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Use reference games as inputs, not instructions: first define the experience you want players to have, then borrow only the qualities that help create it. Test those ideas in a playable prototype and keep, change, or remove them according to what the build shows—not because a reference did it that way.
Start with the player experience, not a list of games
Before naming influences, write one sentence about what you want a player to experience. Make it specific enough to guide choices: “I want players to feel the tension of managing a fragile ship while deciding which risk to take next” is more useful than “I want to make a space game.”
This reverses a common design trap. If the first question is “How did that game handle combat?” its answer can quietly become a requirement. If the first question is “What should combat make the player feel or decide?”, a reference can offer an option without setting the destination.
That priority is visible in Subset Games’ account of FTL. The GDC session description says the game began with the desire to experience what it would feel like to captain a starship; player experience came first, while gameplay structures, mechanics, and genre were secondary. GDC’s FTL postmortem session description presents this as an example of a goal that can guide many later decisions without prescribing a single mechanic.
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Turn each reference into a design question
For every game you study, record the particular quality you are examining and why it matters to your project. Avoid treating a whole game as a template. You might be interested in its pacing, spatial readability, or the emotional weight of a decision; those are different questions, and each suggests different experiments.
- Quality: What exactly caught your attention?
- Purpose: Which part of your intended player experience could it support?
- Transfer: What underlying principle might be useful, apart from the reference’s specific setting, interface, or mechanics?
- Test: What small playable change could show whether that principle works in your game?
For example, if a reference makes a choice feel consequential, do not immediately reproduce its dialogue wheel, resource cost, and branching structure. Ask what creates the weight: limited information, a visible sacrifice, delayed consequences, or something else. Then test the relevant principle using the systems and tone your project already has.
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Broaden the source of ideas
Game references are useful, but they are not the only place to look. Film, television, books, architecture, performance, and other disciplines can suggest rhythms, relationships, spaces, or tensions that a game can translate in its own way. The key is translation: identify what an influence does for its audience, then ask how an interactive system could produce a related effect.
In Game Developer’s report from a 2009 GDC panel, Goichi Suda described drawing on television, films, and games, accumulating ideas, and later bringing them together in a game. Bethesda designer Emil Pagliarulo discussed reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and asking how inspiration from another medium could be translated into a game. These examples are not a formula; they show that influence can be gathered broadly and transformed rather than copied. Read the report on the 2009 GDC game-design panel.
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Use prototypes to answer one concrete question
A prototype is most useful when it tests a question, rather than attempting to prove that a reference’s full design belongs in your game. Keep the test small enough that you can observe what the system allows and what a player understands or feels.
- State the question. For instance: “Does giving the player unlimited control over time create interesting decisions, or remove the pressure we want?”
- Build the smallest playable version. Include only what is needed to expose the decision or interaction under study.
- Observe before explaining. Watch what players try, what they notice, and where their understanding diverges from your intention.
- Compare the result with the project goal. Keep, change, or remove the idea based on whether it serves the intended experience.
Jonathan Blow described beginning Braid by asking, “What happens if I gave the player the chance to rewind time in an unlimited way?” He tested the question in code and observed outcomes he had not foreseen. The value of that approach is not that every design needs time manipulation; it is that a test can reveal consequences that are hard to predict from a reference or a design discussion alone. Read Game Developer’s 2011 report on Blow’s talk.
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Let the goal persist while the design changes
A clear goal should guide revision, not prevent it. A mechanic, level structure, or genre convention can change substantially if it fails to deliver the experience you want. In the 2009 panel report, Fumito Ueda discussed changes to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus while saying the team’s target remained the same. He also said, “We always are making an effort to create the best thing, so changing the plan is not a bad thing.”
The same report describes Pagliarulo discussing how the team played its own game and changed ideas that did not work. That distinction matters: consistency with the goal is more useful than consistency with an early implementation. The panel report covers both accounts.
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Use player feedback as evidence, not an order
Invite a teammate or a fresh player to try the build, then separate what you observe from what they recommend. A player struggling to read an important cue is evidence worth investigating. A preference for a different genre convention is not automatically a reason to change the game.
Ueda said he watched focus players to see the game as if experiencing it for the first time, but also said he did not change everything based on what they said. Jonathan Blow’s 2011 talk was framed around listening rather than dictating; his reported comment was, “Contemporary game design is so often about dictating, rather than listening,”. Read those viewpoints together: listen closely to what a player’s behavior reveals, then use the project’s intended experience to decide what to do with it. Blow’s talk report and the 2009 panel report describe these perspectives.
Notice when references have become instructions
A reference list is starting to dictate the design when the team reaches for a known solution before naming the problem it should solve. Revisit the list if discussions repeatedly end with “that’s how this game does it,” or if a borrowed feature survives despite failing to support the intended player experience.
- Can the team name the player experience this feature is meant to serve?
- Is the idea carrying over an underlying principle, or mostly reproducing the reference’s surface?
- What did the playable test reveal that discussion alone could not?
- Does player behavior support the project goal, even if individual suggestions differ?
These are practical reflection questions, not a validated scoring system. They help bring a design decision back to the project’s own purpose without requiring the team to reject influence altogether.
Originality comes from a vision, not from avoiding influence
A game does not become original simply by refusing to study other games. The more useful distinction is whether influences help answer the project’s design questions or dictate the answers in advance. GDC’s session description for a talk by Fredrik Wester of Paradox Interactive addresses the advantages of originality and how to find and express a vision. It is one industry perspective, not evidence that originality guarantees commercial success. See the GDC session description on originality.
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