Games Design for Dummies

They say there are only 7 stories ever written or told. If that's true, it seems like these days there are only ever 3 games developed and released. And those games are Modern Warfare, Gears of War and God of War, by the way. This is an important entry in my MA diary blog, because it will finally establish my goals and project outlines for the third and final semester. Firstly, I have settled on a design exercise that will act as my Practice module:

At Tuesday's MA roundtable think-tank, Josh “Hairy Balls I” Taylor and myself discussed, raised and dropped a number of different project ideas, but eventually settled on what was originally an obscure whim that I'd toyed with during the recent summer months. “How to Design a Game”. It's a topic I have been inevitably circling for the entire Masters course, in every design/practice exercise I've done thus far, in all 3 years of the undergraduate course, in my job at Fusion, in my articles on my personal blog and at IMHW, and of course in my tutoring of the Proposal module, and soon in some lectures which I'll be writing... how do you design good games? Conceptualization, idea-generation, process, execution, balance, presentation, all subcategories of how I am constantly analyzing and attempting to explain what makes good games, so that I myself can learn the answers.

More what you'd call Guidelines than actual “Rules” anyway..
So that will be my project. I'm going to formally (as formal as this blog ever manages to be anyway) summarize my default “design process” into an actual guide that will explain what I personally hope is an extremely strong and accessible method of developing strong and accessible game ideas. I'm not proclaiming myself to be some sort of omniscient design messiah, or even claiming that I've “cracked the nut” and found the perfect end-all method of design, far from it. Design is a creative process, which means it can (and often should) be different for every person. Nonetheless, I'm hoping that through this project I'll not only be helping beginning designers (and perhaps future students) to find their feet on a stable foundation, but I'll continue to develop and refine my own approach to the subject. To call on the enigmatic and anonymous “they” once again: they say that the quickest way to learn is to teach. And I have a lot more to learn, things that I'll only learn by heading down the road I'm on, through experience and making mistakes. Whatever happens, it should be a fitting finale to my University life and career, a real full-stop to the final chapter. ..A lot of F related alliteration there. Sweet.

The Leg Bone is Connected to the Knee Bone..
So, what IS my process? I'm going to summarize my eventual summary now, so stand back while I make a brave attempt at brevity. Generally I always begin by consciously acknowledging what genre I want to work with. Genres are really just established sets of rules and mechanics (mechanics are actually rules so clever folk know I just said, rules and rules. Please don't tell the dumber folk. -ed) that have already been proven to work and function commercially; they act as a sturdy framework to build upon, a foundation. You need to know what you are going to do inside or on top of that foundation in order to know if your idea is worthwhile. I'll cover this in a lot more detail later, but ideas for story and setting are not GAME ideas, Games Design is about new mechanics or new ways for mechanics to interact.. if you aren't yet a confident AAA designer, or are working toward academic recognition, you want your idea to have a tangible feature you can point to and say “that, that's what makes my idea different and special”. “That's why you should care.” I call it the “hook”.

Once you have the hook, THEN is the best time to polish your intended setting and story. Sometimes the genre, hook and story all strike at once, overlapping and inherently connected, but otherwise, you have the gameplay you want, and remain unsure what world it would best fit. Even if you have a setting in mind, now is a good time to decide on your games personality; it's “look and feel”. Successful franchises almost always establish a particular personality in their visuals and presentation. It's a good idea to know early what your ideas personality is. Once you know those first 3 things, you can bounce between them to polish and refine your idea. This is not completely detached from the “Window Dressing” exercise I dabbled in the entry before last: A “hookshot” is different in Devil May Cry (Devil Bringer) than Mortal Kombat. (Get Over Here!) ..and that's enough of a preview for now I think.

Rules were made to be broken..
I'm not just going to write this stuff out, obviously, that's not a “Practice” exercise. I'm going to do as I threatened earlier this month, I'm going to design a game. As I walk-through my design process steps, I'll follow them, and by the end, I'll hopefully have created a solid concept that proves my method. And after that.. well, let's face it, anything that might boil down to “concept with commentary” isn't semester worthy. I intend there to be a second phase to this experiment.

Often I get excited about the premise of an article or project, only to realize as I dig my teeth into it, that the answers come too easily or taste too dry to even make the questions worth asking. Other times, I hit a wall that says my hypothesis may actually be incorrect, or at least incomplete. In these cases the opposite is true, the topic begs that I ask MORE questions. As I looked around for commercial examples of my “hook and genre foundation” method, I was shocked and a little worried to find myself struggling for contemporary case studies that didn't lead to appearances by the “hook”'s retarded cousin, the “gimmick”. In fact, a depressing number of current releases don't rely on this method of design at all, but on the B class “story/setting” design I have always recommended against. Most of them are sequels relying on the foundations of their predecessors, and almost ALL the rest are cookie-cutter template stamps of whatever has been successful recently. Refer to my opening. So, the second phase will involve the deconstruction of my method; I'll try to break my rules and examine what place the commercial industry seems to be “designing” from currently if they are getting these results. Then I'll do that. A fitting continuation of my “genre analysis” exercise in my first semester, as well.

Moving Pictures
I don't want to present this project in my usual way; printed stuff stuck on walls. But, I also don't particularly want to crawl through the broken glass strewn ventilation shaft that is 3D modeling and animation. The minute the idea of a “How To” project occurred to me I had my eye on a hybrid between still images and animation, a method I'd seen explored in the MGS PSP comic, and in the graphic-novel emulating cut-scenes of Infamous. A little research revealed this method does actually have a name, and is less rare that I'd thought. It's called a “Motion Comic”. Examples follow;
MGS Digital Comic
Batman: Dark Knight Motion Comic

It seems pretty obviously layer-based, so I'll set up my HQ in Photoshop Central, with aspirations of establishing a future safehouse in the scary unknown world of AfterEffects. I don't expect to hit the same pace, polish and excitement of the linked examples, but something between them and the organic slideshow visuals seen in popular videogame-critique series “Zero Punctuation” would suffice. I just want to do something unique and eye-catching that can present these ideas without me, and without people having to actually read. Because nobody wants to read. …

Oh, and “secondly”, if I have any right to use such a prefix 8 paragraphs later, I did choose my dissertation question. It's question#1 ladies and gentlemen.
“Is the industry's newfound focus on big-budget cinematic staging causing a decline in good solid “mechanical” games design?”

If my weekend experience with the stunningly polished and beautifully staged but shockingly automated Enslaved demo wasn't enough, my glance around the industry shelves during my research for the former project clinched the deal. Now I have my projects, I know what I have to do. Let's begin.

-Steve