Functional description

What this is

The functional description is the short statement of what the game is for — the answer you give when someone asks "so what does it do?". It's usually written before a single asset exists, and it becomes the sentence the whole team refers back to when making trade-offs.

Why it carries values

A functional description is never a neutral brief. It encodes and ranks values that then permeate mechanics, aesthetics, target users and evaluation criteria — it acts as the top-level guide to values that developers continually consult: is this mechanic compatible with treating adults with intellectual disabilities as adults? Does this visual style really make space feel cool again? The practice studied here found three broad types of functional description — digitisation, problem-solving, and aspirational — and each carries a distinct value orientation. Which type you write determines which values get protected and which get sidelined before design has even begun.

Patterns from practice

Digitisation

Digitisation-oriented descriptions frame the game as using technology to enhance or replace an existing method. One game aims to "use a smart balance board to gamify rehabilitation" (P2); another is "a one-stop shop for the assessment of certain cognitive skills, and then the intervention of those skills" (P2). These descriptions prioritise efficiency, precision and technological enhancement. Because the goal is to digitise and streamline existing therapeutic and assessment practice, design gravitates towards accurate measurement, reliable data capture and integration with professional workflows — the hardware choice, the repeatable task structures, the clear performance indicators all follow from the underlying value that technology should improve and formalise care. The risk: playfulness and narrative get treated as secondary to functional usefulness for clinicians, even though for the patient they can be an essential part of that function.

Problem-solving

Problem-solving descriptions frame the game as a response to a concrete social or ethical problem, and they load the design with explicit values from day one. One asked how a humanitarian aid program could be designed "in a way that doesn't cause harm" (P7), foregrounding do-no-harm and ethical responsibility. Another tackled exclusion head-on: "Adults with intellectual disabilities do not like playing kids games... they want something that they can engage with, as an adult and be treated like an adult, but have it be appropriate to them" (P8) — a description that promotes dignity and respect while explicitly ruling out child-like aesthetics or mechanics. The road safety game was driven by the fact that "boys between the ages of 17 and 25... account for like 80% of deaths on the road" (P4): harm reduction and preventing avoidable death became the game's central values.

A problem-solving description works almost like a moral mission statement — it narrows the field of acceptable design options. In the driving game, anything that trivialised risk would contradict the stated function; elements that foreground safety and compliance are elevated because they realise it. The description is both compass and constraint.

Aspirational

Aspirational descriptions aim to shift attitudes or cultural imagination rather than solve a measurable problem. The space exploration game began with "I was trying to make space cool again" (P6) — a personal response to the space shuttle's decommissioning and space fading from popular consciousness. This description embeds wonder, curiosity, inspiration and cultural memory, so the design favours awe-inducing visuals, expansive world-building and experiential freedom over didactic instruction. Success isn't fewer road deaths or improved balance scores; it's whether players come away feeling that space is exciting and meaningful again. Narrative, player choice and aesthetics are all aimed at rekindling fascination, not transferring information.

Questions to ask your team

1. Written down in one sentence, what is this game for — and is that sentence digitising, problem-solving, or aspirational?
2. What values does our functional description rank highest, and what does it quietly demote?
3. If the description is technical ("gamify X", "digitise Y"), where do playfulness and narrative sit — secondary decoration, or part of the function itself?
4. If it's problem-solving, what design options does the mission statement rule out entirely? Have we told the whole team?
5. If it's aspirational, what does success look like — and how will we know we shifted anyone's sentiment?
6. Six months from now, when we hit a hard trade-off, will this description actually tell us which way to go?
7. Does every stakeholder agree this is the function — or are the client, the SMEs and the developers each carrying a different sentence in their heads?