Gene writes:

Have you ever wondered about the first stage of creating a video game? GAMBIT’s Technical Director Andrew Grant along with GAMBIT’s Lead Game Designer, Matthew Weise lead a group of three game designers (Kevin Laughlin, Alexis Brownell and Sophia Foster-Dimino) through the paper prototyping stage of videogame development. Video Produced by Generoso Fierro, Music and Editing by Garrett Beazley.

PART ONE: Andrew and Matthew present our game designers with a concept for a game. Here begins the process of creating the gameplay! Our designers use markers on paper, blocks, string and a host of other tools to make the game a reality.

PART TWO: Our game designers have decided to abandon the “paper” stage of development and go right for the whiteboard to hash out their game.

PART THREE: Design Consultant Tim Stellmach comes by to play and review the prototype the designers have come up with based on the game concept.

If you like these videos be sure to check out episode 2. Cool Stuff!

By popular demand, here are the slides from my web based talk on Rapid Iterative Prototyping. Take a look why don’t you! If you’d like to present this to a class or to someone else feel free to do so, please just give me a credit somewhere.

If you have questions on the talk or one that didn’t get answered during the presentation please feel free to ask in the comments section and I’ll answer it there, alternatively you can just e-mail me. And if this is your first time here then welcome, and be sure to join our twitter/facebook/rss feeds!

Oh man, I’ve gotten soooo many good suggestions for awesome web comics from this talk

If you can’t get enough of Eitan’s talks, you’re in luck! On January 27 at 12pm, Eitan will be presenting an IGDA Webinar on Rapid, Iterative Prototyping.

What do you do if you have no artist, no funding, and the design isn’t even complete? Prototype! In this webinar, Eitan will share some ideas for rapid, iterative prototyping, including how we used it in the development of Slam Bolt Scrappers. You’ll even get to see some of the super early builds we developed using this process. And of course there will be plenty of dinosaurs as well.

Unfortunately, Eitan will not be completing a Super Metroid speed run while giving this talk – but we promise to give you plenty of notice when that does happen.

Today Sharat and I gave a talk at the Singapore MIT GAMBIT game lab on rapidly building video game prototypes. It’s something of a rip off of Ethan’s and my IGCE talk from last month but this has a stronger focus on development and how to make different types of prototypes. I suggest checking it out! For more info on prototyping you can also see my guest blog from last week on Sande Chen’s game design website.

Sande Chen recently asked me to a guest post for her monthly blog on game design. I was happy to help, and honestly a little bit flattered/stupefied that she would even ask me to help. Nevertheless I was happy to help, and I’ve copied the entire post below. It’s a bit of a how to on video game prototyping, with emphasis on getting shit done and why this is important. Enjoy!

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So you’ve got an idea for a game, but you’re missing an artist, you don’t have the design nailed down, you need to find funding, and you don’t know what platform you’re going to develop for, you’re not sure that the concept is even feasible, or you [insert development hurdle of your choice here]. How do you even start? With prototyping!

Prototyping is the process of making a small, crappy, slapped-together version that demonstrates certain key aspects of your final vision. It’s a great way to start making games since it is far less daunting, and during the process you’ll learn a lot about what you should actually do in the full version. Prototypes are throw away, but that’s a good thing since it’ll give you more freedom to experiment in ways you might not normally try.

Starting out

Take stock of what you have, and make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. When we started out at Fire Hose we were 3 MIT nerds with a good amount of design experience. We were especially good at programming and game design, but we completely sucked when it came to art and we had almost no money whatsoever. As a result, we decided to focus on the technology and design, and to just rip off artwork from other games. A larger, more established studio might have strengths of lots of money and a large code base, but weaknesses of time and manpower. Whatever the case may be it’s important to focus on what you’re good at and (for the time being) ignore the rest.

Scoping is really important as it dictates how big the prototype will be. We recommend making a few rounds of prototypes, starting with quick + dirty one day versions, then a 1-3 week build, and then a 2 or 3 month final prototype which is a good vertical slice of what the game eventually might feel like. Of course this will vary team by team, as larger groups can accomplish more, and not everyone has 3 months or so to devote to prototyping (though we certainly recommend spending at least that long if you can afford it). It’s worth noting that there is a limit to how big a prototyping team should be; larger than 10 people will probably not be useful since the goal is NOT to make a final version, but just something quick and dirty that can be tested. We find that 3 – 4 people can do a good job of rapidly comping up with something worth playing with.

Let the development begin!

Once you’ve got your team, get to it! Remember, the standard rules of development don’t apply, so feel free to take shortcuts. Want to steal assets/code from other games? Go for it! Want to use stand in, crummy programmer art? Why not! Code in whatever is faster, not most robust (i.e. python, not C). In fact, you should do whatever is necessary to get it done quickly. We’ve done prototypes where someone sits behind the monitor and reads the spoken parts to the user, pretending to be the computer. Don’t feel bad about taking such shortcuts, remember that it’s all throw away anyway.

The one rule that DOESN’T change during early prototyping is that you need to test, test, test. In fact, you should be testing more than you normally do, since you’re probably throwing more new features in front of your users now than during any other part of development. Test on a weekly basis, ask lots of questions, and try to direct users towards rating the features you actually care about (but don’t be leading when you do this!) It’s amazing how much users are willing to forgive when they are presented with an obviously half-assed prototype, so don’t feel bad about asking for feedback.

Finish the job!

It’s easy to stop after making one prototype and calling it a day, but don’t stop there! Analyze testing results and iterate on the prototype, taking what you’ve learned and making it better in the next version. Feel free to try out completely new, different, orthogonal, or contrary features/designs in subsequent builds, since you’re trying to learn more about what will work. You should also start looking to fix your weaknesses during this phase – hire that artist, find more funding, or start putting together a schedule that is actually appropriate for the full title.

Deadlines are your friends, so be sure to schedule them in. It’s easy to just keep iterating with prototypes forever, don’t fall into this rut. Set hard deadlines for when you will finish certain versions and stick to them. Testing days are generally useful as deadlines since it’ll force you to have finished builds that users can play with.

And when you’re done…

Throw the prototype away and start fresh! Trust me, this is the right thing to do. It feels rotten since you’ve spent a lot of time working on it, but you can’t build off of a hacked together prototype full of spaghetti code, stolen assets, and written in a non-robust language. Prototypes serve a purpose, but should not turn into a final game. The main things that should survive are the design and lessons learned.

Today at the IGC East Ethan and I gave a talk called “Rapid, Iterative Prototyping, or How to Rip Off Dinosaur Comics”. A lot of people were asking, so here’s the slideshow from the talk. Enjoy! I’ll gladly answer any questions in the commnets section.

Fire Hose has some talks coming up! Back to back talks in fact, on May 7th and 8th. Both are in Boston, so if you are in town be sure to stop by and check them out!

What’s that? Can’t afford the conference tickets? Never fear, I’ll be posting a short synopsis of each talk right here on this website. Here’s a sneak peek:

Thursday, May 7th, 10:30 – 11:20 – Rapid and Iterative Prototyping, or How to Rip Off Dinosaur Comics
Ethan and I are going to talk about how to make video games quickly even if you don’t have all the pieces in place. We’ll keep things exciting with lots of jokes, and we’ll be showing off early builds of our current game to illustrate points. The talk is guaranteed to entertain, or we’ll go back in time and save you the 60 minutes by telling you to skip it. You can read more about the talk here or on the conference’s website.

Friday, May 8th, 11:45 – 12:30 – Digital Distribution Panel
I really have no idea what the panel is going to be about beyond the title, but I bet it’s going to be pretty interesting as all three of us panelists come from pretty different backgrounds. My friend Al Reed from Demiurge Studios will be there, and he knows a hell of a lot more than me, so I’m exicted to see what he’s got to say. You can read more about the speakers here but I don’t see a page for our panel. Scot Osterweil and Dave Edery are doing a panel on Serious Games which should be pretty cool too.

The Independent Game Conference East is going to be held right here in Boston this May 7th and 8th. It’s going to be a fun conference where small indie gamers can get together, learn tricks and tips for making games with real impact, and meet their peers. A lot of our friends are going to be there giving talks, including Ravi Mehta (Viximo), Darius Kazemi (Orbus), and Scott MacMillian (Macguffin Games). You can see a full list of speakers here.

But there not the only ones! Ethan Fenn and I are going to be giving a talk as well, titled “Rapid and Iterative Prototyping, or How to Rip Off Dinosaur Comics”. We’re basically going to talk all about the super sneaky ninja techniques you can use to make games quickly before you work out every detail of a game. It’s going to be really fun, and yes, we really are going to talk about how we used Dinosaur Comics. Follow the link for the full talk synopsis -

Full talk description: You want to make a game, but you’re missing an artist, you don’t have the design nailed down, you need to find funding, and you don’t know what platform you’re going to develop for. How do you even start? With prototyping! In this energetic talk we’ll walk through the iterative rapid prototyping process we went through making our first title, and we’ll demo builds created along the way to highlight key points. The lessons we’ll cover are useful for both new developers figuring out how to get off the ground and for seasoned industry vets.

Come check out the conference and our talk if you’re going to be in town!