Over at game developer blog Intelligent Artifice, Jurie Horneman has been discussing the possibly tricky question for larger console/PC game teams: 'What to do if you don’t have a game designer on your team?', if you're making a game. Other than getting one, of course.

Horneman then breaks things down handily: "If you can’t have a full-time game designer on your team, you can still make sure game design happens. What counts is that the job gets done. Having a full-time game designer is typically the best solution for this, but producing a game is all about knowing what your risks are, where to allocate resources (whether that be the team’s, or your own) and how to make the best of situations that are not ideal, because situations are never ideal, and the best is the enemy of the good."

He also cautions, near the end: "If there is no clear responsibility for game design, there’s a good chance it won’t happen. Values won’t get tested and tweaked, decisions won’t be documented and communicated. The lack of a game designer is probably not the only problem in your project, so there will be stress and urgency. Under these conditions, people will focus on their own areas of responsibility, because that is so much safer. The worst case occurs when player entertainment is no longer the focus of development. Every feature or asset is ticked off, but nobody cares anymore whether the game is fun." And indeed, that can happen. Thoughts?