My game design story (so far)

Here's another quality article about game design from Gamasutra (by Gillard Lopes and Rafael Kuhnen). It presents a layered model of game design (starting with concept at the top and gameplay "verbs" at the bottom) and then weighs the pros and cons of bottom-up vs. top-down design. The point, essentially, is that both are required.

Some of you may be recoiling at the thought that I'm gearing up for another overly academic discussion of game structure. Luckily, I'm not that cruel. Instead, I offer something more personal.

My own experience with game design has so far fit quite well into Gillard and Kuhnen's description of a top-down process. I've been mulling the concept of my game for several years (the seeds of it probably sprouted six or seven years ago, but real development started almost five years ago when my brother came up with an idea for a character (yes, development has been, shall we say, sporadic).

With a general context in place for the characters, setting, and story line, we began chipping away at the core questions of gameplay: how would combat work, how would the player interact with NPCs, how would the character leveling process work. The answers to many of these questions have changed several times.

Once the major content-related decisions were made, I started building the mechanics, particularly the battle mechanics. This means, in effect, that I had to figure out how to program all the features we wanted in the game.

The line between design and execution is a blurry one for a small team, but we're now at a point where some minimum amount of playable content is required to test our decisions. If they don't result in a fun experience, we will have iterate at the appropriate design level to improve things. That could mean anything from revamping the battle system to rethinking the entire concept.

So, stay tuned for a chance to provide your feedback. It will be a while yet, but game design for a small fry like me is as much about the journey as the destination.