Introduction to Game Systems Design

Chapter 7

Distilling Life into Systems

Now that you understand the fundamentals of creating and using spreadsheets, it’s time to start populating a spreadsheet with new game data. When you’re creating a new game, where does game data come from? Obviously, the data is generated from game systems and, more generally, from games. This means, to generate data, you need systems, and to create systems, you need to start actually making a game. This chapter covers the basics of coming up with game ideas completely from scratch and then building them out with systems and data.

The first concept to understand is that no game is created in a vacuum. When you look closely at the mechanics that compose any game, you find that they are analogs for aspects ...