Game Design: Theory & Practice- P4 pdf

Once a scorpion has passed by, the player must now expend effort trying to shootall the poisoned mushrooms at the top of the screen or be prepared to blast the cen-tipedes as they plumme

Once a scorpion has passed by, the player must now expend effort trying to shootall the poisoned mushrooms at the top of the screen or be prepared to blast the cen-tipedes as they plummet vertically straight toward the player.

So we can see that each of the creatures in the game has a special, unique tionship to the mushrooms It is the interplay of these relationships that creates thechallenge for the player The more mushrooms the flea drops, the more mushroomsthe scorpion has to poison The spider may take out mushrooms along the bottom ofthe screen, getting them out of the way of the player, but it may eat so many that theflea starts coming out again If the player kills the centipede too close to the top ofthe screen, it will leave a clump of mushrooms which are difficult to destroy at such

rela-a distrela-ance, rela-and which will crela-ause future centipedes to rerela-ach the bottom of the screen

at a greater speed However, if the player waits until the centipede is at the bottom

of the screen, the centipede is more likely to kill the player With the mushrooms

almost functioning as puzzle pieces, Centipede becomes something of a hybrid

between an arcade shooter and a real-time puzzle game Indeed, some players wereable to develop special strategies that would work to stop the flea from ever comingout, thus making the centipede get to the bottom of the screen less quickly andallowing the player to survive for much longer It is the interplay of each of theplayer’s adversaries with these mushrooms and with each other that creates aunique challenge for the player

Escalating Tension

A big part of the success of Centipede is how it escalates tension over the length of

the game The game actually has peaks and valleys it creates in which tension lates to an apex and, with the killing of the last centipede segment, relaxes for amoment as the game switches over to the next wave One small way in which thegame escalates tension over a few seconds is through the flea, which is the onlyenemy in the game the player must shoot twice When it is shot just once, its speedincreases dramatically and the player must quickly shoot it again lest the flea hit theshooter For that brief speed burst, the player’s tension escalates In terms of thecentipede itself, the game escalates the tension by splitting the centipede each time

esca-it is shot If the player shoots the middle segment of an eleven-segment centipede, esca-itwill split into two five-segment centipedes which head in opposite directions Sure,the player has decreased the total number of segments on the screen by one, butnow he has two adversaries to worry about at once As a result, skilled players willend up going for the head or tail of the centipede to avoid splitting it

Most of the game’s escalating tension over the course of a wave is derived fromthe centipede’s approach toward the bottom of the screen and the player’s oftenfrantic efforts to kill it before it gets there Once a centipede head reaches the bot-tom of the screen, a special centipede head generator is activated, which spits out

68 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede

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additional centipede heads into the player’s area If the player is unable to kill thecentipede before it reaches the bottom of the screen, which has already increasedtension by its very approach, that tension is further escalated by the arrival of theseextra heads And those extra heads keep arriving until the player has managed tokill all of the remaining centipede segments on the screen The rate at which thoseextra heads come out increases over time, such that if the player takes her time inkilling them, additional centipedes will arrive all the faster, making the player stillmore frantic.

Once the player kills the last segment, the game goes to its next wave, and thecentipede is regenerated from the top of the screen This provides a crucial, tempo-rary reprieve for the player, a moment for her to catch her breath The player willfeel a great rush at having finally defeated the centipede, especially if the extra cen-tipede head generator had been activated In addition, the newly generated

centipede at first appears easier to kill, since it is generated so far from the player’sarea

Over the course of the player’s entire game, the mushrooms inevitably becomemore and more packed on the play-field Once there are more mushrooms towardthe bottom of the screen, the player feels lucky if he can just clear all of the mush-rooms in the lower half of the play-field He has no chance of destroying themushrooms toward the top, since the lower mushrooms block his shots Similarly,

if the scorpion has left any poison mushrooms toward the top of the screen, theplayer has no chance whatsoever of destroying them, and as a result the centipededive-bombs the bottom of the screen on every single wave Far into a game, the top

Over the course

of the play-field becomes a solid wall of mushrooms As the mushrooms becomemore and more dense, the centipede gets to the bottom of the screen faster Whenthe centipede can get to the bottom of the screen extremely quickly, the player’sgame is that much faster paced, and he is that much more panicked about destroy-ing the centipede before it reaches the bottom of the screen This increasedmushroom density has the effect of escalating tension not just within a wave as theextra centipede head generator did, but also from wave to wave, since the mush-rooms never go away unless the player shoots them.

Centipede also balances its monsters to become harder and harder as the

player’s score increases And since the player’s score can never decrease, the sion escalates over the course of the game Most obvious is the spider, whose speedapproximately doubles once the player’s score reaches 5000 (1000 if the game’soperator has set the game to “hard”) The spider also maneuvers in a smaller andsmaller area of the bottom of the screen as the player’s score gets really high, even-tually moving only one row out of the player’s six-row area With the spider thusconstrained, it is both more likely to hit the player and less likely for the player to

ten-be able to shoot it Recall that the flea drops from the top of the screen based on thequantity of mushrooms in the bottom half of the screen When the player starts thegame, if there are less than five mushrooms in that area the flea will come down,dropping more as it does so As the player’s score increases, however, so does thequantity of mushrooms needed to prevent the flea’s appearance Now the playermust leave more and more mushrooms in that space to prevent the flea from com-ing out and cluttering the top of the screen with mushrooms

At the start of each wave, the game always generates a total of twelve centipedesegments and heads at the top of the screen This means that if a twelve-segmentcentipede appears at the top of the screen, that will be the only centipede If aseven-segment centipede appears, then five other centipede heads will appear aswell, thus totaling the magic number of twelve The more centipedes that appear,the more challenging it is for the player to shoot them all, and the more likely onewill sneak to the bottom of the screen The game starts by releasing a singletwelve-segment centipede In the next wave, a slow eleven-segment centipedeappears along with one head In the following wave, a fast eleven-segment and onehead combination arrive Then a slow ten-segment and two heads appear With eachwave there are a greater number of individual centipedes for the player to keeptrack of and a greater escalation of tension The game wraps around once twelveindividual heads are spawned, but then the game becomes harder by only spawningfast centipedes

The player’s death also provides a brief respite from the tension When theplayer’s ship is destroyed, the wave starts over and hence the centipede returns tothe top of the screen Before this, however, all of the mushrooms on the screen arereset This means that all the partially destroyed mushrooms are returned to their

70 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede

undamaged state But also all of the mushrooms poisoned by the scorpion arereturned to their unpoisoned state Many waves into the game, the increased mush-room density makes shooting poisoned mushrooms all but impossible, and withthose poisoned mushrooms in place, the player is bombarded by centipedes hurtlingtoward him in every single wave Thus, a player is almost relieved when his shooter

is destroyed and all those poisoned mushrooms are removed from the top of thescreen This causes the player’s game to be much more relaxed, at least for the timebeing

Centipede is marvelous at creating and maintaining a tense situation for the

player, while still providing brief “breathing periods” within the action Designers

of modern games, who are always concerned with ramping up difficulty for the

player, could learn much by analyzing how Centipede keeps the player constantly

on his toes without ever unfairly overwhelming him

One Person, One Game

Many may scoff at Centipede twenty years after its creation There is no question

that it is a less technically astounding accomplishment than more modern works,and those who do not examine it closely are likely to dismiss it as more of a light

diversion instead of a serious game But what Centipede does, it does with such

facility, featuring game mechanics so precisely and perfectly balanced andgameplay so uniquely compelling, that it truly is a marvel of computer game

design One must remember that Centipede was created in the days of the

one-person-one-game system, when the development team for a game consisted marily of one person, in this case Ed Logg By having one person in total control of

pri-a project, where pri-a single tpri-alented individupri-al fully understpri-ands every lpri-ast nupri-ance ofthe game, the final product is much more likely to come out with a clearness ofvision and brilliance of execution Of course, one person can create a terrible gamejust as easily as a large team, but one must wonder if the lone wolf developer doesnot have a better chance at creating the perfect game

72 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede

“Feel the flow To become one with the flow is to realizepurpose.”

— Warrel Dane

Developing a game for two years with a team of twenty people can

some-times more resemble a war than the creation of art Many would say that adecent amount of conflict can lead to great art, especially in collaborativeforms such as modern commercial computer games A stronger game may arisefrom the ashes of team members arguing over the best way to implement someaspect of gameplay If the game merely becomes unfocused as a result of thesesquabbles, then a good game is not likely to emerge Over the course of the manybattles you must fight, skirmishes you must endure, and defeats you must overcome

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in the course of a game’s development, with conflicts potentially arising with otherteam members or from within yourself, it is far too easy to lose track of just whyyou were creating the game in the first place Is it possible that at one point thegame you are working on captivated your imagination? Was there some vision youhad for why this game would be fun, compelling, and unique? Is it possible that atone point you actually liked computer games at all?

Sometimes in the middle of a project it is easy to get sidetracked—sidetracked

by technological obstacles that are thrown in your path, sidetracked by altercationsbetween team members, or sidetracked when your publisher tells you features A, B,and C simply have to be changed It is at these junctures where you come to doubtthat your game will ever be fun, or whether it will even be completed These peri-ods of doubt are the ones that separate the good game designers from the merelypassable ones Good game designers will be able to overcome these difficulties andstay on track by remembering their focus

The technique I will be exploring in this chapter is certainly not one that allgame designers use, but I think it is one that all game designers could benefit from.Many designers may use the technique but not realize it Others may have entirelydifferent methods for assuring their game comes together as a fun, consistentwhole You cannot expect to go up to any game designer and say, “What’s yourfocus for your current project?” and expect them to produce an answer in line withthe method I explore in this chapter But if you start being rigorous in maintainingfocus in your projects, I think you will see very positive results in the final quality

of your games

Establishing Focus

A game’s focus is the designer’s idea of what is most important about a game Inthis chapter I encourage designers to write their focus down in a short paragraph,since putting it down in writing can often clarify and solidify a designer’s thoughts.However, it is the idea of the focus which is of paramount importance In a way, agame’s focus is similar to a corporation’s “mission statement,” assuming such mis-sion statements are actually meaningful and used to guide all of a corporation’sdecisions

As a game designer you should start concerning yourself with your game’sfocus from the very beginning of the project When the project is in its infancy,before work has started on the design document and the project exists primarily as

an idea in your head, you should ask yourself a series of questions about the gameyou are envisioning:

l What is it about this game that is most compelling?

l What is this game trying to accomplish?

l What sort of emotions is the game trying to evoke in the player?

l What should the player take away from the game?

l How is this game unique? What differentiates it from other games?

l What sort of control will the player have over the game-world?

By going over these questions, you should be able to determine the core nature ofthe game you are planning to create If you have trouble answering these questions,now is the time to think about the game until the answers to these questions becomeobvious Now—before there is anyone else working on the project, before “burnrate” is being spent and driving up the game’s budget, before the marketing depart-ment starts trying to influence the game’s content and directions—now is the time tofocus Only by firmly establishing the vision of the game early on will you have anychance of seeing it carried out

If you do not have too much trouble divining answers to these questions, youmay have written an entire page or more delineating the game’s points of differenti-ation But a page is too much The focus that we are striving for needs to be

succinct—a few sentences, a short paragraph at the most It should be somethingyou can quickly read to your colleagues without their eyes glazing over You shouldtake whatever notes you have in answer to these questions and whittle them downuntil they are short enough to fill only a few sentences, a mid-sized paragraph.Keep only your most compelling ideas You do not need to list every single feature

of the game, or even everything it does differently from other games Keep onlywhat is most important to your vision of the game, only those points which, if youtook them away, would irreparably weaken the game

You do not need to include the setting of your game if that is not inherent to theactual focus of the game It may not matter if your game has a fantasy, science fic-tion, or 1920s crime fiction setting, if what is really at the heart of your game isexploring the relationships between characters in a stressful situation, or the subtle-ties of siege warfare If the setting is not vital to what you want to do with thegame, leave it out Of course, your primary motivation for working on a projectmay be hopelessly intertwined with the setting If you actually started with a settingyou wanted to explore in a game, such as costumed superheroes in small-townAmerica, and your vision of the gameplay formed around the idea of these charac-ters in a certain environment, then you will want to include it in your focus Thefocus is exclusively for the concepts that are most central to the game you are hop-ing to develop All that should remain in your focus are the elements without whichthe game would no longer exist

Your focus should be something that grabs you viscerally, stirs your creativejuices, and makes you feel absolutely exhilarated If it is not something that thrillsyou, even at this early stage, it is going to be hard for you to muster enthusiasm

when your deadlines are slipping, your budget is skyrocketing, you still have threelevels to create, and your lead artist just left for another company Chris Crawford

touched on the idea of a game’s focus in his book, The Art of Computer Game Design, as he was discussing what he called a game’s goal: “This is your opportu-

nity to express yourself; choose a goal in which you believe, a goal that expressesyour sense of aesthetic, your world view It matters not what your goal is, so long

as it is congruent with your own interests, beliefs, and passions.” If you donot believe in your game, it is not going to be the best game you can make

Even if you are working under the constraints of a license, a domineering lisher, or a prima donna lead programmer, make your own goals for the project Ifthe game you have been assigned to work on is not one in which you are interested,figure out some way to transform it into something you can get excited about Nosituation is so bad that, given enough time, you cannot make something out of itthat you find personally compelling You want your focus to be something you willfight intensely for until the game finally ships

pub-Much of this chapter is written in a fashion that implies that you are in charge

of your project, at least from a game design standpoint Of course, this may not bethe case You may be one of several designers on the project You may even be one

of seven and you were just hired last week, so you are at the bottom of the seniorityladder This does not excuse you from determining what your game’s focus is anddoing everything you can to keep the game on track Hopefully the lead designerhas already determined what the project’s goals are and should have included thisinformation in the introduction to the design document If you cannot find it there,you may wish to go talk to your lead Ask her what the project is really trying to do,not necessarily in a confrontational way, but just so you get a good idea of wherethe project is going, and how your contribution to the game can be properly alignedwith that direction

If it turns out the design lead does not really have a focus in mind, it may beheld by another member of the team, say a lead programmer or lead artist How-ever, if despite your best research efforts, the project seems to be goal-less, youmay need to take matters into your own hands Try to figure out where the projectseems to be heading, and start talking with people about it Chat with the otherdesigners, artists, programmers, and producers Try to talk to them about what thegame is all about, and try to get everyone to agree Meetings may be a good place

to do this; when everyone is present any conflicts between different perspectives orpersonalities on the team can be weeded out You do not need to be in a lead posi-tion in order to keep your project on track As a designer in any capacity on aproject, it is ultimately your responsibility that the game always has a clear direc-tion and that a fun game emerges at the end of the tunnel

An Example: Snow Carnage Derby

Let us suppose you have a vision for a game involving snowmobiles and combat.What is it about snowmobile riding that excites you? Is it adventuring across Can-ada’s Northwest Territories, trying to realistically simulate a great snowmobile trek?No? Perhaps what gets you going is that a snowmobile looks like a fun vehicle todrive, and you enjoy the idea of handling one in a safe game-world, where you canmake jumps and spin donuts in the snow without actually injuring yourself In thiscase, reality is not so much the issue as having fun with driving a snowmobile, in anenvironment that allows for plenty of cool maneuvers Since the snowmobile com-ponent seems fairly central to your idea, you will need to include it in the focus Soyour focus can start with a sentence that explains this: “The player’s experience willrevolve around the seemingly realistic physics of controlling snowmobiles, with theplayer being able to do fun and challenging moves and jumps in a snowy environ-ment; the game will be balanced not for realism but for fun.”

Now, what is it about this combat element that grabs you? You see visions ofblood soaking into snow, snowmobiles ramming into other snowmobiles, ridershanging on to their snowmobiles for dear life, desperately clutching the handlebars

to avoid being thrown Why are these snowmobiles battling? That is not as tant, you decide, as the excitement of the combat Why it is happening is irrelevant.The vision of snowmobiles smashing into each other turns you on, with the vio-lence cranked up to absurd levels You may have trouble getting your game intocensorship-minded retailers, but this is your vision So include a sentence about thenature of the combat: “The game will provide a visceral thrill by allowing for thedecapitation and otherwise crippling of enemy snowmobile riders, and said vio-lence will be played out to maximum comedic effect.”

impor-What else about your snowmobile battle game is a central part of your vision?

Do you want to realistically simulate fuel and snowmobiles breaking down? Is ing your snowmobile an intrinsic part of your game? Not really; it seems thatthough that could be added to the game, it is not absolutely essential to your vision.Will the game be in 3D or in 2D? Well, actually, the game could work in either To

fix-be commercially viable in today’s marketplace it will probably need to fix-be 3D butthat is not central to your vision In your focus, do not include aspects of your gamethat are more about getting the project funded and published than making the gameyou want to make You can worry about commercial considerations later Rightnow you are concerned with your vision, and if you start compromising your visionbefore absolutely necessary you are going to be blind at the end of the day So you

do not need to specify 2D or 3D Indeed, maybe you have everything you need forthe focus Remember, the focus should not be very long

Now is the time to put your two sentences together in a paragraph and name thegame Though it may seem premature, naming the game is actually a good idea at

this point You want other members of your team, the marketing department, andthe business people to start liking your game as soon as possible, and having aname they can refer to it by is fairly important to that process Can they really dis-cuss it seriously as “this game idea Richard had”? Giving your game a name makes

it real instead of just an idea, as ridiculous as that may seem

Try your very best to come up with a name that you like and that could end upgoing on the final product Often whatever name is given to a game early on willend up sticking with the game forever It is especially important not to pick a pur-posefully idiotic name, since those are the kind most likely to stick For instance, let

us say you name it Egyptian Rumba As your team keeps referring to the game as Egyptian Rumba, they will start to associate your cool game with this idiotic title,

and your idiotic title will start to sound pretty good through association Someoneworking on the art team may start giving the characters an Egyptian color scheme.Team members who are working on the story might spend a lot of time trying to

figure out why the game should be named Egyptian Rumba, and will develop an

especially clever story line around the name If you later try to change the namethey will be sad and possibly angry that their story no longer makes any sense

Even the “suits” will start to like your Egyptian Rumba title They will think of how

they can capture both the adventuring archeologist market and the Cuban dancemarket And soon, if you even remember, you will say it is time to change the

game’s title, and everyone will say, “Why? We like Egyptian Rumba! It’s a great

name!” And you will be stuck Then the public will see it on the shelves and willthink, “What the heck is that? It sounds stupid,” and quickly pass on to games withmore reasonable titles

So you finally choose Snow Carnage Derby Perhaps a more exciting name

will come up later, but you can live with this one Now, assemble the pieces ofyour focus into one paragraph, and try to write it cleanly and succinctly Refer to

your game in the present tense, as though your game already exists “Snow nage Derby is an exhilarating ” instead of “Snow Carnage Derby will be an

Car-exhilarating ” This lends your game a more concrete existence in the minds ofthose who read your focus It is not just a game that may come about at some point

in the future; it already is a game, if only in your head Something else to avoid isusing generic descriptions that do not actually provide the reader with any useful

information For instance, “Snow Carnage Derby is a high-quality, fun game

that ” Of course it is supposed to be fun Does anyone set out to make a boringgame? Or a low-quality one? Edit out any sections of your focus that do not com-municate important information about your game

Putting together the parts of your focus, you will end up with the following:

Snow Carnage Derby is an exhilarating, fast-action snowmobile tion game The player’s experience revolves around the seemingly realistic

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physics of controlling snowmobiles, with the player being able to do fun and challenging moves and jumps in a snowy environment; the game is balanced not for realism but for fun The game provides a visceral thrill

by allowing for the decapitation and otherwise crippling of enemy mobile riders, and said violence is played out to maximum comedic effect Snow Carnage Derby provides fast-action thrills as the player tries to run down the competition while avoiding destruction.

snow-The Function of the Focus

Try to keep your focus from referring to other games You want the focus to

describe the essence of your game, and if your focus is, “Voltarr is like Tomb Raider, but set on the whimsical planet Dongo and featuring many intense laser

gunfights,” it is hard for someone looking at your focus to understand immediately

what parts of Tomb Raider you are hoping to emulate Take a look at Tomb Raider

itself and determine what you think its focus may have been Then take that focus,remove whatever parts are not necessary for your game, and add in whatever newideas your game will incorporate Chances are your idea of what was compelling

about Tomb Raider will be different from someone else’s understanding When a member of your team reads, “It’s like Tomb Raider,” she is probably reminded of

some different aspect of that game’s gameplay than you are That’s assuming that

she has played Tomb Raider at all Since the focus is designed to guide your team

members as well as yourself, it needs to communicate the same ideas to everyonewho reads it Even if the focus is primarily for your own use, the process of

Your game may

the game on its

own terms and

avoid making

comparisons to

other games.

analyzing Tomb Raider to determine what about it you want to replicate will help

you to better understand your own game You need to have a properly streamlinedfocus that can stand on its own, without demanding that the person who is readingthe focus understand any other particular games All the relevant information that isimportant to your focus must be contained within the focus itself, without outside

references Often when designers set out to create “It’s like Game X but with ”

games, they tend to lose sight of what made the game they are imitating so ling in the first place Then they proceed to make their own game top-heavy with

compel-tacked-on features that exist only to hide the fact their game is just like Game X.

Removing references to other games from your focus will help expose the truenature of the project you are undertaking

Establishing a focus for your project does not need to limit the scope of yourgame, and is not intended to do so Your game can still be a massively complexgame with an epic sweep In fact, if appropriate, this complexity and depth shouldprobably be mentioned in your focus, but you should still be able to describe thegame in a few sentences in order to succinctly communicate what is most importantabout your undertaking Your game can even include multiple styles of gameplaywithin the same game Suppose your goal is to simulate the life of a pirate Youmight want to include an exploration mode for navigating the seas, a tactical modefor engaging another ship in battle, a sword-fighting mode for fighting an enemycaptain one on one, and even a trading mode for selling off booty (Indeed, Sid

Meier already made this game; it is called Pirates!) But having this multiple game

structure does not mean that the focus could not still be, “This game re-creates themany different facets of a pirate’s life through numerous different campaign modes,all designed to evoke the spirit of being a cutthroat The player is able to explorethe nature of being an outlaw, including the economic and physical risks involved.”

If your game is to have multiple separate modes, your focus should apply to all ofthe different sub-games within your project

If you are working on a project solo or with a small team, you may think itunnecessary to actually write down your focus After all, if you can just explain it

to everyone who needs to know, what’s the sense in writing it down? I would arguethat writing it down is key to truly coming to grips with the nature of the game youare planning to develop There is a world of difference between an idea that is kick-ing around in your head and one that is written down on paper in front of you.When it is on paper you can look at it and make sure that what is typed is really thecore of your idea, that those sentences represent everything that is most important

to you about the project Unlike when you describe the project to someone, onpaper you cannot say, “Oh, yeah, and there’s this part, and this other aspect overhere, and I really mean this when I say that.” If it is not down on the paper, it is notpart of the game’s focus Someone who reads the focus on paper should be able tounderstand your vision without you needing to explain it I find that writing the

focus down really helps to clarify and solidify what the game is attempting toachieve.

When I worked on my first game, Odyssey, I had no grand plan to have a focus.

Nor did I sit down and purposefully think it out On the other hand, I seem toremember the primary goal revolving around a story It was the story of a mad sci-entist-type character, a powerful sorcerer who performed experiments on haplesshumanoid creatures These were not biological experiments, but rather socialones—experiments where he would see how these humans would treat each otherwhen under certain circumstances Really, he was exploring the evil side of all sen-

tient creatures So Odyssey’s focus was to explore the mean and vicious ways

different groups of people can treat each other in certain situations and to set upscenarios where the players witnessed this first-hand and would have a chance tomake a real change in their lives Non-linearity and multiple solutions were also atthe forefront of my mind, so I set out to make sure players would be able to pursuedifferent tactics to solve the problems they were presented with, with no solutionbeing designated as the “right” one And so I had my focus Without really thinking

of it in terms of a focus or vision, I had determined what I wanted to do with thegame, and I was able to stick with that for the duration of the project Since I wasbasically developing the project solo, I did not have to communicate this focus toanyone else, and if I had needed to I doubt that I would or could have Though Iknew in my head what I wanted in the game, at the time I could not define my goals

in terms someone else could understand Now, looking back, I can come up withthe following:

In Odyssey, the player explores a rich story line about the evil nature

of mankind, and sees under what circumstances groups will treat each other in morally reprehensible ways This is a simple RPG/adventure game Though sword-and-sorcery combat will be involved, it never over- takes the story line The story line allows for multiple solutions and non-linearity whenever possible, with the player able to effect real change among the NPCs he encounters in the game.

Maintaining Focus

Once you have your focus down on paper and you are satisfied with it, when youcan read it over and say, “Yes, certainly, that’s what I’m going for,” it is time toshare it with the other members of your team It is important that you get everyone

on your team to sign on to your focus You want them to acknowledge that, yes, this

is the direction the team is taking, and to agree that they see a compelling gamecoming out of it in the end If no one on your team thinks your focus is very capti-vating, and despite your best efforts to campaign for it no one can get excited over

it, you can come to one of two conclusions First, perhaps your game idea is not allthat good Hard as this may be to admit, it could be that your focus statement andpossibly the game it describes are simply not original or enticing If the idea in yourhead is still exciting to you, maybe you did not capture its focus properly on thepaper You should go back and try to figure out what about the game excites you butwhich did not come across in your focus If you persist in thinking your game iscompelling and that your focus properly reflects why, the second conclusion youcan come to is that the team assembled is simply the wrong one to develop thisgame Not every team can develop every type of game A team that has been mak-ing sports games for years, likes working on sports games, and knows how to make

a sports game fun is probably not the best team to enlist to create your nineteenthcentury economics simulation If you have the option of finding a new team foryour game, that is great If not, you may need to come up with an idea that everyone

on your team is going to like It is important that everyone on your team like yourfocus idea Because of the collaborative nature of modern, well-budgeted computergames, it is virtually impossible to create a good game if you do not have the major-ity of your team excited to be working on it

If you are working on a project largely by yourself with others contributing nificantly less to the game than you, you may not need to sell your focus at all.Indeed, games created by lone wolf designer/programmer/artists can be among themost focused of computer games Since one person is creating the vast majority ofthe game’s content, she is able to exert absolute control over every nuance Sologame development is typically not something at which one can earn a living anymore, but I know of a few who do Of course, the fact that a game was created