Transcript Microsoft Certified Partner

Getting Started in
Game Design
Dr. Lewis
Pulsipher
Copyright 2007 Lewis Pulsipher
Who am I
 Designed my own games while a teenager
 Began playing commercial wargames in 1963
 Played the original Atari 2600 and have
played some PC games heavily, but rarely
play any video games these days; never
owned a game console
 Designer of six commercially-published board
wargames (most recently February ‘06)
 Active designer of board and card games
(playtesters solicited!)
 My main job is teaching networking, Web
July 17,
2015
development
in college
Reality Check
 Almost no one makes a living designing
games
 Most who do work for a game company, not
freelance
 You could spend the same time as profitably
by picking up bottles and cans for deposits
and recycling!
 Most publishers don’t make a lot, either—and
it’s risky
 Many publishers exist largely to self-publish
their own games
July 17, 2015
Reality Check 2
 So if you design games, do it because you
like to, or because you must, not because you
want to make money
– Alan R. Moon, two German “Games of the Year”,
would have had to get part-time job if not for
Ticket to Ride winning
 Recognize that your “great idea” is probably
not that great, not that original, and not that
interesting to other people
 Finally, it’s extra-hard to get into video game
design
July 17, 2015
OK, How much do you make?
 In my experience, royalties are a percentage
of the publisher’s actual revenue
– 5% is most common
 Publisher sells to distributor at 40% of list
price or less; distributor sells to retailer for
10% more
 Internet sales are becoming significant—then
publisher makes 100%
 Shipping costs may be subtracted from
revenue
July 17, 2015
Royalty example
 $40 list game, 5% of $16 = 80 cents
 Per 1,000 copies, $800
 $20 game, $400 per thousand
 Wargame typical printrun is a few thousand
 “Euro” games might go up to 10,000
 Most games sell poorly after first six months,
most are not reprinted
 German “Game of the Year” might sell
250,000 or more, after award
July 17, 2015
What about the biggies?
 In general, the really big companies have
staff to design their games
 Many will not even accept outside
submissions
 Virtually all will require you sign a statement
relieving them of all liabilities
 At least one only works through agents
 In USA, Hasbro owns all the traditional
boardgame publishers such as Parker
Brothers, Avalon Hill
July 17, 2015
Do I need an agent?
 Whatever for?
 Yet, I did for my first game back in the 70s,
in England
– Unfamiliarity
– I could meet and talk with him locally (London)
 Shady “agents” and “evaluators” abound
– Don’t ever get an agent who wants a fee “up
front”
July 17, 2015
Practice and get others to
evaluate
 Diplomacy variants and D&D material in my
case
 Post such things on your or other Web sites
 Analogy:
– Jerry Pournelle (SF writer) says be willing to throw
away your first million words on the road to
becoming successful SF writer
– Similarly, be willing to make lots of games/mods
that don’t make any money on the way to making
(some) money as a game designer
July 17, 2015
Intellectual Property Rights
 Ideas are not important, and not valued!
– Ideas are a dime a dozen: execution is what
counts
 Copyright now inherent
– Forget that “mail to myself” idea
– Registered copyright makes suits much easier to
pursue and more remunerative
 Ideas cannot be protected, only expression of
an idea
July 17, 2015
The idea is not the game
 Novices tend to think the idea is the
important thing
– Ideas are “a dime a dozen”. It’s the execution,
the creation of a playable game, that’s important
 The “pyramid” of game design:
– Lots of people get ideas
– Fewer try to go from general idea to a specific
game idea
– Fewer yet try to produce a prototype
– Fewer yet produce a decently playable prototype
– Very few produce a complete game
– And very, very few produce a good complete
game
July 17, 2015
Licensed Properties
 Tie-ins with movies, comics, books,
etc.?
 Much too expensive
 Not even worth the IP owner’s time to
do the processing for a boardgame—
there’s not enough money in it
July 17, 2015
Boardgame Developers
 You don’t control your own game!
– My experiences –see
http://www.pulsipher.net/gamedesign/deve
lopers.htm
– See also
http://www.pulsipher.net/gamedesign/desi
gningvsdevelopment.htm
– Some publishers are different (e.g. GMT)
July 17, 2015
Submitting Games
 Read the publisher’s requirements
– Some require you to sign a form and seal it in an
envelope
– Some won’t accept unsolicited proposals at all—
this is common
 Expect it to take a long time
 Expect to get rejected
– May have nothing to do with how good your game
is
– Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rejected many times
July 17, 2015
Two forms of game design
 Video games and non-video games
 Scale is different
– “big time” video games are produced by
dozens of people, cost millions of dollars
– “big time” non-video games produced by a
few people with budgets in the thousands
• Yet a few sell more than a million copies
July 17, 2015
Prototypes—”testing is sovereign”
 To best improve a game, you must have a playable prototype
– Firaxis’ Sid Meier-Civilization series, Pirates
– The sooner Firaxis got a playable version of Civ 4, the more they
could learn
– A playable prototype includes “artwork” or physical components,
and rules or programming
 The rules for a non-video game are the equivalent of the
programming of a video game
– Programming must be precise and is very time consuming (game
engines may help in the future)
– A playable set of rules can be much less precise, relying on the
mind(s) of the designer(s), and notes
 It’s also much easier to change the non-video prototype to test
different approaches
 It’s much easier to produce the physical prototype, than to
create the artwork for a video game
July 17, 2015
Learning to design
 So we can have a playable, testable
non-video game much more quickly
than a computer game of similar scope
or subject
 Consequently, it’s much easier to learn
game design with physical games than
with video games!
– Kevin O’Gorman’s concurrence
July 17, 2015
Art vs. Science
 As in many other creative endeavors, there
are two ways of approach
– These are often called Romantic and Classical, or
Dionysian and Apollonian
 Or: art and science
– Some people design games “from the gut”
– Others like to use system, organization, and
(when possible) calculation
 Mine is the “scientific” approach; and that is
more likely to help new designers
– Game design is 10% art and 90% science
July 17, 2015
Who is the audience?
 A game must have an audience
– What are the game-playing preferences of
that audience
– Short or long?
– Chance or little chance?
– Lots of story or little story?
– “Ruthless” or “nice”?
– Simple or complex?
 There is no “perfect” game
July 17, 2015
Genre
 Video games are more limited by genre
than non-video games
 Most video games and many others fall
into a clear genre category
 Each genre has characteristics that
come to be “expected” by the consumer
 Much easier to market a video game
with a clear genre
July 17, 2015
How to design games
 Limits lead to a conclusion:
– Characteristics of the audience (target
market)
• “People don’t do math any more”
– Genre limitations
– Production-imposed limitations
• “Board cannot be larger than X by Y”
– Self-imposed limitations
• “I want a one-hour trading game”
July 17, 2015
Publisher-imposed limits
 Some are publisher preference, some
are market-dictated
 For example: many publishers want
nothing that requires written records in
a game
 Another example: consumers strongly
prefer strong graphics, whether in a
video or a non-video game
July 17, 2015
Self-imposed limits
 You have your own preferences
– Don’t design a game you don’t like to play yourself
– If you don’t like it, why should anyone else?
 Limits/constraints improve and focus the
creative process
– Great art and music is much more commonly
produced in eras of constraints, rather than eras
without constraints
 Example of a limit: I want to produce a two-
player game that lasts no more than 30
minutes
July 17, 2015
Do it!
 Too many people like to think about
designing so much, they never actually
do it
 Until you have a playable prototype,
you have nothing
– (Which is what makes video game design
so difficult)
– It doesn’t have to be beautiful, just usable
July 17, 2015
Design vs. “development”
 “Development” has two meanings
– In video games, it means writing the
program
– In non-video, development (often by a
person other than the designer) sets the
finishing touches on a game, but may
include significant changes
– Development takes longer than design, in
either case
July 17, 2015
The designer’s game vs. the
game that’s published
 Video games are often overseen by the
publisher, who is paying the bills; so it
is modified to suit as it is developed
 Non-video games are often unseen by
the publisher until “done”; some
publishers then modify them, often
heavily
July 17, 2015
Self Publishing
 Do you want to design, or do you want to be
a businessperson?
 But often it’s the only way your game will be
published
 Most self-publishers will lose money NOT
counting the time they spend
 Virtually all lose money if you count the time
they put into the business
 See http://www.costik.com/selfpub.html
July 17, 2015
Brief “What’s Important” on the
business side of game design
 Most people in the business are honest
and try to do good
– It’s too small a business to get tricky, word
gets around
 It really is a small business, and
mistakes are common
 Barring long apprenticeship and great
good luck, you won’t make a living at it
July 17, 2015
Resources about the business
 Game Inventor’s Guidebook by Brian
Tinsman
 “All about publishing” thread on
ConsimWorld
 Lots of books about video game
publishing
 Come to my seminar on Saturday at 2
about process of game design
July 17, 2015
Questions?