Use reference games as inputs, not instructions: name the player experience you want first, identify the specific quality you are studying in each reference, and test a version shaped by your own goals. References can help you ask sharper design questions; they should not answer those questions for you.
Start with the player experience, not a list of games
Before collecting references, write one sentence describing what you want players to feel, understand, or do. Make it about the experience rather than a feature or genre label: for example, “Players should feel responsible for keeping a fragile crew alive during a risky voyage.” That gives the team a basis for judging whether a borrowed idea belongs.
This kind of starting point appears in the development account for FTL: Faster Than Light. The Game Developers Conference (GDC) description of Subset Games’ postmortem says Matthew Davis and Justin Ma began with a desire to experience what it would feel like to captain a starship. Player experience came first; gameplay structures, mechanics, and genre followed. Read the GDC session description.
The practical lesson is not to avoid genres or mechanics. It is to make them serve a defined experience. If a familiar feature does not help create that experience, familiarity alone is not a reason to keep it.
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Study a quality, not a whole game
For every reference, write down the particular quality you want to understand and why it matters to your project. “I want combat like Game X” is too broad to guide a useful experiment. “I want the player to read danger quickly in a crowded space” identifies a design question.
- Quality: Name a specific effect, such as pacing, spatial readability, or the emotional weight of a decision.
- Reason: Connect it to the player experience you wrote down.
- Principle: Ask what makes that effect work, rather than copying the visible feature that produces it in the reference.
Then look for other ways to achieve the same principle. A reference’s exact interface, camera, progression system, or combat loop may be one solution—not the only solution. The further you move from copying a surface feature toward understanding its underlying purpose, the more room you have to find an expression that fits your game.
Broaden your inspiration beyond games
More than one game can help prevent a single reference from becoming the default blueprint. Look beyond games as well: film, television, books, and other media can suggest ways to handle mood, tension, character, or structure. The important step is translation. Ask what principle you can adapt to an interactive experience, rather than importing a scene or device unchanged.
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In a 2009 Game Developer report from a GDC panel, Goichi Suda described drawing ideas from television, film, and games, accumulating them, and eventually bringing them together in a game. The report also describes Bethesda designer Emil Pagliarulo reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and considering how inspiration from another medium could be translated into a game. Read the panel report.
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Turn influence into a playable question
Do not debate a reference indefinitely. Build a small test that answers one concrete question. A prototype should make it possible to observe what the system allows and what a player understands or feels. It need not be polished; it needs to expose the design decision you are trying to make.
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- State the question. Make it answerable through play, such as: “Does giving players control over time make a mistake feel more understandable, or less consequential?”
- Build only what the test needs. Use the minimum rules, assets, and interface needed to explore the question.
- Play and observe. Note what players try, what the system permits, where they hesitate, and whether the intended feeling emerges.
- Compare the result with your goal. Keep, revise, or remove the idea based on how it supports the experience—not on how closely it resembles its reference.
Jonathan Blow’s account of prototyping Braid offers a concrete example. In Game Developer’s 2011 report, he describes beginning with the question, “What happens if I gave the player the chance to rewind time in an unlimited way?” He tested it in code and observed outcomes he could not have predicted in advance. The report also quotes him saying, “Contemporary game design is so often about dictating, rather than listening.” Read the report on Blow’s talk.
A prototype is useful not because it proves a reference right or wrong, but because it reveals how an idea behaves in your game.
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Ask a teammate or a fresh player to try the build. Watch what they do before explaining what you hoped they would do; their actions can show where the design communicates clearly and where it does not. Treat observations as evidence to consider alongside your goals, not as automatic instructions to change the game.
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The same 2009 panel report describes Fumito Ueda watching focus players to see his game as if encountering it for the first time, while also saying he did not change everything based on what players said. He put the balance this way: “We always are making an effort to create the best thing, so changing the plan is not a bad thing.” The report also recounts Ueda discussing changes to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus while saying the team’s target remained the same.
That is a productive way to handle iteration: let feedback expose a mismatch or a new possibility, then decide whether the response serves the project’s intended experience. A design can change substantially without losing its goal.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Know when to revisit your references
References become a problem when they start supplying solutions before the team has named its own problem. If a discussion keeps returning to what another game does, pause and restate the player experience and the question you are trying to answer. Then decide whether the reference still helps.
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Use these questions to assess a proposed influence:
- Does it directly support the player experience we intend?
- Are we carrying over a surface feature, or adapting an underlying principle?
- What did the playable test reveal about how the idea works in our game?
- Does player feedback support the project goal, or point to a different issue?
These are practical decision prompts, not a validated scoring system. Their purpose is to keep the project’s own goals in view while the design changes through testing.
Treat originality as a design choice, not a guarantee
Originality is not achieved by refusing to look at other work, and it cannot be bought by adding novelty for its own sake. It comes from the choices a team makes while finding and expressing a vision for its project. A GDC session description for a talk by Fredrik Wester of Paradox Interactive frames originality in terms of its advantages and the work of finding and expressing a vision. That is an industry perspective, not evidence that originality guarantees commercial success. View the GDC session description.
Use references to expand the options you can consider. Let your intended player experience, prototypes, and informed judgment determine which options become part of the game.
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