Proper Planning

Taking a game from concept to finished is not as easy as some people think. Certainly not as easy as I thought at least. It requires a lot of planning, iteration, testing, redesigning, retesting, more iteration and more planning. Most of my project plans have been little more than glorified (and very long) to-do lists. They swiftly grow to to-do piles, to mountains, to colossi. That's a bit melodramatic, but I'll make a point here.

This is a poor practice. It leads to your project becoming a series of boxes you need to tick off rather than a process with deadlines and milestones. Gantt charts help to alleviate this, and I know there are other tools you can use to make the whole process easier. I haven't personally used any of them yet, but there is always hope in the future. These tools (as far as I understand) are better ways of organising those things you need to do and allowing you to ascribe proper deadlines to any of them. It actually sounds fantastic for people like myself, who get easily lost in their own minds and often forget things. Actually, I should do some research before my next project and use one. Or two.

Step 1: Concept/Vision

This is a super important step. This also isn't just saying "I wanna make x game because reasons". You need a proper vision that includes all aspects of your game. For this step, I usually spend a few days rattling a concept around my head and my little red notebook until I have a few pages on the game itself and how it will work. Then I focus on who I am making it for. This helps narrow some things down and gives me the room I need to start culling unnecessary features or out-of-scope ideas. This process is helped along a lot if you're not working solo. This is also where your overall design goals are laid out. If you don't lay out your design goals here, before you do anymore design work, then you run the risk of a mismatch between goals and design. Which is never a good idea. It gives your design context. It means that questions that previously had no right or wrong answers now have definite answers. I can't stress this enough. Don't forget this step.

Step 2: Player Stories

Player stories are something I've newly discovered that are amazing. Basically, (and there are a number of ways to do this which we will get to) they are start to finish rundowns of things players will do in your game. For this project, I did a 5 minute story, a day-to-day story and a week-to-week story to show the different levels of engagement our game would feature. This proved to be very useful in deciding what actual things needed to be made and implemented in the game. Particularly the 5 minute engagement breakdown, as that included everything that would be present in the game over the most likely and most common interaction.

Another way to handle this is project backlogs. There is a great resource for a spreadsheet based backlog done by Mountain Goat Software. I have to use these in the future because they look great. Basically, you use a spreadsheet with 3 main columns. As a..., I want to..., so that.... Easy.

As a Game Designer, I want to design games that matter so that people can see the art in games. It's that simple.

Like I said, I have to use this for my next project. Turning my little red notebook into this would streamline my pipeline so much.

Step 3: Project Timeline

Just as important to include on any project, not just games, is a thorough timeline. There are many tools available to you to make one. But I just use a spreadsheet again. Colour coded and detailed. This is mainly to avoid pipeline jams when working with larger teams. Everyone has a responsibility and a role. They each have a job to complete and a deadline to meet. It's all listed and detailed in the project's timeline.

Step 4: Release Timeline

As I've learnt with SpaceRace it's important to have a release timeline in place. Much like the project timeline, I would do these in spreadsheets. These are more for your marketing and release material. Screenshots, videos, trailers, Facebook pages, Twitter posts, Google Play/AppStore specific requirements. These all need to have deadlines. The end of the pipeline is where when things go wrong, they go very wrong. Take every step you can to avoid ending up there when releaseing your games.

Notes to Self

Be strict on yourself. You just wrote everything you need to do to plan a game. Do it. Every time. Understand and comprehend what you just wrote and take it all on board.

Sources

http://gbgames.com/blog/2016/01/how-to-create-a-game-development-project-plan/

https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/a-sample-format-for-a-spreadsheet-based-product-backlog