Whether you’re a big game company, an indie game developer, a college student majoring in game design, or a kid just starting out, the steps involved in creating a new video game are pretty much the same. From developing the first idea and designing the look of the game to testing the finished product, building a game requires many different skills.
In a large company, you might have teams that specialize in one particular part of game development, such as just the characters or just the levels. Hundreds of people might work on one game! In smaller companies, some of the team members may do multiple jobs. One person might design the look of the objects and write the computer programs to make those objects move.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
Why do designers need to think logically about the games they are designing?
The process for designing a game is very similar for both large and small companies. First, the team brainstorms ideas. Then, they write up the game plans. The team gets feedback from other people and makes changes to the plans.
Designers and developers work on every part of the game, including the game assets, the challenges on each level, and the computer programming needed to make it all happen. The entire process can take several months!
WORD TO KNOW
game assets: any part of the game that the player can see or interact with directly, including characters, objects, backgrounds, text, sound, and special effects.
Lots of people test the video game and make lots of changes to make sure the game is as perfect as possible before it’s sent out into the world.
Club Penguin, the biggest MMO game for kids, was created in a basement in Canada! Game designer Lance Priebe (who also made Mancala Snails) originally made Club Penguin in his spare time for his own kids to play. In 2007, Disney bought Club Penguin for $700 million. Priebe worked for Disney Interactive until 2009.
Today, he runs Hyper Hippo Games. The first question he asks of any new game is, “Can we find the fun and can we find it fast?” Anyone in the company can propose a game, but they only get two weeks to create a working prototype. Priebe prefers starting the design process by building a board game version because, he says, “I get to touch the rules.” His board is drawn in the form of a map, he uses action figures as characters, and he makes the buildings and landscape out of Lego pieces.
WORD TO KNOW
prototype: an early version of a design used for testing.
Once the video game version is ready to test, it’s made available on their website. “You don’t know what your core feature will be until you put it in front of an audience,” Priebe says. “You don’t know what game you’re designing.” Priebe’s goal is always a game so good players don’t even think about how it works. They just enjoy playing it! You can test out games yourself.
MAKE YOUR OWN GAME
Even as a beginner, you can follow the same process professionals use to develop your own games: Find an idea, design the look, create a sample, write a plan, build the game, and test the game. Let’s take a closer look at these steps.
Find an idea: Game designers look for new ideas in lots of different places. These include other kinds of games, other video games, myths, legends, classic adventure tales, historical events, and game jams. Once you have some ideas to start with, brainstorm!
Can you mash up two different themes and come up with something unique? Can you find a new way to tell a familiar story? Jot down all your ideas. Then decide which one you want to work on.
Design the look: When you’ve decided on an idea for your game, start thinking about the details. Think about the characters or playing pieces, the setting or background, the art and music, and the story. You also need to design the gameplay. Decide on the goal of the game and start coming up with obstacles and rewards that will make the game fun and challenging.
Write all these details down in a treatment, which is a short, one-page description of the game. Don’t worry if you’re not sure about any of your decisions. You can always change them later!
WORD TO KNOW
gameplay: the way players interact with a game and the experience it provides. Game reviewers use it to rate how well they liked playing the game.
treatment: a short description of how the game works.
Your game treatment will help you keep track of what works and what needs to be improved. It should include the following parts.
name
what the game is about
what it looks like, including the style of the cards, the board, and the backgrounds
the object of the game
the cards, pieces, or characters
objects that can help or hurt players along the way
how the game is played
Create a sample: It’s important to make a quick version of your game to playtest. A low-tech run-through lets you know if your idea is good before you invest a lot of time into programming it. At this stage, you only need to think about how it works and if it is fun and interesting to play.
WORD TO KNOW
playtest: a research session where players are asked to play an unfinished game while the designers take notes on how it works and players’ comments and reactions.
BONUS POINTS
When Dejobaan Games made a game about BASE jumping, they wanted to push the limits with a really creative name. They called it AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. This weird title got lots of attention and helped make the game popular!
Pay attention to whether it’s too easy or too frustrating and how long it takes to play a round. Take notes so you remember what you need to work on. Get your friends to test your game, and ask questions to get their opinions on what they like and don’t like about it.
Do you and your friends enjoy the game? Is it both interesting and entertaining? If so, it’s worth developing more!
Don’t worry if the game doesn’t work. Try changing one piece of the game at a time to see if you can fix it. If you can’t, set it aside and try something different.
Write a plan: Now it’s time to create a detailed design document. The design document is like a movie script or the blueprint of a building. It’s the guidebook for every member of your team.
Build the game: If you’re making a board or card game, you’ll create all the artwork. If it’s a video game, you’ll do that plus make it work on a computer! Find some volunteers and have them play through one level or round. If your game is designed for younger children who can’t read yet, playtest it with a group of preschoolers. If it’s an app for grown-ups, ask your parents to give it a try.
MAKE SOMETHING NEW, FAST!
A quick way to make a new game is to reskin an existing game. You can change the entire gameplay by changing the look, objects, or characters. The free puzzle game 2048, in which players slide numbered tiles around to make them double up, was a reskin of a mobile game called Threes. Many fans of the free version never realized is was a reskin of an earlier game! You’ll reskin a game in Chapter 5.
WORD TO KNOW
design document: a guide for the team that will be working on the game, containing all the details and plans.
reskin: adding new graphics and other design elements to the structure underneath an existing game.
A design document has much more detail than a treatment. Here are some of the sections included.
Vision: What kind of a game is this— adventure, puzzle, edutainment? Is it cartoony, supernatural, realistic history? Who will want to play it? How is it like other games and how is it different?
Gameplay: Using your prototype as a guide, describe how the game is played. What is the goal? How do players progress through the game? What are the rules?
Story: If your game has a story, write a summary that follows the same order that players will discover it. Write a script that tells what happens and what the characters say. Include instructions, background information from the narrator, and conversations between the different characters.
Gameworld: Your document should describe where your game is set and what each level looks like. You will also need to draw maps of each level.
Characters: Describe your main characters, the enemies they face, and any other characters they meet throughout the game. Characters can be divided into playable characters (PC) and non-playable characters (NPC). NPCs can be helpers or enemies or bosses that the player must defeat to move on. They might also be neutral characters that just hang around. For all characters, decide how they look and sound, how they move, their strengths and weaknesses, and any special abilities.
WORD TO KNOW
playable characters (PC): characters or avatars in a video game that are controlled by the players.
non-playable characters (NPC): characters in a video game that are controlled by the computer program, not including enemies.
bosses: the main enemy in one level of a game that must be defeated to move on.
BONUS POINTS
Chris Egert of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC), says you can make a great game from ancient myths or classic science fiction stories. He advises his students to ask themselves, “What sort of worlds can I make with that? How can I take something and twist it around?”
Test the game: The final level of testing is called quality assurance (QA). QA engineers explore every level and test every possible choice a player can make. They are looking for bugs. Check to see if there’s anyplace your characters can get stuck or walk off the edge. Do some destructive testing to find out if there is anything that will accidentally make your game freeze or crash, such as pushing two buttons at the same time.
According to independent game designer Amy Kraft, “The best QA testers love breaking the game.”
If your game tells a story, check the conditional scripting to see if your game does what you want it to do. If not, go back to the beginning, fix the problems, and go through all the testing steps again.
WORD TO KNOW
quality assurance (QA): playing a game that is nearly finished to find any problems before it is published.
bug: a mistake in the code that causes unexpected problems.
conditional scripting: the part of a script or plan for a game that shows what happens when a player makes one choice or another.
BONUS POINTS
Gaming companies often ask kids from the community to come to their studios and playtest new games. If you’re one of the volunteers chosen to help make a new game better, you might find your name in the game’s credits when it comes out!
Cheat codes are “secret” keyboard or controller commands that let you jump a level, make you invincible, or give you an unlimited number of lives. The first cheats were the result of a bug in the programming or a backdoor built in by programmers to help them move through the game quickly as they built and tested it. Later, those cheat code bugs became features that every player could use, if they could figure out the commands!
WORD TO KNOW
cheat codes: keyboard commands that let you skip steps or give you extra powers.
command: an instruction in the form of code that tells a computer to do something. Also called a statement.
programmer: a person who writes computer programs. Also called a coder.
The QA process can be used whenever you build something new, whether it’s a video game or robot, to make it as good a design as possible! Now that you know the basics of game design, you can learn how to code your game into a video game.
SAMPLE GAME TREATMENT
The sample game treatment on the following spread shows you how you might turn Goldilocks and the Three Bears into a game. The map helps you plan the action.
How would you have written the treatment differently? Is there anything else that you think should be included?
What it’s about: Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a text adventure comedy game for one player about a lost little girl named Goldilocks. She finds a house in the woods belonging to three bears. The game is aimed at younger children.
Goal: Goldilocks (the player) must collect objects from the bears’ house to survive in the woods. She must escape before they return from their walk.
Characters:
•Goldilocks, an adventurous little girl with golden hair
•Papa Bear, a large, fierce animal with scruffy fur, long claws, and large teeth
•Mama Bear, a medium-sized animal with perfectly combed fur and a slightly angry expression
•Baby Bear, a cute cub with big eyes and a friendly expression
BONUS POINTS
The British Council created a video game from the story of Goldilocks to help kids learn to speak English. You can play it here.
Setting: The game takes place in a little cottage deep in the woods, surrounded by trees. Because the owners are bears, the cottage feels like a cave. The cottage has a kitchen and living room on the first floor, and a bedroom upstairs under the eaves.
There are three exits—a heavy wooden front door, a staircase in the living room leading to the second floor, and a small, round bedroom window just big enough for Goldilocks to fit through.
•The kitchen has a rough wooden table with three chairs. On it are three bowls of porridge. One bowl is frozen solid. One will release a plume of steam when a spoon is inserted. The third just sits there.
•In the living room there are three identical chairs. One is solid, another folds up, and the third is easily breakable.
•In the bedroom there are three identical blankets.
Gameplay: The player must collect an object from each room and avoid the bears as she moves though the house: a bowl, a chair that folds so it can be carried, and a blanket big enough to keep her warm but not too big to carry. As she searches, the bears come home and look around to see what has happened. If the bears catch Goldilocks, she drops the objects she has already collected and is chased out of the house. If she collects all the objects and escapes before the bears catch her, the player wins. Players can adjust the timer to make the game easier or harder.
Challenges: The player must figure out which identical bowl of porridge isn’t too hot or too cold, which chair will fold up, and which blanket is just right—without falling asleep on the bed.
Bonuses: The player can earn extra time before the bears find her by straightening up each room before she leaves.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
Now it’s time to consider and discuss the Essential Question: Why do designers need to think logically about the games they are designing?
GAME JAM ACTIVITY
IDEAS FOR SUPPLIES
board game that is new to you
Learn to improve games by thinking about them as you play or watch others play.
1 Write down the name of the game and the company that made it on a page in your notebook. Also write down the date and who will be playing it. Divide the paper in half by making a 2-column chart like the one below. Mark one half Like and the other half Don’t Like.
2 As you play, write down whatever you and your friends like or don’t like. Try to find four or five positive and negative things about the game.
3 When you’re done playing, write down ideas for fixing the things you didn’t like. For example, if it’s a card game that you found too easy, try adding more cards to each player’s hand to make it tougher. If it’s a board game with dice, try adding a rule that anyone who rolls a double loses a turn.
4 Now try another iteration by repeating Steps 2 and 3, changing one rule at a time. Continue to take notes about what works and what doesn’t until you are happy with the result.
WORD TO KNOW
iteration: using a process that repeats itself, in this case, developing a game, testing it, developing it further, and testing it again.
A CLASS CREATES A GAME
Game designer Amy Kraft of Monkey Bar Collective in New York City helped her daughter’s first-grade class create its own card game based on its favorite science topic—animals. Their idea was to combine the concept of a food chain with math. The class researched the food chain for details about which animals eat which other animals.
Then they needed to come up with some rules. How many cards would there be? How many points would each card be worth? Usually game designers need to balance the system to make sure one element alone doesn’t make a player sure to win. In this game, the students had to make the cards add up to certain numbers. For instance, the numbers of two fish cards had to equal the number on the card of a fish-eating animal. Then the playtesting began. Some students played, while others watched and took notes. They kept refining the rules until everything worked.
They also came up with a catchy name—Animal Food Fight. When the game was finished, the students held a launch party to celebrate their achievement.
CREATE A FOUND-OBJECT GAME BOARD
IDEAS FOR SUPPLIES
large pieces of paper 
dice, game spinner, blank cards, or cut-up pieces of paper recycled materials such as buttons, bottle caps, old dolls, minifigs, or action figures cardstock or cardboard
Mix it up! Start with a new kind of board and see what games it inspires.
1 Sketch a rough outline of a game board using any design you like. You can make a grid like a checkerboard or Scrabble board, a wavy path like the one in Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders, or a square of spaces as in Monopoly.
2 Gather some recycled materials to use as game pieces. Using your board and pieces for inspiration, brainstorm ideas for a new game. Write down as many ideas as you can in 15 minutes—the crazier the better! It doesn’t matter whether they will work or not. Brainstorming is for coming up with lots of new and interesting ideas.
3 Look through your ideas for some that seem possible. You may want to try combining ideas. Choose the best idea and write it up as a very short game treatment. Check the list in the chapter for what to include in the treatment.
4 Make any additions to the board that might be needed to help players figure out what to do, such as colors, labels, or directions. This is just your prototype, so don’t worry if it’s messy! You’ll make a better version later. If you need dice or a spinner, you can borrow them from a game you own.
5 Playtest your game, using the process described above. Make any changes needed and try it again.
6 When you have a working prototype, make a nicer board using stiff cardboard and colorful art materials. Keep playing and refining your game. Keep track of new rules and other changes as you make them.
BONUS POINTS
Have you ever played with a Rubik’s Cube? Erno Rubik, an architect, invented it by accident. He was trying to create a cube with parts that could twist and turn without coming apart. After putting colorful stickers on his cube, he demonstrated how it moved, and then it took him a month to solve his own puzzle! You can try an online version here.
IDEAS FOR SUPPLIES
identical index cards art supplies
Have you ever played Memory? That’s the game where you start with a set of cards in which every card has one other card that matches it. All the cards look the same from the back. You lay the cards out face down in a grid and turn them over two at a time, trying to find a match. You win by matching up the most pairs of cards. In this activity, you will design, prototype, and test your own variation on this classic memory game.
1 Brainstorm some ideas for a new kind of matching card game.
Here are some ideas to get you started, then come up with more of your own.
•Create a code that equates one object with another. For example, a green circle is equal to the word “elephant.” Players get two minutes to memorize the code. Instead of matching two cards that each show a green circle, players match each image to its code word or symbol.
•For each pair of cards you turn over, you might be able to match it in three different areas, such as color, shape, and size of objects. Every area of match gets a point. For instance, a big blue square and a little red square would be worth one point. A little blue square and a little blue circle would be worth two points. The player may choose whether to accept those two cards as a match, or put them back and try for a better match.
•Turn it into a game for two or more players, with one player acting as judge for each round. Using cards with no matches, make each player explain to the judge why their pair should be considered a match.
2 Pick one idea and make a prototype with rough drawings sketched on the index cards. A good number of cards to play with for each round is 16. Your version of the game might use more cards or a different number of cards in each round.
3 Playtest your game. What can you do to improve it? Make changes and try again.
4 When you’re satisfied, create a final set of cards. If you don’t want to draw the final designs on the cards by hand, you can print pictures off the Internet or cut them out from old magazines. Just be sure the images don’t show through from the back. If they do, glue a second blank card to the back to make them thicker.
TRY THIS: You can create a family photo memory game by using pictures of your family! Ask a parent to help you go through your family photo albums and pick out pictures from each of your family members. Include pictures of your family pets and those old black-and-white photos of when your grandparents were little. Be sure to make copies of the photos you choose so that the originals stay intact.
BONUS POINTS
House rules are ways to play a game that make it easier, harder, or more fun in some way. A popular house rule for Monopoly is to give all the fines paid during the game to a player who lands on Free Parking. Does your family play this way?
Choose a favorite story and turn it into a text-based adventure game, then write up a treatment for it.
1 Pick a story to use as the basis of a game. You can choose a fairy tale, your favorite book, or a story you’ve written yourself.
2 Write the story down in the form of a game treatment. Use the Sample Game Treatment for a Goldilocks Text Adventure as a model. Although your text adventure will not include images, be sure to describe the places, objects, and characters so players can create pictures in their own minds.
3 A text adventure usually involves exploring a space with different rooms or areas, so draw a map of the game area. Mark all the objects and characters on it. This is just for planning purposes, so don’t worry about making it perfect.
THINK ABOUT IT: In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to turn your idea into instructions the computer can read and understand! If you’d like to try your hand at creating a playable version instantly, websites such as Twine and Text Adventures are free programs that let you enter in your information and create a game in minutes!
