Nathan Sumsion, senior video game designer for Avalanche-Disney Interactive Studios, spoke Wednesday night at the Memorial Union to conclude the ISU Game Development Competition’s final day of presentation and judging.

His lecture, entitled “Spelling it Out: Communication roles of a Game Designer,” sought to advise students with an interest in video game design how to best communicate to the various parties the field deals with most.

Sumsion pinpointed three specific groups that game designers work with most readily: publishers, development teams and players.

“Knowing how to communicate with each group is very important,” Sumsion said.

He said there are 15 various facets integral to a game’s design that must be consistently communicated throughout the design process. Among these were artificial intelligence, plot, mechanics, content, game flow and the “fun factor.”

“As designers, we have to tie all these ideas together and make sure everyone understands them correctly,” Sumsion said.

He described one of the objectives of a video game designer as “[trying] to communicate these ideas in our head to a programmer or artist and explain, ‘This is why this is gonna be fun,’ so they can take it a step forward and make it something people want to play.”

A constant communication between a game designer and the development team is essential to the design process, Sumsion said.

However, the relationship a studio has with its publisher mainly consists of game pitches and game design documents. Because of this, Sumsion said, the communication process between the two is slightly different.

“Visually communicating is a big key; use lots of pictures,” Sumsion said. “Concept art, images which encompass the general scope of the game, is one of the best tools a studio can bring to a pitch.”

However, the game design document is at the heart of the pitch. A game design document outlines and summarizes every aspect of the game from the plot and gameplay to characters and levels.

Sumsion said there is no set format or length for a game design document and that they typically range from 40 pages to more than 200 pages. He cautioned game designers to be concise in their description of the game, though.

“If you have some 400-page masterpiece with your epic storyline, no one’s going to read it,” he said.

Sumsion also encouraged game designers to hook publishing companies with new and unique ideas, as well as bringing along a complete and working demo version of the game.

As far as communication with players goes, Sumsion said that the most important factor in a game is a “consistent visual language.” He used the presence of barrels within video games as an example to illustrate this point.

“Everyone knows that when you shoot those barrels, they’re going to explode,” Sumsion said. “We had exploding barrels in “Far Cry 2″; I lobbied very heavily for them.”

Sumsion said that every situation in which communication is necessary for game design studios is going to be different.

“Figure out what works well in your situation, and do it,” he said.