You can’t change Game Direction without throwing a storm into your game.

Your Game Direction becomes so fragmented and less valuable that you can’t count on it anymore, making it effectively useless. You need to consider your Game Direction as the reassuring guide that helps you get back on track anytime you find yourself lost. The more you follow it without changing it, the more solid it gets, and the better it will lead you through development.

This week, I’ll show you why you should never change your Game Direction and what happens if you’re forced to do it. If you don’t know what a Game Direction is, refer to this previous episode.

Every time you change your Game Direction, you create a crack in your design compass.

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Here is what you’ll discover:

• Prevention Is Better Than Cure
• Changing Game Pillars
• Changing Thematic Structure

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

Game Direction should NEVER change.

From the moment you start Pre-Production, your Game Direction should, ideally, never change. But why?

To explain it, I’m referring to the Theory of Player Experience, which lies at the core of Game Design as a discipline. In particular, about a fact: “If you change the experience, you force the game to change”. If you remember from a few episodes ago that the Game Direction represents the Target Game Experience, it should be clear why this is a problem. Changing the Game Direction means you can’t follow the same path you’ve done until now; you need to shift your focus since your goal has changed.

You need a change in direction. And this means restarting from the Concept Phase to redefine another Game Direction.

The amount of time (and money) you lose from such a change scales with the size of the game, but it’s generally pretty high.

So, what to do?

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When in trouble with your Game Direction, change the game.

Imagine finding yourself in an ongoing development (Pre-Production or Production) with an unaligned game and Game Direction. The worst thing you can do is to pivot the Game Direction to fit the game.

It seems right, but you’re only solving the problem in the short term. Besides the experience-related issues I explained above, you’re setting a dangerous precedent whereby you can change both game and Game Direction. This risks leading to an endless spiral of continuous changes, making you go around in circles without reaching anything. And it gets worse because changing Game Direction during development makes you define a new Game Direction in a rush.

As a result, you increase the chance of unforeseen issues that will make you change your Game Direction again. “We changed once; we might as well do it again” will be your state of mind.

So, the safest thing you can do is to change the game to realign it with the Game Direction you set.

You should follow this route 99% of the time, but the real challenge is managing the rest 1% when you physically can’t.

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Sometimes, you have no choice, and this won’t come for free.

I don’t want to go easy on this. There are no quick fixes or happy endings when you are in this situation.

What you need to do is as simple as it sounds: you need to restart the entire project. There are no magic wands. Of course, you don’t always need to throw away all you’ve done until then. You can recycle and repackage things, and the process will be faster. But that’s a restart anyway; you need to check if and how much of it you can afford.

Evaluating it depends a lot on the project’s social and economic context and the team itself. Yet, I want you to be mindful of what happens when you change a Game Direction component after the Concept Phase.

This way, you can, at least a bit, “predict” and better evaluate what’s best to do for you.

Changing Game Pillars

Only a few situations can justify a Game Pillar change.

Let’s say, for some reason, you feel forced to change one or more Game Pillars. How do you know if your “feeling” comes from a good place?

Changing Game Pillars, albeit an extreme move, makes sense only in 2 specific situations:

• Misjudged interest: What you thought was an interesting thing, you discover it being trivial or shallow
• Technical issue: An unforeseen technical or management problem occurs (more skill required, miscalculated game size, etc.)

Outside of these 2 situations, a change in Game Pillars is poorly justified and should be avoided.

But let me be clear on a harsh point here. Both situations, especially the first one, are, in 99% of cases, the result of a poorly handled (or short-lived) Concept Phase.

If you put time and effort into crafting your Game Direction, nothing (except external forces) is unpredictable.

When those things happen, keeping the right mindset is critical.

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Take it as an improvement opportunity for the next project.

Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s ok. There’s no reason to beat you up for that because the alternative would be doing nothing in the first place.

However, they’re mistakes nonetheless, so the best you can do is acknowledge and learn from them. Every mistake comes at a cost, and if you are deep in development, the price can range from very high to unsustainable. That’s why it’s important to make mistakes when they’re cheaper, and this lies at the heart of the Game Design Iteration Cycle.

Everything changes when you shift from seeing the pain of being wrong to the price of learning. It’s not easy to keep lucidity in moments when everything seems falling to the ground.

But taking ownership of the mistake, treasuring the learnings, and moving to the next project is the best thing you can do.

Changing Thematic Structure

Changing the Thematic Structure is the deepest change you can make.

The effects you have on the project are similar to changing Game Pillars. However, the damage magnitude can be way higher.

Since the Theme and Message you chose underlies everything, changing them could be a serious earthquake. You’re compromising the game layer of meaning and why your game exists in the first place. So, unlike for Game Pillars, you don’t have situations where the change could be acceptable. Remember that if you happen to change something significant to your Thematic Structure without any visible effect on the game, you’re in trouble.

It means that you’re not following your Themes and Message at all. In this case, you need to refine your Thematic Structure and actually follow it from that moment on.

That said, when I say “changing”, I only mean radical changes like changing the Theme or the Message themselves.

If you want to modify their details, that’s a whole other story.

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If changing the Thematic Structure is dangerous, upgrading it is powerful.

As you iterate on the game during Pre-Production, you could discover new details about the Theme or a new way to frame the Message. Not only can you add them, but doing it is a great thing to strengthen your Thematic Structure. Also, keep researching and learning new things about the Theme (consider the Themeography practice).

However, anytime you want to add, remove, or change something in your Thematic Structure, don’t do it blindly. Consider how it affects the game and decide whether to accept or discard the change for dangerous domino effects.

So, as a general rule, focus on making your Game Direction stronger without changing its fundamental nature.

A Game Direction is like a lighthouse guiding ships; don’t change its position, make it taller.

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Key Takeaways:

• Game Direction should never change; when in trouble, change the game.
• Changing Game Pillars is almost never justified, aside from 2 situations.
• Changing the Thematic Structure can be dangerous, but upgrading it can be glorious.