You've got a game idea, so how do you set about turning it into a game? More specifically, who are the people that make games and what do they do day to day? Over the next few months I'll be discussing the roles of the different members of Elixir and their role in making Republic: The Revolution, our first game [see Edge 78].

At Elixir there are two main designers, myself and Joe McDonagh. The role of a good Lead Designer is manifold. First and foremost you have to provide the initial concept for the game. It's essential that you have a strong vision of the game. You then need a design document, which is usually just a couple of pages long and outlines the key points of the game. You then have to persuade your team and your publisher that's it's going to be the game of the decade.

What you want from the original vision is for it to be inspirational enough to keep you going through the long months of development and also ambitious enough not to limit the team's creativity. I believe a great game is the culmination of a great initial concept and then thousands of smaller but perfectly formed creative ideas. It's also the work of people who are making a game they desperately want to play .

After the initial stage there are two important jobs a designer does. The first is to generate content for the game. The second is mechanical and involves creating the rules and sub-systems that make the game work.

The content side of designing is perhaps the most fun. If we were to use Monopoly as an example, the content part of the job would entail naming the streets, creating Community Chest and Chance cards as well as choosing the style of the playing pieces ("I know, one player can be a boot and another can be a Scottie dog………"). To do this you need a good imagination and the ability to communicate your ideas to people.

The mechanical side is much harder and the least understood part of the job. It involves writing the rules to the game, which is a process of enumerating and calibrating key game mechanics. How powerful is a rocket launcher in relation to an axe? How much money should a player pay if he lands on Park Lane with two houses and crucially, are these costs balanced exactly across all the properties? How much money should a player receive for passing Go? This is where the Designer has to make the hard yards, often through the numbing grind of tweaking thousands of variables ("Hmm, yes, the axe is definitely a four and a half"). It's for good reason that Joe is affectionately known as "Spreadsheet Man". How much of this sort of work there is to do depends very much on the game you are working on. Some games require more design than others.

Republic: The Revolution is an enormous game and requires a lot of design for a number of reasons. Firstly, the minute a player tries to do something and can't is the minute he remembers he's playing a game. This game simulates an entire country - which means there's a lot of work to make sure this doesn't happen. Secondly, a game in the real world needs to be accurate, whereas a sci-fi or fantasy game doesn't. People notice and mind very much if you misrepresent the real world.

On the content side Joe spent the first two months of the development in the British Library reading about the former Soviet Union. The idea was to generate enough information to help us create a living, breathing country that was to all intents real. The fictional country of Novistrana features elements of Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Abkhazia among others. Getting to this point involved hours of poring over books with fascinating titles like "Central Asia and The Caucasus after the Soviet Union". The fact that the player may never discover that the country's main crops are barley and buckwheat or that 6.25% of the population works in machinery production isn't the point. If a player only sees 2% of everything we've put, this implies that the other 98% is present and correct. This reinforces the illusion of reality. These little details give a game its depth and soul.

Being imaginative in your sources of research is also important. Hilariously we ended up entertaining Kiev's Professor of Sociology for dinner in an attempt to enlist his help. Equally bizarre was the Soviet library we found in Brixton. Going by the vaguely sinister name of "The Society for Anglo-Soviet Co-operation", it's a vast library of Russian books tucked away in dilapidated house in the roughest part of Brixton. He's convinced it's a den of spies and that they think he's an undercover MI6 agent. I think he's been playing too many games.

Another key design responsibility is the Interface. I think the interface is one of the purest tests of design skill. We have a principle here called the Parent Test; the ultimate challenge, this involves sitting one of our parents down in front of a game and seeing if they can pick it up within ten minutes. It's a pretty stringent test.

Other than imagination and creativity there are other skills that help you become a decent Designer. An encyclopedic knowledge of games is extremely useful. If you ever see an interview with Scorsese or Tarantino you realise they spend their lives watching and studying films. A game Designer should have the same dedication. Being able to communicate your ideas, in conversation and on paper is critical. Telling an artist that you want a Russian looking building isn't very helpful; Being able to show visual reference and explain your thinking is. An analytical mind is also helpful. Lots of people play games; few can explain what makes one better then the other. TA versus Starcraft anyone? If you can take a step back and isolate key strengths and failings it will help you with your own game. It will also lend credence to your views, whereas telling a programmer to implement a feature because it's "good" won't. But perhaps most importantly of all you need good taste and intuition for what is cool and what plays well.

At the end of the day, there is no secret to game design. Much of the magic of gameplay comes from the thousands of hours you that invest in playing your own game. You'd be amazed at how many developers don't actually play their own game - it's sounds incredible, but it's true. Another danger is that people can be precious with ideas. The right idea is the one that works best. This is why active discussion involving the whole team is so beneficial to the design process. Finally, the most important thing is keep focused on the single objective: fun. Games are games. Technology is cool but gameplay is always king.

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