Starting is often the hardest part of designing a game. Too often we get distracted with small little details of our design and struggle getting our ideas off the ground. In this example, we are going to focus on starting with high level ideas. Refer to this guide if you need help coming up with game ideas.
High Level vs Differentiation
Many professional game designers start with a high level idea of the type of game they want to create. They then refine the idea to come up with market differentiation. This simply means that they refine the high level ideas until they have a game or product that is different enough from competitors in the marketplace to find success.
The amount of differentiation from competitors to use is a challenging line to define. A high level can be provided as the following:
Game designs that are too similar to competitors don't offer enough to be interesting while game designs that are too different from the market have a learning barrier that is too great for users to overcome.
If your game concept is too similar to competitors, you may find your users do not have interest in your game as it will not be compelling or exciting. If you game concept is too advanced or too different requiring players to learn new mechanics or play styles, they may be uncomfortable and won't stay around to play.
How then do you balance out how much differentiation to add into your game? Let's look at 3 steps to designing game ideas:
- Define High Level
- Refine Key Elements
- Provide Specific Focuses
Keep your ideas high level at first, then divide your idea into a handful of sub ideas or key elements, then divide each of those into smaller sub ideas that focus on specific goals. Rinse and repeat several times until you have lots of details to work with.
The beauty of this approach is that it forces you to start with a very high level view of what you want to do. Some people would call this focusing on the Core Game Experience.
This first step might involve the main gameplay mechanic, such as being a racing game, a match-3 game, etc. This process can also be used when creating or designing a new mechanic such as deciding how a weekly competitive tournament might work.
This is not provided to be a hard and fast rule that every idea has to go through. Rather a guiding principle to use as you come up with ideas to ensure that your designs meet the desired goals that you have in mind.
Step 1: Define High Level
Start with your high level idea. Don't get into the specifics in this step.
If you are building a game - what kind of game? A match-3 puzzle game? A car racing game? A first person shooter game? Provide a single sentence definition of your main game idea.
If you are focusing on a new game mechanic or feature, the same principle of keeping the idea high level should be followed. Are you creating a new weekly tournament? A new chat feature? Are you introducing social clubs into your game? Whatever the feature or mechanic is - keep the idea high level in this first step.
For our examples here, let's use a car racing game.
Step 2: Refine Key Elements
In this step, we are going to take our basic idea of a car racing game and break it down into more refined ideas. In this case we want our racing game to have competition, so we will allow players to compete against other in a group of up to 12 drivers. We also know that the type of cars being raced will be very important and we want to offer customizations to those cars. The type of tracks being raced on will be of very high importance and will be designed so that different types of cars will have benefits or disadvantageous.
At this point, we have just defined 3 key elements of our high level design.
- Competition: The races will be competitive against friends or strangers.
- Customizable Cars: The cars will be a critical component and players can build up customizable cars.
- Challenging Tracks: The tracks will offer a variety of challenges which will require both skill and car abilities.
Notice how when we define this second level we don't get too specific yet. In this step we are taking our high level idea and identifying its principle components. We need to provide enough details to these components to help direct us in the design, but we don't need to provide exact specifics on how these ideas are accomplished.
There is no rule to how many sub ideas you need to create during this step, but coming up with at least a small handful of sub ideas will help you progress in the design process. Avoid creating too many sub ideas or creating ideas of unbalanced importance.
For example, in this racing game, the type of tracks we will race on and the type of cars being used is of very high importance. By contrast, the way users choose to login into the game or how they connect with friends isn't as important. This is not to say that the login procedures and social elements are not important, rather, they are just not on the same level of importance as the track design and car styles. Users will choose this racing game based on the tracks, racing types and car styles. Users don't normally go to a store and say, "Oh let's by this game because it lets me login with Facebook".
Remember that this is also a repeatable design process. At some point, you will define out how the login and social features work. We are just not at that stage yet.
Step 3: Provide Specific Focuses
Now that we have a few of our key pillars identified, we can start providing some specific details to those elements. Above we shared the key pillars will be around the competition, car style and track designs. Now let's provide specifics.
We want our game to use 4x4 trucks. The trucks will start off small at first. Over time, users can customize them in a personal garage using parts such as wheels, engines, etc. Since we are using 4x4 trucks, we will create track styles that take place in the wilderness, mud pits, mountain areas, sandy beaches, etc. The tracks will have a lot of obstacles such as trees, rocks and animals which will add elements of challenge and skill to the game.
Notice how in this step we start to provide healthy details on how a specific feature or element will work. Depending on the item, this may be accomplished in very little text - or it may require a sentence or two. Try to avoid providing paragraphs of endless text at this point.
If you have an item that needs a lot more definition or specifics, then you will want to repeat this entire design process focused on that item. An example of this is found further down below in this article.
In this step we can also ensure that we are going in the right direction with a key element. After we provide the specifics of a key element, we may find that it is not as strong or compelling as we once thought it would be. If that happens - that's fine - that is the purpose of this type of design routine. We may need to go back to step 2 and change one of our key elements as it no longer feels as important as it once did.
Repeat the Process on Key Ideas
The great thing about this design process is that it is repeatable. In our racing example, we ended the design process with a result of having custom 4x4 trucks that we design in our garage. Let's now restart this design process using our Garage as our next high level idea.
In the example below, we will repeat all 3 steps mentioned earlier in this lesson: (1) Define a High Level, (2) Refine Key Elements and (3) Provide Specific Focuses.
High Level: Personal Garage to Customize Vehicles
Refined Key Elements:
- Garage Limits: Garage can only hold X number of cars.
- Specifics -> Users start with 1 car, but unlock additional spots as they progress through the game. Users can also remove cars if desired.
- Paint Shop: Ability to customize colors and graphics on cars.
- Specifics -> Simple colors and graphics available to start. Premium graphics available as rewards for competitions or for purchase.
- Parts Store: Ability to buy car parts or upgrades.
- Specifics -> An in game currency is used to buy stronger engines, better tires. Currency is won through completing races or challenges.
- Skill Progression: Unlock certain upgrades / car types after specified goals are met.
- Specifics -> More advanced upgrades available after skill is demonstrated allowing you to compete in more senior challenges.
Don't be alarmed if this process again needs to be repeated. Even in our example above we would want to repeat this process to properly define out the "Parts Store" or the "In Game Currency" mentioned. Those elements need a lot more definition that we can't provide yet at this point in time.
Keep Designing...
In this article we started with a high level idea of a racing game. We broke out the key elements of the car types, the race tracks and the competitive nature. We provided specifics about the car types leading us to creating a personal garage where we can customize our cars. From there we defined out an in game currency, a parts store and customizations that unlock as the users progress in the game.
This constant iteration and refinement of ideas is how we go from a level idea to a well thought out feature. With all of these design elements, we are well on our way to creating a very intriguing game.
