The Designer’s Production Guide (2025 Edition)
By William Anderson | Awaken Games
Game design is filled with unwritten rules—best practices passed down through experience, mistakes, and lessons learned on the job. While every designer has their own process, many of these principles remain consistent across projects and teams. In this guide, I’ll share key questions and strategies I rely on when entering production, particularly for independent or small-studio projects.
Start by Designing for the Team You Have
This simple rule is often overlooked: design for your actual situation, not your ideal one. It’s easy to fall in love with a concept, but before greenlighting full production, ask yourself:
- Does my team have the skills to build this game?
- Can we onboard new talent or adopt tech fast enough to meet milestones?
- Are we setting ourselves up to succeed, or burn out?
Managing creativity is often more challenging than creating the game itself—especially in today’s remote, global teams. Clear communication, defined workflows, and honest assessments of team capabilities are more important than ever.
The First Law of Design: Reality Check Before Commitment
Before locking into production, do a technical and creative feasibility pass. Don’t fall into the trap of “we’ll figure it out later.” You only get one first impression—make it count.
Questions Every Designer Should Ask Before Production
1. Is this a licensed project?
If yes, carefully navigate the politics and constraints that come with it. Licensors can be collaborative or creatively stifling.
Ask yourself:
- How much creative freedom will we have?
- Will approvals be fast or bureaucratic?
- Who’s the actual decision-maker?
- Do they understand (or care about) the interactive medium?
Modern projects often involve transmedia IPs—TV shows, web comics, brands. Be proactive in setting expectations and boundaries. Clarify the target audience early and educate licensors on game-specific considerations like UX, monetization, and engagement loops.
2. No license? Great! But you still need a sellable hook.
Creating original IP is liberating—but selling it is harder. You need to excite internal stakeholders, investors, or community backers.
Know this:
- Each studio has its own pitch pipeline—learn it.
- Understand what types of games your leadership or audience gravitate toward.
- Use visual prototypes. Today’s tools like Unity, Unreal, or Godot make it easier to whip up vertical slices or cinematic mockups.
- Be data-savvy: Use market research (Steam tags, genre trends, playtime analytics) to support your pitch.
Know Your Production Environment
3. What’s the target platform(s)?
Today’s platforms include consoles, PC, mobile, web, handhelds, and cloud services. Cross-platform tools like Unreal Engine and Unity have blurred the line, but each platform still has its quirks.
Things to confirm:
- Do we have dev kits, licenses, and access to SDKs/APIs?
- Is there internal platform experience (certification requirements, performance optimization)?
- How mature is the toolchain? (Remember: consoles often have limited documentation early in a generation.)
Avoid falling into the trap of “we’ll just port it later.” Plan multi-platform from the start—or scope it down.
4. Is the team ready—or are we pretending?
Not every artist wants to do game-ready assets. Not every programmer is up to date on ECS architecture or shader pipelines. Skills mismatches destroy timelines.
Audit your team:
- Are key roles covered? (Producer, tech lead, gameplay engineer, art lead, QA)
- Can they hit your visual/technical targets?
- If not, is there a hiring or outsourcing plan?
- Are there enough people for live ops if it’s an ongoing game?
Toolchains and workflows must support the project type: 3D? 2D? Pixel art? Multiplayer?
Modern Tools, Modern Expectations
5. Are we using the right game engine and tools?
Off-the-shelf engines like Unity, Unreal, Godot, and GameMaker have drastically improved—but no engine fits all ideas.
Ask:
- Does our engine support the core mechanic natively—or are we hacking it?
- Can we build pipelines and editors to speed up iteration?
- Are plugins/assets available, or will we build everything from scratch?
- Can we integrate CI/CD pipelines for faster QA and builds?
If the answer is no to most of those questions, you’re making a toolset and a game. Plan accordingly.
6. What’s the state of our production tools and art pipeline?
Fast iteration beats perfection early on. Today’s teams use Figma, Miro, Jira, Trello, Notion, Perforce, GitHub, and more. Even spreadsheets and Google Docs—when used right—are invaluable.
For art:
- Are we doing real-time PBR? Sprite-based? Voxel?
- Are asset specs defined for animation, rigging, VFX?
- Will art require custom shaders or tools?
- Can we support our output in-engine?
Avoiding the Chaos: Set Clear Boundaries
In today’s hybrid environments, clear roles matter more than ever. If people start stepping into each other’s shoes without clarity, morale tanks fast.
Define:
- Who approves what?
- Who owns gameplay vs. level design?
- Is the project lead also the creative director—or is that two roles?
Role drift kills indie teams. Use job definitions, org charts, or simple diagrams to lock this down.
Final Thoughts
Before any project moves forward, take a hard look at your concept, team, tools, and timeline. Every amazing game starts with a great idea—but only succeeds with great planning and honest execution.
Ask the hard questions. Listen to your team. Align your vision with your resources—and always build room for iteration.
Game development isn’t about making the best game idea—it’s about making the right game for your team, your timeline, and your players.