Mike Pickton 6 - Game Design-y things

This week me and Mike discussed my ideation process for focusing my game projects. So far I have spent my time researching, gathering reference material and recording any thought processes into a brainstorming flowchart.

My flowchart created for ideation purposes.

After talking with Mike he suggested some ideas and areas I could look into as an extension of what I already had. I had potential story themes, settings and mechanics under a different branch each but after feedback Mike encouraged me to crossover the branches and just separate them by related ideas, as opposed to sectioning off areas like mechanics in order to allow ideas to cross pollinate and create connections.

Another idea is to subcategorize mechanics into different areas if needed, and think about them in different terms as opposed to general 'gameplay' Most of the ideas I am exploring is within the area of a third person rpg-style game so that is something to work within, using that I can separate the different parts of that into subcategories:

• hazards
• environment/exploration
• adversarial? - Any mechanics that involve the player confronting an enemy, doesn't have to involve violence.
• progression - this could include a levelling system, upgrades like weapons or more general ideas of game progression that can lend themselves to story problems

The main point though that came up while talking was that I would need to document my process a lot more when it comes to actually planning out the game concepts, how they are made and any thoughts that go into the design process. This should include any key decision making; like for example whether I start developing a game from a mechanic or if I start developing from a narrative standpoint. I should be comparing the methods and explain my reasoning behind my creative decisions.

Game Design?

One thing I seem to have missed so far in my learning contract (essentially my self written brief for the year) is including work that I may have to do into the game design aspect of my research. This area will be quite a big part of my work and essentially covers all the ideation process and critical thinking I would have to do in order to create the game prototypes I want to. Mike recommended that after seeing some of my research work into game design that I include it into my learning contract, otherwise my current work can't really be marked.

-James