Game Design

You sit in your room, thinking about how you can make a game. You want to make a game that will become popular, but you don't know what to do. You have some basic coding knowledge, but you’re having trouble coming up with an idea. We will follow the development of a game and find out how to make one by following these simple steps.

The first step in game design is planning; you want a basic idea of what you need to do. A great way of doing this is to ask people what they would like in a game. If you have a social media following, try polling your audience on what they like in games and base your fundamentals off of that.

Our next step would be to find out what people would like in a  video game. Keep in mind that you are still the one in charge, you can reject things that you don't think would fit in your game, but you should still listen to suggestions.

Inspiration is part of any work ever made, and game design is no different. Let's take a look at some successful games and loom at what makes them memorable. First up is Valve’s Team Fortress Two, a class-based first person shooter with teamwork elements. Lots of people come to TF2  because of the nine distinct classes. One of my favorites is the Scout, an arrogant kid from Boston; he was the youngest of eight boys growing up, and he loved to fight as a kid, but his older brothers always beat him to the fights. He thought,  If I can run faster than my brothers, then I can beat them to the fights! This explains Scout’s fast running speed and doubled capture rates; this class is all about speed. 

Take a look at the Sniper, a support-focused class tasked with taking out key opponents on the enemy team, such as a Medic. Sniper comes from New Zealand but was raised in Australia, hence his accent. Sniper is a professional Hitman. He’s efficient, polite and has a plan to kill everyone he meets. Sniper’s biological father drowned when Sniper broke a glass dome encircling the country of New Zealand as it was expected that magma would cover New Zealand; it was in fact water that covered the country.  

The last Valve character up is the Medic. Taking on a supportive healer role, it's the Medic’s job to make sure his teammates stay alive.  Medic is a crazed German treating his patients more like lab mice than like people, as seen in “Meet the Medic.”  Medic can use charge from healing teammates to make a teammate invulnerable for a short while, which is useful for pushing towards an objective or clearing out large swathes of enemies. This makes the Medic a prime target though, so it's up to Medic’s teammates to defend him so he can heal the rest of the team.

Another great game is Terraria, developed by ReLogic. Terraria attracts players because of its addicting gameplay and strong replay potential. Terraria has four main builds you can play as, adding to the reply potential.  The tech tree in Terraria consists of multiple branches; these all have a separate area in the tech tree, (it's highly simplified) although they divide at first.  They come together at the Lunatic Cultist fight, then they all progress the same way after the Cultist fight. You can lay as a brave knight, harnessing the energy of earth itself manifested into a green saber, or a cunning summoner, using long forgotten magic to spawn minions to do your bidding, eventually harnessing light itself to spawn and slash your opponents with a sword of pure prismatic energy. My favorite is the Ranger, using bows, guns, even rocket launchers to obliterate anyone who crosses you. The final build in Terraria is the Mage, using enchanted weapons and Mana-fueled rods and wands, commanding meteors and typhoons at will. 

In Terraria you can find accessories in your travels, ranging from boots to wings, emblems to magnets. These are extremely helpful in gameplay; most are just simple quality of life things, like running faster or increasing the amount of summons you can have out at a time. If you have the Goblin Tinkerer in your town, you can pay a fee to get a random prefix on weapons or accessories, making them better or worse. 

By now you’ve looked at some games you like, analyzed why you like them and know what type of game you want to make and how to incorporate the elements; now you must choose a game software that supports what you want to make. Unity is a great starter engine, but I recommend you start by making simpler games and work your way up to developing your game. Perhaps you could invest in hiring other game developers to speed up the process of development; this step takes time, LOTS of time.   Just remember to not rush yourself or your employees. 

Now that your game is basically done, you should find playtesters to find glitches and bugs, then patch those before release. If the players find a glitch, then patch it.

There isn’t much to the last step, just keep updates flowing in to make sure the players don't get bored. The more players play, the more popular you will get. More players will make your next release grow even faster.

Games are important in the modern human world; make yours an important part of someone’s day.  From ten people to 10 million,  make somebody's life just a bit more fun.

-Alex