Toy or story

The approach that we're taking to your initial idea phase is not an approach that comes naturally. Usually, new game developers want to start with setting, story, and character, as if writing a book. That's how we've always been taught to begin a creative project. As there's often so much overlap between narrative forms like books, movies, and TV shows, it's tempting to start there. "My game is about a dark, brooding superwarrior named Kane Glorg who doesn't know who his parents are, so he travels the wasted landscape with his two-handed axe and his vicious battle sloth, slicing through hordes of evil slime demons in his ultimate quest to punch Satan in the face."

The take-away from this chapter is that all that stuff is window dressing. When you're just starting out - and unless you're building an explicitly narrative game like a graphic or textbased adventure - story, setting, or character will be the end point, not the start point. Too many would-be game developers get caught up in the epic implications of their story design instead of worrying about what's most important: does my game have a fun, simple mechanic that players will enjoy?

When you're designing a game, you're not creating a narrative. You're creating a toy, which can be wrapped like a sausage roll in flaky layers of delicious storytelling, character arcs, and twist endings, but you need to start with the toy. You need to start with that small, singular piece of joy that puts a smile on your player's face. As Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who created Mario, Donkey Kong, and Zelda, said in his 2007 keynote at the Game Developers Conference, start by imagining your player having fun with your game, and work backwards from there.