Blog1 min read
Systems design starts with the verb
Before the spreadsheet, before the loop diagram, a system needs one verb a player can say out loud.
Every system I have shipped that held up started the same way: someone could say what the player does in one verb. Bat. Build. Bluff. Hoard. When the verb is fuzzy, the spreadsheet gets built anyway, and it gets built around the wrong thing.
The test
Write the verb on a sticky note. Then ask three questions:
- Can a new player do the verb in the first minute?
- Can an expert do the verb in a way that looks different from the new player?
- Does the verb produce something the rest of the game wants?
If the answer to the third one is no, you have a toy, not a system. Toys are fine. Just do not wire a progression track to them and expect it to carry a season.
Where it goes wrong
The common failure is designing the economy before the verb is settled. You end up tuning currency sinks for an action nobody enjoys, and the tuning hides the problem for a few sprints. By the time the playtest data says “people stop here”, the economy has three dependent systems hanging off it and nobody wants to pull the thread.
What I do now
I refuse to open the tuning sheet until the verb survives a paper playtest with one person who has never seen the pitch. It costs a day. It has saved months.