Game Design Patterns Consolidation

Galactica Media: Journal of Media Studies. 2025. Vol. 7. No. 3. P. 155–176.

Amir M. Abu Makhadi

The field of game design patterns has grown up rapidly because of the necessity of tools supporting game design process on video games, serious games and education. However the field does not address criticism from academia and industry such as fragmentation, lack of collaboration, inconsistent template, navigation and patterns contradiction which leads to incompatible pattern collections and as a result to disparate application of game design patterns. 

Despite the criticism of fragmentation of game design pattern collections, there is a lack of works aimed at consolidation of game design patterns. The intention of this article is to contribute to closing this gap by examining pattern collections, identifying their weaknesses and revealing practices that would compensate for those weaknesses and become a foundation for patterns consolidation.  

Using comparative analysis, the article reviews six works aimed at forming game design pattern collections that behave like a “shared vocabulary”. Each work is compared according to six criteria. 

Based on this comparison the article presents three main findings: (1) Despite inconsistent pattern template, existing pattern collections can extend each other without losing collection specific format. (2) Keywords are a reliable way for navigation in pattern collections. (3) “Related patterns” field could be used for describing conflicting and complementing patterns. 

According to those findings, a consolidated pattern template was suggested which can be used for consolidation between collections of game design patterns.  

 

Keywords: паттерны, design patterns, гейм-дизайн, game studies, Ontology pattern language, game design, исследования видеоигр