Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Game concept
The first section of the pitch generally addresses the concept of the game and the
idea behind it. The concept should be described in a few sentences that allow anyone
to quickly grasp the basic mechanics of the game and communicate its look and feel,
using little, if any, technical jargon.
When describing the concept, include anything that is necessary to explain the basic
gameplay of your title but leave out what relates to special cases, additional contents,
and information that may confuse the reader.
If your concept is not brief or very clear and it cannot be grasped with a single reading,
it means that you still haven't got a good concept to begin with.
Work on it until you can provide a single, short sentence, usually called high concept,
which communicates what the game is all about. It should be a catchy phrase, put in
the heading of the document to catch the reader's attention and make him willing to
continue reading.
In game design courses, students are asked to provide high concepts of three to five
words in total, things such as
Pac Man - eat 'em all
.
This is an excellent exercise to learn to think of games from the perspective of the
central gameplay element they are built around.
There is this interesting article by
James Mardsen
of FutureLab about the develop-
ment of Velocity that we suggest you to read. It offers great insight on the process of
developing a gameplay idea (what
James Mardsen
calls "the toys" of gameplay) with
a commercial purpose in mind:
This is the opening screenshot for the pitch document of the game Velocity. You can
find the entire document online at
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesMarsden/
