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Intentionality vs Strategy

Following my presentation at GDC, someone asked me the very compelling question, 'What is the difference between Intentionality and Strategy?'

I thought this was a great question, and I did not have a ready answer, though I promised to explore the problem and come up with one.

It's a difficult question, and I wrestled with it for a while before finally figuring it out. I've written up the answer to it, but the answer is about five pages long so I won't post it in the body. Instead you can grab it as a document here.

The short form of the answer is simply that Strategy is a sub-set of Intentionality, but all of the details are in the document for the original questioner or for anyone else interested. I have also re-uploaded the entire zip containing the presentation materials themselves to include the 'addendum' that answers this question.

I'd also like to add that, in my opinion, the discovery, analysis and presentation of formal concepts of design, the defining of their domains and applicability, and the discourse involved in 'debugging' those definitions is fundamental to what we do. This is the real challenge that game designers face in transforming what we do from a job into a profession. Answering this question has been one of the best experiences I've ever had as a designer. So thanks to Doug Church for starting the ball rolling on this with his short paper on Formal Abstract Design Tools (and also for being the guy who made the initial 'discovery' of Intentionality) and thanks to the questioner for keeping me on my toes.

GDC 06 Materials Uploaded

I know I promised them within 48 hours, but 60 hours will have to do. Sorry for the short delay. I expect to get around to posting my overview of the conference in general later this week - maybe in multiple parts.

A couple of additional things related to this presentation will come soon as well, including my review of David Sirlin's book 'Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion' - a copy of which he kindly handed to me after my presentation.

Also, someone came up to me afterward and asked the question 'what is the difference between Intentionality and Strategy' - a great question, which stumped me on the spot, but to which I have most of an answer now. I'll formalize that and get it up here shortly.

Anyway, thanks to all of you who braved a hang-over to be there bright and early Friday morning. If you have any questions about the presentation that you wanted to ask, post them here and I'll try to tackle them all.