1. Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology and Story

2. “You know what’s the number one dumbest question I get asked when I’m out at some great university lecturing? I’m always asked ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ For about forty years I’ve been yanking their chain when I answer ‘Schenectady.’ They stare at me, and I say, ‘Yeah, Schenectady, in New York. There’s this idea service, see, and every week I send ’em twenty-five bucks, and every week they send me a freshly picked six-pack of ideas.’” — Harlan Ellison

3. Brainstorming a Game Idea Harlan Ellison might scoff at the idea of trying to explain where ideas come from. Certainly, if you are a novelist having trouble coming up with ideas, it may be time to wonder if you have chosen the right profession. Similarly, a good game designer, at any given moment, will be able to come up with no less than five solid ideas she would like to try to make into a computer game. There is no shortage of ideas in the gaming world.

4. Brainstorming a Game Idea Aspiring game designers often think they can sell their idea to a development company. They seem to be under the impression that game developers are just sitting around waiting for a hot idea to come around so they can spend several million dollars to make it a reality. On the contrary, selling a game idea to a company is so rare that one should consider it an impossibility. Almost all of the challenge in game development is not coming up with a good idea, but in following through and being able to craft a compelling game around that idea.

5. Brainstorming a Game Idea In the arena of computer game design, the process of coming up with a game idea that will work is complicated by a number of factors fiction authors do not need to worry about. In part this is because computer game ideas can come from three distinct, unrelated areas of the form: gameplay, technology, and story. These different origins are interconnected in interesting ways, with the origin of the game’s idea limiting what one will be able to accomplish in the other two areas. So when a game designer starts thinking about the game she is hoping to make — thinking about it in terms of gameplay, technology, or story—it is important that she consider how that initial idea will impact all aspects of the final game.

6. Gameplay Beginning with gameplay is one of the most common starting points for game development, especially for designer- or management-driven projects. Thinking about a style of gameplay is often the easiest core for someone to latch onto, especially if that gameplay is similar to an existing game. “It’s a racing game!” “It’s a flight simulator!” “It’s a 3D action/adventure like Super Mario 64!” “It’s a first-person shooter like Halo!” Often a game developer will have enjoyed a game in one of these genres and will want to apply her own spin to it. With a general idea for a game that is interesting to her, the designer will want to work out what her particular game is going to accomplish in terms of gameplay. What type of racing game will it be? What aspects of racing are we trying to capture for the player?With a more specific idea of what type of gameplay she wants to create, the designer should start thinking about how that will impact the technology the game will require and what sort of story, if any, the game will be able to have.

7. Gameplay Depending on the type of gameplay you are hoping to create for the player, you need to analyze what sort of technology that undertaking will require. Does the game need a 3D engine, or will 2D be enough or even more appropriate? What sort of view will the player have of the game-world? Will it be fixed or dynamic? Does the action transpire fast and furious with a large number of entities moving around on the screen at once? Are the game-worlds large or small? All of these questions and many more need to be analyzed to understand what the game’s engine must accomplish in order to properly execute the gameplay idea. Of course the technology you choose to employ for your gameplay must actually run on the target system, whether it be a PC, console, or custom-made arcade cabinet. You must also ask if the game’s programming team is up to creating the required technology. Technological feasibility may end up limiting the scope of your gameplay. Even worse, will the engine team’s existing technology work or will they need to scrap it and start from scratch? Is there enough budget and time to trash it and start over? If you find that you need to adapt your gameplay to match the engine, you really are not starting out with gameplay as the origin of your idea, but instead with technology, as I will discuss next. If you are starting out with a gaming engine that must be used, it is in your best interest to not fight that technology with incompatible gameplay. Instead you should try to conceive of gameplay that is well suited to that engine.

8. Gameplay The type of gameplay your game will employ similarly limits what type of story can be told. An RPG can tell a much more complex and involved story than an action/adventure game, and in turn an action/adventure can tell a more substantial story than an arcade shooter. Certain types of stories just will not fit with certain types of gameplay, such as the Greek mythology in a flight simulator example discussed previously. Similarly, a romantic story might not fit with a strategy game, and a tale about diplomacy would not fit so well with a fast-action first-person shooter. Since you made the choice to come up with your gameplay style first, you need to ask yourself what sort of story is best suited to that gameplay, and try to tell that tale. Sometimes a designer will have both a story she wants to tell and a type of gameplay she wants to explore, and will attempt to do both in the same game, even if the two do not go well together. Do not try to cobble an inappropriate story, either in terms of complexity or subject matter, around gameplay that is ill-suited to that type of narrative. Save the story for a later date when you are working on a title with gameplay that will support that story better. And while your technology is limited by what your team is capable of accomplishing in the time allotted, the story is limited only by your own ability to tell it. You should pick the story best suited to your gameplay and go with it.

9. Technology Going into a project with a large portion of the game’s technology already developed is also a fairly common occurrence. If this is not the development team’s first project together at a new company, then it is likely that there will be an existing technology base that the project is supposed to build from. Even if the project is to use a “new” engine, this often only means an older engine updated, and as a result, the style of game best suited to the engine will not change significantly. Even if an engine is being written from scratch for the project, it is likely that the lead programmer and her team are best equipped to create a certain type of engine, be it indoor or outdoor, real-time orpre-rendered, 3D or 2D, with a complex physics system for object movement or something more simple. The programmers may be interested in experimenting with certain special lighting or rendering effects, and will create an engine that excels at these objectives. The designer is then presented with this new technology and tasked with coming up with a game that will exploit the sophisticated technology to full effect.

10. Technology Other times it is predetermined that the project will be using an engine licensed from some other source, either from another game developer or a technology-only company. Though some of these licensed engines are becoming more and more robust and as a result can allow for a fairly broad number of games to be made with them (Criterion’s RenderWare is certainly a good example of this), many licensed engines are still developed with one game genre in mind, and no engine is without its fundamental limitations. Sometimes the project leaders have enough foresight to consider the type of game they want to make first and then pick an engine well suited to that. Sometimes the engine licensing deal that seems to deliver the most “bang for the buck” will be the one chosen. Then, with an engine choice decided, the team is tasked with creating a game and story that will fit together well using that technology.

11. Technology When technology is handed to a game designer who is told to make a game out of it, it makes the most sense for the designer to embrace the limitations of that technology and turn them into strengths in her game. The technology can also limit what sort of story can be told. Without a sophisticated language parser, it is going to be difficult to tell a story in which players need to communicate with characters by typing in questions.Without an engine that can handle outdoor environments reasonably well, it is going to be difficult to make a game about mountain climbing.Without robust artificial intelligence, it is going to be hard to make a good game about diplomacy.Without streaming technology that allows for the playback of large sounds, it will be hard to have huge amounts of dialog and hence hard to have characters whose dialects are important to the story.

12. Technology Without the ability to have large numbers of moving units on the screen at once, it will be impossible to tell a story where the player must participate in epic, massive battles between armies. The game designer needs to consider how the story line will be communicated to the player through the engine that she must use. Trying to tell a story with an inadequate engine isjust as likely to compromise the game as tying a particular story to inappropriate gameplay. Again using the example of Half-Life mentioned above, if the team at Valve had tried to set their game in Death Valley and involve the player battling gangs of twenty giant insects at once, the Quake engine would have ground to a halt on the machines of the day and the game would have been miserable to play. In the Death Valley scenario, Valve might have been telling the story they wanted, but no one would have cared since the game would have been miserably slow and looked horrendous. For the greater good of the game, the story and the technology must be compatible with each other.

13. Story Finally, it is certainly possible that the brainstorming for your game may start with asetting you want to employ, a story you want to tell, or a set of characters you want toexplore. This is probably a less common starting point than technology or gameplay.Indeed, since many games have no story whatsoever, the very concept of a game starting with a story may seem strange. At the same time, it is not unheard of for a game designer to think of a story she wants to explore, and only then start exploring what sort of technology and gameplay will be best suited to telling that story. Frequently, a particular setting may inspire a game designer, such as the adventurous world of Errol Flynn or the dark and gritty crime world of Sin City. A designer may not care too much about the specifics of the plot, but may have a strong desire to work in a world filled with swashbucklers or grim private detectives. For my purposes in this chapter, I consider these inspirational settings to fall under the definition of starting with story.

14. Story Any good game designer who thinks up a story or a setting will have a tendency to think of it in terms of how it would translate into a game, how the player can interact with that story, and how the story may unfold in different ways depending on the player’s actions in the game-world. Indeed, not all stories will translate very well into games, and thinking of gameplay possibilities early can help you rule out settings that simply will not work out in games. So a designer may not be thinking solely of the story but also of the gameplay. But the story can be the jumping-off point, the central vision from which all other aspects of the game are determined. Of course the type of story to be told will have a dramatic effect on the type of gameplay the project will need to have. If the designer wants to tell the story of a group of friends battling their way through a fantastic world full of hostile creatures, a first-person shooter with teammates might be appropriate. Any sort of story that involves the player talking to a large range of characters and going on “quests” for those characters might be addressed with more RPG-style mechanics.

15. Story Of course, the technology will have to match up with the story as well, primarily in order to support the gameplay the designer decides is best suited to telling that story. If conversations are an important part of communicating the story, the programming team will need to be able to develop a conversation system. If world exploration and discovery are a big part of telling the story, perhaps a 3D engine is best suited to the gameplay — one that allows the players to look anywhere they want with the game camera. The designer may find that specifically scripted events are important to communicating aspects of the tale; players must be able to observe unique events that transpire at specific times in different parts of the world. In this case, the programmers will need to give the level designers the ability to implement these scenes. The technology is the medium of communication to the players, and thereby the story is directly limited by what the technology is capable of telling.

16. Working with Limitations Experienced game designers already understand the limitations placed on the creation of games by the technology, gameplay, and story. When they take part in brainstorming sessions, these game designers have a good gut sense of how making certain choices about the game in question will limit its creation further down the road. For each decision that is made about the game, many doors are closed. When enough decisions about the nature of the game have been made, it may be that there is only one type of game that can possibly accomplish all that the designers want. The stage for making major decisions is over, and now all that lies ahead are the thousands of smaller implementation issues.

17. Working with Limitations In many ways, developing a game is all about understanding your limitations and then turning those limitations into advantages. In this chapter I have discussed how the designer must understand where her game idea is coming from: gameplay, story, or technology. With this understanding, the designer must recognize how this limits the other attributes of the game—how a certain gameplay calls for a certain type of story and technology, how one story requires a specific technology and gameplay, and how technology will lend itself to specific types of games and stories. One designer may consider these requirements to be limitations, while a more positive designer may consider them to be simply constraints. Indeed, many people do their best work when operating inside constraints; having limitless options can be quite intimidating and confusing. It is the designer’s job to establish what constraints the project has, find the perfect parts that fit within those limitations, and finally make all the pieces fit together in a compelling game.

18. Working with Limitations In many ways, developing a game is all about understanding your limitations and then turning those limitations into advantages. In this chapter I have discussed how the designer must understand where her game idea is coming from: gameplay, story, or technology. With this understanding, the designer must recognize how this limits the other attributes of the game—how a certain gameplay calls for a certain type of story and technology, how one story requires a specific technology and gameplay, and how technology will lend itself to specific types of games and stories. One designer may consider these requirements to be limitations, while a more positive designer may consider them to be simply constraints. Indeed, many people do their best work when operating inside constraints; having limitless options can be quite intimidating and confusing. It is the designer’s job to establish what constraints the project has, find the perfect parts that fit within those limitations, and finally make all the pieces fit together in a compelling game.