Design Components and Processes - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 48

the player's role clearly, because the role a game offers is part of how publishers
decide whether to fund that game, as well as how players decide whether to buy it.
FULFILLING THE DREAM
Abstract video games have arbitrary rules, so the player seldom has any pre-
conceptions about what the game will, or won't, allow her to do. Representational
video games, however, take place in a world that is at least somewhat familiar, and
the player comes to the game with certain expectations and hopes. Representational
games are about fulfilling dreams —dreams of achievement, of power, of creation, or
simply of doing certain things and having certain experiences.
Once you have a game concept, a role, and an audience in mind, it's time to begin
thinking about how you will fulfill your player's dream. What is the essence of
the experience that you are going to offer? What kinds of challenges does the player
expect to face, and what kinds of actions does she expect to perform? Deciding
what it means to fulfill the dream is the first step on the road to defining the game-
play itself.
DESIGN RULE Concept Elements Are Permanent
You must not make changes to the concept elements of your game — the game concept,
audience, player's role, and dream that it fulfills — once you have started into the elabora-
tion stage of design.
The Elaboration Stage
Once you have made the fundamental decisions about your game in the concept
stage, it's time to move into the elaboration stage of design. At this point, your
design work begins to move from the general to the specific; from the theoretical to
the concrete. In the elaboration stage, you normally begin working with a small
development team to construct a prototype of the game. If you are planning to
incorporate radically new ideas or new technology, your team may also build a test
bed or technical demonstration to try them out. From this point on, you may take
your design ideas and have the development team implement them in the proto-
type to see how they work in practice. Based on what you learn, you can then go
back and refine them.
At some point during the elaboration stage, your game (you hope!) gets the green
light from a funding agency and proceeds to full production.
When you begin the elaboration stage, if you have a team of several people, it
becomes possible to begin working on the design tasks in parallel. Once you all
agree upon the fundamentals of the game, each designer can start work on a
particular area of responsibility.