Learn to cut features, you already know how to add them

There is something I always say: “Game design is the art of constraints and framing.” Constraint means cutting, and framing is how you present what is left to the player. Nobody wants to do either one, because adding feels like creativity and cutting feels like loss. The part that is actually design is the second one.

One question is enough for the cut decision. If this feature goes, what does the player lose? If your answer is “some depth” or “some variety”, that feature was never there. Cut it.

If you are saying “but it doesn’t work without this”, ask the second question. What happens if the player never notices it is missing? If the answer is “nothing”, then it does not matter. You notice it. The two are not the same thing.

The real problem is that the cost of cutting goes up over time, because a feature’s cost is not its own cost, it is the cost of the systems built around it. Cut it today and you lose a week of work. Cut it three months from now and you have to rip out the four systems that got attached to it.

So delaying the decision makes cutting impossible. After a point, carrying the feature feels cheaper than ripping it out, and you start living with bad design.

The system you like least in your game is probably sitting there because it could not be cut in time.

Also, most features that cannot be cut are there not for the player but for the person who had the most fun making them. The system belonging to someone who says “but I gave three months to this” never even gets opened for discussion. If you work alone, that person is you, and cutting the work you buried yourself is the hardest of all.

Cutting on its own is not enough either, and that is where framing comes in. For the player not to feel the absence of what you cut, you have to describe the game from the start as if that thing never existed. The player looks for what was promised, not for what you never promised.

That is why I cut most of what a real AC-130 crew does early in Metal Thunder. Fire control officer, sensor operator, radio coordination, all of it exists in reality, but that is not the load a player can carry at once. If I had cut it late, I would have had to rip out everything I built around it too.

So how do you make sure? Before you cut, turn the feature off, take a build, put it in front of someone and ask “is anything missing?” If nobody notices without being asked, your answer is right there.

Do not delete what you cut, write it down somewhere. Features do not die, they were just born in the wrong game. The next one might have use for it.