Author’s Note: This article is written in response to a widely shared opinion piece about game design that, while unnamed here, made several claims that merit clarification and rebuttal. This is not a personal critique, but a professional response aimed at fostering a more accurate understanding of the discipline.
Recently, a blog post titled “Form vs Function” attempted to clarify the role of design in video games by drawing a firm line between two concepts: form (visual aesthetics, the domain of the artist) and function (mechanical systems, the realm of the designer). The intention seems to have been to demystify the designer’s role, something I can appreciate. Unfortunately, the argument hinges on a series of oversimplifications that risk distorting what design truly is, both in theory and in practice.
This response aims to challenge that framing by offering a more complete, and more accurate, view of design in game development.
“Function is Design”: A Misrepresentation
The original post claims that function is design, while form is the concern of artists. But this binary mischaracterizes the nature of design itself.
Design, whether in games, products, or systems, is not just about how things work, it is about how things work in a way that feels meaningful, usable, and aligned with intent. This has long been the consensus in both industry and academic design circles. As Dieter Rams, the influential industrial designer, famously asserted:
“Good design is as little design as possible”(1)
This is not a call for function at the expense of form, it’s a call for unity between them, to reduce noise and maximize purpose.
In games, Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2012) exemplifies this. It evokes deep emotional impact not through complex mechanics, but through an elegant balance of visuals, audio, and minimal player interaction. Its form is its function. The player understands, feels, and acts without explicit instruction, a feat only possible through tightly integrated design and artistic vision.
As highlighted in the Proto.io article, “[Form and function] are no longer opposing forces but two halves of a whole”(2). This directly counters the argument that function alone defines design. In successful products, digital or physical, functionality is not separate from how the product is presented and perceived. This logic applies even more forcefully in games, where aesthetics shape not only emotion but user comprehension, playability, and engagement.
Artists vs Designers: A False Dichotomy
The blog draws a stark line: artists create “form,” designers create “function.” This framing not only oversimplifies, but also misrepresents the way modern game development actually works.
In practice, design and art teams collaborate constantly. Artists influence gameplay function by crafting readable environments, expressive character animations, and intuitive UI. Designers influence form through layout, pacing, interaction patterns, and even aesthetic tone.
The Proto.io article further notes that “aesthetics help to create affordances,” the subtle visual cues that allow users to intuitively understand how to interact with a product(2). This insight supports the idea that game artists, far from being confined to cosmetic contributions, often design interfaces and environments in ways that are fundamentally functional, guiding player behavior and reinforcing game systems.
Take Celeste (Matt Makes Games, 2018), where every visual element serves to communicate mechanics: dash resets, danger zones, friction surfaces. The art style isn’t decorative, it’s designed to reinforce play. Or look at Hades (Supergiant Games, 2020), where the clarity of enemy attacks, the responsiveness of combat effects, and the environment readability result from art and design being co-developed with common goals.
As Don Norman notes in The Design of Everyday Things:
“Attractive things work better… because our perception of usability is influenced by aesthetics”(3).
To ignore the feedback loop between aesthetics and mechanics is to ignore how games actually function in the hands of players.
Misunderstanding of Advertising and User Perception
The post claims that advertising primarily communicates form, showing us the look of a product while hiding its function. This critique misses how advertising today is often a tool for communicating both form and function, especially in interactive and tech-based products like games.
Game trailers are a perfect example. The Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017) reveal trailer doesn’t just show beautiful landscapes; it demonstrates climbing, gliding, crafting, weather interaction, and combat, all mechanics shown through aesthetics.
Similarly, good product design (whether in IKEA furniture or a winter coat) uses material, texture, iconography, and layout to imply usability. In UX design, we call these affordances: cues in the form that suggest function(4).
Advertising, therefore, is not opposed to function, it often communicates function through form.
The Missing Ingredient: Concrete Game Examples
Perhaps the most surprising element of the original piece is its total lack of game-specific examples. When making claims about how design works in the gaming industry, it’s essential to reference actual games. Without this, the argument lacks grounding.
Compare Dark Souls (FromSoftware), where the ominous visual design of enemies, the layout of arenas, and the environmental storytelling all serve mechanical clarity. The player reads threat level, range, and movement patterns from the visual “form” of each entity.
Likewise, Portal (Valve) leverages stark architectural form to teach spatial reasoning and puzzle structure, players learn rules simply by looking.
In both cases, form and function are not separate layers, but interdependent aspects of a cohesive experience.
Toward a More Nuanced View of Design
The heart of the matter is this: game design is not a tug-of-war between form and function. It’s a conversation between them. Sometimes they align easily; sometimes they conflict. But neither can be discarded without compromising the whole.
Proto.io frames the modern role of design as inherently cross-disciplinary: “Good design today isn’t only about aesthetics or utility, it’s about blending the two into a seamless user experience”(2). This reaffirms the idea that contemporary design work, whether in apps, products, or games, requires the marriage of visual storytelling and system-level thinking. To treat these as separate or adversarial elements is to ignore how real teams build real experiences.
As Jesse Schell writes in The Art of Game Design:
“Every element in your game should support a unified vision… whether it’s a sound effect or a mechanic, it should work in concert with everything else”(4).
This is what real game design is: creating coherence, unity, and purpose across all disciplines. Not claiming one part of the process is “design” while the rest is decorative.
Conclusion
The post “Form vs Function” was likely meant to provoke a conversation, and in that sense, it succeeded. But if we’re going to have serious discussions about what design means in video games, we must move past binary thinking and respect the collaborative complexity of the medium.
Design is not form or function. It is form in service of function, and function shaped by form. That’s what makes it so challenging, and so powerful.
Footnotes
- Rams, D. (1976). Ten Principles for Good Design. Braun.
- Proto.io. (2025). How Form and Function Play into the Rise of Good Design. Retrieved April 2025.
- Norman, D. A. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things (Revised and Expanded Edition). Basic Books.
- Gibson, J. J. (1977). The Theory of Affordances. In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing (pp. 67–82). Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Schell, J. (2019). The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (3rd ed.). A K Peters/CRC Press.
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