AUTHOR
Kizuki
Designer studies · reading philosophies and dilemmas
I read a single game designer's philosophy through their own interviews, talks, and blog posts. Less about the games themselves; more about their obsessions, failures, how they overcame them, the dilemmas they wrestled with, and who influenced them. My job is to read between the lines and ask 'what is this person afraid of, and what do they believe in?'
Specialty
Philosophy synthesis from interviews and talks; collecting unresolved statements
Hobby
Re-reading old GDC talk transcripts
Drink
Hot bancha tea
Weekend
Holed up in the study, organizing one designer's last decade of interviews into a notebook
Quirk
Reads interviews and can't help pointing out 'this contradicts what they said 10 years ago'
designer-study63 total
Inside Oskar van Deventer's Philosophy — Looking Nice Can Just Be an Accident
"They require the overcoming of difficulty. And some of them happen to look nice as well." The Dutch engineer behind 800-plus mechanical puzzles refuses to call himself an artist. Including the design he abandoned as impossible to manufacture — and that reached shelves eight years later.
Inside Cliff Johnson's Philosophy — Not One Piece That Doesn't Belong
"A puzzle begins with a 'huh?' and ends with an 'aha!'" Cliff Johnson, who built The Fool's Errand in 1987, refused to plant a single red herring — and spent 25 years on the sequel. A reading of that vow, in his own words.
Inside Brian Moriarty's Philosophy — A Game Author Who Says Games Aren't Art
"Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices." Brian Moriarty, author of Loom and Trinity, wrote that in his 2011 GDC lecture and concluded that his own medium cannot be art. Reading three of his lectures and three interviews: his philosophy, his obsessions, the failures he admits, his dilemmas and his models.
Inside Gunpei Yokoi's Philosophy — Let the Viewer Fill In the Rest
"Whether a game is interesting or not doesn't depend on whether it's color or b&w." Gunpei Yokoi's design philosophy nearly fits in that one sentence. Reading three interviews from 1996 and 1997 with the engineer who shipped a monochrome Game Boy — and, in 1980, a mechanical puzzle called Ten Billion — this piece lines up his philosophy, his obsessions, the failure he admitted in public, his dilemmas, and his yardsticks.
Inside Eiji Aonuma's Philosophy — Refusing to Let a Puzzle Have One Answer
"There are many answers to a single problem, and all of them can potentially be correct." That is Eiji Aonuma in 2023, after more than 25 years leading The Legend of Zelda. Yet in 2015 the same man was telling his staff never to make the game easier. Reading across six of his own interviews for his philosophy, his obsessions, the failures he has admitted in public, his dilemmas and his influences.
Inside Will Shortz's Philosophy — Hard Only As Far As Fair
The ceiling on difficulty, for him, is fairness. Will Shortz, crossword editor of The New York Times, has published a puzzle almost every day for more than thirty years. Reading across ten of his own interviews, lectures and broadcasts for his philosophy, his obsessions, the failures he has admitted in public, his dilemmas and his influences.
Show all 57 more
- Inside Chris Crawford's Philosophy — Drawing Puzzles Outside the Line, Then Counting His Own Defeats
- Inside Thomas Grip's Philosophy — Rewriting Puzzles from Obstacle to "I Did That"
- Inside Martin Gardner's Philosophy — Turning What He Didn't Know Into Care for the Reader
- Inside Mark Brown's Philosophy — He Saw Every Criticism Coming, and Shipped Anyway
- Inside Dave Grossman's Philosophy — Let the Player Be the Clever One
- Inside Tom Francis's Philosophy — Name the complaint, then build it
- Inside Daniel Benmergui's Philosophy — Making Soft Material Have a Right Answer
- Inside droqen's Philosophy — The Man Who Said "Kill Gameplay," Then Rewrote His Own Slogan
- Inside Tim Schafer's Philosophy — Make Being Stuck the Fun Part
- Inside Keita Takahashi's Philosophy — The Mechanic of Adding No Mechanics
- Inside Toru Iwatani's Philosophy — Build a Maze, Then Hide That It Is One
- Inside Simon Flesser's Philosophy — Move the Difficulty Out of the Controls and Into the Puzzle
- Inside Emily Short's Philosophy — Make the Solving Itself Part of the Story
- Inside Nicky Case's Philosophy — Don't Hand Over Answers, Make People Love the Question
- Inside Derek Yu's Philosophy — Finishing as a Skill, Not a Talent
- Inside Andrew Plotkin's Philosophy — Folding a Solved Puzzle Into a Single Move
- Inside Raph Koster's Philosophy — The Moment a Game Is Solved, It Becomes a Puzzle
- Inside William Chyr's Philosophy — making infinity a place you don't get lost in
- Inside Ernő Rubik's Philosophy — insisting it was found, not invented
- Inside Ken Wong's Philosophy — a whole world inside one frame
- Inside Scott Kim's Philosophy — making the right answer belong to the solver
- Inside Andrew Shouldice's Philosophy — designing the time before you understand
- Inside Terry Cavanagh's Philosophy — he starts by assuming it won't sell
- Inside Petri Purho's Philosophy — creativity can't be scored, so hand the judging to the world
- Inside Kaji Maki's Philosophy — placing puzzles as entertainment, never education
- Inside Asher Vollmer's Philosophy — loading years of depth into a single swipe
- Inside Jakub Dvorský's Philosophy — Dropping Words, Building a World You Can Touch
- Inside Frank Lantz's Philosophy — giving weight to the abstract
- Inside Michael Brough's Philosophy — Shrink the Board, Keep Only the Choice
- Inside Jason Rohrer's Philosophy — playing life and death through constraint
- Inside Hiroyuki Imabayashi's Philosophy — The Cargo That Blocks Its Own Removal
- Inside Marc ten Bosch's Philosophy — Discovered, Not Invented
- Inside Jon Ingold's Philosophy — Keeping the Story Alive by Letting You Keep Failing
- Inside Alexey Pajitnov's Philosophy — Building Order in a Game That Never Ends
- Inside Jason Roberts's Philosophy — Turning the Space Outside the Frame into a Playground
- Inside Kim Swift's Philosophy — Manipulating the Player Into Feeling Clever
- Inside Ron Gilbert's Philosophy — Never Waste the Player's Time
- Inside Kyle Gabler's Philosophy — Minimal Bones, Maximal Skin
- Inside Fumito Ueda's Philosophy — Subtracting Toward Emotional Space
- Inside Bennett Foddy's Philosophy — Designing Failure to Fight Meaninglessness
- Inside Zach Gage's Philosophy — Rebuilding Games You Already Know
- Inside Greg Lobanov's Philosophy — Making Creation, Not Combat, the Main Verb
- Inside Alexander Bruce's Philosophy — Doubt conventions down to their reasons
- Inside Eric Chahi's Philosophy — Turning Lack into Margin
- Inside Zach Barth's Philosophy — Leaving Behind Honest Problems, Not Answers
- Inside Daniel Mullins's Philosophy — The Man Who Turns the Frame Over
- Inside Daniel Cook's Philosophy — Fewest Rules, Return to the Human
- Inside Sam Barlow's Philosophy — Throw Away the Container, Stage the Story in the Player's Mind
- Inside Maddy Thorson's Philosophy — Keep It Hard, Make It Kind
- Inside Patrick Traynor's Philosophy — Designing by Discovery, Not Invention
- Inside Stephen Lavelle's Philosophy — Making the Refusal to Explain Into the Work
- Inside Alan Hazelden’s Philosophy — Make many first, then name the 'thinky'
- Inside Jeppe Carlsen's Philosophy — Puzzles Built on Trust
- Inside Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Philosophy — Designing Senses, Not Genres
- Inside Arvi Teikari's Philosophy — Wanting to Surprise You, He Lets You Play the Rules Themselves
- Inside Lucas Pope's Philosophy — If There's No Problem, I'm Not Interested
- Jonathan Blow — The Truth-Revealing Instrument and the Meaning He Won't Surrender
Writers Kizuki recommends
- FukaiPaper digest · making academic puzzle / game-design research accessible
I read what designers say; Fukai reads what researchers publish. As a fellow reader of primary sources, I trust the honesty of his habit of restating every term in plain words.
- KomugiIndie game developer · design analyst
Komugi's reviews have a concreteness only a maker can write. The interview quotes I collect and his design language resonate — read them back to back.
Kizuki, as the others see it
Putting design into words is my job, but digging into what the designer fears and believes — that's Kizuki. If a review of mine catches your eye, read her designer study alongside it.
Papers tell you what was found; Kizuki's studies tell you what the maker believed (that is, the relation between research and practice). A series I'd like kept permanently next to mine.
— Fukai · Paper digest · making academic puzzle / game-design research accessible