Winning in design, high-end and classy or low-key and luxurious with connotation – iteration vs. planning

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Mobile game design concepts typically follow two basic schools of design philosophy:

1. Iteration-based design = just use some core mechanics and keep iterating until you develop something interesting, which is a relatively primitive and not widely used design method used before development.
2. Planning-based design = think about all functional points, every key scenario, dependencies and interactions of all basic functions before development.

Generally speaking, iterative design designers usually come from the PC field. They often pre-sell one-time paid games with high entertainment value. There are also game practitioners who come from the design of casual games and use iterative methods to design games with high retention and low profitability.

In my opinion, we have too many people who adopt iteration-based design and continue to do so. These people take the MVP (minimum viable product) view and see the MVP approach as a core, a pillar and a poor excuse for not fully thinking through all the features. People who use this approach often make comments like:

• “We can iterate later”
• "Don't worry about profitability right now, we just need to make it fun"

Unfortunately, non-technical people don't understand that game code is not an elastic resource, it's not like building and rebuilding Legos. Unlike Play-Doh, it's hard to make substantial changes without a massive resource drain: because code is relatively inelastic, game code in particular usually involves a lot of hard coding.

I'm going to take a slightly extreme view here, and I think that many free-to-play games based on an iterative approach, where mobile game designers are not necessarily suited to the paid model, are dangerous, and can destroy the entire game team due to their inertia.

When it comes to developing a viable product, the new mantra in mobile game development should not be focusing on the “Minimum” in “MVP” but something more.

Kim's Law: Develop a minimum viable product based on a maximum viable plan.

The mobile gaming space is too difficult for those who are not willing to invest the time and effort to think about their designs.

I often see the following types of scenarios:

• Half-baked ideas that are not well-designed and have no detailed description are handed over to the development department
• Too many designers chase the best-selling game designs and try to cram new features into existing games when those features don't make any sense.
• There is no deep thinking about how all the features in a game should work together and how they are related and interdependent.

For game designers like the one above, I have the following suggestions:

• Stop! It's too dangerous! You are destroying development, wasting precious time, and wasting resources that could have been better used with better planning. Speeding up the design = delaying overall development. Rushing on half-baked features will lead to a waste of costs in the end, do your job!

So how can we design better?

In fact, all designs come down to the following key tasks:

1. UI: Make sure the UI accurately represents the features of the game you are designing and make all key schematics in advance.
2. User onboarding: Make sure every new feature has a usage scenario and user interface, and playtest it in your mind before handing it over to R&D. What I mean is: Mobile UI and game design: experience scenario changes and user onboarding
3. Edge Cases: Think about all the major edge cases. What are edge cases? They are situations that are outside the normal flow of the game, but still need to be designed for. Make sure there are no major issues within the boundaries.
4. System Impact: Think about how this feature will affect your game balance and economy. How does this affect other systems in your game. How does the UI affect the rest of the game and make sure it is consistent.
5. Design impact: How will this new feature affect the overall user core loop, design goals and monetization? If you add a new PVE feature to a PVP game, this could be devastating. This will greatly affect monetization and the estimated game's monetization. (Game design based on monetization: ARPDAU--portal click here) Think before you do it!

Finally, in some cases, an iterative approach makes more sense than a planned approach, such as when you suddenly come up with the key and critical parts of a new game type to try. Furthermore, this is not about big picture planning. You should do as many planning exercises as mentioned above for your game features, game types, goals, etc. So determine the best feasibility plan for your specific situation first, there is no best answer that can answer all situations.

But in some cases, you may want to do more planning for the following types of games:

More complex: The more complex, interdependent, and systemic it is, the more you need to understand how your features affect other features in the game.

More UI: More UI is more complex, but you also have more scenes to put more UI

More systems: Generally the more hard code your game has the more systems it has. In many cases with new games, especially like Dota Legends, we see a lot of systems in the game, such as multiplayer PVE and retention-based systems.

Graphical overview: When to use iterative design vs. planned design

Summarize:

I hope this article can help you get more chances of successful products through better planning.

Know when to do more planning than iterating.

Use the above exercises to reduce iterations during game development and production. Most planning should be done in the early game creation phase, when costs are the highest.