Pattern Language for

Game Design
Pattern Language for
Game Design

Chris Barney
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I want to dedicate this book to the three people in my life who
brought me to the place where I had no choice but to write it.
To Jerry Levy, studying under you at Marlboro College set
the academic bar that I have strived for throughout my
career. You taught me to think deeply and to believe that
we must use our understanding to change the world.
To Christopher Alexander, whom I have yet to have the privilege
to meet, your words and insight into how we see the soul of the
universe inspire me. I hope with all my heart that my work here
will help open the doors of Pattern Theory to more designers
and help us to all build the strong centers we need to be whole.
To my father, Gary Barney, you are a living example of
Alexander’s nameless quality. My drive to make the world a
better place comes from you, and this book is my attempt to
do just that. I hope the pages that follow make you proud.
Contents

Preface: How to Use Tis Book, xvii

Pattern Library Website, xxi
Acknowledgments, xxiii
Author, xxv

SECTION I Introduction

CHAPTER 1 ◾ Introduction 3
WHAT IS THIS BOOK FOR? 3
WHY IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU? 4
WHY AM I THE PERSON WRITING THIS BOOK? 8
PATTERNS, CREATIVITY, AND ART 12
Why Are Tere Patterns? 13
Back to Art 14
Is Tere Room for Creativity and Innovation? 15
Diferent Designers, Diferent Patterns 15
Forming Patterns vs. Accepting Tropes and Stereotypes 16

SECTION II Background

CHAPTER 2 ◾ Background on A Pattern Language by

Christopher Alexander 21
PATTERN THEORY 24
CRITICISMS 24
IMPLICATIONS FOR GAMES 27
vii
viii ◾ Contents

CHAPTER 3 ◾ Background on the Use of Pattern Languages

in Other Fields 29
COMPUTER SCIENCE 29
SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE 32

CHAPTER 4 ◾ Background on the Use of Patterns in Game

Design 35
BOOKS 35
Patterns in Game Design 35
Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design 38
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES 40
“Te Case for Game Design Patterns” 41
“Developing a Pattern Language for Flow Experiences in
Video Games” 42
“Design Patterns in Games: Te Case for Sound Design” 44
“Patterns and Computer Game Design Innovation” 45
OTHER GAME DESIGN PATTERN PROJECTS 47
LARP Pattern Language 47
Kind Fortress 47
Interactive Institute Swedish ICT 48

SECTION III An Introduction to Patterns in Game Design

CHAPTER 5 ◾ An Introduction to Patterns in Game Design 53

WHAT DOES A PATTERN LOOK LIKE, AND HOW CAN I
FIND IT? 53
Te Pattern Template 54
EXAMPLE PATTERN: MYSTERY-DRIVEN EXPLORATION 58
INTRODUCTION TO PATTERN EXERCISES 61

CHAPTER 6 ◾ Common Problems in Proposed Patterns 69

PATTERNS SHOULD ADDRESS A DESIGN PROBLEM 69
SHALLOW PATTERNS 70
CIRCULAR PATTERN 71
 Contents ◾ ix

PATTERNS SHOULD BE PRESCRIPTIVE 71

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS 72
ANTI-PATTERNS 72
THE DESIRE TO BE THE AUTHORITY/KILL YOUR BABIES 73

SECTION IV Pattern Exercises

CHAPTER 7 ◾ Pattern Exercises 77

EXAMPLE EXERCISES AND PATTERNS 78

CHAPTER 8 ◾ Basic Pattern Exercise 79

BASIC PATTERN EXERCISE 79
Pattern Purpose 79
Example Basic Pattern Exercise 80
Exercise 80
Pattern: One of Tese Days Tat’s Going to Get You Killed 85

CHAPTER 9 ◾ Structural Pattern Exercises 89

HIGHER-ORDER PATTERNS 89
Pattern Purpose 89
Example Higher-Order Pattern 90
Exercise 90
Pattern: Te Tree Bears Teory of Level Size 94
LOWER-ORDER PATTERNS 96
Pattern Purpose 96
Example Lower-Order Pattern 97
Exercise 97
Pattern: Old Me Was Afraid of Old You, But New Me Is
Stronger! … And Now I’m Afraid of New You 100
FORMAL AND FUNCTIONAL DESIGN ELEMENTS 102
FORMAL PATTERNS 103
Pattern Purpose 103
Example Formal Pattern 104
x ◾ Contents

Exercise 104
Pattern: Don’t Intellectualize My Pain! 110
Bonus Student Example: Temporally Unavailable Space 112
Pattern: Temporally Unavailable Space 112
FUNCTIONAL PATTERNS: PATTERNS FROM RULES 114
Pattern Purpose 114
Example Functional Pattern 116
Exercise 116
Pattern: Fight Like You Live 121
EMOTIONAL PATTERNS 124
Pattern Purpose 124
Example Emotional Pattern 125
Exercise 125
Pattern: Oh! Tat Went Unexpectedly Well 127
PLAYER EXPERIENCE PATTERN 129
Pattern Purpose 129
Example Experience Pattern 130
Exercise 130
Pattern: Te Risk of Knowing You 134
THEME PATTERNS 136
Pattern Purpose 136
Example Pattern 137
Exercise 137
Pattern: Bringing About the Apocalypse 143

CHAPTER 10 ◾ Focused Patterns 147

PATTERNS FROM MICRO, MACRO, AND META
CIRCULATION PATTERNS 147
Pattern Purpose 148
Example Pattern from Micro, Macro, and Meta Circulation
Patterns 150
Exercise 150
 Contents ◾ xi

Pattern: I Could Be Bounded in a Nutshell and Count

Myself a King of Infnite Space 155
BOSS ENCOUNTER PATTERNS 158
Pattern Purpose 158
Example Boss Encounter Pattern 159
Exercise 159
Pattern: We’re Going to a Dark Place Together 162
EMERGENT NARRATIVE PATTERNS 164
Pattern Purpose 164
Example Emergent Narrative Pattern 165
Exercise 165
Pattern: Te Tree Pillars of Meaning in Emergent Narrative 171
EMBEDDED AND ENVIRONMENTAL NARRATIVE PATTERNS 174
Pattern Purpose 174
Example Embedded and Environmental Narrative Pattern 176
Exercise 176
Pattern: I Tought You Should Know 182

CHAPTER 11 ◾ Patterns That Break the Mold 185

BREAKING SPACES PATTERNS 185
Pattern Purpose 185
Example Breaking Spaces Pattern 187
Exercise 187
Pattern: Know Your Past, Know Your Future, Know Yourself 195
PLAYER MANIPULATION PATTERNS 198
Pattern Purpose 199
Example Player Manipulation Pattern 200
Exercise 200
Pattern: Coercive Ludonarrative Resonance 204
PATTERNS IN INNOVATION 207
Pattern Purpose 207
Example pattern 208
xii ◾ Contents

Exercise 208
Pattern: Tere Had Better Be a Very Good
Explanation for Tis 212

SECTION V The Fifteen Properties

CHAPTER 12 ◾ Taking a Step Back: What We Have

Learned So Far 217

CHAPTER 13 ◾ The “Fifteen Fundamental Properties of

Wholeness” in Game Design 219
LEVELS OF SCALE 222
STRONG CENTERS 223
BOUNDARIES 224
ALTERNATING REPETITION 225
POSITIVE SPACE 226
GOOD SHAPE 227
LOCAL SYMMETRIES 228
DEEP INTERLOCK 229
CONTRAST 230
GRADED VARIATION 231
ROUGHNESS 232
ECHOES 234
THE VOID 234
INNER CALM 235
NOT SEPARATENESS 237

SECTION VI Advanced Pattern-Generation Exercises

CHAPTER 14 ◾ Advanced Pattern-Generation Exercises 241

PATTERNS FROM CORE MECHANICS 241
Core Mechanics 241
Pattern Purpose 242
Example: Pattern from Core Mechanics 243
 Contents ◾ xiii

Exercise 243
Pattern: Greater Choice Requires Greater Motivation 248
FINDING MISSING PATTERNS 251
Pattern Purpose 251
Example Finding Missing Pattern 251
Exercise 251
Pattern: And Now I Guess We’re Doing Tis 255
FINDING NEGATIVE PATTERNS 257
Pattern Purpose 257
Example Negative Pattern 258
Exercise 258
Pattern: Game, Know Tyself 262
FINDING POSITIVE PATTERNS FROM NEGATIVE ONES 264
Pattern Purpose 265
Example Positive Pattern 265
Exercise 265
Pattern: Familiarity Breeds Contempt, or at Least High
Expectations 268
USING PATTERNS FOR UNDERSTANDING 270
UNDERSTANDING TECHNIQUES 271
Pattern Purpose 271
Example Pattern 272
Exercise 272
Pattern: More or Less Running Away 274
UNDERSTANDING TROPES 276
Pattern Purpose 276
Example Pattern 277
Exercise 277
Pattern: Can I Do Tis Alone? 284
THE FIRST CHOICE 286
Pattern Purpose 286
Example Pattern 287
xiv ◾ Contents

Exercise 287
Pattern: It All Depends on How You Look at It 291
AUDIENCE PATTERNS 293
Pattern Purpose 293
Example Audience Patterns 295
Exercise 295
Pattern: Tis Game Isn’t about You … But It Is for You 300
THEORETICAL PATTERNS 303
Pattern Purpose 304
Example Teoretical Patterns 305
Exercise 305
Pattern: I See Where You Are Going with Tis 307

SECTION VII Building a Language

CHAPTER 15 ◾ Connecting Patterns into a Language 313

INTRODUCTION TO PATTERN LANGUAGE
CONSTRUCTION 313
BUILDING A PATTERN LANGUAGE 314
1. Make Sure You Have Enough Patterns 314
2. Add Keywords 316
Sample Keywords List 317
3. Understand the Scope of Your Language 318
Pattern Categories 319
Categories from Disciplines 319
Categories from Game Mechanics 320
Categories from Genre 320
Categories from Patterns in Game Design 320
Categories from Pedagogy 321
Categories from Live-Action Role-Playing Game (LARP)
Design 322
Meta-, Macro-, and Micro-Level Patterns 323
4. Adding Existing Parent Patterns 324
 Contents ◾ xv

5. Adding Existing Child Patterns 326

6. Linking Other Related Patterns 326
7. Suggest New Parents and Children 328
8. Use Exercise 24: Teoretical Patterns to Find Related
Patterns 329
9. Link Confdence 329

CHAPTER 16 ◾ Organizing and Maintaining a Pattern

Language 333
INTEGRATING PATTERNS FROM OTHER SOURCES 333
Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design 334
Pattern: I’m Doing It As Hard As I Can 341
Patterns in Game Design 344
Te Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses 347
Exercise 25: Creating Patterns from Lenses 349
Example Pattern from Lenses 350
Exercise 350
Pattern: Just Look at What You’ve Become 362
PITFALLS OF PATTERN RELATIONSHIPS 365
COMBINING PATTERNS 366
ELIMINATING PATTERNS 370

CHAPTER 17 ◾ Creating New Pattern Exercises 375

FRAMING THE INTENT OF THE EXERCISE 376
LISTING AND DESCRIBING EXAMPLES 376
ANALYZING THE EXAMPLES 377
ARTICULATING THE PATTERN 377

CHAPTER 18 ◾ Designing with a Pattern Language 379

INTEGRATING PATTERN LANGUAGE USE INTO EXISTING
DESIGN PROCESSES 380
PATTERN LANGUAGE AS THE BASIS OF DESIGN 381
xvi ◾ Contents

CHAPTER 19 ◾ Teaching Yourself or Students with Pattern

Languages 385
AN INSTITUTIONAL PATTERN LANGUAGE 387
DEVELOPING WITH PATTERNS 387
PROVIDING FEEDBACK 388
ASSESSING PATTERNS FROM OTHERS 389
DEVELOPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S PATTERNS 390
GROUP PATTERN EXERCISES 390
DIVIDING THE EXAMPLES 390
REVIEWING OTHER’S PROJECTS 391
CREATING KEYWORDS 391
CATEGORIZING PATTERNS 392
ASSESSING A PATTERN LANGUAGE 392
DESIGN EXERCISE USING PATTERNS 394

AFTERWORD, 397

GAMES REFERENCE, 403

REFERENCES, 465

INDEX, 469
Preface
How to Use This Book

M y goal with this book is to teach you a new way to approach game
design. You’ll learn how to take the games you’ve played and the design
tools you’ve already mastered and put them into a framework that you build.
Tat framework will give you access to all of the knowledge you already have
in a way that will let you understand when and why each tool is needed.
Tis book asks you to complete 25 exercises, each of which will help
you describe a pattern found in game design. Tese patterns will help you
understand or discover the techniques used to design games. Patterns that
you produce will be your own, diferent from those described by other
designers. You’ll then connect those patterns into a Pattern Language.
Tis language serves as the beginning of a framework that you’ll use to
organize your knowledge of game design so that you can always fnd the
right design tools to solve the design problems you face.

FIGURE 0.1 We all come to game design with the knowledge gained from a life-
time of playing games.
xvii
xviii ◾ Preface

Whoever you are, you already know a lot about game design. If you’re a
new student, you’re coming to your studies with the things you’ve learned
by playing dozens, probably hundreds, of games. But all of that knowledge
is buried in your memories and experiences of those games.

FIGURE 0.2 Degree programs hand students so many tools that it becomes hard
to know how to organize them.

As a student or beginning designer, your instructors or mentors hand

you more tools. But they do it so fast that you don’t have time to decide
where to put them, and by the time you graduate, you’ve dropped some of
them along the way and forgotten you ever had them.

FIGURE 0.3 Professional designers have accumulated so many tools that choos-
ing the right one can be daunting.
 Preface ◾ xix

If you’re a working designer, you have a vast warehouse of tools and

techniques that you’ve used or seen throughout your career. You have so
many options that sometimes it can be hard to decide which ones you
should be using or even what some of them do.
Te process that this book walks you through will help you look at
each tool you have, look at the games you’ve played, and see the tools used
to create it. You’ll look at each technique, understand its purpose, and
describe that as a pattern, then fnd its place in your Pattern Language so
you can fnd it again when the time is right to use it.

• Section I of this book looks at what precisely a pattern is. If you don’t
know, then it’s an excellent place to start. If you think you know what
a pattern is but you don’t know who Christopher Alexander is, then
I encourage you to take a look at this section. When I talk about a
pattern, I mean something particular, and I promise it’ll be worth
your time!
• Section II covers the origin of pattern theory and describes how
game design and other felds use it already. If you aren’t sure about
the idea of patterns and want to understand why they’re valuable and
how the techniques in this book developed, then you want to read
this section.
• Section III talks about how a pattern is created or discovered, and
shows you how to document your patterns. If you want to jump right
in and start digging for patterns, or you want to understand how
to get the most out of other people’s patterns, then you can jump
directly to this section.
• Section IV is where the exercises begin. If you’re excited to get
started, you can begin here and jump back to the frst three sections
when you have questions. You’ll want to complete each exercise at
least once, though each time you complete one, it’ll give you a difer-
ent pattern.
• Section V takes a step back from creating patterns and considers the
higher-level properties of game design, which you may have begun
to notice appearing again and again in the patterns you’ve created.
Ten it moves into more challenging exercises. You may want to skip
ahead to this section afer creating your frst few patterns if you feel
ready to add more depth to the patterns you’re describing.
xx ◾ Preface

• In Section VI, you’ll learn to connect your patterns into a language

that you can use to design games that work in the way you intend.
You’ll also learn how to combine your language with those of other
designers and adapt patterns that existed long before this book.
Next, you’ll learn to use your Pattern Language in your studio or
classroom with your classmates and colleagues.
• Tis book also includes an example design produced by students and
the patterns that they used to create it.
• Finally, this book includes a comprehensive list of the games used
in the example patterns, so you can easily fnd more information on
them to help you understand those examples.

FIGURE 0.4 Creating your own Pattern Language can give the structure you
need, whatever your background.

I hope that you fnd the process of working through these exercises as
rewarding as I have found the process of creating them.
Pattern Library Website

T he companion website for this book is available at

patternlanguageforgamedesign.com. Te site provides searchable
access to all the patterns listed in this book, with more added all the time.
It also contains the Games Reference with active links to all the referenced
sources for easy access.
Te website will allow you to add your patterns to the library and share
them with developers all over the world. Over time that functionality will
be expanded to allow you to create private languages for your dev team,
class, or institution.

xxi
Acknowledgments

I t’s traditional to say that you could not have written a book alone.
Now, at the end of writing one, I fnally understand how true that senti-
ment is! Tis book may exist because I set out to write it, but if it is read-
able, comprehensive, rigorous, and beautiful, I have some work to do in
providing thanks.
My eternal debt and gratitude to Kamela Dolinova, my life’s partner,
and to Meadow Osmun, my oldest and dearest friend, both authors in their
own right. Your close reading, research, and technical editing allowed me
to fnd the voice to say these words.
Jason Weiser and Christopher Totten have provided beautiful illustra-
tions for this text. Teir insight and playfulness may have saved me from
producing a humorless impenetrable wall of text. Tank you for giving
this book Lebendigkeit.
Tank you to Glenna Greer and Carter Seggev for their research work
building the Games Reference included at the end of this book.
I must also thank my students at Northeastern University who sufered
through and hopefully benefted from the development of the process that
this book describes.

xxiii
Author

Chris Barney is an industry veteran with over a decade of experience

designing and engineering games such as Poptropica and teaching at
Northeastern University. He has spoken at conferences including GDC,
DevCom, and PAX on topics from core game design to social justice.
Seeking degrees in game design before formal game design programs
existed, Chris built his own undergraduate and graduate curricula out of
oferings in sociology, computer science, and independent study. In pur-
suit of a broad understanding of games, he has worked on projects span-
ning interactive theater, LARP design, board games, and tabletop RPGs.
An extensive collection of his essays of game design topics can be found
on his development blog at perspectivesingamedesign.com.

xxv
 I
Introduction

1
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

WHAT IS THIS BOOK FOR?

Tis book will not tell you how to design games. Tis book is not a list of
rules you can follow to create games. It will not give you instructions for
creating the meaningful games you have inside, the ones that you know
will change the world. No list of design principles, methodologies, or even
lenses, no matter how insightful, is sufcient for that. Every game is difer-
ent and unique, and a book of techniques will never quite ft your needs.
Memorizing principles and rules of design will never give you the level of
mastery you need to shape games out of your passion.
What is this book, then? It’s a book of exercises that will help you orga-
nize your understanding of design into a language that you can use to cre-
ate games. If you’re a student, this book will help you teach yourself game
design. If you’re an experienced designer already, this book will help you
organize your hard-won understanding and insight. It will help you com-
municate to your colleagues why the things that you say are true. And if
you’re an instructor, this book is a new pedagogy. It will let your students
derive design principles and rules from their own gaming experience.
Tat process will prepare them to expand their design skills long afer
they have lef the classroom.
What is this magical process? Sadly there is no magic, only hard work.
But the short version is that this book will teach you how to apply the ideas
of the architect Christopher Alexander, who pioneered the concept of a
Pattern Language as the framework for architectural design (Alexander
et al. 1977). Computer programmers and, later, game designers took his
work and applied it to their felds. At its core, a pattern, as defned by
3
4 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

Alexander, is a generalized solution to a design problem found by exam-

ining many existing examples. But a Pattern Language is not just a col-
lection of patterns. Tose patterns must be linked together so that any
designer can select the ones that work together to solve a specifc problem.
Because patterns are generalized and broadly applicable, any solution that
they generate will be unique to the needs of the designer using them.
Tis book does not provide a Pattern Language for game design. Instead,
it ofers a series of exercises for you to complete. Each one gives you a dif-
ferent way to create a pattern. Once you’ve worked your way through this
book, you can select the exercise that’s best suited for any design prob-
lem you face, and complete it again to generate new patterns that ft your
design needs. Over time, you’ll link all of the patterns you create to build
your own Pattern Language. Tis book contains only 24 exercises, but
using them you can discover hundreds of patterns.
I hope that over time we’ll share the patterns that we fnd with one
another, combine the ones that are duplicates, and recognize deeper pat-
terns based on the imperfect ones. Slowly, as an industry, we can come to
understand the deep structures of our design practice. And that will allow
us to create powerful, necessary games with craf, intention, and care.

WHY IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU?

If you already believe that making games is one of the most important
things you could do with your life, then you can probably skip the rest of
this section. But if you think that game design is just a fun career or a way
to make money with your technical or creative skills, then read on. If you
know why games must, must be carefully and thoughtfully designed, then
feel free to skip ahead. But if you think that all you need are your artistic,
technical skills and creativity, then this next section is for you too.
I believe that we use stories to tell each other about the world. Te idea
that early humans used stories to teach each other about the dangers of the
world and how to survive them is not new. But the way that we tell stories
has changed many times in the thousands of years since we sat in small
bands around fres and told each other tales. Te world has become more
complex, and the number of people in it has increased. As we moved from
hunter-gatherers to agricultural societies, the oral tradition became drama
and literature. As we moved from agriculture to industry, from cities to
nations linked across the globe, theater became cinema and television. As
the industrial age gave way to the information age and nations became
 Introduction ◾ 5

entwined in a fractally complex global society, theater has given way to

tabletop and live-action role-playing games, and then to video games.
Tying those two progressions together into some kind of unifed theory
of the development of human narrative and its interplay with the develop-
ment of human society would be a book in itself, but the idea is powerful
and useful. It seems to me that as society became more complicated, we
needed more robust ways to tell the stories necessary to understand the
world around us; to teach ourselves how to survive in our ever more com-
plex societies. Drama allowed us to tell more nuanced, compelling stories
to somewhat larger audiences. Literature allowed us to reach thousands
and millions with our narratives. Cinema gave us the best of both worlds:
the higher fdelity of the image, and the reach and durability of the printed
word.
We have reached a place where the world has become so complicated,
and the problems we face are changing so rapidly that we manifestly don’t
know how to solve them, let alone how to craf stories that allow us to
share that knowledge. Now we see the rise of interactive narrative. As
designers, we use it to tell stories that let the audience become players. We
watch players use our narrative frameworks to explore the problem spaces
presented by the stories we tell.*
If any of that is even partially true, then it puts a lot of pressure on us
as designers. Tere are still plenty of professional game developers, and
even more game players, who will argue that games are “just for fun,” and
that the games they play and make don’t afect their players. Games like
Brenda Romero’s Train† make a strong argument that games are indeed
more than just fun and do change the thinking of people who play them.
But a few examples are insufcient to prove this point, and it’s an impor-
tant point, so I am going to look at some of the mechanisms by which
games infuence their players.
First, as narratives, games have the same functional efect as any other
form of storytelling: they present a world for us to consider. And as in all
types of narrative, they can present information persuasively. As a portion

* Tis theory of the role of narrative in society is just a theory, albeit one I would like to spend
a few years of my life rigorously researching. It doesn't have anything to do directly with the
development or use of pattern languages, but it provides a good background to understand their
importance.
† Tere are many other examples of profoundly afecting games, such as Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please,

and White Death by Nina Runa Essendrop and Simon Steen Hansen.
6 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

of the feast of media we consume, they are part of the cultural rhetoric*
that shapes our view of the world.
Games are unique, however, in that they’re defned by mechanics that
players interact with, and those mechanics can reinforce their narrative
and form a type of participatory rhetoric. Te player participates in the
demonstration of the validity of the argument. Tat last sentence was a
bit dense; let me give an example. A player winning a game of Settlers
of Catan has participated in the case that growth is a necessary compo-
nent of success in a competitive economic environment. A winning player
must expand their settlements to generate a variety of resources in as large
quantities as possible. Tey are explicitly rewarded for building the longest
road and so on. Tat argument is not necessarily correct, because the arti-
fcial rules that constrain the game create it. Still, it feels very persuasive,
as you experience victory or defeat depending on your ability to play out
that argument.
And last, games are simulations of real-world systems: from a worker-
placement strategy game to a dating sim, from chess to playing house.
Sometimes the simulated systems are literal, and sometimes they’re
abstract. Games let you practice interacting with those systems, ofen in
simplifed situations in which it’s easier to experiment and come to under-
stand how they work.
If you’ve been playing games all your life, and if they’re so powerful and
capable of infuencing and teaching us, then why aren’t you a super soldier
or ace pilot or skilled plumber? Te answer is that we aren’t very good
at using the potential of games. Educational games are mostly inefective
and not engaging. (I say that having helped make more than a few.) AAA
titles are trying very hard to do a lot of things; however, those things are
all pulling in diferent directions, implementing systems and executing on
mechanics with high polish and not a lot of intention or understanding.
Tere are, of course, exceptions—games that make a strong argument
and have a profound impact on their players. If you think back on the
games that matter most to you, you will probably fnd some of the more
efective ones. For instance, compare the level “No Russian” from Call of
Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to the white phosphorus scene in Spec Ops: Te
Line. In Call of Duty, the designers put the player into a situation that tells
them to murder civilians. Te designers did this for plot reasons, and to

* Cultural rhetoric is the idea that everything around us, everything we produce, is infuenced by
the culture we live in.
 Introduction ◾ 7

give the player an emotional reason to hate the terrorists they are infl-
trating. In some ways it works, but it amounts to the trope of “fridging”
(killing a female character to motivate a male protagonist) applied to an
airport full of innocents. In Spec Ops: Te Line, the player is tricked into
thinking that the only way past a group of enemy soldiers is to use a drone
to target them for a mortar strike. Te game hides the nature of the target
from players; they see only markers on their radar that they assume are
enemy soldiers. To advance in the game, you have to commit an atrocity.
Afer you have located a nearby drone and mortar launcher and used it to
fre white phosphorus mortars into the cluster of “enemies,” you discover
that they were refugees; men, women, and children. To advance to the
next level, you walk past their charred bodies, including a mother holding
a small child to her chest. Despite the graphic and manipulative nature of
the sequence, it doesn’t feel like it’s using the shock value of the scene to
sell copies of the game. It is integral to this game about the horrors of war
and the way that interacts with their gamifcation.
Why did the level in Call of Duty feel ofensive, but the scene in Spec
Ops felt like an indictment both of war and of jingoistic shooters like Call
of Duty? Because Call of Duty is a valor fantasy, intended to be fun and
competitive and to have a story that makes you feel good about being a sol-
dier fghting for your cause. Call of Duty has mechanics, narrative, and art
that work to that end. Some aspects of the game, like the killing of civil-
ians or “Press F to Pay Respects” in Advanced Warfare,* work counter to
those goals. Te inconsistency in tone and mechanics across those games
makes the scenes intended to create emotional motivation seem manipu-
lative and disrespectful of both the player and the subject matter. Spec
Ops, on the other hand, is entirely focused on its intent of critiquing both
warfare and the military shooter genre. In that context, its use of forced
moral choice becomes a powerful emotional tool that feels appropriate.†
Te Pattern Language you build from the exercises in this book will
allow you to design games in a way that aligns all the aspects of your
game with the experience you’re trying to create through it. Patterns are
a neutral tool; games are not. Tey inherently have meaning, whether you

* “Press F to Pay Respects” is an infamous scene where players are attending a military funeral and
when they approach the cofn are prompted to press the F key to pay their respects. Many critics
found the mechanic shallow and disrespectful of the sacrifce of actual soldiers.
† Tat is not to say that all players were bothered by “No Russian” or that many players were not

angered by Spec Ops, just that the reactions of players to that level in Call of Duty were unexpected
to the developers, and players’ outrage at Spec Ops was the stated intent of the developers.
8 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

intend it or simply echo the culture around you. So you may fnd pat-
terns to examine the efects of racism and privilege, or you might fnd ones
to help you maximize player retention and monetization. Patterns won’t
make designers make “games for good,” but they will make you aware of
what all of the aspects of your game are doing and help you make sure that
it’s what you intended.

WHY AM I THE PERSON WRITING THIS BOOK?

I’ve spent around 25 years focused on learning game design. Yet I still
ofen don’t feel like a “real” game designer. I certainly never imagined
I’d write a textbook about it. But my own long, arduous, and circuitous
education in game-making led me to the conclusion that this book was
needed. I knew there had to be a better path than the one I had followed.
If you’re reading this, you’re likely in a class that’s part of an educational
program in game design or have been through one. Formal games educa-
tion is a fantastic development, not least because it means I now have a
job teaching game design. But it’s also still very new. Degree programs in
game design didn’t exist when I went to college in the late ’90s, and so I
had to fgure out how to learn it on my own.
Coming from a family of teachers, I knew that going to school was how
you learn things, so I went to a college that allowed me to design my own
program. And I learned a lot. But not enough to think of myself as a game
designer.
I knew from reading interviews with “real” designers that the way you
learn how to make games is by making them. So I started making games.
I’m still proud of many of them, but I knew there were designers out there
working far above my ability level. And I hadn’t broken into the industry,
so I clearly wasn’t a game designer yet. I didn’t even consider what I was
making “real” games, for a number of reasons that seem false and even
harmful to me now: I wasn’t getting paid for the work, or the games weren’t
digital, or I was more focused on interactive fction than mechanics.
Time for more school, I thought, and I got a master’s in computer sci-
ence with a focus on conversational artifcial intelligence (AI). I came out
of that feeling like I knew some things but still acutely aware of how much
I didn’t yet know.
Around this time, my good friend Link Hughes, who is currently a
game designer at Google, began insisting I come to the Game Developers
Conference (GDC) as a conference associate (CA). Afer three years of
applying, the program accepted me. Tat was probably the best advice
 Introduction ◾ 9

anyone ever gave me, not just because of what I learned about making
games, but because I met other game developers there. I talked to these
people I admired so much and realized they were only human. Some were
smarter than I was; some were better game developers. But not all of them.
I was new and inexperienced, but not hopelessly out of my depth.
So I made some more games, played more games, and applied for many,
many development jobs. And I got no callbacks, so I began to despair. All
my studies and practice didn’t seem to be worth much to the industry I
loved. Maybe I didn’t have what it took, and perhaps everyone could see
that but me. I hadn’t completely given up on my dreams, but I was close.
Ten one day, the call came. I was driving, and I pulled over to take it.
Afer my future boss and mentor told me that he was extending an ofer
to work as a sofware engineer and game designer on Poptropica, I stayed
parked on the side of the road for a while to cry. Even afer all my work, I
don’t think that until that moment I had admitted to myself how impor-
tant I thought games were or how much I needed to be a part of making
them.
Let me take a moment here to say that if you don’t feel that passion, if
you don’t have to make games, then put this book down and back away
slowly. Whatever your skillset, you will almost certainly be paid more for
it in another feld. Take that job instead, and you won’t have to bear the
heartbreak that this feld generates—and more importantly, you won’t
have the responsibility for making games. Because make no mistake: cre-
ating games is a huge responsibility. If you don’t yet understand why that’s
true, read on, and don’t worry, I won’t stop harping on it. Kidding aside,
the responsibility that game-makers hold is the heart of this book, and
you’ll need to understand it to understand why patterns are so important.
But let’s get back to the path to becoming a game developer and how my
journey led me to write this book. Te attempt by colleges and universities
to design programs that teach game design is admirable, and of course,
I’m enthusiastically in support of it. I’m not telling you about my educa-
tion as a way of griping about how hard I had it back in my day. (“We had
to design our levels uphill, both ways! And we didn’t even have graphics
tighteners!”) I’m not even telling you this because I think that the way I
had to learn was unfair compared to the programs that exist today.
I’m telling you this because I have become convinced that game design
is such a large, broad, delicate, and evolving art that we cannot teach it
in the time a degree program gives you to learn it. Te gaps that the cur-
rent system creates in new designers impact the entire industry. Of course,
10 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

many students go on to become great developers, but even the best of us

spend years flling those gaps and learning on the job.
Once I got my frst industry job, I recognized that my education was
far from over. I began to believe that I was a game designer (maybe), but
I didn’t fool myself that I knew everything. I learned that the best of my
colleagues were driven by passion, too, and while they were skilled and
generous, most of them didn’t have degrees in game development. Tey
came to their expertise through many diferent avenues, all driven by that
same sense that game-making is a subtle art. No great designer I’ve met
takes their job lightly.
One of my colleagues recommended a book called A Pattern Language
to the other designers on my team. But since it was the frst I’d heard of
it, and it was an architecture book, not a game design book, I added it to
my endless list without realizing how close I was to a key to solving the
problems I was seeing.
Fast-forward a few years, and I was attending the METATOPIA con-
ference, mostly to playtest a board game I was developing. While there,
I attended a talk titled “A Pattern Language for Larp Design” (Li and
Morningstar 2020). Tat was my frst real exposure to the formal idea of
patterns. I loved the idea, but its application was particular to live-action
role-playing games (LARPs). While I contemplated the usefulness of hav-
ing a Pattern Language for general game design, I didn’t pursue it then,
either.
A year or so afer that, I got a job teaching games in the game science
and design master’s program at Northeastern University. As I prepared
to pass on the things that I had learned, I couldn’t help but feel that my
schooling, and my early experiences adjacent to the industry, had failed to
prepare me adequately for the work. I knew that I had wasted years foun-
dering afer I graduated. And while my programs had taught me some
valuable skills, they hadn’t given me a concrete path to move from student
to functional game designer.
Game designers ofen advise hopeful new developers and students that
they should play all the games that they can and make games themselves;
to learn by observation and practice. It’s good advice, but I don’t think
it’s enough. Making games helped, reading about games helped; playing
games and thinking hard about them helped a lot. But there had to be a
better way. No one had told me what to look for when I played games, or
even how to look. And I had no way to judge whether the games I was
making were good or even improving.
 Introduction ◾ 11

When I started teaching, I read a lot of game design textbooks. Mostly

I was excited that such things existed since they hadn’t when I was in
school. Of course, the most generally useful to me as a designer was Te
Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell (2020). He mentioned the architect
Christopher Alexander, who had written the Pattern Language book I had
now heard of two times before. He also based several of his “lenses” for
game design on Alexander’s patterns.
A couple of semesters later, I had the opportunity to teach a graduate-
level class with the intimidating name “Spatial and Temporal Design.” It
turned out to be a course on using architectural theory in game design. At
this point, it was clear that it was fnally time to read this book that had
been chasing me through my career: Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern
Language.
Even with all of the buildup to reading it, I found myself unprepared for
the enormity of this book’s implications and scope. It’s not a book about
patterns in architecture. It’s a book that proposes a new and powerful way
to organize thought about a subject—in its case architecture, but with so
many other possible applications, about which this book explicitly specu-
lates. Tese ideas were so clearly crucial to game design that I immediately
assumed I had just missed the books and conference talks that explored
them.
A little research revealed that several books and doctoral dissertations
had indeed been written on the topic by game developers who were as
impressed with Alexander’s ideas as I was. But when I read what other
game designers had done with his work, I saw that all of the previous
attempts to apply Alexander’s ideas to game design were fawed in one way
or another. Tey were either too narrow in scope or focused on producing
one defnitive Pattern Language to rule them all. If I wanted to use the
idea of Pattern Languages in my teaching, I would have to fgure out how
to do it on my own.
I made my frst attempt in that Spatial and Temporal Design class,
and it was relatively successful. My students showed me great patience
as I assigned them my early attempts at pattern generation exercises. We
worked together to identify 117 patterns. Most of them were obvious
things that any game design student would be told in school. At frst, I
was disappointed, but then I realized something crucial: I had not told
the students those things. Instead, they had recognized those fundamen-
tals through observation and practice, and I had given them the tools to
do it.
12 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

At that point, I realized that the true power of Alexander’s ideas wasn’t
in the actual patterns that he identifed, but in the way that his Pattern
Language organized learning. I started talking to my game design and
teaching colleagues about my ideas, and one of them, Christopher Totten,
became very excited. He asked if I had considered writing a book. I hadn’t;
on some level, I still wasn’t sure that I was a real game designer, even
afer so many years and games. But I looked at the industry, struggling to
mature, and at my students, striving to master the complexities of design.
Eventually, I conceded that I needed to write this book: a textbook that
doesn’t teach game design directly but instead shows a way to use the pro-
cess of building a Pattern Language to learn game design.
What this book is, then, is the culmination of my attempts to learn
game design through the ad hoc processes that currently exist. It is an
attempt to put in your hands a set of tools that will allow you not to learn
the fundamentals of game design but to derive that knowledge through
your lens of experience. It is, I hope, the basis for a new pedagogy, one that
allows any aspiring game designer to unlock the principles that drive great
games—the kind that changes the world.

PATTERNS, CREATIVITY, AND ART

As I began compiling my work on patterns, I was pleased with what I
had. I felt like I had a manageable amount of work to do organizing and
structuring the exercises and making sure I was clear about the pattern
generation process. I thought I understood pattern theory, and how much
or little of it was necessary to share for readers to understand and use these
ideas and techniques. It turned out that I was wrong; the scope and signif-
cance of creating Pattern Languages far exceeded my initial assumptions.
All that became clear to me as I was speaking with a good friend about
my work: I was laying out the plan for this book and all of the theories I
just described for you. She nodded, agreeing that I was making a compel-
ling argument, but asked if I saw any place for art and creativity in my
theories, a question you may have been asking yourself. If I could look at
games and use these techniques to understand the patterns that under-
pinned their creation, then was I reducing game design to an elaborate
form of paint by numbers?
Of course, my immediate response was to say no, of course, not! Even
afer identifying a large enough group of patterns to use as a primary
design method, the very nature of those patterns would be general and
fexible. I would still need to apply creativity if I wanted to implement
 Introduction ◾ 13

those patterns in my designs in a way that produced unique games that

met my design goals. Tat’s all true enough, but knowing that this friend
was brilliant and certainly knew all of that, I bit my tongue and asked her
what she meant.
She told me the story of an argument she had with a hidebound profes-
sor in an undergraduate class. She had written a poem about a fower and
thought that it was enough that a poem was about the beauty of that fower
and the joy it brought her. Her professor, of course, disagreed. He wanted
to know the deeper meaning of the poem and her agenda in writing it.
Possibly he wanted her to recognize the role of cultural rhetoric in her art.
Maybe he wanted her to look closely at her work to see the craf she was
applying to generate the words that had appeared, to her, to fow sponta-
neously onto the page in an act of pure creativity and art. Or perhaps he
was just a jerk. Regardless, the incident stuck with her, and what she was
asking me was whether this idea of looking at the product of human efort
as being defnable through a set of patterns lef room for them to be art
and not just craf. I said that of course they did. She smiled at me a little
skeptically, and our discussion moved on. But she had succeeded in letting
some of the wind out of my sails and getting me thinking. I worried about
the problem for a while and eventually came to the following conclusions.

Why Are There Patterns?

It’s clear that we can fnd patterns in games as Alexander did in architec-
ture. Patterns seem to exist everywhere in the world around us—in the
natural world, but also in everything we create and do as humans. Why? I
think that this state is inevitable, given our understanding of the universe.
Tat may seem like a bold claim, but follow along.
Te laws of physics govern the universe, and those laws cause it to
behave in predictable, repeatable ways that explain the underlying pat-
terns we see around us. From the microscale of electrons orbiting nuclei to
the cosmic scale of the earth orbiting the sun, the nature of the universe
produces visible patterns. We live our lives dealing with the consequences
of those patterns. Te turning planet causes day and night, its path around
the sun causes seasons, and life has evolved in a world that contains these
basic patterns.
Te structures of life conform necessarily to those patterns. As life
becomes more complex and begins to exhibit behavior, the behaviors that
succeed are those that take advantage of the immutable patterns in the
universe. What I am describing, of course, is the theory of evolution. Now
14 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

consider that, as intelligence evolves, not only is it governed by the ability

to perceive those behavioral and environmental patterns, but intelligence
may well be defned as the ability to recognize and regulate behavior to
deal with those patterns.
Humans, then, are the most sophisticated pattern recognition machines
in existence. Tey are the inevitable product of an ordered universe. Tis
idea seems to echo Carl Sagan when he said, “We are a way for the cosmos
to know itself.”
Te nascent feld of machine learning and neural networks leverages
this idea of pattern recognition. While they are still a long way of from
consciousness, they lend support to our understanding of pattern recogni-
tion as a building block of intelligence in organic brains (Fogel 2001).
If humans are creatures that have evolved to recognize patterns and
order their behavior by them, then it seems reasonable that anything we
create is going to refect those patterns that we have perceived. It seems to
me that this is why there are patterns—in human behavior, organization,
architecture, art, literature, and video games.
All that said, we are imprecise organic machines, and the patterns we
perceive and imply are subject to individually limited data sets. Tere is
nothing “true” or “good” about those patterns. Te oldest, most persistent
patterns would be the ones that had the best outcomes for an individual’s
or group’s survival, not the ones that were true or just. And the existence
of a pattern does not mean that it is understood consciously. Similarly, the
inclusion of a pattern in a work of art or craf does not imply that the art-
ist used it intentionally. Down that track of reasoning lie stereotypes and
tropes, which I will discuss later.

Back to Art
Alexander looks at the world and seeks to identify patterns that architects
can use to shape “good” spaces that will enrich the lives of the people who
inhabit them. Computer scientists, in a more limited way, try to use pat-
terns to create sofware that will function better to fulfll its purpose. I am
attempting to look at the patterns in games and use them to create more
meaningful, useful games that fulfll my intent. We are all turning pat-
terns outward to shape and improve the world around us.
Artists, I think, are examining how the world afects them—seeing pat-
terns in how they feel and using those patterns to make other people feel
the things that they do. Tey are turning patterns inward and using them
to understand themselves. Tat’s not to say that artists don’t produce art
 Introduction ◾ 15

intended to create outward change in the world, or that architects and

engineers don’t have an inner life! We all combine our self-knowledge
and our perception of the world in our work. Te tension between the
two defnes human endeavor, and games sit very much on both sides of
that line.

Is There Room for Creativity and Innovation?

Only if we understand what patterns exist can we see the places where we
have not defned patterns and explore them. Only by observing the use of
patterns in the world can we apply them in original ways or know when
replicating the existing implementation of a pattern is all we need.

Different Designers, Different Patterns

Students that are given one of the exercises in this book produce difer-
ent patterns than professors. Given the same exercise, experienced game
designers notice diferent patterns than professors or students. While
some are “better” versions of others, ofen they difer because they are
from and for game designers with diferent perspectives and needs. A vet-
eran designer’s pattern may be profoundly insightful, but useless to a stu-
dent focusing on the fundamentals. A student’s results may be self-evident
to a professor, but help the student articulate their understanding of a core
concept. Tat same student might return to the same exercise years later
and generate an entirely diferent but equally valid pattern based on the
experience they’ve had since their frst encounter with the exercise.
Tis book encourages the development of a personal Pattern Language
that is what you, as a developer, need. It also promotes the sharing of pat-
terns as a form of communication, with all of the aforementioned in mind.
Te mutability of pattern exercises also means that the set of exercises in
this book can be used by designers from all areas of design to create pat-
terns that are useful to their respective felds. For example, given an exer-
cise based on themes in games,* a technical designer might come up with
a pattern describing a mechanic that generates a sense of loss. A sound
designer might detail a pattern for using character-based themes to cre-
ate an attachment to signifcant non-player characters (NPCs). And an
art director might generate a pattern about changing color usage to con-
vey danger in horror games—each of these coming from a single pattern
exercise.

* See Exercise 10: Teme Patterns.

16 ◾ Pattern Language for Game Design

Forming Patterns vs. Accepting Tropes and Stereotypes

Naively accepting this view of the world as a collection of patterns could
lead to thinking that we perceive “truth” in patterns and that using them
is “good.” I don’t believe that’s true for several reasons. Patterns, outside
of those defned by the physical laws of the universe, are based on human
perception. Our ability to perceive and understand those, especially on the
unconscious level on which most patterns historically have been formed,
is limited and imprecise. Te patterns that have persisted are those that
give the most advantage to individuals and groups, not those based on
“truth” or that produced just outcomes. Tus we have patterns of slavery,
oppression, and abuse, things that generated at least a short-term advan-
tage for those implementing the patterns.
While Alexander created the modern conception of a Pattern Language,
the idea of patterns in human behavior or art has been around for a long
time. Stereotypes are formal patterns, organically developed, and based
on limited, reductionist observation. Tey create an advantage for the
in-group and reinforce the maintenance of an insular worldview. Te
research into their development is extensive. Tropes are a more recent and
intentional catalog of functional patterns in media. Te patterns identifed
as tropes are, of course, nothing new, but recognizing them, calling them
tropes, and using that knowledge to understand the context and intent,
explicit and implicit, of media is relatively new.
In this book I am not using the term “tropes” just to mean an informal
description of a pattern in the world or in games. By trope I mean a partic-
ular set of formal and functional mechanics that exists across games and
other forms of media, and that encapsulates a social context and mean-
ing. Te website TV Tropes contains a vast collection of proposed tropes.
However, it mixes tropes that ft my description and ones that lack the
social context that is relevant to me. For instance, the trope urban ruins
(TV Tropes 2020c) is loaded with a social context, while the trope check-
point is close to a purely functional element (TV Tropes 2020a).
Te process of generating patterns through the exercises in this book
forces you to think deeply about the mechanics and techniques used in the
games you observe. Te exercises will help you understand the purpose
behind those techniques, to see beyond their surface-level efects.
As you complete the exercises in the sections that follow, pay attention
to the kinds of patterns you see. Consider their efect and intent. Some
that you uncover will guide you toward creating innovative, compelling
 Introduction ◾ 17

games with the potential to change the world for the better. Others that
you observe will be recapitulations of the cultural rhetorics of intolerance,
misogyny, and fear. Yes, I am saying that those things are present at a deep
level in the games we play. I have included an exercise in Chapter 14 to help
you look at tropes and understand their efects on games that use them.
Part of the work of developing your own personal Pattern Language is
deciding what patterns you want to use to create your art—and to do so
with eyes wide open to the efects of those patterns. As an industry, part
of the work of converging on a shared Pattern Language will be choosing
what patterns we want history to see when it looks back on the world our
games are helping to shape. I hope we all choose wisely.
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