MAIN QUEST OVERVIEW

From Level 1, you will jump right into making games. Your first games may take you less 15 minutes to design (and probably won't be very good), but as you learn about design concepts and acquire the tools you need, your game designs will improve.

The purpose of the MAIN QUEST is to gain some experience in taking a game through the entire process from concept to completion. Because of this, do not simply start with an existing design (such as an earlier game you created in this course, or an idea you’ve had floating around in your head for awhile). You have plenty of time – the entire rest of your life! – to take your existing projects further. For now, get some practice at all of the stages of designing a game.

The Process

The process we will follow is going to go something like this:

STEP 1: Generate Ideas
These do not have to be fleshed out in any meaningful way, they are just “seeds” that can serve as starting points. You will choose one to serve as the basis for your Main Quest. Parameters for ideas have been created based on your level of game design experience - BASIC, INTERMEDIATE, or EXPERT.
STEP 2: Design Playable Prototype
You will create the core mechanics of the game. The game does not yet have to be complete with all details fleshed out, but it does have to be at the point where you can start playing it with yourself (even if you have to make up a lot of the rules as you go along). You’ll play your own game in private, working on it until the point where you have a complete set of rules.
STEP 3: Playtesting
Start testing with designers and non-designers. Bring in some close friends, family, confidantes, or other participants of this course. Share your project with them, play the game with them, and get feedback. The key here is to figure out if the core of the game is fun at all (if it is not, you can start over with one of your other ideas or else modify your current one and try again). When you have the core of the game working and it is meeting its design goals, it will be time to get into the details. You’ll playtest with new players who have not seen the game before, and observe them from a distance to see what they do. Once you are confident that your game is solid, you’ll explore “blindtesting” – a playtest where you are not present at all.

NOTE: Use the FORUM to recruit other students to help play-test your games!
STEP 4: Analyze Your Design
After all of the details are complete in your game, it is time to tweak the small things. Make sure the game is balanced – that is, that there are no strategy exploits that are too powerful, and that all players feel like they have a reasonable chance of success. Lastly, as the game nears completion and the mechanics become solidified, you’ll consider the “user interface” of your game – the visual design of the physical components that will make the game as pleasant, easy to learn and easy to play as possible. Once everything is set, you’ll spend a short amount of time on the craft of the physical components, making the artwork and assembling the components in their final form.

Keep in mind that game design is an iterative process, and that at any point in the process you may find a reason to return to earlier steps to redo something. This is fine, and it is to be expected. This is also the reason why it is better to kill an idea early than to abandon it late. If you find that you have to start over from scratch, you’ll have more time remaining if you start over in the first week (as opposed to restarting the project in the last week).

What if I want to make a complex and long game?

As mentioned earlier, given equal amounts of time, a shorter, simpler game will give a better experience than a longer, complicated game. A game that takes ten hours to play to completion will give you fewer iterations than a game that can be played in five minutes.

What If I Don’t Want To Make a Board Game?

If you have a strong interest in board games and are excited to get started, don’t let me keep you. Realize that you are in the lucky minority.

If you are still more interested in making video games, I’ll remind you that the vast majority of your time making a video game will be spent creating art assets and writing programming code, and if you want to learn game design then you should choose an activity where the bulk of your time is spent designing the game. The principles and concepts of game design are mostly the same, whether you work in cardboard or code, so if you’ve got the skills to design video games you should be able to use those same skills to make a board game.

If you are interested in creating tabletop role-playing games. I’ll remind you that evaluating the design of an RPG is tricky, since a sufficiently skilled GM and players can salvage a weak system (or, sufficiently inexperienced players can ruin a perfectly good system). This will make playtesting far more difficult to evaluate, so you will find it useful to practice on a board game project first. Note that the line between board game and RPG has blurred in the past few years, given narrative-heavy board games like Android and mechanics-heavy RPGs like D&D 4th Edition.

How much should I spend on the Design Project?

It's up to you. Cost is primarily determined by the game components. Somewhere between $25-$50 should be reasonable.

If you have additional real-world constraints (limited by budget, resources, network, time, etc.), consider those to be part of the project. A designer should not complain that they lack the resources to make the game they want; rather, they should find a way to make the best game possible with the resources they have.