Chapter 8: The Game Improves Through Iteration

Choosing an Idea

Now that you have a big pile of ideas, what's next?

Make Decisions and execute
Don't be too wed to them if they fail

The Eight Filters


LENS 015: The Lens of the Eight Filters
To use this lens, you must consider the many constraints your design must satisfy.  You can only call your design finished when it can pass through all eight filters without requiring a change.  Ask yourself these key questions:

1. Artistic Impulse ("Does this feel right to me?")
2. Demographics ("Will the intended audience like it?")
3. Experience Design ("Is this well designed?")
4. Innovation ("Is this novel?")
5. Business and Marketing ("Will it be profitable?")
6. Engineering("Is it technically possible?")
7. Social/Community ("Does it meet our social and community goals?")
8. Playtesting ("Do the playtesters like it?")

In some situations, there may be still more filters; for example, an educational game will also have to answer questions liek "Does this game teach what it is supposed to?" If your design requires more filters, don't neglect them.

The Rule of the Loop

The more times your test and improve the design, the better your game will be.

Loop Q1: How can I make every loop count? Loop Q2: How can I loop as fast as possible?

Software Engineering!

Waterfall

Don't!

Boehm Spiral Model

Spirals through 4 quadrants.

Come up with basic design
Figure out biggest risks
Prototype mitigations to those risks
test
Create a more detailed design based on findings
Go to step 2

Q1 Answer: Assess your risks and mitigate them. Q2 Answer: Build many rough prototypes.

Agile

Sprints and whatnot. I know this stuff.

Risk Assessment and Prototyping

LENS 016: The Lens of Risk Mitigation
To use this lens, stop thinking positively and start seriously considering the things that could go horribly wrong with your game.  Ask yourself these questions:
1. What could keep this game from being great?
2. How can we stop that from happening?

Risk management is hard.  It means you have to face up to the problems you would most like to avoid and solve them immediately.  But if you discipline yourself to do it, you'll loop more times, and more usefully, and get a better game as a result.  It is tempting to ignore potential problems and just work on the parts of your game you feel most confident about.  You must resist this temptation and focus on the parts of your game that are in danger.

Tips for Productive prototyping

Answer a Question
Forget Quality
Don't Get Attached
Prioritize your Prototypes
Parallelize Prototypes Productively
It Doesn't Have to be Digital
It Doesn't have to be Interactive
Pick a Fast Loop Game Engine
Build the Toy First

LENS 017: The Lens of the Toy
To use this lens, stop thinking about whether your game is fun to play, and start thinking about whether it is fun to play with.  Ask yourself these questions:
1. If my game had no gal, would it be fun at all?  If not, how can I change that?
2. When people see my game, do they want to start interacting with it, even before they know what to do?  If not, how can I change that?

There are two ways to use the Lens of the Toy.  One way is to use it on an existing game, to figure out how to add more toylike qualities to it -- that is, how to make it more approachable and more fun to manipulate.  But the second way, the braver way, is to use it to invent and create new toys before you even have any ida what games will be played with them.  This is risky if you are on a schedule -- but if you're not, it can be a great "divining rod" to help you find wonderful games you might not have discovered otherwise.

Seize Opportunities for More Loops

Closing the Loop

State the Problem
Brainstorm possible solutions
Choose a solution
List the risks of using that solution
build prototypes to mitigate the risks
test the prototypes. If they're good enough, stop.
State new problems, and go to step 2

How much is Enough?

Look into Mark Cerny - "The Method" Pre-production and production

pre-production until two publishable levels, when you know enough to safely plan out the whole thing

The Plan to Cut Rule

If 50% of your budget was removed, you could still make a shippable game

The 50% rule

All core gameplay elements should be fully playable at the halfway mark in your schedule.

Your Secret Fuel

LENS 018: The Lens of Passion At the end of each prototype, when you are carefully mitigating risks and planning what to do next, don't forget to check how you feel about your game with these important questions:

Am I filled with blinding passion about how great this game will be?
If I've lost that passion, can I find it again?
If the passion isn't coming back, shouldn't I be doing something else?

At the end of every sprint, when you are studying your prototypes and planning what to do next, you must remember to also do a passion check. Passion is the way your subconscious tells you that it is excited about your game. If the passion has gone away, something has gone wrong -- if you can't figure out what that is, it is very likely your game will be dead on arrival. Passion has its dangers -- it is an irrational emotion after all, but you must take it seriously, for more often than not, passion is what knocks down obstacles and carries a game to success.

GrapeSodaGames / learn

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