Neither Becca nor I (Ginny here) have gone to school for game design. So we’re learning about how game designers talk and the lingo they use as we go. Becca is going through a video course about game development and texted me the other day about putting together our game’s core value and the pillars. Her text was short with the explanations.

Core: What word(s) is the game about.
Pillars: Answer the questions how, what, why and include the 3 most important features of your game.

But think shorter than that.

I got onto Google and poked around a bit to see what I could find there about Core values and game pillars. And I challenged Becca to put together her thoughts and then we’d share them with each other.

Becca came up with the Left Image and I came up with the Right Image. (And yes, I made them pretty on purpose. EVERYTHING MUST BE PRETTY!)

This is the difference in how Becca thinks given what she learned and how I think given what I learned. You can see her core word is Character Development and my core word is Growing Up. Which… is pretty much the same thing in different languages. They’re synonyms. We both want narrative driven game play and talk about exploring, racing, crafting and learning.

We’re very close to the same page and as usual are sharing each other’s brains. Now comes the fun part of meshing our thinking together in a cohesive core and pillars document.

What do you think about our core values and pillars? Is this a type of game you could see playing now or in 2025? Share your thoughts in the comments. Have a mystical magical day!