An interesting split I've seen over the last decade is "Design theory that plays well in schools" vs "Design theory that working game designers use".

School: MDA, Mechanics, History of Old Games, Board Games. What is teachable? Where do you meet students existing knowledge? https://twitter.com/p_gorigoitia/status/1277658121066946566

Working designers: They may reference these, especially if that is the lens they were taught.

But I see more
- Deconstruction of key game examples
- Prototyping in code
- Spreadsheet design
- Buttloads of content design

Theory is primarily:
- Internal economies (sources, sinks, pools, transforms) for deconstruction and re-implementation.
- Lots of attention paid to scaffolding how players will learn the system with verbs and skills.
- Some UX theory. Dribbles social design theory.

The part that interests me is that 15 years ago this split didn't exist because there weren't schools. Not really. And there wasn't much design theory.

Now it feels like the 'standard' body of knowledge is quite rich. But it evolved in 2 isolated populations.

Like schools are this odd Galapagos hothouse where some practical game design skills can't be taught (don't have the teams, project complexity, context, or the right students)

So instead they teach MDA, definitions of 'immersion' and board games.

And maybe that's okay?