Game Content Design

Core Workflow

1. Identify the genre, target audience, session length, platform, progression model, content budget, and intended player fantasy.
2. Define the content's job: teach, test, reward, surprise, escalate, relax, branch, gate, reveal, or create mastery.
3. Establish constraints before authoring: available mechanics, enemy roster, verbs, locations, assets, pacing target, difficulty range, and production limits.
4. Think compositionally about content when useful: combine reusable mechanics, enemy capabilities, modifiers, objectives, rewards, and environmental constraints instead of inventing bespoke one-off content every time.
5. Build content around player decisions. Avoid sequences that only ask the player to follow instructions unless the goal is onboarding or atmosphere.
6. Use escalation deliberately: introduce, combine, twist, pressure, resolve. Track what the player has learned before asking for mastery.
7. Specify rewards, failure recovery, replay value, and telemetry or playtest signals where relevant.

Content Types