In this entry, my first, I am going to discuss my process of taking not yet crystallized swirling ideas in my head to forging a concise and coherent vision for a project.

As an indie game designer I have new ideas for games daily, often multiple in a day. The trick isn’t coming up with new ideas but to sift through the ideas to find those that are worthy of exploration, and being able to combine them with other interesting ideas to actually flesh out a viable game concept.

This process is used to filter out the noise and focus on only the core elements of a game idea. Identify what characteristics, mechanics, and player responses that you are attempting to achieve and then make sure that nearly every choice along the way is aligned with these insights. Not only are you left with a powerful tool for decision making, it also serves as a way to help articulate the core experience of your game.

So how do you find out the most important elements of your game? Start by making a list of the characteristics that define what your game is supposed to be and why. Then, trim this list down to the four or five aspects that you can consider the primary drivers of the experience. Some examples could be:

Arcade hockey physics, robust fighting mechanics, low demand visuals, character customization, local multiplayer

Nonstop action, simple but deep skill system, competitive leaderboards, interesting gear combinations, compelling storyline

When making your own list, really dive deep into each characteristic to justify its position. You may find that one aspect isn’t actually as important as you originally thought. Conversely you may find that by better understanding what a particular concept might bring to the project you can now view the overall picture with greater clarity.

This blog is about my journey with a particular game concept from the earliest stages to completion; below I’ll be going through this brainstorming-to-vision process in real-time as an example of the level of depth I recommend.

Key Characteristics of As-Of-Yet-Untitled Game

Narrative Focused

While I have been a video game design enthusiast for thirty-plus years, I have also had an interest in writing screenplays. I love the minimalist format of screenplays and how they demand that every word on the page have purpose. As I like to fancy myself a storyteller, I feel that it is time to put my screenwriting and game design knowledge and experience to use together on one piece of interactive fiction.

This story in particular is a psychological thriller that has multiple tight constraints both physically and temporally. The details of the story, how I arrived at it, and what emotions I intend to elicit through it are better left for another blog entry but the important thing here is that this isn’t going to be a game that incidentally has a story, this is a story brought to life by a game.

Mobile Focused

I intend to not simply ship a title on mobile platforms, but to embrace what it means to be a game played on a handheld device powered by touch controls. Much like the Wiimote is used to give the player a unique experience, I intend to deliver an experience that is unique not in spite of being played on a smartphone or tablet, but truly enabled by the medium.

Choice and Consequences

The bulk of the gameplay will be driven by the choices the player makes along the way. The game takes place in real-time so the player’s choices are not limited to simply Option A vs B but also when choices are made and what the player chooses to focus their attention on while ignoring other information. Ensuring the majority of decisions a player makes “matter” for a given playthrough of a story-driven experience demands robust narrative branching and multiple tracked metrics under the hood. It must also be understood that as each playthrough progresses differently, what defines success and failure along the way varies as well. This leads to the necessary existence of several overall victory and defeat conditions to have satisfying conclusions while remaining within the context of the player’s experience. Finally, due to the exponentially growing nature of significant narrative branching, the entire game must be designed with a focus on brevity. This is crafting an interactive short film, not a full length feature.

Deep Immersion

Typically when game designers or authors speak of immersion they are referring to keeping the mind of the audience focused on the experience at hand. Immersion therefore is a goal for virtually all media as losing the audience’s attention is seen as a failure of the highest order. The thriller and horror genres often take this goal even more seriously as the author does not merely want your attention, but they want your empathy as well. Primarily, when the protagonist is afraid, the audience should be afraid along with them. For my purposes with this title, when I refer to Deep Immersion I am stating that I want to take it even further. It is not my goal for the player to empathize with the protagonist, I want them to feel as though they are the protagonist. When the protagonist is disrupted by or anxious due to a time constraint, so should be the player. When the protagonist is handicapped by a physical constraint, so should be the player.

Missing the cut

There are many other characteristics that will define the overall experience of the game. Visual aesthetic, control scheme, expected game session time, replayability, progress metrics, the list goes on. In other games some of these may very well be elevated to core mechanic, however in this particular game all of these can be considered secondary tools used to achieve the core four elements listed above. If you can identify that one mechanic’s purpose within your game falls under the umbrella of another mechanic, typically speaking only the latter deserves the status of being part of the vision.

I Can See Clearly Now

So I have a deeply immersive narrative-driven mobile game where decisions have real impact on the outcome. What exactly is impacted by being able to define these characteristics as being the core of the project?

In short, everything.

Once you have a firm vision in place, it should be used to inform your position on almost all future decisions. When faced with multiple options, ask yourself every time “which choice more clearly delivers my vision” and let that metric be your magic 8-ball.

I believe that articulating a concise vision is an important step that takes a project from early brainstorming to having a solid foundation upon which to build. Furthermore, the process of defining a vision allows for moments of great insight and clarity for the future while providing a tool that will be useful from now until shipping the title and beyond.

Thank you for reading. Follow me on medium and on twitter @Ablyvion for future updates and for my next entry about bringing elements of screenwriting structure into the gaming world.