Designing a playable game in a few short weeks is not something I would try to do again. Fortunately I was part of a team that was flexible around meeting and working collaboratively, despite the fact that we lived in four different time zones. We demonstrated good teamwork and communication, which many of the authors on game design have stressed as an important element in successful game design teams (Fullerton, 2019, p. 7; Schell, 2008, pp. 413-424).
We followed a four-step process:
- Concept & Proposal
- Storyboarding
- Development
- Review & Playtesting
Concept & Proposal
I work at a community college with a large culinary arts program. I had the idea of a bake-off type game after working with colleagues at VCC in course creation, and after watching bake-off shows on TV. I initially shared the idea on Slack and invited interested parties to collaborate with me. Once we had our team, I brought the original concept to the table in the first meeting, and we brainstormed and refined the idea until it became something we could write-up as a proposal. It was interesting to see how different people had a slightly different interpretation of what the game could be and how it could work, though at the end of the process we had an idea that all of us could happily support and contribute towards.
An initial mistake we made was to decide quite early in the process on the development platform, Articulate Storyline 360. Given that we had very little time to create the game, we couldn’t really spend a lot of time prototyping the concept in different platforms. The drawback of this, however, was that we found ourselves taking into account the affordances and limitations of Storyline at an early stage in the game’s gestation – given more time I would have liked to look into alternatives. That said, compromises are necessary in order to deliver a product on time, and we made this compromise from the outset.
Storyboarding
Another phase that we should probably have spent more time on was the storyboard. This was created as a tabulated Google doc with the intention that it would show us where we needed to find game resources – namely sounds and images. From this perspective the storyboarding process was useful, but I would have liked to spend more time creating a more visual storyboard as a means of walking through the game levels prior to development.
Development
The development phase was largely completed by one team member who had access to Articulate 360 and the necessary Storyline skills to develop the prototype. Although Storyline does offer a review mode where teams can collaborate on the design, it was hard to collaborate on game development because of the lack of access to the tool as a developer, and because of the time zone differences between team members. On the other hand, the work we did on the design specifications and storyboard meant that the developer had a very solid idea of what we all expected from the game, and the end result was pretty much what we had in mind from the storyboard stage onwards.
Review & Playtesting
Review and playtesting happened in the last two weeks of the project, prior to the deadline. Steps 3 and 4 became iterative, with playtesting leading to changes to the game, and these being playtested once more. Again, the main texts I used for the course all referred to the importance of playtesting and iterative design (Fullerton, 2019, pp. 277-310; Schell, 2008, pp.89-114 and 433-448; Tekinbas & Zimmerman, 2003, Chapter 2).
Going through this four-step process, I was struck by how much the idea could change from the initial concept through to the design. The compressed development time for the prototype made this even more of an effect – we had to very quickly make compromises and decisions around what to keep and what to lose in the game mechanics.
Summary
The final prototype lost something along the way: In the original idea I had been thinking of a premise and story (Fullerton, 2019) that would drive the game. I had in mind the type of tension that one sees in reality TV baking shows, where competitors have to work against the clock and there’s the ever-present risk of failure, or a low score from the judges. Again, lack of time and resources made this impossible, and we had to compromise around the level that we had time to build. Given more time I would have liked to see us develop more complex later levels in the game, and to introduce some of the drama that I had in mind in the original concept.
A powerful learning for me through the different readings and activities in the course has been the importance of narrative and premise, at least in the games that I enjoy playing. There needs to be an underlying thread, and a point to playing. I think that, given the time and resources, our prototype could be worked up into a game that I might actually enjoy playing.
References
Fullerton, T. (2019). Game design workshop: A playcentric approach to creating innovative games, fourth edition (4th ed.). A K Peters/CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/b22309
Schell, J. (2008). The art of game design: A book of lenses (Second ed.). Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780080919171
Tekinbaş, K. S., & Zimmerman, E. (2003). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press.