabled items become enabled and brought into play.
Structured Format
Description: Your interface requests specific text input from users, formatted in a particular way.
Context: The input format expected by your program is familiar and well-defined, with no expectation that users need to deviate from the expected format (e.g., credit card information, telephone numbers, license strings).
Solution: Design text fields that reflect the required format. Keep fields short as clues to input length. Once users have typed all required characters in the first field, automatically move input focus to the next field while allowing them to return and re-edit previous fields.
Design Patterns in Game Design
Game design patterns address recurring problems in game mechanics, player experience, and system design. Björk (2004) categorized game patterns into several areas:
- Game elements
- Resource and resource management
- Information, communication and presentation
- Actions and event patterns
- Narrative structures, predictability and immersion patterns
- Social interaction
- Goals and goal structures
- Game sessions
- Game mastery and balancing
- Meta games, replay ability and learning curves
Producer-Consumer
Description: The production of resources by one game element that is consumed by another game element or game event.
Consequences: - Creates concrete, very common gameplay mechanics - Can regulate game flow - Can increase game complexity, especially when players control producer-consumer elements - Can increase the feeling of player control
Implementation Considerations: - Production regulation: Based on time/turns, player actions, game events, element configuration, or continuous vs. one-time production - Consumption regulation: Similar factors as production - Often uses related patterns like Factory and Accumulator
High Score Lists
Description: Give players the chance to rank themselves against other players who have previously played the game.
Consider the context and solution for High Score Lists in your own projects. How might this pattern affect player motivation and engagement?
Power-Ups
Description: Power-Ups are game elements that give time-limited advantages to players who pick them up.
This pattern creates temporary asymmetry in player capabilities, encouraging exploration and risk-taking while maintaining overall game balance through time limitations.
Paper-Rock-Scissors
Description: Sets of three or more actions form cycles where every action has an advantage over another action.
Context: Game designers want to avoid a general winning strategy in gameplay, encouraging players to observe opponent activities while promoting tension and randomness.
Solution: Create cyclical relationships between game actions where each action counters another, preventing any single dominant strategy.
Which of the following best describes the purpose of the Paper-Rock-Scissors pattern in game design?
[ ] To make games more complicated
[x] To prevent any single winning strategy and encourage observation of opponents
[ ] To reduce the number of possible player actions
[ ] To make games easier for new playersDesign Patterns in Learning
Educational design patterns help structure effective learning experiences. Examples include:
- Early Bird: Getting students engaged from the beginning
- Spiral: Revisiting concepts with increasing complexity
- Multi Pronged Attack: Using multiple approaches to teach difficult concepts
- Groups Work: Leveraging collaborative learning
- Active Student: Encouraging student participation
- Buddy System: Peer learning and support
- Write Over Read: Emphasizing active creation over passive consumption
These learning patterns can be applied to game design education and even integrated into game mechanics to create educational games.
Critical Considerations
Are Design Patterns a Silver Bullet?
Design patterns are not magic solutions that automatically create effective interfaces or games. They should be viewed as:
- A common design vocabulary for communication among team members
- A documentation and learning aid for understanding design decisions
- An adjunct to existing methods rather than a replacement
- A target for refining existing designs through proven solutions
Do Design Patterns Destroy Creativity?
This is a common concern, but patterns actually enhance creativity by: - Providing a foundation of proven solutions - Freeing designers to focus on novel aspects rather than reinventing basics - Offering a shared language for discussing and iterating on designs - Enabling more sophisticated designs through pattern combinations
Summary
Design patterns provide a powerful framework for capturing and sharing design knowledge across disciplines. Key takeaways include:
- Patterns codify expertise: They capture the knowledge that experienced designers use to create effective solutions repeatedly
- Context is crucial: Patterns emphasize effectiveness within particular situations rather than universal applicability
- Patterns form languages: The most powerful applications come from combining multiple patterns that complement and reinforce each other
- Cross-disciplinary value: Patterns originated in architecture, evolved through software engineering, and now enhance UI and game design
- Balance structure and creativity: While patterns provide proven frameworks, the best designs creatively combine multiple patterns to create something greater than the sum of their parts
As Alexander noted, “The best designs will use many design patterns that dovetail and intertwine to produce a greater whole.” The goal is not just to string patterns together, but to overlap them in the same space, creating designs that are dense with meaning and profound in their impact.