The Serious Art of Designing Fun

In my previous post, I talked about defining the game goal(s) and its topic (see 'The birth of a game design'), this time we'll start talking about defining the game requirements.

Whereas a game's goal(s) and topic only impacts the design, the game requirements have a critical impact on the technical specifications, the design details, and the game content. The requirements that I like to define as early as possible are:

1. The audience
2. The platform
3. The genre
4. The pacing

Follow up:

The audience

Defining the audience is probably the most critical item to nail down as soon as possible. It helps define assumptions you can make regarding their expectations and their game playing skills. In turn, this information helps define the complexity (or simplicity) of game design elements such as the user interface, its mechanics and its activities. The age group factor also impacts the game content - its cultural references (Josh Groban vs. Ashley Tisdale), even its language (l8r vs. bye).

• What is the target age group?

  By far, the target age group has the largest impact. The wider the target age group, the less commonalities you'll find. The more focused the target age group, the less people will play your game.

• What is the target gender split?

  What is the ratio of males to females who will be playing your game? For most game designs, its goal(s) and topic will have already implicitly defined the target gender split. Still, it never hurts to call it out explicitly - it's another factor that can be used to measure the success of a game in meeting its requirements.

• What are the target audience traits?

  What are some of the core interests you expect in your target audience? For example, do you expect them to enjoy turn-based board games? Perhaps, you're developing games for users who have never played a computer/console game before.

Make sure to do your research - there are lots of statistics you can harvest from the web. Sites such as Gamasutra, Gamespot, and GameFAQs, and Indie Gamer are a good place to start. Look at download statistics from sites such as Tucows, and Top Downloads. Finally, don't be afraid to look into non-gaming related sources for information - you'd be surprised what you can gleam from websites such as IMDB and the BBC.

The platform

By platform, I'm referring to the hardware requirements and the operating system requirements.

• Are you building a game for Windows, MacOS, or the iPhone? Perhaps you're targeting all three!
• What are the memory, CPU, and operating system requirements in order to run the game decently?
• Is it an online game, a web browser game, or an offline game?
• Does the game come on a CD? Is it downloaded? Perhaps its both?

Platform requirements have a critical impact on how you build the game, what you can use to build the game, and how long it will take For example, if you're intending to build a game for Windows and and MacOS, you might opt to use Blitz, Torque, Unity, or roll your own engine. However, if you're building a game for Windows and XBox360, your choices are XNA, Torque, or roll your own engine.

Platform requirements which are thoroughly defined increase the likelihood that the game will be developed on budget and on schedule. Nothing impacts a game development schedule more than having an unforeseen need to migrate a game from one platform to another.

For platform requirements, look for hardware specification recorded on popular commercial and shareware titles. Make sure to look at specifications for software that your audience uses. Steam is a fantastic resource for finding statistics on platform requirements.

I'll talk about the remaining 2 game requirements next week.