Nice article by Blizzard. About designing a gameplay top-down and bottom-up
These are kind of extreme examples we’ve encountered during the past years of Heroes of the Storm development. The reality is that the design process is usually a mixture of both top-down and bottom-up styles. They both have merits. Top-down tends to generate a lot of ideas we can sift through, and bottom-up tends to immediately point us in a solid direction with a mechanic we know is fun to play. Regardless of the direction, it’s very often the case that both approaches give similar results:
Top-down: Suppose I’m designing a ninja character (ninjas are cool). I know that ninjas are generally perceived in popular culture to have certain traits: they can sneak around, they’re generally quick and hard to catch, they’re efficient killers, and they’re probably martial arts experts. So I may explore mechanics like cloaking, melee weapons, high damage, and some kind of escape option.
Bottom-up: Suppose I really like the gameplay of sneaking around and waiting for the perfect time to strike, or I think the game would be better with a character that filled a role like this. In order to make my strike effective, I’m willing to trade survivability for damage, making for some edgy, tense play. What kinds of characters fit that description? A ninja? A Protoss ninja? Zeratul?
By exercising both approaches to design, we get a more and more “complete” version of the Hero: a moment of gestalt where conceptual fantasy and compelling mechanics come together to make the player. That’s when we know we’ve found the fun.