Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
At this point, obviously, we have no idea what Cylon ships are, how they
“activate,� what a Crisis Card is, or how a Crisis Card might interact with
a Cylon ship—and yet here it is, something telling us exactly that. But the
truth is there's really no other way. The writer realizes that readers don't
have any of this information yet, and so continues
…(see Activate Cylon Ships step on page 11).
This cross-reference lets readers know that it's not their fault that they
don't know what the author is talking about. The fact that games are
nonlinear means that their manuals are also nonlinear, which makes
them difficult to read.
Nonlinearity and Game Design
Why am I talking about nonlinearity? Because this characteristic of
games is something designers need not only to realize, but also embrace.
Games are inherently nonlinear, so every step of the way the process of
game design and game development will be nonlinear as well. One of the
first steps we take in designing a game, for example, is writing a game
design document. Of course, a game design document is (usually) a lin-
ear text document, and so we're back to the same issue we had with the
manual. If the first paragraph describes the uses of the
jump
action in
Su-
per Mario Brothers
, and one possible use is “to release power-ups from
special blocks,� readers will be totally confused about what that use is.
For this reason I advocate using a nonlinear (web-type) format for
writing game design documents. Personally, I like to use online wikis,
which allow for several different pages all linking to and from each other.
Wikis also save all of your past edits and revisions, which can be useful in
the ever-changing game design process. There are many sites where you
can create free wikis online, and they're great tools in any developer's ar-
senal. There are other options, too: you could create a web pattern physi-
cally by laying out Post-it notes on a wall or index cards on a floor Either
of these are a really great way to see relationships that a text document
will never show you.
The Designer Is the Bad Guy
The nonlinear nature of games makes it incredibly hard to predict all of
the possible ins and outs, possibilities, and offsets of a game system. This
means that as a game designer, you're going to be wrong—a
lot
.
If you're
not a person who's comfortable with admitting you're wrong about
something, then you either shouldn't be a game designer, or you should
be a lone-wolf game designer who can create a game with no other help.
