Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
levels, a story, or both. Will your game be so large that it should be divided into lev-
els? Will your levels be unrelated, and all available to the player at any time, or will
they be organized into a sequential or branching configuration, in which complet-
ing a level makes the next one available? What types of conditions will determine
when a player has completed a level? The genre that you have chosen will help you
to determine your answers.
The other question is whether you want a story. Stories give games a context and a
goal. Some genres, such as sports and puzzle games, don't usually include stories
because their context is self-explanatory. In other genres, such as role-playing
and adventure games, the story is a large part of the game's entertainment.
Representational games frequently have a story; abstract games generally don't,
although
Ms. Pac-Man
was an exception in a small way. Stories about abstract char-
acters are seldom very involving.
If you do choose to have a story in your game, you don't have to know exactly what
narrative content you want to include at the concept-formation stage. All you need
to know is whether you want a story and, if so, what its overall direction will be.
You should be able to summarize it in a sentence or t wo; for example : “Jack Jones,
leader of a secret anti-drug task force, will conduct a series of raids against the drug
barons, ending in an apocalyptic battle in the cocaine fields of Colombia. Along
the way, some of the people he encounters will not be quite what they seem.”
Errors in the storyline are much easier to correct than errors in the gameplay, and
gamers will forgive story errors more quickly as well. Make sure you understand
your game first; then build your story into it.
DESIGN RULE
The Story Comes Later
Do not spend a lot of time devising a story at the concept stage. This is a cardinal error
frequently made by people who are more used to presentational media such as topics and
film. You
must
concentrate most of your efforts on the gameplay at this point.
Types of Game Machines
When you first start fleshing out your game concept, you should concentrate
on the dream, the player's role, and the target audience. However, a game concept
is not complete without a statement about which machine (or machines) the game
runs on. Some genres of games are better suited to one kind of machine than
another, and all machines have features and performance characteristics—input
and output devices, processor speed, storage space—that define the scope of the
game. You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the different types of
machines and how their owners use them.
