Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
greatest games break new ground. They're unlike anything seen on the store
shelves before.
Communicating Your Dream to Others
A dream is a fantasy that you have by yourself; a computer game is something that
you make for someone else. You and your development team are entertainers. If
your game is in a well-known genre and setting (for example, a World War II flight
simulator), you can be pretty certain that a number of people already share your
dream. But if your game is in a new setting (a futuristic city of your imagination,
for example) —and especially if you are opening up a new genre—you have to be
very careful and thorough in communicating your dream to others. Some of the
first questions a publishing executive is going to ask you are, “Why would anyone
want to play this game?” and “What's going to make someone buy this game
instead of another?”
So what does it mean to entertain someone? Many people think entertainment is
synonymous with having fun, but even that isn't completely straightforward.
People have fun in all kinds of ways. Some of those ways involve hard work, such
as gardening or building a new deck. Some of them involve frustration, such as
solving a puzzle. Some, such as athletic competitions, even involve pain. One per-
son's entertainment is another person's insufferable boredom. To build a game that
entertains, you must know
who
it will entertain and
how
. Chapter 1, “Games and
Video Games,” discussed a variety of ways in which video games entertain people.
Keep them in mind as your work takes you from dream to game.
Chapter 2 described a game concept as “a general idea of how you intend to enter-
tain someone through gameplay.” That description was accurate enough for an
overview, but to discuss game concepts in detail, we need a more complete
explanation.
A game concept is a description of a game detailed enough to begin discussing it as
a potential commercial product—a piece of software that the public might want to
buy. It should include, at a minimum, the following key points:
A high concept statement, which is a two- or three-sentence description of what
the game is about. Here's a high concept statement for a game about street football:
The game at its grittiest. No pads, no helmets, no refs, no field. Just you and the
guys, a ball, and a lot of concrete.
The player's role(s) in the game, if the game is representational enough to have
roles. If the player will have an avatar, describe the avatar character briefly.
