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How do you like that. I'm right back into efficacious play, now planfully improvising a route by turning what looked like a mistake into an alternative way to go. -David Sudnow, Pilgrim in the Microworld
Iterative Design
A game design education cannot consist of a purely theoretical approach to games. This is true of any design field: designers learn best through the process of design, by directly experiencing the things they make. Therefore, a large part of their training as students of game design must involve the creation of games. As conceptual as this book might seem, its intention is not just to spark debate and analysis but to facilitate the design of games. In this chapter we offer a number of tools for integrating our ideas about games into the process of making them. This book does not provide a hands-on guide to game programming, project management, or other aspects of game development. What it does offer is a way of thinking about the process of designing games. It is a very simple and powerful approach, one that grows out of more than a decade of experience in teaching and designing games. We call this approach iterative design. We are certainly not the first to use this term or the design methodology it represents, but our experience has shown that it is an invaluable tool for any game designer. Iterative design is a play-based design process. Emphasizing playtesting and prototyping, iterative design is a method in which design decisions are made based on the experience of playing a game while it is in development. In an iterative methodology, a rough version of the game is rapidly prototyped as early in the design process as possible. This prototype has none of the aesthetic trappings of the final game, but begins to define its fundamental rules and core mechanics. It is not a visual prototype, but an interactive one. This prototype is played, evaluated, adjusted, and played again, allowing the designer or design team to base decisions on the successive iterations or versions of the game. Iterative design is a cyclic process that alternates between prototyping, playtesting, evaluation, and refinement.
Why is iterative design so important for game designers? Because it is not possible to fully anticipate play in advance. It is never possible to completely predict the experience of a game. Is the game accomplishing its design goals? Do the players understand what they are supposed to be doing? Are they having fun? Do they want to play again? These questions can never be answered by writing a design document or crafting a set of game rules and materials. They can only be answered by way of play. Through the iterative design process, the game designer becomes a game player and the act of play becomes an act of design. Learning to play a game critically, seeing where it excels and where it grinds to a halt, and being able to implement changes that will push the game toward meaningful play are all core game design skills. We have a straightforward rule of thumb regarding prototyping and playtesting games: a game prototype should be created and playtested, at the absolute latest, 20 percent of the way into a project schedule. If a game is a two-week student assignment, the students should be playing a version of the game two days after it is assigned. If it is a commercial computer game with a 15-month concept-to-gold schedule, a prototype should be up and running three months into development-at the absolute latest. Early prototypes are not pretty.They might be paper versions of a digital game, a single-player version of a networked experience, hand-scrawled board and pieces for a strategy wargame, or a butt-ugly interactive mock-up with placeholder artwork. Still, the prototype is more than an interactive slideshow-it is a genuinely playable game that begins to address game design challenges of the project as a whole. The online multiplayer game SiSSYFiGHT 2000 was first prototyped on Post-It notes around a conference table, next as a text-only IRC (Internet Relay Chat) game, and then as a skeletal web-based game, which became the basis for the final application. At each stage, the game prototype was rigorously played, evaluated, tweaked, and played again. Most paper-based game designers follow an iterative design process, but most digital game designers do not. Typically, a commercial computer game is copiously designed in advance, with extensive storyboards and design documents often hundreds of pages long, completed before any actual game production begins. These documents invariably become obsolete as soon as production development starts. Why? Because the play of a game will always surprise its creators, particularly if the game design is unusual or experimental. Even a veteran designer cannot exactly predict what will and will not work before experiencing the game firsthand. Prototype your game early. Play it throughout the entire design process. Have as many other people as you possibly can play your game, and observe them playing. Let yourself be surprised and challenged. Remain flexible. And don't forget to have fun.
Managing game software development or any kind of game development offers its own challenges, and we are not suggesting that iterative design represents a complete development methodology. Our focus is game design, not game development. Iterative design is just one part of a much larger process for moving a game project from concept to completion. But taken on its own, it is an excellent starting point for a rigorous and effective game design process.
