8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
1/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
How to Begin Designing Games
By Troy Dunniway
"Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found,
but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin."
- Donald Barthelme
If you are fortunate, you are already inspired to create a
specific game. Whether you were inspired by a movie,
another game, an original game-play idea, a story, a great
piece of art, or one of the many other sources of
inspiration, you have an initial idea of what you want to
build. Even if you weren't inspired but were told to build
a game around a specific existing property, you probablyhave some idea of what your game will be.
This article explains how to turn an undeveloped idea into
an initial design treatment. The design treatment is a
document that briefly describes the concept of your game
and compares it to existing games. It acts as a vital
springboard for the rest of the design process. The article
begins with a discussion of things that can help develop
your initial concept, such as genre, technology, story, and
art. A basic estimation of a game's scope and overview of
the designer's software tools rounds out the article.
Places to Start
You can start your design from lots of places, but one of
the most common is to start with a genre.
GenreIt is often safest and most helpful to start your design by
choosing a genre. It is possible to begin to design a game
from a story or character perspective, but this is far more
difficult and will almost certainly take much more time.
The most important part of game design is designing game
play. Starting with a genre helps define the basics of your
game play quickly.
Knowing what genre of game you're going to follow and
understanding the design implications of a particular kind
of game is very important early on. However, when you take
this approach to starting your design, make sure that you
innovate and don't just imitate. The biggest danger of
Do Not Distribute without permission. 1
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
2/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
designing your game from a "genre first" perspective is
that you might become so wrapped up in the genre that you
create a design that is too similar to another game.
If you think that you can duplicate a successful game with
a clone, ship two years later, and be successful, you're
probably wrong. For example, you might be thinking thatmost of the RTS games haven't changed at all, yet many
continue to be successful. Although this might be true to
some degree, for every successful RTS game that comes out,
many others fail. Rare exceptions powered by marketing do
succeed, but clones that do not offer anything new
generally fail.
The second biggest mistake that people make when deciding
what kind of game play to design is to try to be completely
original. Occasionally, a completely original game comes
along that is very well designed and successful. However,
designing a truly original game is extremely difficult and
is not recommended until you are already a proven
successful designer. Any less experienced designer will
have an easier time following the guidelines established by
successful games in a genre and innovating only in a few
game-play areas. It's important to know when and where to
innovate, and when and where to stick with the established
conventions of the genre. When in doubt, stick with the
proven game-play elements of your game's genre, and
innovate only when you see opportunities to substantially
improve game play.
The other big mistake that designers often make is mixing
genres. This is very difficult and should be done very
carefully when it is attempted.
For example, many people try to put action into everything.
Some of these games have been mildly successful with a
small crowd of hard-core players. Games such as Battlezone
and Uprising, which mix action game play with high-level
strategy elements, ended up being mildly received by the
public, even though they were highly regarded by the game
press. Adding action elements into a game that is short on
it isn't a bad idea; it just needs to be done carefully.
You also must realize that game players prefer certain
types of games for a reason. Mixing two genres of games in
the hope that both audiences will like and buy it can be a
dangerous path. Instead of expanding your potential
audience, you might actually constrict it. For example,
mixing a first-person shooter with an RPG might work for
Do Not Distribute without permission. 2
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
3/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
some gamers, but striking a balance between the fast pace
of a shooter with the story-driven exploration and
character building of an RPG will force a lot of
compromises that might cost you both audiences. Some games,
such as Deus Ex, achieved a strong balance between the
game-play elements of these two genres, but other games
(notably Daikatana) have fared less well.
Using different genres of game play together in different
parts of one game can also be dangerous. You generally want
to avoid creating games in which the player is forced to
learn a whole new set of controls to play each new section.
This has worked in a few cases, such as in the Super Star
Wars Trilogyon the SNES or Rebel Assault on the PC, but in
most cases it fails badly. Players have limited attention
and limited tolerance for learning new skills, particularly
lessons that have nothing to do with previously learned
skills. Players are willing to learn your game, but at somepoint (and I argue that this occurs earlier than later),
players want to experience your game with the goal of
trying to beat it. They don't want to keep learning the
rules.
Having players switch from first-person shooter to side-
scroller, to driving game, to arcade shooter will drive
players crazy. You don't want your game to be a feathered
fish that can't fly or swim. Most players want a consistent
interface and game-play style for each game that they
learn. Great games provide a consistent interface but
provide variety in elements such as computer opponents,settings, or player goals.
Another issue you need to be aware of is that creating a
game that utilizes multiple engines not only can turn off
your audience, but also can be very tricky technically. A
good multipurpose 3D engine makes it easier for games to
offer different camera views, but properly implementing
this still means a lot of extra work. Either way, before
you try to create a game that will require multiple engines
or types of game play, it is best to consult heavily with
your programming and art teams regarding the implications
of such an approach.
No matter what genre your game belongs to, it's important
to balance tradition and innovation. Use the conventions of
the genre to provide an understandable, playable game. Then
find small ways to set your game apart from the rest in
your genre. Provide innovations that motivate players to
buy your game instead of the original.
Do Not Distribute without permission. 3
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
4/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
Technology
Sometimes you start creating a game because you already
have a set of technologies from another project that need
to be utilized. This can be a hard place to start from
because the technology has already begun to dictate what
you can and can't do.
The other approach to starting with the technology (which
is just as common) is for a group of programmers to start
developing technology for a new game without first
understanding exactly what kind of game they want to
create. Because they don't have a strong design, they have
no way of knowing whether the technology that they are
creating will work for the final game. Often a team of
engineers will end up with a very impressive technology
demonstration but not a very fun game.
Starting from the technology has other pitfalls that affectthe nonprogrammer portion of the team. A lot of programmers
who aren't designers often don't realize that it usually
takes just as long to create the artwork for the game and
to create and balance the levels as it does to program the
game. If you program the game for a year and then bring in
artists, level designers, and others and expect to have the
game finished in six months, think again. You'll probably
see the product in a year and a half instead.
Programmers who put together a game without a design might
also find themselves redoing a lot of the game technology
when the level designers start to actually create the gameplay. The programmers might find that much of their work
just doesn't fit, and then they are faced with the tough
decision to change the design or change the technology.
Programmers on the cutting edge often forget that the rest
of the industry is also moving rapidly ahead. Even if they
have the best technology one year, if it takes an extra
year to release the game, chances are good that the rest of
the industry has now caught up and all the key selling
points of the cool technology just got neutralized.
Many successful games don't use the latest and greatest
technology. This is particularly true on the PC. If you
look at the top-selling PC games in 2001, when 3D was all
the rage, just about every top-selling PC game of 2000 was
still 2D. As Table 7.1 shows, this is not true for console
games.
Top-Selling PC Console Games of 2001
Do Not Distribute without permission. 4
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
5/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
2001 Top 10 Console/Handheld Games, by Units Sold
(Platform Follows Publisher Name in Parentheses)
1. Grand Theft Auto 3 (Rockstar Games/Take-Two, PS2)
2. Madden NFL 2002 (Electronic Arts, PS2)
3. Pokemon Crystal (Nintendo of America, GBC)
4. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Konami of America, PS2)
5. Super Mario Advance (Nintendo of America, GBA)
6. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (Sony, PS2)
7. Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 (Activision, PS2)
8. Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 (Activision, PSX)
9. Pokemon Silver(Nintendo of America, GBC)
10. Driver 2 (Infogrames, PSX)
2001 Top 10 PC Games, by Units Sold
1. The Sims (Electronic Arts)
2. Roller Coaster Tycoon (Infogrames)
3. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone (Electronic Arts)
4. Diablo 2 Expansion Set: Lord of Destruction (Vivendi
Universal)
5. The Sims: House Party Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts)
6. The Sims: Livin' Large Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts)
7. The Sims: Hot Date Expansion Pack (Electronic Arts)
8. Diablo 2 (Vivendi Universal)
9. Sim Theme Park (Electronic Arts)
10. Age of Empires: Age of Kings (Microsoft)
The Top 10 lists for PC and console/handheld games, for 2001. Data
supplied by NPDFunworld (for console games) and NPDTechworld (for PC
games). (Source: Gamasutra.com)
Do Not Distribute without permission. 5
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
6/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
On the PC, technologically advanced games usually have
higher minimum system requirements and often sell fewer
copies for that reason. This all goes to show that game
play is king.
Despite all the warnings against using technology as a
starting point for your game, it can be done successfully.
In the past, many games were designed and built largely by
one programmer. Although most of today's games are too
large for one person to design and build, having one person
designing and programming results in one clear vision that
doesn't need any communication between designer and
programmer. If you keep all these issues in mind and focus
on game play rather than technology for technology's sake,
you can successfully start a game design inspired by
technology. However, given all the risks of starting a
design from technology, you are generally better off
starting your design from a different perspective.
Existing Intellectual Property
Many intellectual properties that you might want to
leverage have a story, characters, or a universe that
already exists. Stories can come from movies, books,
comics, television shows, or a wide variety of other
sources.
Sometimes your job is to make a game out of a movie. This
can be a tough thing to do because you often need to timethe game to appear with the release of the movie. Creating
a game based on a movie that doesn't really exist yet can
be a big challenge, analogous to building a house on a
foundation that isn't complete yet. Lucas Arts faced this
challenge with its Star Wars Episode I adventure game.
If you're asked to create a game based on a movie, you must
make sure that you understand to what extent you can
exploit the license. Is the game you're making going to be
an interactive version of the movie, or one that just has a
similar story and the same characters in it? If you're
creating a game based on a two-hour movie, be aware that
you might not have enough material to create a 20- to 40-
hour interactive game. If there is a book behind the movie,
though, you might have all the material you need for the
game.
You'll face similar issues if you're asked to create a game
based on a book. A book often might have too much or,
Do Not Distribute without permission. 6
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
7/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
occasionally, too little information in it with which you
can work. You also need to be clear about what you're
creating and how closely you need to follow the existing
storyline.
One advantage to creating a game based on a well-known book
series is that often the author has been developing theuniverse and the characters for many years and has already
created almost everything that you would ever need in the
game. This can save you months of work. The downside is
that it doesn't usually give you any room to re-create the
characters so that they work well in the game that you are
trying to design. Another possible advantage for licensing
a major writer and his book or series comes if you can also
contract the writer to write additional material for your
game. This should ensure that your story is well written
and true to the author's original vision.
Having a well-written story before beginning the game can
also be a nightmare. A great story isn't necessarily a
great game. A great story might make a particularly good
adventure game or RPG, but trying to make something else
out of it might be very hard to do. Telling a story in an
interactive game is very different from presenting a linear
tale that you know your audience will read in a particular
order.
You also need to consider how the audience of the original
story and the potential audience for your game overlap. A
person who reads an epic fantasy novel isn't necessarilysomeone who would want to play a first-person shooter set
in that universe. Licensing a story might not gain you many
more loyal fans unless you make sure that the game is one
that will appeal to those same readers.
Comics are becoming another popular place to pull stories
from for use in games. Just as in books and movies, comics
have all the same potential problems. Comics also have a
particular style and audience that you must be aware of
before you set out to create a game based on one.
Licensed properties can be a great starting point for agame, as long as you keep these issues in mind. The key
point to remember is that, first and foremost, you are
creating an interactive game; any story might be only one
component of that game. Try to understand ahead of time
what developing a game based on a particular story or
license means to your game, how much you need to follow the
Do Not Distribute without permission. 7
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
8/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
existing story, and how that story complements the rest of
your game.
Art
Some of today's great games started as artistic visions.
Great art is usually critical to a game, but keep in mindthat poor game play will kill your game even faster than
mediocre art. If you have an artist on board from the start
of a project, by all means have that person start sketching
out the world and maybe some characters early on. However,
if you are the designer of the game, it's probably more
important to worry about game play and other design issues
early in the process than it is to worry about how each
character looks. Most publishers want to see a game-play
prototype first and then a visual prototype later. If you
spend all your time just worrying about what the game looks
like, you might have to spend more time down the road
adapting the game to changes in the design.
Even though starting with game play makes sense, I still
see new projects being started every day that focus on art
first. These projects spend months, if not years, sketching
out every aspect of the world, every character, and every
scene in the game. This is often done before any game play
is resolved, so things might have to change to make it a
better game.
On the other hand, great-looking art is hard to find. This
is a very subjective thing to say, I know, but as 3D has
become more dominant lately, we're having exponentiallymore problems with projects that do not have great art. So
even if art isn't high on your initial design list, make
sure that someone on your team is worrying about the look
and feel of the game as early as possible; with few
exceptions, you can't have a really great game without
great art.
Defining the Genre
As we have seen, although you can start your design at
other places, it is generally best to start with game play.
One of the exercises that I find really important to dohere is to break down the genre of the game and determine
what it is about the genre that defines it. What do players
typically do, what are their actions, what common themes
exist, which features appear in all games of that genre,
and which features appear in only a few of them?
Do Not Distribute without permission. 8
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
9/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
Because our running example will be an RPG game, let's take
some time to define that genre first.
Example: Defining an RPG
Here's a brief list of some elements that appear in most
RPGs. This list will also go a long way toward helping youdefine your features. Most of these features are what
define the genre:
Immersive world with a rich story
Combat system
Character creation and development
Exploration and quests/missions
Inventory and item collecting
Selling and trading
Conversations and interactions with NPCs
Research and upgrading
Defining the Initial Design Starting Point
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my
imagination. Imagination is more important thanknowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles
the world."
Albert Einstein
So, you have defined your genre and you think you know what
kind of game you want to make. Now where do you start? This
is a tough call. Every project is different. The important
thing is to understand the principles of game design well
enough that you know how to adapt and change as you make
mistakes. It is important that you don't rush into a design
and just jump right in, expecting to finalize things rightfrom the start. Design work takes a lot of patience and
planning initially. Planning will save you a lot of time
down the road. Although your design will still need to be
flexible and change, you will generally rework less of your
design if you have a plan from the start.
Do Not Distribute without permission. 9
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
10/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
By this point, you should already know what genre of game
you are creating, have identified good and bad examples of
other similar games, and have begun to develop your plan to
get the game made.
Although you can start your game design in any manner,
focusing on a few specific areas initially will make thedesign go more smoothly. Therefore, it's important to
understand what areas of game design are the most important
to focus on at different points in the projectand why.
Starting Point Example: Game Soldiers of Rome
Soldiers of Rome is a historical action RPG meets
Gladiator, the movie. It is similar to Diablo II on the PC,
but it will be designed for the latest generation of
consoles. It takes place in the ancient world, and it
follows a player on an epic journey to save his family and
his honor. The player will also build giant armies and
fight them, as in Dynasty Warriors 2 on the PSX2, while
controlling only a single main character. The Legion should
be easy for people to play, exciting, cinematic, and fun.
My team can do the project over the next 18 months.
What Is Known About the Game?
The best place to start any game design is with the
information that you already know regarding what the game
is, needs to be, should be, has in it, or must include.
Some of these ideas and requirements might be your own, but
often they derive from someone else who gave you theassignment to develop a certain game.
If a game is based on a book, movie, or other medium
license, you might already have a good idea of the world
where your game will take place, the characters that it
must include, the time frame, the story, and possibly a lot
more. It can be just as challenging, if not more
challenging, to design a game around an existing license
than one that you think up on your own, so don't think that
knowing all of this information will take all the fun away.
There is still plenty for you to do.
A game that is a sequel to another game or that is based on
another game franchise might have a lot already in place.
You might know what the game play is like, what was
successful and what people want changed, who is in the
game, and what the world is like. If you are designing a
sequel to another game, some of the topics this book covers
aren't as applicable to such a project.
Do Not Distribute without permission. 10
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
11/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
Every game will have an initial idea associated with it.
This idea might revolve around a previously played game or
a story or character that you created or acquired as part
of a license. Keeping a running list of everything that you
know and would like to do with your game design is
important. You should know what all your goals and assets
are before you begin.
The game you are designing might also be your own original
idea, not one based on an existing property. You might know
what kind of game it is, what genre it is, that it is set
in a particular kind of world, and that it has both people
and monsters in it. At this point, don't worry about low-
level details. Just write down every high-level aspect of
the design that you know. You might know that four humans
and three creatures crash-land on some dangerous planet.
From this you know that you have seven characters, that the
game is science fiction, that it takes place on a dangerousalien world, that the beginning of the story includes a
crash landing somewhere in it, and that the end of the
story might include the heroes being rescued. A lot can be
deduced from just a single sentence idea, so don't rule out
any ideas that you have early on.
It is also important to consider early in the design
planning the destination hardware platform for the game.
Certain genres and types of games are better suited for
consoles, whereas others are better suited for the PC. Some
titles can exist easily on a wide variety of platforms,
whereas others can logically exist on only a single one.The decision to create a game for a console, a PC, or both
can be based on all kinds of factors, from market
demographics to the access you have to development tools.
Consoles are fixed hardware targets, while PCs are
constantly changing and upgrading.
For a designer, the most important difference between
consoles and PCs is the different control devices. The PC's
mouse serves as a pointing device, which is useful for
player tasks such as selecting one unit from a crowd or
controlling large numbers of units. Therefore, most RTS
games have shipped on the PC. The console's controllerprovides buttons convenient for controlling a single
character and pressing multiple buttons simultaneously. A
game such as a martial arts fighting game that requires
combination moves is more easily controlled with a console
controller. It isn't critical that you know whether your
game will be on a particular console, but you should at
least know whether you are developing a PC game, a console
Do Not Distribute without permission. 11
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
12/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
game, or a cross-platform game. The technical and interface
difference on both platforms can drastically change the way
the game is designed. Picking your target platform will
help you make decisions about the interface and help you
envision your game in action.
Whatever high-level decisions you have made about your gameat this early stage, write them down. Don't worry about
filling in low-level or even midlevel details at this
point. It's important to outline the big picture of the
game before moving on to more design specifics.
Example: Thoughts on The Legion
Based on my ideas and my genre-defining features, I now
have a good idea of what the player could be doing in the
game. I know that the game needs an epic story, that it is
centered on a central character or small group of
characters, and that the character needs to fight lots of
enemies. There are a lot of places to explore, puzzles to
solve, people to talk to, and quests to complete. All the
while, the player is building up the character, getting
stronger stats, finding or buying new weapons, and
gathering equipment. I also know that the game is
historical, based in ancient Rome, and epic in scale.
Although this game could work on PCs or consoles, I will
focus on consoles because the player is focused on
controlling one player and because consoles have the
performance that the game requires.
Progressive Refinement
One of the most important things in game design to
understand is how it is done iteratively. I call this
method "progressive refinement" because you are constantly
refining your vision of the game. The main reason to use an
iterative process is because "things will change." Yes,
that's right it will all change. Hardly anything that you
do early in the process will make it into the final game,
at least in the same form that you originally envisioned
it.
Think of it like you are writing a book. You can start on
page 1 and spend a lot of time writing and rewriting the
page until it is perfect; then you move on to the next
page. The problem is that the carefully constructed
characters and polished prose on page 1 might be completely
irrelevant by the time you have written page 200. Perhaps
the characters or the setting no longer works with the
unfolding plot or escalating dilemmas of the characters.
Do Not Distribute without permission. 12
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
13/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
Maybe your style has changed, and now the story is being
told from a different point of view. Perhaps it's the wrong
place to start the story. If you finalize page 1 before
writing the ending, you will be constantly trying to adapt
the end of the book to fit a poor beginning.
As with planning a book, it is usually best to first planand then rough out most sections of a game before
finalizing any one area. Throughout this article, you will
find iterative game design used because this is what a
formal design process is all about.
The Puzzle of Designing Games
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but
not simpler."
Albert Einstein
I approach game design as a giant jigsaw puzzle that must
be put together. The final picture is a completed game.
Sometimes the puzzle is easy; it has only 250 pieces, and
the picture on the pieces is simple and easy to discern.
However, most of the time, creating a game is like trying
to put together a 10,000-piece masters puzzle that is all
one color, with 100 extra pieces and no edges. Not to
worry, though you can do some things to make this puzzle a
lot easier to complete.
In game design, you might know where only one piece of the
puzzle goes in the beginning, but with a little patience,
planning, and calculation (and a liberal dose of dumb
luck), you can start putting it together one piece at a
time. As you add more pieces to the puzzle, the whole thing
begins to take shape until pieces begin to place
themselves. You might even be lucky and find a big section
of the puzzle already put together for you if you are
patient and dig slowly through the box. Likewise, if you
look carefully at a game design, certain elements of the
design will obviously fit together and make sense right
from the start.
Eventually, other people from your team will come in and
help you work on the puzzle, and it will come together
faster. Therefore, you need to have the foundation of the
puzzle well laid out and organized before others sit down
and try to help you. For now, you're trying to get the
borders of the puzzle filled in. You might occasionally
Do Not Distribute without permission. 13
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
14/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
find pieces to the puzzle that fit in the middle, and
that's okay, but don't spend a lot of time yet trying to
lay down those pieces. Concentrate on the edges and the
layout of the pieces. Will leave all the extra puzzle
pieces in the box and keep stirring them up as you put it
all together, constantly digging for just the right piece,
or will you form a plan of attack, organizing the pieces
into logical areas to tackle one at a time?
If you have an idea of where to begin with your design, you
can piece together the edges of your puzzle. The edge
pieces are your design document template, while the "meat"
of the puzzle is filled in through the rest of the design-
formalization process. Formalizing your design is just a
way to help you put together the puzzle I mean, game faster
and easier.
If this is your first game design, start with a small game
before trying to tackle a larger game such as an RPG or an
RTS. The first game you design might be feasible for one
engineer and one artist in one year. Start small, start
with what you know, and practice as much and as often as
possible.
If you are a novice designer, I suggest that you design
small games in different genres, to find out how the genres
differ before tackling a bigger game in a single genre.
Because you'll rarely be able to design exactly the kind of
game that you like, you should be as knowledgeable and as
flexible as possible in your design skills. It's especiallyimportant to get your first bad designs out of the way so
that you can finally get to your good designs before you
retire. This might sound cynical, but the simple fact is
that most people get good at a skill only after practicing
it for some time. If it's unfeasible for you to design and
build a variety of games, you might be able to use paper
play testing to test your designs without building games.
At the very least, spend some time studying games from each
genre.
Scope and Scale of the Design
From the start, you should have a good idea of how big the
game will be. Many factors determine this scope.
It is important to be conservative here. Our initial
reaction as designers is to try and create a bigger and
better game than anyone before us. So, if our main
competitor has 24 levels with 6 different races and 50
units, you almost always initially think that more is
Do Not Distribute without permission. 14
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
15/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
better. Don't get caught in this trap. Create games that
are polished and fun, not big for the sake of being big.
Maybe the game was only mildly successful because it was
too big and too complex. As the saying goes, "Keep it
simple, stupid."
Creating virtually any modern commercially released gamerequires a lot of time and money. Even if you aren't trying
to develop a large title, it is still important to
understand your limitations. The best way to gauge the
effort involved in building a game is to talk to those who
might build the game: your development team. If you don't
have an existing team, estimating effort can be very
difficult. The best way to get a rough estimate of effort
is to compare yours against game-development projects that
have already finished. Fortunately, websites such as
Gamasutra.com often provide details of the approximate
effort involved in building games. All of the informationin Table 7.2 was taken from postmortems available on
Gamasutra.com.
Table 7.2
Effort Involved in Building Various Games
Title Publisher Full-
Time
Staff
Contract
or
Support
Staff
Years in
Development
Approximate
Development
Budget, in
Millions of
U.S.Dollars
Cel
Damage
Microsoft 16 12 2 $2 million
Startopia Eidos
Interactive
15 6 2 $3 million
Tropico Gathering
of
Developers
10 1 2 $1.5
million
Operation
Flashpoin
t
Codemasters 10 3 4+ $0.6
million
Black and
White
Electronic
Arts
25 3 3+ $5.7
million
Do Not Distribute without permission. 15
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
16/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
Given the large amount of effort, time, and money required
to build a game, designing within your limits is crucial.
If you haven't created a game before, you should ask
yourself several things before you get started. How will
this game be created? Will this game be created by you anda few friends, or by a professional experienced team of 20
people? What is the time frame for completing parts of the
game? Is there a schedule of key milestones?
Many game designs must be significantly scaled back partway
through production or even at the end of production because
there was just too much content to create. Being realistic
about how large your game will be in the beginning is
critical to the game's ultimate success. It will also keep
you from spending a lot of time designing things that would
never realistically get into the game.
Budget Considerations
If you're one of the fortunate designers working on a
project in which money is no problem, you might not have as
much to worry about as the rest of us. Even if we aren't
the ones who make up the budget, write the checks, and
spend the money, everything we do costs money. Every crazy
idea that we try to implement, every wrong path that we
send the dev team down, and every extra piece of art we
have made costs money.
Every design problem, bug, or error that we can catch inthe beginning costs exponentially less to fix than if it is
caught later in the process. A design flaw that makes it
into a shipping product or into a final test cycle could
cost thousands of times more money to fix than if it were
eliminated in the early stages of the design. Design
problems usually aren't purposeful, but they can be
avoided. Proper game-design documentation and techniques
will save you a lot of money. Therefore, if you have the
time, the most cost-effective way to design a product is to
complete and test as much of the design as possible before
full production begins. Paper play testing is aninexpensive way to test ideas before any part of the game
is built. There is a limit, however: Some ideas just can't
be perfected on paper, and some bugs can be found only when
they are play tested. Part of the game-design formalization
process is knowing which aspects of the design can be
figured out early and which require more development
resources or prototyping.
Do Not Distribute without permission. 16
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
17/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
Keeping Your Design Flexible
Even though design changes can be expensive, it's important
to realize that factors beyond your control might require
design changes. Therefore, you need to keep your design as
flexible as possible.
First, you might design things later in the process that
will force major changes in your earlier work. If your
earlier work is too set in stone, it can cause difficulties
and delays. This is why it's important to progressively
refine your entire design instead of "finishing" an entire
section of the design before getting a good picture of the
entire thing.
Second, technology will change. If your design relies on
certain technology, you can count on aspects of the
technology never quite meeting expectations; keep abreast
of what is happening with the technology, and constantlyevaluate its progress and what its current implementation
means to your design. It's also a good idea to stress the
importance of certain technological features that are
critical to game play so that the programmers know how the
features are prioritized. When the programmers tell you
that a certain feature won't make it into the game, you
must immediately evaluate this and determine how you need
to adjust your design to fit this new reality. Don't wait
until the end of the project when the technology is
complete to adjust your design.
The third thing that usually changes is the minds andperceptions of people critical to getting your design
completed. A wide variety of people get to give you their
opinions (or orders) about your game and expect you to
follow them. This can come from your publisher, executives
at your company, the marketing department, or play test
groups. If you start testing your game and it's not fun,
there must be ways to adjust it. Most important, avoid
falling in love with your design so much that you refuse to
make changes. You might think that you are right and
everybody else is wrong, but even if this is true, it might
not be worth risking your job. Be careful not to makearrogant decisions.
Changing Your Design
The design of a game is a constantly evolving and living
thing. The design is not fully complete until the game is
on the shelf. As designers, we must understand that every
time we change our minds, it has a consequence. I've seen
Do Not Distribute without permission. 17
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
18/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
many titles go through several costly and time-consuming
redesigns. This typically happens with titles that don't
have a formalized design process, that don't lock the game
play and genre early on, or that try to combine or cross
genres and do something completely new.
I've seen such projects go for years, changing genre andkey features constantly. One such project hadn't made
appreciable progress in two years due to the nonstop
changes to the design. It has not shipped yet. There comes
a point at which change is still good and necessary, and
there also comes a point at which changing the design
seriously jeopardizes the entire project. Some publishers
might go along with changing the genre or a major aspect of
the game, but be careful: Many publishers might just cancel
a project rather than wait an extra year to ship the title.
These examples stress the importance of designing in
stages, as discussed in the previous article. Designing in
successive levels of detail should help you nail down the
big picture before moving on to lower-level details.
Finding the balance between healthy and necessary change
and unneeded and detrimental change is very tough. Every
time you want to make a change to your design, first ask
yourself whether the change will affect an already
completed aspect of the project. Minor design changes often
have major ramifications to the technology team, which now
must redo aspects of the technology to accommodate your
change. Also, sometimes a change might be necessary but thenew implementation is not clear. When you're undecided
between two ideas and are not sure which one would be best,
make sure that the programmers on your team know about
other possible fallback positions. Then if you change your
mind later, the programmers have made their technical
design flexible enough to accommodate both your possible
ideas.
If you also have early ideas that you know might change,
identify them as a risk from the start. Remember that even
a seemingly small change can turn into a major issue;
communicate with your team to determine when a new featurewill drastically change your game.
What do I mean by a small change? Here's an example: Let's
say that your initial game-design decision was to give the
characters in the game only one weapon. Then you decided to
change it so that any character could pick up and use any
weapon in the game. Initially this might seem like a small
Do Not Distribute without permission. 18
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
19/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
change for the better, but now every weapon must be set up
for every character. This necessitates new art, modeling,
and design. Because every character can now use every
weapon, a different attachment system must be implemented
in code, thus affecting the memory architecture and the
save/load system (because now all of these weapons must be
accounted for all of the time). If this change is made
early in the projectsay, before the project, reaches the
alpha stageit might be acceptable. But making this kind of
major change after the alpha or beta stage could
drastically delay the project.
An important tool for controlling changes is a formal
design-change process, to make the process of changing the
design consistent and predictable. Although the exact
process that you use will vary depending on team size and
other factors, all design-change processes have common
elements. First, suggestions need a place to be received.In many cases, the producer is the right person to collect
any design-change suggestions being made by various project
contributors. Next, the idea must be considered by various
disciplines on the team. Certainly, the designer will have
a strong voice in whether the design change is a good one.
But leads from every discipline: programming, art,
animation, audio, testing, and so on should have a chance
to comment on the feasibility of the design change given
the current schedule and budget.
After everyone has had a chance to voice their opinions, a
decision should be made on whether to implement the change.This final choice might be left to the designer, the
producer, or a committee. Although the details will vary, a
design-change process that lets everyone on the team
consider changes will help keep changes from getting out of
control.
When you implement a formal design-change process will
vary, but typically such a process is in place by the alpha
milestone, after significant progress has been made on the
game. To carefully control design changes, put your design-
change process in effect as soon as production begins. If
you have a small team that wants as little overhead aspossible, you might wait until the beta milestone before
implementing a design-change process.
If a formal design-change process sounds like unnecessary
overhead to you, consider how much time and money are
wasted when a bad change is made to a design. Trading a
small amount of overhead to implement a formal design-
Do Not Distribute without permission. 19
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
20/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
change process will achieve significant risk reduction for
the design and the game.
Taking Criticism
We designers are the keepers of the vision for the game,
and we must take ownership of it and show a passion forwhat we do. On the other hand, it is easy for us to believe
that we (and perhaps onlywe) know what the consumer wants.
Then when people tell us that our game is bad or that
something is wrong, we don't believe them. Veteran game
designers are often more guilty of this than new designers.
We need to learn to listen to people. We need to understand
what people want and why they are asking for things. I
might not change my design if a single person tells me that
he doesn't like a given feature or layout (although I
should carefully consider his thinking instead of just
dismissing it out of hand), but if several people tell methat they don't like the same thing, I need to start
listening and understanding why.
It's also important to understand that you are the
designer. The opinions of others are important, but
opinions are like, well, you know the saying: You can't
make everyone happy. It's important to understand who your
target audience is and what makes them tick. You also need
to understand who is criticizing you. Other people at work
might be hard-core gamers and, therefore, might not give
you a super-objective opinion on whether the game is too
hard or too easy. On the other hand, a new game playermight not be the best person to evaluate a hard-core RPG or
RTS meant for a hard-core audience. Know your audience, and
know who is criticizing you before you make or reject
changes.
Too many people take criticism personally. Remember that
you do this for a living; it's a job, and criticism is
usually directed at your product, not at yourself. The most
important thing to remember is to not take it personally or
get angry and frustrated when you get conflicting opinions.
Don't start doubting your abilities as a designer. Rememberthat a lack of critical thinking could leave you with a
lousy product. Use criticism to make the game better.
It might sound kind of clich or funny, but we all want to
make everyone happy. Just remember that we'll never make
everyone happy all of the time it's merely important to
just make as many people within our target audience as
Do Not Distribute without permission. 20
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
21/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
satisfied as possible. If these people are happy, your
future success is ensured!
Designing with Risks in Mind
Every design involves risks. Understanding and evaluating
those risks as you go will save a lot of time and troublelater.
Evaluate early every aspect of the design that could lead
to problems later. These problems might be risky for design
reasons or technical reasons; either way, it's critical to
have a backup plan or an idea for adapting the design if
your idea doesn't work. The hard thing is recognizing which
aspects of the design are risky.
A good first step is to identify all the new aspects of the
design. Is the idea you're working on completely new or
something that's been implemented by others before you?These are two completely different cases. Be wary of
completely new ideas that you have never seen in a game;
the possibility exists that the idea has been tried and
rejected by others at some point in time. Anything that
you've never seen before must be tagged as risky and tested
early in the design.
You must also look at what you've never designed yourself
and understand the ramifications of doing this new thing.
Have you designed only 2D games and are now doing your
first 3D game? Have you designed only children's titles and
are now trying to design a full-blown RPG? Or are youtrying to design a console RPG after you've designed
several PC RPGs? Each one has its own problems and risks.
The important thing is identifying the risk and making a
backup plan.
For example, let's say that you are doing a real-time
strategy game. You want to differentiate your game by
allowing a full 3D camera system that will allow the player
to move the camera anywhere in the game. Because this
aspect is new to you, you do a little research, only to
find that almost all examples of 3D camera systems in RTS
games have been problematic and that the game themselves
have been only marginally successful. Knowing this, if you
still try to implement this system, you would know that it
was an obvious risk. The fallback plan could include
returning to a more traditional locked camera system. In
this case, this is fairly easy to do.
Do Not Distribute without permission. 21
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
22/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
However, if you tried to design a real-time strategy game
combined with a full role-playing game, you'd be taking on
a bigger risk with global design ramifications. First, a
few other titles have tried to combine these two genres,
but most of them have been only marginally successful.
Second, these are two very distinct genres that typically
have only a small amount of crossover in their audiences.
A fallback plan for this title might be to make it more of
a full-blown strategy game or a full-blown RPG if people
don't like the combination of the two genres. The problem
is understanding what makes those genres what they are and
knowing which features you need to keep to revert back to
one. This decision should be made early in the project; the
later this change is made, the worse the ramifications will
be.
If you've started laying out levels and implementing
features that are specific to an early version of the game,
you risk having to redo a lot of work if you change your
mind later. Test any new things that you want to try when
you create the prototype, and get everyone on the project
to sign off on the idea before you implement it.
Others' opinions on your design will help you identify
areas of risk. Team leads from each discipline can help you
identify features that might be difficult to implement. A
producer or another designer can help you identify how your
design compares with other games already built. In any
case, identifying as many risks as possible and coming upwith alternative plans will help your design become a real,
finished game.
Designing "Fluff"We all want to make our games as big, as innovative, and as
exciting as possible. Very rarely does any initial game
design get fully realized. We always run out of time. One
of the most effective techniques that I like to use when
designing is to make sure that some percentage of my
initial design isn't critical to the game. I try to design
20-50% of the game to not be immediately important. Thisdoesn't mean that these areas aren't fun, but it does mean
that they might not have a huge impact on the story or
wouldn't be missed if they didn't make it into the game.
This allows you to cut parts of the game if you run out of
time, without jeopardizing the entire project. This is
another reason why it's important to prioritize your
features you'll know which features can be cut first. If
Do Not Distribute without permission. 22
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
23/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
every single level of your game is critical to you and the
story, you'll eventually be forced to rewrite the story to
adapt when you inevitably have to cut back. In some
regards, having a smaller, more easily understood story (if
you have one) early is better anyway. Then, if you have
extra time, you can always add extra areas or levels to the
game that add new subplots or different game play. Extra
time might also be spent adding secrets, Easter eggs,
cheats, and other goodies.
Use a consistent priority system so that all team members
understand which features are the most important. You'll
need to use at least three different priorities for your
rankings to be meaningful. If you need a starting point, I
suggest the basic rankings of "must," "should," and
"could." "Must" features are those that have to be included
for the game to be successful. "Should" features would
really benefit the game but could be cut if absolutelynecessary to stay on schedule. "Could" features are good
ideas that would be fun for at least some players, but
these are the first to get cut if the game falls behind
schedule.
Evaluate every aspect of your game and assign each feature
a meaningful priority. We'd all love to see every aspect of
our designs implemented, but we need to realize that the
worst case happens more often than we would like. Knowing
which parts of the game could be easily removed generally
can save you some grief down the road.
Knowing What to Do and When
One of the hardest things that a game designer must figure
out is when to work on different parts of the design. My
biggest goal during a project is to avoid continually
reworking everything. Reworking is often necessary and
unavoidable, but it chews up a lot of time. The best way to
minimize rework is to design in successive layers of
detail.
As I have noted numerous times previously, a common mistake
is to sit down with an idea and just start designing the
game. As an artist, it is important to go where your
creative juices take you, but it's also important to not
get sidetracked for too long. We're discussing getting
started on your design, when it's important to stay at a
high level of detail.
A good example of what to avoid is spending too much time
on a single feature or idea. If you're creating a game such
Do Not Distribute without permission. 23
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
24/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
as Tomb Raider, designing the central character is very
important. You could spend weeks or even months writing her
back story, what she likes and dislikes, what she looks
like, and every minute detail about her. These are probably
important details to know some day, but you need to step
back and make sure that the other aspects of the game that
might affect the character design are also being worked on
and finalized. Maybe you find out that the character
suddenly needs a new ability that is important to the game
play, but the story and design for the character don't
allow for this. You then have to go back to the drawing
board.
Instead of focusing on any one piece of your game, focus on
the high-level vision to get your design started. We talked
some about design stages in the previous article, and we'll
return to this concept of designing in stages in the next
article.
Other people on your team will also be pushing you to
develop aspects of the design that are necessary for them
to work on. Sometimes you have the luxury to work in a
vacuum for months on end, but this usually isn't the case.
Because everyone looks to the designer for answers, the
schedules of others on your team will determine which
aspects of the design get refined when. Designing this way
is not optimal, although it often happens. In any case, you
need to be aware of the schedules of others and be willing
to work on design details for areas that they will need. A
good producer will help coordinate your efforts with thoseof the others on the team.
Almost nothing is worse for a designer than to have people
on the team being held up because parts of the design
aren't finished. You then are forced to rush parts of the
design and get them finished before they should be so that
other people on your team can get to work. A good designer
not only knows how to prioritize these issues, but he also
can multitask and work on many of the problems at the same
time.
An End to the BeginningNo matter where or how you begin, you now should have a
better idea of some the different scenarios that you might
follow to start your design and the tools that will be
helpful to you as a designer. Most important, remember that
whatever you use as a starting point, game play should be
your focus. Plan your design effort and work in stages,
starting with the high-level vision of your game. It's
Do Not Distribute without permission. 24
8/22/2019 Where to Begin Your Design
25/25
@2003 Troy Dunniway All Rights Reserved.
easier than it might seem to get started on a game design.
Keep what we've covered in mind, and simply start writing
down what you know.
D N t Di t ib t ith t i i 25
Top Related