Tynan Sylvester, creator of RimWorld, offers a provocative alternative to the standard view of game design as a process of invention. Drawing on Borges’ Library of Babel – a universe-sized library containing every possible 410-page book – he imagines a “Library of Play” where every possible game design already exists as a latent possibility. The designer’s job is not to create but to navigate: to search this hyper-dimensional space of potential games and find designs that work. The search is guided by a “design landscape” where similar games cluster together, height represents how well a design fulfills its goals, and thick fog obscures everything beyond arm’s reach. The only instrument available is a slow, imprecise altimeter – playtesting. This framing inverts the usual creative narrative: breakthroughs like Minecraft (a “great leap” from Dwarf Fortress) and polished releases (patient “hill-climbing” up a local peak) become different traversal strategies on the same terrain, each with its own risks and rewards. The essay concludes that the core skill of a designer is not generating ideas but knowing how to move through the landscape: when to climb carefully, when to jump blind, and how to read the shape of the ground beneath your feet.
The Design Landscape
Tynan Sylvester reframes game design as exploration rather than creation — a journey through Borges-inspired Library of Play where designers search for, not invent, great games.