MGDA: Part 2, Design Phase

(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)


To advance to this phase, you should now have a potential idea that you would want to develop into a video game. Preferably something you want to do with a passion.

In this phase, your task is to turn that idea into a functional game concept. You do this by making all of its features as clear as possible for yourself. This is so you know exactly how the game looks and functions in its finished state and how are you going to get there. Thats the entire goal of the design phase.

During this phase, these words are most sacred: Focus on what matters.

MGDA: Part 1, Idea Phase

(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)


What is a video game?

Before I begin to teach you how to make a video game, lets see what a video game really is, what it can do and what uses does it have.

A video game is an interactive program that puts player in a world with a set of rules he/she has to follow to achieve a goal. Thats the premise.

MGDA: Part 0, Foreword

(MGDA means "Making a Game: the Direct Approach" and it is a series of blog posts meant to educate people to learn how to make a video game professionally.)


I want to start off this series with a blog post that explains a couple things.

So far, I've gotten a basic layout figured out and roughly organized, so typing this out should come out rapidly.

Firstly, I needed a way to identify which blog posts are related to this series, so I made a short acronym for this series. Its MGDA and it stands for Making a Game, the Direct Approach. After the acronym will be an indication which part is in question, starting with this being part 0. This is all just to make it stand out better in the archives for future readers.

Incase you're new here, I'm making a series of blog posts, that explain how you can make a video game from start to finish, using crystal clear steps and all the needed details to make you understand what it takes to make a game and be succesful while doing so. This is aimed for both beginners and experienced game developers out there.

News: New series and future posts.

Now that I'm done with the "what makes a good game" series, I'd like to announce a new series of blog posts.

This new series will be called "How to make a game, the direct approach".

This will be a series of blog posts that explain the entire process of creating a video game from start to finish, either alone or in a team, with clear, detailed steps how to make it happen.

Longevity and the infinite game.

Making a game last long is a challenge. How to achieve replayability? How to extend the game? How to make people coming back to it for more? How to do all this, but still keep the game fun and worth playing?

Well, how about making the game last forever and have endless fun gameplay? It is possible, althought it does require good specific design and certain features to make it work. I'm going to tell you how to do it and what is needed to make it happen.

Accessibility and Usability.

Easy to learn, hard to master.
Deep, but approachable.

That is the ideal goal for any game to aim for. The question of how accessible and how usable your game is can determine how easy it is to learn it and how fun it is to play. It has many aspects to it and I'm going to talk about all of them related to this topic.

This is something you do not want to screw up. It has been the downfall of many projects, both in the industry and the indie scene. So read up to understand how to ensure the success of your game.

Make them believe its real.

Believability. This is the art of presenting something that could potentially exist in the real world, even though its fiction. I'm not talking about realism in here, although it helps. What I'm talking about is making things look, feel and act as you would expect it to, despite the fact it doesnt exist in the real world. This is useful because it helps for a player to grasp ideas more quickly and immerse in game universe much more comfortably, and thus, enjoy the game better and learn it quicker.