American journalist Christopher Hitchins is quoted as saying, “Everyone has a novel in them”. The less quoted part is the end of the sentence, which concluded, “...which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain”. But forget Hitchens. If it’s in there, let it fly free!
Written by Chris Marling
FROM IDEA TO REALITY
I’m sure every gamer has had at least one of these experiences. Scenario one: You’re playing a game and something doesn’t quite sit right. If you’d designed this game, you’d have done X differently. Scenario two: You suddenly think, why isn’t there a game about Y? Scenario three: While thinking about favourite games you ponder, Why has nobody thought of combining X from this with Y from that? Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step toward designing your own game.
YOUR GAME IDEA IS BROKEN
Well, probably. Our ideas sound perfect in our minds. What could possibly go wrong? You’re a genius! The reality is usually quite different but the only way to know for sure is to take the next and crucial step in the design process….
GET IT TO THE TABLE
While this may sound obvious, it’s amazing how many people you speak to have these ideas cooped up in their minds for years without acting on them. I’ll go into prototyping later, but unless your idea is ridiculously complex, making something playable should be relatively straightforward.
People often make the mistake of trying to make something fancy. Think of any first draft as for your eyes only, which takes the pressure off. Draw on pieces of paper for cards, putty stickers on dice, and make hand-drawn paper boards. While the likes of Cool Mini or Not may disagree, a good game is in the mechanisms, not the pieces.
You don’t even need to make the whole game at first. In fact, it may be better if you don’t. Looking at a huge task often stifles the creative process, so getting part of the idea down to test if it works is a great start. For now, you just need to get into first gear.
In the first instance, you should be able to test a few things alone. The next step is to bring in your partner, or friends, and talk them through the idea. It’s amazing how powerful saying something out loud can be. First, it can help fire your thoughts, for better or worse. But you may also get some valuable insight from your testers.
At this early stage, you should just be looking for proof of concept. Does your initial idea work? If not, can anything be done to solve th
