Design Process
Developer's Cave, Potential RPG February 29th. 2008, 12:52pmI don’t yet have as defined a game design process as my software process, but I’ve evolved a simple methodology for recording and refining my game design ideas. The technology needed is a pen, a journal, and a wiki. The process involves three activities:
For one, I write down (with the pen, in the journal) every random gameplay thought, with little regard for feasibility or conformity to the rest of the design. From my technical background, I tend to auto-cull things that would be impossible to implement. From my board game background, I tend to prefer strategic mechanics, rather than fuzzy “wouldn’t it be cool if” concepts.
The second activity also involves a pen and a journal (I use the same one from above). The goal is to refine the random thoughts into coherent game mechanics. Terminology like “attributes” and “weapons” and their interactions must be defined. The goal is to draft and refine the game systems.
The final activity, which I had underestimated, is concisely documenting the final game design. This phase forces decisions, exposing gaps and conflicts. If you can’t play the game in your head from these designs, and design the software, then there is something missing. I’ve found that a wiki provides the best balance between formality and flexibility.
All of these activities happen more or less at the same time. This is not a sophisticated requirements tracking system, and document versioning would be needed to coordinate design and software teams, but this works for my team of one.
Overall, this methodology seems rather obvious, but it’s important to be aware of the process, and write it down. Unless something is well documented, it cannot be well understood.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I have found that writing things down is key, especially now that I’m getting older and cannot remember every little thing I’ve ever thought. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think about an idea for an hour … or two … and then lose half of it in the morning.
So now I carry around a mini-journal in my back pocket. I usually keep it next to my bed at night. I’ve also bought a collapsible pen that I keep clipped to it at all times.
I don’t always go back to it because some of the things stick with me due to the fact that I wrote it down, but it’s nice to go back and look and all of the weird crap I’ve thought.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I almost always have a top-flip back-pocket notepad with me, too. I used to have a bendable pen. Now I run the risk of snapping my gel-ink pen in my pocket.
I also have a mini-pen that almost fits within the spiral of the notepad, but I don’t like writing with it.
A collapsible pen is a good idea. I’ll have to look for one of those.
February 29th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Wal-mart is where I got mine. It has an aluminum shell. The writing half fits into the bottom half as if the bottom were the cap. Then the writing half pulls out and attaches to the bottom half the other way so that it is a full-sized pen. The result is a full-sized pen that collapses to about half the size of a normal pen.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Here’s one that looks perfect from ThinkGeek:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/98ce/