Microsoft Certified Partner
Download
Report
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?