- Mobile Game Design Essentials
- Dr. Claudio Scolastici David Nolte
- 1806字
- 2021-07-23 14:16:06
The roles in an indie mobile team
What follows here is a review of the main roles required for an ideal mobile indie team. For each role, we provide a description of duties, skills, personal traits, and the academic formation.
We don't mean that this list of roles is a requirement for any team; it is possible for people getting into the game industry to have different backgrounds.
Also, we don't mean that each role represents a person. There can be people covering more than one role, as it is likely that more people will share one role.
The game designer
The game designer defines what happens in a game and what the player does to progress through it. He is responsible for turning a game play idea into a detailed design document, which is constantly updated and used by all other team members as a reference guide to develop their part of the project.
During the pre-production phase of a game, the designer is responsible for defining what the game is about, its story and the game world, what the game mechanics are, which features the game will implement, what its Unique Selling Points are, and its main competitors.
This information flows into the pitch document of the game, a sort of presentation document of a game-to-come, usually presented to potential investors to get the approval on the project, as for example, with the videos on Kickstarter. We will address the pitch document again by the end of the book, when we will create one for a mobile game.
During the production phase, the work of a game designer consists of checking that all the team members work towards the realization of the vision he has in mind. With the producer, the game designer acts as the coordinator of the project and a living wiki. Whenever a team member has a question on how a specific piece of game should work or look like, he will look to the game designer to provide the answer. Be ready for that and know your game!
Game design starts with a good idea. It can be a nice game mechanic, the idea of a cool character or a piece of a story: anything can provide the inspiration for a good game. A popular indie game called Braid finds its premises in the consequences of a bad love delusion.
The next step is to convey this idea to the rest of the team in a way that ensures everyone understands what the idea is. This sounds simple, but is far from it. A game designer needs a wide variety of skills as well as good ideas. Good ideas are plentiful, everyone has a few. The trick is getting something built that somewhat resembles that good idea. The main tool the designer uses to convey his/her idea to the other members of the team is, as we have already said, the design document.
The designer should have a working knowledge of the team's skills, such as art, sound, programming as well as a background in playing games. A designer needs the ability to analyze game play and to articulate what works and what doesn't work in a game.
Since mobile game development is involved here, the designer should also have a thorough knowledge, from both commercial and technical perspectives, of the mobile platform: trends, technical advancements and solutions, successful genre and control schemes, profitable business models, strengths, and weaknesses. We expect to provide you with such fundamentals within this book!
There are several tools the designer is expected to be able to use to accomplish his/her tasks.
- Pencils and paper: Any game mechanic description should begin with a sketch of some sort to explain how it works. If you can't sketch the idea for a game mechanic, it probably isn't a good mechanic.
- Text editors and software: To create mind maps and schemes, text editors and software are a strongly recommended requirement, as they are necessary to create documents and presentations that can be shown and shared with the other team members to better communicate the ideas behind a game and throughout all its development process. Spreadsheets with data and formulas are included.
- Image editors: These are necessary as well to create schemes, fake screenshots, basic level sketches, and any other reference image that can be helpful to convey the idea the designer has in mind. A design document with no images is not a good one.
It is also very likely that the game designer is required to create the so-called white boxes for the game levels, at least the main ones. In such cases, the ability to use 3D modeling software to create geometries becomes very important, as well as an advanced knowledge of the most popular game engines to create basic terrains and the relevant geometry of a game level.
In a small team, the designer can be accounted for practically implementing the specific aspects of a game. Depending on his/her background, he can help the programmer with additional coding and scripting, he can be in charge of level design or help the artists with graphic assets, he can take care of updating a developer's blog for the project for communication purposes, and he is responsible for designing and managing testing sessions of the game during its development.
Being in charge of so many different tasks, a game designer needs many other skills to accomplish all of them. Some of these skills are acquired during high school studies, while others require academic studies or experience coming from confronting specific working situations, so it takes time to develop them.
- Communication: The number one most important skill for a game designer is communication. Being able to talk to a programmer, artist, writer, tester, sound designer, producer, marketer, and financier in a way they each understand is crucial to the success of your project.
- Technical writing: Formal technical writing skills are also very important for the game designer. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling are essential for creating a clear design document. The design document is the source your team will go to when they have questions. Keeping it easy to read and up to date is crucial for the success of your project.
- Drawing: A designer should be able to draw at least a bit. Mocking up screens is essential for the design document. Knowing how to use Photoshop and/or Visio will aid the designer greatly. A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in game design.
- Programming\Scripting: A designer should have an understanding of the principles of programming. You don't need to be able to actually write code, but it wouldn't hurt. Knowing the basics of programming will allow you to format the information in your design document to best serve the programmer.
- Scripting languages: Familiarity with scripting languages, such as Java or LUA, will allow you to directly interact with the game engine your programmer has built, saving time and money. You can also test your own ideas without using up the programmer's work cycles.
- Math: A designer should know math, at least to algebra level. When boiled down to the basics, games are a set of math problems. This sounds boring, but go back and look at the paper and pencil version of Dungeons & Dragons. It's all statistics!
- Finance: The game designer must understand the costs of the decisions they make. Changing direction mid-project can cost a lot of money/time. Prototype early and often to make sure the design works.
- Psychology: Yes, games punch some very basic human feedback buttons, such as reward behavior, aversion feedback loops, and the like. Understanding what these are will allow you to build a truly addictive experience. Yeah, that sounds bad, but it's what we do!
How does one learn how to design games? A good place to start is by using pencil and paper, a deck of cards, a chess board, poker chips, whatever is at hand. Take an existing game and modify it. ForAC example, tick tack toe is an interesting game to start with. Fundamentally, it's a broken game, since the player who moves first will always win unless they make a mistake. Try to think of ways to fix that: a bigger board, different types of moves or pieces, add dice and/or cards, and so on. A game designer is a person who asks himself how things work and how their behavior can be described by rules.
As Raph Koster (a brilliant game designer) once wrote:
"Games are not their graphics or their frame rate, they are their rules."
A good rule of design is to take the action the player will do most often and prototype it. If your testers enjoy it, perfect it and set it aside. Then define the second most frequent action the player will do, find how it will complement action #1, implement and test it. Continue on to action #3, repeat the process. For a first time project, it's probably best to lock down the design at action 3-5. Every action added will significantly increase the complexity of testing and debugging.
A designer must be open to criticism coming from other team members and testers. Ideas come and go and it is very important for a designer to never feel too attached to any of them.
Finally, if you want to be a designer, you need to have a life. Go out and get a liberal arts degree, take up a sport, make lots of friends, and have adventures. All of these things will enrich your life and give you the material to make great games.
Most videogame designers have a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Arts, Computer Engineering, or Experimental Psychology.
Though not strictly required, a strong University background can help you develop those skills that can get your first step into the gaming industry.
More important, a University background can help you develop that specific forma mentis that makes you willing to keep learning as you progress in your career. That is really important when your line of work has to do with technologies and habits that change so fast, as in the world of game development.
In the last few years, several universities and private schools worldwide have started offering various courses in game design that teach the basics of this extraordinary discipline.
No game is ever done!
You will always find things you want to change. It is the nature of the beast. Usually you just run out of resources and say, "it's good enough". If you have ideas on how to improve the game, file them away and save them for the sequel.
More about the role of game designer and his/her tasks can be found at the following links:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-designer
http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/09/26/mailbag-i-want-to-become-a-designer/#more-4280