Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
make the toy First
Game designer Kyle Gabler gave a video keynote for the first Global Game Jam in 2009.
in his talk, he gave seven useful tips to help develop a game in a short time span. These
tips are so useful that we suggest they apply to most game development projects, no
matter how much time there is.
One tip, which is very relevant for our discussion here, is
make the toy first.
. Gabler sug-
gests that before you spend any time on creating assets and content, you have to make
sure that your mechanics work. This means you should start by building a prototype or
proof of concept for those mechanics. The mechanics should be fun to play around with,
even without nice art, clear goals, or clever level design. in other words, you need to
design a toy that is fun to interact with in its own right and build the game from there.
Obviously, we agree, and we suggest that you follow Gabler's advice.
You can find Gabler's full (and witty) keynote online:
www.youtube.com/
Getting It Right
As mentioned, to get game mechanics right, you must build them. The methods
and theory described in this topic will help you understand how mechanics work,
and they will include new, efficient tools to create early prototypes, but they can
never be a substitute for the real thing. You must build prototypes and iterate as
much as you can to create games with balanced, novel mechanics.
A prototype is a preliminary, usually incomplete, model of a product or process
created to test its usability before building the real thing. Because prototypes don't
have to be as polished as the final product, they are (usually) quicker and cheaper
to construct and modify. Game designers create prototypes of games to test their
mechanics and gameplay. Some of the more common prototyping techniques that
game designers use are software prototypes, paper prototypes, and physical prototypes.
A Few Terms
Over the years, software developers have devised a number of terms to describe dif-
ferent types of prototypes. A
high-fidelity prototype
resembles the intended product
closely in many ways. In some cases, a high-fidelity prototype ends up being refined
into the final product. A high-fidelity prototype is relatively time-consuming to build.
