"Your game will say something; it will have a message of some type for your players. It may go unnoticed by most if it aligns with a status-quo vision, but even in that case, it's saying something."
The goal of theme-driven game design, says Where The Water Tastes Like Wine creator Johnnemann Nordhagen, is not to hit your audience over the head with your views or ideas. Rather, it's to have a light framework that provides structure and insight and a solid base from which you can build a natural cohesion throughout the game. Here's his case for why we should approach game design grounded in what we know we want to say.
Read all about it over at Game Developer.
