Your game may be similar to another game such as Tomb Raider, but in your focus you want to describe the game on its own terms and avoid making comparisons to other games.
Try to keep your focus from referring to other games. You want the focus to describe the essence of your game, and if your focus is, “ Voltarr is like Tomb Raider, but set on the whimsical planet Dongo and featuring many intense laser gunfights,” it is hard for someone looking at your focus to understand immediately what parts of Tomb Raider you are hoping to emulate. Take a look at Tomb Raider itself and determine what you think its focus may have been. Then take that focus, remove whatever parts are not necessary for your game,
and add in whatever new ideas your game will incorporate. Chances are your idea of what was compelling about Tomb Raider will be different from someone else’s understanding.
When members of your team read, “It’s like Tomb Raider,” they are probably reminded of some different aspect of that game’s gameplay than you are. That’s assuming that they have played Tomb Raider at all. Since the focus is designed to guide your team members as well as yourself, it needs to communicate the same ideas to everyone who reads it.
Even if the focus is primarily for your own use, the process of analyzing Tomb Raider to determine what about it you want to replicate will help you to better understand your own game. You need to have a properly streamlined focus that can stand on its own, without demanding that the person who is reading the focus understand any other particular games.
All the relevant information that is important to your focus must be contained within the focus itself, without outside references. Often when designers set out to create “It’s like Game X but with…” games, they tend to lose sight of what made the game they are imitating so compelling in the first place. Then they proceed to make their own game top- heavy with tacked-on features that exist only to hide the fact their game is just like Game X.
Removing references to other games from your focus will help expose the true nature of the project you are undertaking. If you add sufficient description revealing what it is about
another game that you are trying to capture in your new design, it may be OK to leave in the reference to that original game since it can provide a helpful starting point for readers.
This is a matter of individual preference when writing your focus, and I personally prefer to leave out other game references of any kind if at all possible.
Establishing a focus for your project does not need to limit the scope of your game, and is not intended to do so. Your game can still be a massively complex game with an epic sweep. In fact, if appropriate, this complexity and depth should probably be mentioned in your focus, but you should still be able to describe the game in a few sentences in order to succinctly communicate what is most important about your undertaking. Your game can even include multiple styles of gameplay within the same game. Suppose your goal is to simulate the life of a pirate. You might want to include an exploration mode for navigating the seas, a tactical mode for engaging another ship in battle, a sword-fighting mode for fighting an enemy captain one-on-one, and even a trading mode for selling off booty.
(Indeed, Sid Meier already made this game; it is called Pirates!) But having this multiple game structure does not mean that the focus could not still consist of, “This game recreates the many different facets of a pirate’s life through numerous different campaign modes, all designed to evoke the spirit of being a cutthroat. The player is able to explore the nature of being an outlaw, including the economic and physical risks involved.” If your game is to have multiple separate modes, your focus should apply to all of the different sub-games within your project.
If you are working on a project solo or with a small team, you may think it unnecessaryto actually write down your focus. After all, if you can just explain it to everyone who needs to know, what’s the sense in writing it down? I would argue that writing it down is key to truly coming to grips with the nature of the game you are planning to develop. There is a world of difference between an idea that is kicking around in your head and one that is written down
on paper in front of you. When it is on paper you can look at it and make sure that what is typed is really the core of your idea, and that those sentences represent everything that is most important to you about the project. Unlike when you describe the project to someone, on paper you cannot say, “Oh, yeah, and there’s this part, and this other aspect over here, and I really mean this when I say that.” If it is not down on the paper, it is not part of the game’s focus. Someone who reads the focus on paper should be able to understand your vision without further explanation. I find that writing the focus down really helps to clarify and solidify what the game is attempting to achieve.
Though I did not know it at the time of the game’s development, Odyssey’s focus was centered on telling a specific story.
When I worked on my first game, Odyssey, I had no grand plan to have a focus. Nor did I sit down and purposefully think it out. On the other hand, I recall the primary goal revolving around a story. It was the story of a mad scientist-type character, a powerful sorcerer who performed experiments on hapless humanoid creatures. These were not biological
experiments, but rather social ones — experiments where he would see how these humans would treat each other when placed in certain circumstances. Really, he was exploring the evil side of all sentient creatures. So Odyssey’s focus was to explore the mean and vicious ways different groups of people can treat each other in certain situations and to set up scenarios where the players witnessed this first-hand and would have a chance to make a real change in their lives. Non-linearity and multiple solutions were also at the forefront of my mind, so I set out to make sure players would be able to pursue different tactics to solve the problems they were presented with, with no solution being designated as the
“right” one. And so I had my focus. Without really thinking of it in terms of a focus or vision, I had determined what I wanted to do with the game, and I was able to stick with that for the duration of the project. Since I was basically developing the project solo, I did not have to communicate this focus to anyone else, and if I had needed to I doubt that I could have without considerable reflection. Though I knew in my head what I wanted in the game, at the time I could not define my goals in terms someone else could understand. Now, looking back, I can come up with the following:
In Odyssey, the player explores a rich story line about the evil nature of mankind, and sees under what circumstances groups will treat each other in morally reprehensible ways. This is a simple RPG/adventure game. Though sword-and-sorcery combat will be involved, it never overtakes the story line. The story line allows for multiple
solutions and non-linearity whenever possible, with the player able to effect real change among the NPCs he encounters in the game.