Where to Start When Making a Game

You've had a great idea for a new game! It's so cool and you are fired up due to the amazingness your brain has bestowed upon you. It will surely be the funnest game of all time. How had no one thought of these ideas before? It's going to be great. So what do you do next?

If games are things that can cause the light behind your eyes to come on. A pursuit that you can spend hours upon hours upon hours enjoying. Then chances are you have had the experience I talk about above. It can be a daunting challenge to go through the process to translate this lightning strike of inspiration into a finished game made harder since most people just don't know how to get started down the road that will get them there.

I will outline the process that has worked for me in the past. It's my creative process. Take whichever parts that make sense to you and do with them what you will.

• Step 1: First thing is first. Get yourself a notebook. NOW! Something you can easily have with you all the time to take notes in. Whenever you have an idea for a game write the idea down in your notebook within a short period of time from when it occurs to you. So within a few hours to a day or two. Outline the overarching idea of both themes and mechanics so that there is an overview of the game. At this point it is important to have an idea what players would do on their turn and how a player would win the game or how the game ends. This forces you to organize your thoughts on the idea and introduce some logic to your mechanical or thematic inspiration. Additionally you now have pretty detailed notes so that when you return to the idea in weeks, months, or years you will remember the gem of the idea that originally excited you. Whenever you have an idea and think to yourself "That's so good. I will remember it." you are fooling yourself. You won't remember it.

• Step 2: Now you have returned to an idea that is in your notebook and you are going to make it into a reality. Start by writing a 1-2 (3? maybe) page overview/outline of the game. Take this opportunity to describe in some detail how the mechanics work and list all of the components that will be included in the game along with what your target price point, number of players, and play time is. Do not write a rulebook in this overview. Just have a concrete idea of what game play is like and why all of the component's called for are needed for the game. A rulebook is to long with to much detail and we are looking for a guiding document rather than something that includes all of the technical nuance to hold all of the rules of the game. I normally type these up as a file on my computer. This is the first "file" for the game and starts the process for me. So if I write one of these files I am more serious about turning my idea into a game than I am about ideas that are only in my notebook.

• Step 3: Using the outline you typed up in the last step build a physical prototype of the game. Make a board, mock up cards and tokens, procure meeples or playing pieces, proxy miniatures, etc ... This step can be a bit daunting if you have never done it before and eventually I am sure I will write other articles about how to go about some of these things. The biggest thing to remember is that at this point how the game looks doesn't really matter so long as it can be played. It is worth noting that most people find it easier to associate the effects of game pieces or cards with an image. So even throwing unique clip art on each component can help players along. You are going to make lots of changes and the prototype will have to be rebuilt to varying degrees each time you do. So the goal is to prototype in a way that lets you play the game as soon as possible rather than turn out beautiful close to finished product layouts. You may find it helpful to write a short rules doc at this point but DO NOT write a rule book. A comprehensive rulebook takes a lot of time and you would need to rewrite it drastically many times during the prototyping and play testing process. It is easy to get caught up in writing a comprehensive rulebook but it is a waste of time to do so until you have played the game enough to figure out what works and what doesn't. Once you know what the rulebook needs in it from having played the game it becomes much easier to write it as you are explaining a situation you already understand rather than trying to create something while also describing the thing you are creating.

• Step 4: Play your prototype! Play it with your friends. Play it with strangers. Play it in a house with a mouse. Give it to groups of people to play without you. Make changes based on their comments and feedback. Repeat the process. Repeat it again. REPEAT IT AGAIN. ITERATE! Play the game as many times as you can. If you can get to 100 plays in about 3-6 months you should hopefully have a pretty polished game. This of course varies on how long of a play time that the game has. I would shoot for 50-100 plays for a board game if possible. For a two player versus card game I would shoot for more like 200+ plays. It can be very hard to get through this many plays in the time period I just quoted. Many times when you make a game, by the time it comes out in a finished form you would rather not play or see it ever again. While many large publishers have open beta testing programs there is no substitue for playing the game yourself with many different groups. Open beta test programs tend to work best for feedback on development work for games that already exist and have a big enough audience that cares about providing feedback. Watch players while they are playing. Are they watching the plays of other players? Are they looking at their cards or postion, thinking about what they are going to do? Or are they looking around thinking about other things only engaging when prompted to take their turn? Looking at their phone? The look in peoples eyes and how they phyically play the game will tell you whether you have created something that is fun. Actions and body language are much more telling than words in this situation. You should listen to their words and get what you can from feedback, but if people just aren't engaging and staying engaged then something is wrong mechanically or possibly with the whole idea. While it can be frustrating to rework something you think is awesome or scrap an idea entirely after having built a prototype (possibly multiple prototypes). It is better to determine you are headed in the wrong direction and correct your course, or to start over on an entirely new idea that might actually work, than to push on and finish something that just isn't fun. At some point you and people you regularly test the game with will have less feedback on mechanics and feedback will start being mostly about certain cards, board positions, or game pieces. Then the smaller scope feedback will also trickle off and most feedback will be something like "I could see it being either how it is or this other way." At this point you can be fairly confident in your game and move on from testing.

• Step 5: Now that you have played the game a lot, fixed many issues, and applied polish. It is time to write a final rulebook. This should be fairly straightforward at this point since you are just explaining how to play from experience. While this is the final comprehensive document focus on brevity and being to the point. Also I would caution against trying to explain every corner case and exception in every spot that they are relevant. State the rules clearly. Interaction with components and interpretation can be left to players to figure out. If your game ends up being played competitively then you will get many opportunitys to release FAQ's and other ways to clarify interactions.

• Step 6: Be done! The longer you have the more you will continue to tinker around with your game turning the wrenches and toggling the knobs. Making a little change here and there. This isn't really bad per se but the play testing process should have polished the game up to a finished state. That should be the goal. So, once you have gone through that process and writing your final rulebook it is time to call it done and move on to your next game! Your game is your baby and of course you should want it to be the best it can be but the more and more time you put into the more fun or money (or whatever it is you are hoping to get out of the experience) you need to get to make it worth your while. So resist the temptation to endlessly tinker looking for that elusive 1% increase in quality. It is very probable that the vein is mined out and there is not really a whole lot of gold to get out of it anymore. Diminishing retuns.

Good luck on your games and I hope this has helped you get going in the right direction! If you have questions or want to have a discussion with me about this article please feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter at the links embedded in each word respectively.