ptg7947181 GAME CONCEPTS 81
C H A P T E R 3
Beginning with browser-based games is an excellent way to get started building small games, because you don’t have to know much about the machine’s hardware.
Handheld Game Machines
Handheld game machines are a hugely popular and very inexpensive form of enter- tainment, used in the West mainly by children. (In Japan, significant numbers of adults use them too.) Handhelds support few add-on features; the input and output devices are usually fixed. These machines have a smaller number of buttons than a console controller does and only a small LCD screen. Their CPUs are slower than their console counterparts but still have enough CPU speed to run sophisticated games. The Sony PSP represented a huge jump in the power and display quality of handheld game machines.
The cheapest handheld machines offer a fixed set of built-in games, but the more versatile handhelds accept games stored on ROM cartridges, and the PSP now sup- ports a small optical disk. Cartridges store much less data than the CD-ROMs or DVD discs that home consoles and computers use. Designing for a cartridge machine places severe limits on the amount of video, audio, graphics, and anima- tion you can include in the game. Because they’re solid-state electronics, though, the data on a cartridge is available instantly. There’s no delay in loading data, as there is with optical media devices.
The handheld game market is potentially lucrative, but creating a game for one tests your skills as a designer. With less storage space, you have to rely on gameplay rather than content to provide the entertainment. And as with home console machines, to develop for handheld game machines you must have a license from the manufacturer. (The Pocket PC and other personal digital assistants belong to a different category because they are not, strictly speaking, game machines. The later section “Other Devices” deals with them.)
Mobile Phones and Wireless Devices
Mobile phones now have enough computing power to play decent games.
Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to find a reliably profitable business model.
The public is reluctant to pay much money for games on mobile phones. Skins and ringtones account for most of the money being made in mobile phone content at the moment. But the worst thing about developing for mobile phones is the utter lack of standardization. The screens are all different sizes and color depths; the pro- cessors are different; the operating systems are different. Even the layout of the buttons is nonstandard, making it difficult to be certain what user interface design is convenient across a range of phones.
However, mobile phones and other wireless devices such as the Nintendo DS do have one distinct advantage over traditional game handhelds: Wireless devices per- mit portable networked play. Players can compete against other people while riding on trains or waiting for an appointment. Setting up a networked game on mobile
ptg7947181 phones usually requires making a deal with a cellular service provider. Also, unlike
dedicated game machines, for the most part, phones do not require a license from the hardware manufacturer. Anyone can write a program for a mobile phone, with one exception: Apple’s iPhone.
Other Devices
Games show up on all sorts of other devices these days. The more specialized the device, the more important it is to understand clearly its technical limitations and its audience.
Airlines are starting to build video games into their seats; these games tend to be aimed at children. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) provide a great new platform for small, simple games for adults. Video gambling machines, too, enjoy growing popularity. Because they are so heavily regulated and not sold to consumers, they really constitute an industry unto themselves, but video gambling games require programmers and artists just like any other computer game. And, of course, arcade machines, although not as popular as they once were, still provide employment to game developers.
Because these devices occupy niche markets and often have peculiar design restric- tions, this book doesn’t address them in detail. This is a book about game design in general, so it concentrates on games for all-purpose game machines: home consoles and personal computers.
Summary
In this chapter, you learned what a game concept is and what decisions you have to make to create a high concept document. You should now understand the impor- tance of defining the player’s role. You also learned the distinctions among game genres and how to think about choosing a target audience—particularly with respect to its degree of dedication to gaming. And you have an idea of how your choice of machine affects the way people play your game.
Creating a game concept is like designing the framework of a building: It gives you the general outlines but not the details. The remainder of this part of the book is dedicated to creating those details.
Design Practice EXERCISES
1. Create a high concept document for one of your favorite games or one that your instructor assigns.
2. Write a short paper contrasting the player’s roles in a Tomb Raider game and a Civilization game.
ptg7947181 GAME CONCEPTS 83
C H A P T E R 3
3. Certain genres are more often found on one kind of machine than on another.
Write an essay explaining which machine each genre works best on and why. How do the machine’s features and the way that it is used in the home facilitate or hin- der the gameplay in each genre?
Design Practice QUESTIONS
Once you have a game idea in mind, these are the questions you must ask yourself in order to turn it into a fully fledged game concept. You don’t have to be precise or detailed, but you should have a general answer for all of them.
1. Write a high concept statement: a few sentences that give a general flavor of the game. You can make references to other games, movies, books, or any other media if your game contains similar characters, actions, or ideas.
2. What is the player’s role? Is the player pretending to be someone or something, and if so, what? Is there more than one? How does the player’s role help to define the gameplay?
3. Does the game have an avatar or other key character? Describe him/her/it.
4. What is the nature of the gameplay, in general terms? What kinds of challenges will the player face? What kinds of actions will the player take to overcome them?
5. What is the player’s interaction model? Omnipresent? Through an avatar?
Something else? Some combination?
6. What is the game’s primary camera model? How will the player view the game’s world on the screen? Will there be more than one perspective?
7. Does the game fall into an existing genre? If so, which one?
8. Is the game competitive, cooperative, team-based, or single-player? If multiple players are allowed, are they using the same machine with separate controls or dif- ferent machines over a network?
9. Why would anyone want to play this game? Who is the game’s target audience?
What characteristics distinguish them from the mass of players in general?
10.What machine or machines is the game intended to run on? Can it make use of, or will it require, any particular hardware such as dance mats or a camera?
11. What is the game’s setting? Where does it take place?
12. Will the game be broken into levels? What might be the victory condition for a typical level?
13. Does the game have a narrative or story as it goes along? Summarize the plot in a sentence or two.
ptg7947181
Game Worlds
Games entertain through gameplay, but many also entertain by taking the player away to an imaginary place—a game world. (This book uses the terms world, setting, and game setting interchangeably with game world.) In fact, the gameplay in most single-player video games appears to the player as interactions between himself and the game world. This chapter defines a game world and introduces the various dimensions that describe a game world: the physical, temporal, environmental, emotional, and ethical dimensions, as well as a quality called realism.
What Is a Game World?
A game world is an artificial universe, an imaginary place in which the events of the game occur. When the player enters the magic circle and pretends to be some- where else, the game world is the place she pretends to be.
Not all games have a game world. A football game takes place in a real location, not an imaginary one. Playing football still requires pretending because the players assign an artificial importance to otherwise trivial actions, but the pretending doesn’t create a game world. Many abstract games, such as tic-tac-toe, have a board but not a world—there is no imaginary element in playing the game. Chess has only a hint of a world; although the board and the moves are abstract, the names of the pieces suggest a medieval court with its king and queen, knights and bishops.
Stratego has a slightly more elaborate world: The board is printed to look like a land- scape, and the pieces are illustrated with little pictures, encouraging us to pretend that they are colonels, sergeants, and scouts in an army. Stratego could be played entirely abstractly, using only numbers and a bare grid for a board, but the setting makes it more interesting.