An interesting split I& #39;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">https://twitter.com/p_gorigoi...

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& #39;t exist because there weren& #39;t schools. Not really. And there wasn& #39;t much design theory.

Now it feels like the & #39;standard& #39; 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& #39;t be taught (don& #39;t have the teams, project complexity, context, or the right students)

So instead they teach MDA, definitions of & #39;immersion& #39; and board games.

And maybe that& #39;s okay?