Core Game Design Concepts - Game Design Essentials - page 45

These loglines are very similar to what you want to write for your game. The
purpose is to give a good overview of what the project is about and to encourage
others to read further. Keep it simple and to the point. If possible, include the
game's genre to help clarify what the project is about.
To get more ideas on loglines for games, look at some of the catalogue list-
ings of games for sale. Writers strive to create a one- or two-line description
(the logline) of what a game is about to encourage buyers to look further at the
game. The blog My Day Will Come has some pretty good loglines describing
games: www.mydaywillcome.com .
The short descriptions used by Academic Skill Builders ( www.arcademic-
skillbuilders.com/games/ ) provide more examples of how you can boil down
descriptions to get to the point quickly and efficiently without losing any flavor
of what the game is about.
Once you've defined your genre and demographic and prepared the logline,
write a few concise paragraphs with a bit more detail. Two to three paragraphs
are all you need to broaden the information. For example, you can expand the
logline for Mario Bros. to explain what the creatures are and why they're com-
ing into New York in paragraph one. In paragraph two, you can explain why
Mario and his brother feel compelled to try and battle them. You may choose
to provide a third paragraph to explain how your gameplay will be unique and
compelling.
In this example, your synopsis should explain why Mario does things, and why
the creatures do things. This is the initial work that gets done on creating the lore.
Creating Game Lore
Lore , in a nutshell, is the detailed backstory or narrative for any game. The lore
outlines a series of events that have taken place beforehand (before the events
that are happening in your game) and may explain the history of the worlds,
the conflicts, the characters, and what is driving the current gameplay. Some
games that have extensive lore are Halo, Elder Scrolls, Metroid Prime, Fallout,
Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, and World of Warcraft.
The history of why lore has such a strong foothold in gaming can easily be
traced back to story-driven tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons . Lore
is the mythology of the game. Most role-playing games (RPGs) are steeped
in lore.