Designer games as play with purpose to develop player game sense

 Ric Charlesworth is a ‘great’ of Australian coaching. In the early 1990s he explained his approach as 'Designer Games'. The ideas have been very influential in my thinking about practice design. At its core, the approach of Designer Games moves towards what I call ‘play with purpose’ to teach player game sense (game intelligence or perception-decision making-execution ability) using the context of the sport.

The fundamental idea is that players should be "thinking players" capable of solving problems arising from the context of the game.

How I think a Designer Game works

A Designer Game is a small-sided or modified game specifically engineered by the coach to highlight to the players a particular problem or tactical concept. This is done by:

• Manipulating Game Conditions: The coach changes the rules of play. For example, to encourage wide play, the coach might enforce that a goal only counts if the ball is played out to the wings before scoring.
• Guided Understanding: The coach acts as a facilitator rather than a director. They use questioning, for example, asking "What happened there?" or "How could you create more space?", to lead players to solutions.
• Representative Practice: The games must look and feel like the 'real sport'. The dimensions, player numbers, and intensity mimic specific match scenarios (e.g., defending a lead in the final 5 minutes)

Charlesworth is often quoted as saying that training should be harder and more chaotic than the game itself. By "designing" games that are faster, more time and/or space constrained, or more mentally challenging than a standard match, it is assumed that when players step onto the pitch the real game feels simpler and more controllable.

An example of a Designed Game

A common challenge in territory games (AFL, Hockey, Soccer) is a "stagnant" forward line, where players all lead directly at the player with the ball and then do not recycle their position, creating a crowded space that is easy to defend. The following Designer Game is engineered to teach players how to create "corridors" of space and use lateral movement to pull defenders out of position.

The Game: "The Lane Switch"

This game focuses on ball movement and leading patterns for forwards. Instead of initially telling the forwards where to run, the play space is manipulated to scaffold game behaviour. The context for this example is Australian football (AFL).

The Setup

• Area: A 70m from goal area that includes the forward 50 area of the ground.
• Players: 10v8: 6v6 forward/defender + 4v2 attackers-defenders who start outside 50.
• The "Design": Divide the play area into three vertical lanes down the ground (Left, Centre, Right) using markers.

The Game Rules

1. The Entry: The game starts with a contested ground ball ‘outside the arc’ (outside the forward 50m line). The coach decides the lane the game start ins, and varies that starting lane over the duration of the practice.
2. The Condition: To score a goal, the ball must be possessed in a different lane to the lane the contest starts before a shot on goal is taken.
3. The "Power Lane": If the team moves the into the Centre Lane and scores in this lane, the goal is worth 9 points (a "Super Goal" – pedagogy = exaggeration). Note: If a score happens from the same lane the contest started a without a change of lanes having occurred, the score does not count.
4. No Marking option: To create "chaos", the game can be played with a rule that encourages continuous play, i.e., if a mark is taken inside the forward 50 are of the ground, the player has 3 seconds to play on or lose possession to the defending team.

Getting the players thinking with reflection on the play - "Coachable Moments" (Questioning Strategy)

Instead of the coach shouting instructions (telling) like "Kick it wide!", the coach waits for a suitable moment to freeze play and ask questions to shape and focus player thinking. For example,

"When we got stuck on the boundary, what prevented us from getting into the 9-point zone?"

"Forwards, what move did you make to drag your defender out of the centre lane to open it up for a teammate?"

In a Play with Purpose model, Designer Games are a way to use gameplay as Explicit Teaching through a game-based approch. The Play with Purpose model provides the macro-structure (the session flow), and the Designer Game provides the micro-structure (the gameplay as a specific problem-solving task).

Sometimes, a Designer Game reveals that a player or players understand the tactic but lack the technical ability to execute it. In the Play with Purpose model, the coach then provides an episode where the player/players “step out" of the game into a practice task to work on the technical ability and after a period of practice, then return to play to check the player can adapt the ability into the game.

 Summary

Element	Designer Games In Play with Purpose
Role of the Game	The environment where fitness/skill/tactics are challenged.	A context for explicit teaching of game understanding
Coach's Role	The Architect (designer) and Facilitator.	Use the game play as inquiry within an explcit teaching context.
Focus	"Match-like" representation.	Tactical awareness emphasied to develop "thinking players."
Learning Process	Performing to the game conditions.	Player reflection scaffolded through coach questioning to promote enhanced player understanding from the performance.

Thanks for stopping by and reading this post. If you would like to connect with me about a project to do with this blog or any of the other ideas that I have blogged about, you can contact me by the email link available here 

Related posts

Game based learning as play with purpose here

Coaching for player learning using play with purpose here

Small side games - a coaching tool for technical, tactical and conditioning here

Play with purpose - a development of the game sense approach here

Play with purpose - deliberately here

Sport coaching and PE teaching - thinking like a game developer here

Game design principles and sport teaching/coaching here

Play with Purpose here

Bibliography

Charlesworth, R. (1994). Designer games. Sports Coach, 17, 30-30.

Charlesworth, R. (2006).World's Best: Coaching with the Kookaburras and the Hockeyroos. Author.

Charlesworth, R. (2021). Ric Charlesworth: The coach - managing for success. MacMillan.