Think Big, Design Small
Thursday, June 15th, 2006One of the largest issues in game development is that of scope management, particularly in this day of MAG (multi-action genre) games such as Grand Theft Auto. Game designers have a tendency to think big; more and bigger levels, more features. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact thinking big is critical to the process of developing innovative gameplay and innovative gameplay is the key to being successful as a company. The real trick however is to know when you have crossed the limit of your time and budget. This comes with experience. Veteran designers develop a sixth sense for knowing when they are approaching the limits of feature implementation for their projects; however, even the most senior among us still need to step back from time to time and begin cutting to stay on schedule. A secondary effect of scope management arises when designers are not willing to cut features and instead of doing one or two things well, their game ends up doing several things poorly. There are a few simple guidelines you can follow that will help you keep your game design lean, while maintaining fun and interesting gameplay.