Brainstorming a Game Idea:Gameplay,Technology
andStory
“You know what’s the number one dumbest question I
get asked when I’m out at some great university
lecturing? I’m always asked ‘Where do you get your
ideas?’ For about forty years I’ve been yanking their
chain when I answer ‘Schenectady.’ They stare at
me, and I say, ‘Yeah, Schenectady, in New York.
There’s this idea service, see, and every week I
send ’em twenty-five bucks, and every week they
send me a freshly picked six-pack of ideas.’”
— Harlan Ellison
Brainstorming a Game Idea
Harlan Ellison might scoff at the idea of trying to explain
where ideas come from. Certainly, if you are a novelist
having trouble coming up with ideas, it may be time to
wonder if you have chosen the right profession.
Similarly, a good game designer, at any given moment,
will be able to come up with no less than five solid
ideas she would like to try to make into a computer
game. There is no shortage of ideas in the gaming
world.
Brainstorming a Game Idea
Aspiring game designers often think they can sell their idea
to a development company. They seem to be under the
impression that game developers are just sitting around
waiting for a hot idea to come around so they can spend
several million dollars to make it a reality. On the
contrary, selling a game idea to a company is so rare that
one should consider it an impossibility. Almost all of the
challenge in game development is not coming up with a
good idea, but in following through and being able to craft
a compelling game around that idea.
Brainstorming a Game Idea
In the arena of computer game design, the process of coming up
with a game idea that will work is complicated by a number of
factors fiction authors do not need to worry about. In part this
is because computer game ideas can come from three
distinct, unrelated areas of the form: gameplay, technology,
and story. These different origins are interconnected in
interesting ways, with the origin of the game’s idea limiting
what one will be able to accomplish in the other two areas. So
when a game designer starts thinking about the game she is
hoping to make — thinking about it in terms of gameplay,
technology, or story—it is important that she consider how
that initial idea will impact all aspects of the final game.
Gameplay
Beginning with gameplay is one of the most common starting points for game
development, especially for designer- or management-driven projects.
Thinking about a style of gameplay is often the easiest core for someone to
latch onto, especially if that gameplay is similar to an existing game. “It’s a
racing game!” “It’s a flight simulator!” “It’s a 3D action/adventure like Super
Mario 64!” “It’s a first-person shooter like Halo!” Often a game developer will
have enjoyed a game in one of these genres and will want to apply her own
spin to it. With a general idea for a game that is interesting to her, the
designer will want to work out what her particular game is going to accomplish
in terms of gameplay. What type of racing game will it be? What aspects of
racing are we trying to capture for the player?With a more specific idea of
what type of gameplay she wants to create, the designer should start thinking
about how that will impact the technology the game will require and what sort
of story, if any, the game will be able to have.
Gameplay
Depending on the type of gameplay you are hoping to create for the player, you need to
analyze what sort of technology that undertaking will require. Does the game need a 3D
engine, or will 2D be enough or even more appropriate? What sort of view will the player
have of the game-world? Will it be fixed or dynamic? Does the action transpire fast and
furious with a large number of entities moving around on the screen at once? Are the
game-worlds large or small? All of these questions and many more need to be analyzed to
understand what the game’s engine must accomplish in order to properly execute the
gameplay idea. Of course the technology you choose to employ for your gameplay must
actually run on the target system, whether it be a PC, console, or custom-made arcade
cabinet. You must also ask if the game’s programming team is up to creating the required
technology. Technological feasibility may end up limiting the scope of your gameplay. Even
worse, will the engine team’s existing technology work or will they need to scrap it and
start from scratch? Is there enough budget and time to trash it and start over? If you find
that you need to adapt your gameplay to match the engine, you really are not starting out
with gameplay as the origin of your idea, but instead with technology, as I will discuss
next. If you are starting out with a gaming engine that must be used, it is in your best
interest to not fight that technology with incompatible gameplay. Instead you should try to
conceive of gameplay that is well suited to that engine.
Gameplay
The type of gameplay your game will employ similarly limits what type of story can be told.
An RPG can tell a much more complex and involved story than an action/adventure game,
and in turn an action/adventure can tell a more substantial story than an arcade shooter.
Certain types of stories just will not fit with certain types of gameplay, such as the Greek
mythology in a flight simulator example discussed previously. Similarly, a romantic story
might not fit with a strategy game, and a tale about diplomacy would not fit so well with a
fast-action first-person shooter. Since you made the choice to come up with your
gameplay style first, you need to ask yourself what sort of story is best suited to that
gameplay, and try to tell that tale. Sometimes a designer will have both a story she wants
to tell and a type of gameplay she wants to explore, and will attempt to do both in the
same game, even if the two do not go well together. Do not try to cobble an inappropriate
story, either in terms of complexity or subject matter, around gameplay that is ill-suited to
that type of narrative. Save the story for a later date when you are working on a title with
gameplay that will support that story better. And while your technology is limited by what
your team is capable of accomplishing in the time allotted, the story is limited only by
your own ability to tell it. You should pick the story best suited to your gameplay and go
with it.
Technology
Going into a project with a large portion of the game’s technology already
developed is also a fairly common occurrence. If this is not the development
team’s first project together at a new company, then it is likely that there will
be an existing technology base that the project is supposed to build from.
Even if the project is to use a “new” engine, this often only means an older
engine updated, and as a result, the style of game best suited to the engine
will not change significantly. Even if an engine is being written from scratch
for the project, it is likely that the lead programmer and her team are best
equipped to create a certain type of engine, be it indoor or outdoor, real-time
orpre-rendered, 3D or 2D, with a complex physics system for object
movement or something more simple. The programmers may be interested in
experimenting with certain special lighting or rendering effects, and will
create an engine that excels at these objectives. The designer is then
presented with this new technology and tasked with coming up with a game
that will exploit the sophisticated technology to full effect.
Technology
Other times it is predetermined that the project will be using an engine licensed
from some other source, either from another game developer or a technology-
only company. Though some of these licensed engines are becoming more and
more robust and as a result can allow for a fairly broad number of games to be
made with them (Criterion’s RenderWare is certainly a good example of this),
many licensed engines are still developed with one game genre in mind, and
no engine is without its fundamental limitations. Sometimes the project
leaders have enough foresight to consider the type of game they want to
make first and then pick an engine well suited to that. Sometimes the engine
licensing deal that seems to deliver the most “bang for the buck” will be the
one chosen. Then, with an engine choice decided, the team is tasked with
creating a game and story that will fit together well using that technology.
Technology
Without the ability to have large numbers of moving units on the screen at
once, it will be impossible to tell a story where the player must participate
in epic, massive battles between armies. The game designer needs to
consider how the story line will be communicated to the player through the
engine that she must use. Trying to tell a story with an inadequate engine
isjust as likely to compromise the game as tying a particular story to
inappropriate gameplay. Again using the example of Half-Life mentioned above,
if the team at Valve had tried to set their game in Death Valley and involve
the player battling gangs of twenty giant insects at once, the Quake engine
would have ground to a halt on the machines of the day and the game
would have been miserable to play. In the Death Valley scenario, Valve
might have been telling the story they wanted, but no one would have
cared since the game would have been miserably slow and looked
horrendous. For the greater good of the game, the story and the technology
must be compatible with each other.
Story
Finally, it is certainly possible that the brainstorming for your game may start
with asetting you want to employ, a story you want to tell, or a set of
characters you want toexplore. This is probably a less common starting point
than technology or gameplay.Indeed, since many games have no story
whatsoever, the very concept of a game starting with a story may seem
strange. At the same time, it is not unheard of for a game designer to think of
a story she wants to explore, and only then start exploring what sort of
technology and gameplay will be best suited to telling that story. Frequently, a
particular setting may inspire a game designer, such as the adventurous world
of Errol Flynn or the dark and gritty crime world of Sin City. A designer may not
care too much about the specifics of the plot, but may have a strong desire to
work in a world filled with swashbucklers or grim private detectives. For my
purposes in this chapter, I consider these inspirational settings to fall under
the definition of starting with story.
Story
Any good game designer who thinks up a story or a setting will have a tendency
to think of it in terms of how it would translate into a game, how the player
can interact with that story, and how the story may unfold in different ways
depending on the player’s actions in the game-world. Indeed, not all stories
will translate very well into games, and thinking of gameplay possibilities early
can help you rule out settings that simply will not work out in games. So a
designer may not be thinking solely of the story but also of the gameplay. But
the story can be the jumping-off point, the central vision from which all other
aspects of the game are determined. Of course the type of story to be told will
have a dramatic effect on the type of gameplay the project will need to have.
If the designer wants to tell the story of a group of friends battling their way
through a fantastic world full of hostile creatures, a first-person shooter with
teammates might be appropriate. Any sort of story that involves the player
talking to a large range of characters and going on “quests” for those
characters might be addressed with more RPG-style mechanics.
Story
Of course, the technology will have to match up with the story as well, primarily
in order to support the gameplay the designer decides is best suited to telling
that story. If conversations are an important part of communicating the story,
the programming team will need to be able to develop a conversation system.
If world exploration and discovery are a big part of telling the story, perhaps a
3D engine is best suited to the gameplay — one that allows the players to
look anywhere they want with the game camera. The designer may find that
specifically scripted events are important to communicating aspects of the
tale; players must be able to observe unique events that transpire at specific
times in different parts of the world. In this case, the programmers will need
to give the level designers the ability to implement these scenes. The
technology is the medium of communication to the players, and thereby the
story is directly limited by what the technology is capable of telling.
Working with Limitations
Experienced game designers already understand the limitations
placed on the creation of games by the technology, gameplay, and
story. When they take part in brainstorming sessions, these game
designers have a good gut sense of how making certain choices
about the game in question will limit its creation further down the
road. For each decision that is made about the game, many doors
are closed. When enough decisions about the nature of the game
have been made, it may be that there is only one type of game that
can possibly accomplish all that the designers want. The stage for
making major decisions is over, and now all that lies ahead are the
thousands of smaller implementation issues.
Working with Limitations
In many ways, developing a game is all about understanding your limitations
and then turning those limitations into advantages. In this chapter I have
discussed how the designer must understand where her game idea is
coming from: gameplay, story, or technology. With this understanding, the
designer must recognize how this limits the other attributes of the game—
how a certain gameplay calls for a certain type of story and technology,
how one story requires a specific technology and gameplay, and how
technology will lend itself to specific types of games and stories. One
designer may consider these requirements to be limitations, while a more
positive designer may consider them to be simply constraints. Indeed,
many people do their best work when operating inside constraints; having
limitless options can be quite intimidating and confusing. It is the designer’s
job to establish what constraints the project has, find the perfect parts that
fit within those limitations, and finally make all the pieces fit together in a
compelling game.
Working with Limitations
In many ways, developing a game is all about understanding your limitations
and then turning those limitations into advantages. In this chapter I have
discussed how the designer must understand where her game idea is
coming from: gameplay, story, or technology. With this understanding, the
designer must recognize how this limits the other attributes of the game—
how a certain gameplay calls for a certain type of story and technology,
how one story requires a specific technology and gameplay, and how
technology will lend itself to specific types of games and stories. One
designer may consider these requirements to be limitations, while a more
positive designer may consider them to be simply constraints. Indeed,
many people do their best work when operating inside constraints; having
limitless options can be quite intimidating and confusing. It is the designer’s
job to establish what constraints the project has, find the perfect parts that
fit within those limitations, and finally make all the pieces fit together in a
compelling game.