Starting the Game - iPhone Game Blueprints - page 2

It is important to remember that a game idea is not always unique. There are tons of
games with identical principles and rules: to match-three elements in a row, to save
a princess, to defend a base, to shoot enemies, and to win a race (the only excep-
tions are unique titles with revolutionary new principles of gameplay, but such games
appear once in a blue moon as it is very hard to think a new type of reliable and ad-
dictive gameplay). To stand out from the crowd, the game needs a plot (or semant-
ic ornamentation ). The volume of information it conveys can differ; games with a
complex gameplay (packed with adventure and RPG components) feature screen-
plays made of hundreds of pages and thousands of lines of text. This includes the
mainstoryline, varioussidequests, alternative variantsofthesameevents, subplots,
and so on. There is an interesting list on gaming at http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/
List_of_longest_video_game_scripts , showing descriptions of some of the longest
scripts for modern video games; for instance, Fallout 3 from Bethesda Game Studios
has a screenplay made up of 40, 000 lines. But some visual novel games have
scripts with more than 1,00,000 lines. This is more than in the movie industry (a tra-
ditional film screenplay has about 120 pages (one page per minute) and around 50
to 55 lines of text per page, since the overall number of lines is something close to
6,500). This is not only because the games are longer, but also because they are
non-linear. At the same time, simple games, which are reasonable to begin a game
developer career with, may have very short plots, barely longer than the synopsis.
For instance, it can describe a game setting and some minor notations: an underwa-
ter bubble match-three game with a few unique bonus elements. Such type of plot
is perfect for small puzzle games because the game's mechanics are clear enough
that you only need to describe its graphics—the look and feel.
Stronger efforts on the plot are needed when the figure of the protagonist (the main
character) is introduced. In this case, some classic dramatic principles are turned
on. The player needs to know something about the character: his motivation, goals,
and strong and weak points. Maybe the character's past is unclear (this is a good
way to create intrigue), but he should have a recognizable pattern of behavior and
some principles and characteristics; in other words, he should have some spirit. In
this case, the player would feel as if he/she is with the protagonist. A well-written
character needs an appropriate framework in the form of a good story that should
be interesting to follow. It is important to note that any genre can have a deep and
exciting plot. One of the wonderful examples of great storytelling is a critically ac-
claimed indie game, Braid ( http://braid-game.com/ ), designed by Jonathan Blow . It
features an interesting plot, gameplay and story-driven design as a platformer game
with puzzle elements.