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7 Tips For Successful Video Game

Prototyping - Department of Play
Will Freeman

11-14 minutos

If you want to make a game that succeeds creatively and

commercially, prototyping will almost certainly be a key step in the
design and development process.

Prototyping serves as a point at which early ideas and concepts

can be crystallised, pivoting the process of game design into the
production pipeline phase. And while many design changes will
likely be implemented after prototyping concludes, it can be
powerful in defining your final product.

Chances are, if you’ve put any time into the study of game design
and development, you already know that sketching out a game’s
core elements is a vitally important process. And yet many
misconceptions about how to get the most from prototyping persist.
It is in many cases a rapid process, with a focus on ideas over
polish, and yet there is considerable nuance to the art of
prototyping. It can often thrive as a deliberately rough and ready
process, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be handled with care.
Which begs the question; how do you get prototyping right?

This article offers seven tips for those looking to understand and
implement impactful videogame prototyping.

1. Start With A Clear Vision

While prototyping is about embracing experimentation, it is

essential to set certain parameters and framings. Particularly the
game’s vision and listing the unknowns.

Understanding what your game is, and, more importantly, why it

should be made is the key to any hit. This vision gives everyone on
the team the context to make decisions and so autonomy, resulting
in quicker and more accurate iterations..

Secondly, prototyping is about gaining understanding about a game

vision, so state the unknowns you and the team are seeking. It may
be something very specific: ‘Can this control scheme work?’, or
broader such as ‘can this be fun?’ Either way having the questions
at front of mind will allow you to prioritise your work and focus only
on what’s needed.

2. Don’t Paper Prototype

Paper prototyping – generally using paper, pen and other basic

stationary to explore game design concepts – has a captivating
allure. The notion that lavish, deeply interactive games can start life
in such a basic form has long beguiled press and consumers, and
to an extent, the industry itself. Educators can be particularly
enthusiastic about the form, and it arguably has a function as an
accessible way to begin to understand game design as a whole. In
some cases, paper prototyping can work well – perhaps if you are
making a traditional card or board game in digital form, or working
with a puzzle concept or trivia game.

But by the same logic, it can also stifle genres that are challenging
to represent in cutout sketches and graph paper. You can’t, for
example, use paper prototyping for making arcade or action-
orientated games. In those forms, controls and dexterity are
important; but impossible to capture via pieces of paper. Using
paper prototyping in those cases can even erode potential game
feel, and has a knack for pushing any genre towards a card or
board game feel. Paper prototyped action games can too easily feel
like they are made up of tokens, cards and chance rolls, rather than
characters, narrative and action.
Hideo Kojima fleshing out Metal Gear concepts with LEGO
prototyping. Back then it make sense. There’s little reason to take
this approach today.

Additionally, paper prototyping is rarely faster than other

contemporary methods. It’s worth noting here that ‘paper
prototyping’ also covers examples where other simple physical
materials are used to explore the concepts of a game’s design.
Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima famously used LEGO bricks and
camcorders to prototype the early 3D entries in his acclaimed
series. The logic at that time made sense.

25 years ago game development tools did not offer the potential for
rapid workflows. Today, however, the simple primitives and free
moving cameras in Unity, Unreal and other engines offer
considerably faster ways to build functional game concepts, and
are supported by a bounty of free or affordable assets and plug-ins.
Much quicker and more flexible than scissors and card.

3. Be FBR!

Being FBR (‘Fast, Bad and Rong’) captures the spirit of what
prototyping is: Making mistakes, quickly.. ‘Fast, Bad and Rong’
communicates the idea as a functional sentence, even if it isn’t
perfect. But how can you be FBR?

Don’t worry about good: Prototyping is about exploring the

potential of your ideas – not making something polished or final.

Make mistakes, quickly: Prototyping is where the cheapest and

most consequence free mistakes happen, so make ASAP. Noodling
over a grand plan when you could be prototyping can waste
valuable time. Equally, that grand plan may fall apart if you don’t
give proper attention to prototyping.

Be brave, don’t fear failure: Making a shit prototype is good, it

means you didn’t sink years of your life and millions of dollars into a
shit game. But keep making bold, interesting decisions and you’ll
soon have a bold and interesting game. Even if not on the first
(second or third) try.

4. Make It Look Bad

It can be tempting to pack your prototypes with vibrancy and

flavour, little bits of refinement here and there. The thing is, that can
prove something of a distraction, and muddy clarity around the
direction the prototype is taking things in.

It’s all too common to see prototypes made up of a range of

colourful and eye-catching assets from different asset packs – or
‘asset pack bashing’ as we call it at Department of Play. That
approach can leave the prototype looking janky and mismatched.
As much as we assert the value of FBR, do not build something
that misrepresents the game you are trying to make, or that sports
such a clash of aesthetics that it becomes distracting.

An almost nice looking prototype can prove significantly challenging

to those less familiar with the technical side of game development.
Leaving them to judge on merits other than the gameplay.

A simple technique to solve this issue is to ‘grey box’: remove all or

some of your assets and materials and replace them with grey,
blueprint or a wireframe material. This gives a more consistent look
and signals strongly ‘this is placeholder artwork’, allowing everyone
(yourself included) to focus on what matters: The gameplay.

Prototyping the visual style can be done in parallel with concept

sketches and mock-ups.

5. Build Only What You Need

As you approach prototyping, it can be easy to feel you should build

out every element of a game. That may be required in some cases
– and shouldn’t be avoided by default when games are very simple
or straightforward – consider a simple tile-matching or other puzzle
game. But in many cases, a lean, economical approach is best.

Always challenge yourself with the question: ‘is this needed to

explore the game’s design and function?’ Focus on prototyping
elements that are about the game’s mechanics, interactions and
systems of your game. There will be exceptions, of course; a
hypothetical creative illustration game where interaction with its
aesthetic is core to the user experience might require prototyping of
that aesthetic, for example.

Overall, though, don’t be afraid to hack your way around features:

Sometimes an existing video may suffice as a placeholder asset,

cutscene, or even a visual backdrop.

Often a non-functional wireframe is all that is needed to represent

something that is way too complex to build or inessential to the core
experience.

Many game elements can be automated or faked, such as bots for

multiplayer games.

Equally, in many cases you may be able to explain context to a user

as they play, rather than putting in a time consuming feature or
function, such as tutorials or UX prompts.

6. Build a Template Project

While prototyping is so often about working fast and lean, it can still
take a full day to set up a scene in an engine like Unity, especially
when considering the effort of integrating assets packs, plugins,
code frameworks, controller mapping and so on.

Are you making prototypes frequently or constantly around similar

genres and settings? Then consider stripping back a developed
prototype to its core elements. That gives you a base project that
you can copy, making each subsequent prototype easier and more
efficient.

At Department of Play we have developed DoPUF (Department of

Play Unity Framework). This consists of:

A code architecture that necessitates quick to write, decoupled

code. F

Classes that handle basic game logic, like levels, as well as saving,
UI and sound.

Our favourite asset packs, including 2D, 3D and audio.

Common mobile functions, like notifications, in-game ads and

haptics.

Analytics and advertising SDKs.

DoPUF lets us build and deploy a test project to the store within an
hour, meaning we can quickly turn prototypes into distributed
testing, or even soft launches within a week.
Passenger plane autopilot systems use a software engineering
technique known as ‘design diversity’. The approach happens to
have a lot to teach about game prototyping.

7. Be Like Autopilot

Aeroplane autopilot systems are commonly engineered using a

safety-focused approach called ‘design diversity’. In many cases
three separate teams will each make distinct autopilot software that
later exists as a functional whole within an aircraft’s systems.
However, the trio of softwares will run on distinct computers and
may even deliberately use entirely different architectures. When in
use in a plane, all three software systems will have to reach the
same conclusion before a proposed course of action is
implemented by the aircraft. This system is employed to avoid bugs
causing potentially devastating outcomes.

While bugs in prototypes may not be quite so dangerous, the

design diversity approach can be highly useful as a means to
identify valuable design findings.

Having more than one team prototyping your game,can lead to

divergent results and more diverse, informed insight. Every team
has different backgrounds and experiences meaning they’ll solve
problems differently. These teams can highlight both ideas full of
potential, and help accelerate the process to conclusions such as a
game’s lack of viability.

Third-party external teams can help bring this design diversity to

your process. Department of Play has a prototyping service
available that can complement your own, by delivering your team
quick, creative, device-playable games.
Conclusion

The tips shared here do not intend to present an absolute or

complete guide, because the rules of prototyping change with each
individual game. We hope you find them useful, and we’re always
here to discuss prototyping – or any element of your game, from its
design to monetisation and market performance. If you have any
questions, or want to talk more, do get in touch.

About the author

Will Luton

Founder at Department of Play | + posts

Department of Play founder and Chief Product Consultant. Will has

worked at the likes of SEGA and Rovio, took Angry Birds 2 top 50
grossing and is author of Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games
You Give Away.

Will Freeman

Will Freeman is a freelance video game journalist, editor,

copywriter, consultant, and event curator, having served and
covered the game industry for over 15 years. Having worked with
The Guardian, The BBC, BAFTA, Edge, Ukie, Tiga, Vice,
GamesIndustry.biz, PocketGamer, MCV, Develop and more, he is
also a devotee of arcade gaming, technology and culture, a
published author, and a competitive yo-yoer.