Planning and Editing Your Designs

First you write down your goal; your second job is to break down your goal into a series of steps, beginning with steps which are absurdly easy.

Fitzhugh Dodson

Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an ocean.

Percy Ross

You can get all the advice you want and read all the books you want, but what you've got to do is stand at the computer like I did from day one and say, "What can this stupid little thing do?" You've got to try little things out and make a million mistakes. But the great part about a home computer is you can do whatever you want and you aren't going to blow anything up.

Gary Kitchen from an AGH Library article

The best way to move game design forward is simply to develop, design, and construct a game. And make sure you finish it. No matter how bad, how simple, how slow your finished product is, you will learn an immense amount simply by building a game on your own.

Read, experiment, design, develop, play, and most important of all, have fun. In the end, having fun is what games are all about.

Ben Sawyer (adapted)

From The Ultimate Game Developer's Sourcebook

Even if your first game doesn't turn out the way you'd like, it can give you ideas for other games.

Christopher Chance

K-Power Magazine, April 1984

We have a good idea where the game is going and what it will look like at the beginning, but there's a lot of fine-tuning that can only be done after the game has started to take concrete form.

The design is not something cast in stone that has to be followed to the letter—it's more of a guideline.

Jon Freeman

Compute Magazine, February 1985

There are cases where you design something that looks good on paper and there's only one small part of it that's fun. You have to focus on that and throw the rest away.

Brent Iverson

The last 10% of game design is really what separates the good games from the great games. It's what I call the clean-up phase of game design. Here's where you make sure all the elements look great. The game should look good, feel good, sound good, play good.

Gary Kitchen

Gary Kitchen's GameMaker Manual

How to Create New Games from Old Games

One way to invent your own game is to take an old game that doesn't quite work for your purposes and to change it around. You might make some minor revisions in the game or you might totally overhaul the whole thing so that it's completely unrecognizable, depending on how much of the original game is attractive to you.

Identify your goals.
Brainstorm a list of all the games you can think of that relate to your goals.
Put a plus sign next to the games you feel positively about, and a minus sign next to the ones that have negative connotations for you.
Choose one of the games that has a plus sign next to it, a game that you like but one that's not perfect for reaching your goal or goals.
What is it that you like about the game?
What is the part of the game you'd like to change? Describe that element here.
Brainstorm a number of ways to replace that element with something else.
Choose one of your new elements and describe what you like about it and the way that it might fit into the old game.
Does the game still work? Is it still fun to play your new way? Are there any more changes that will be necessary because of the element that you've just changed?
Is there anything else from your brainstorm in part 7 that you can incorporate in your new version?

Have you completely recycled this old game so that it meets your standards? Are you excited about your new version? If you are, then why are you still reading this? Get going.

Adapted from the book Playfair by Matt Weinstein and Joel Goodman

When I design an adventure game, I start by telling a story. I bring together a plot, detailed characters, and a conflict. Then I allow for multiple paths through the story. Finally, I add puzzles.

In a simulation, I start with an environment or system that I can model mathematically in a realistic way. That means I have to know almost everything there is to know about each element of the system I'm modeling before I ever begin. Each building in Outpost, the fusion reactor for example, functions as a miniature, simplified version of the real thing.

Bruce Balfour

From Outpost: The Official Strategy Guide

Even though it's fun to crawl inside a computer and play with its potential, it's really important to look at other aspects of your life as well. That's where ideas for programs will come from.

Marcia Burrows

K-Power Magazine, April 1984