The first document that a game designer creates is called a one pager. The one pager explains and sells your game’s concept to publishers and devel-opers and puts your ideas and vision into a concise document. A one pager can be one or two pages (double spaced preferred but single spaced in lieu of a partial third page).
The one pager always begins with your game’s title. You are selling the game’s name as well as its design. The first sentence is the most impor-tant and often the hardest one to write. In one sentence you must describe your game concept. Let me repeat this rule: You must explain the entire game in ONE SENTENCE. Usually, the sentence repeats the game’s title and includes the game’s genre and a basic description or overview of the concept.
Some examples are:
n Gangster is an FPS where the player is a gangster like Jesse James, Clyde Parker, or John Dillinger, and the player is placed in the gangster scenarios and must successfully complete each mission.
n P-Man is an action game where you maneuver a dot-munching, ani-mated circle through a labyrinth trying to destroy flashing bases, as six enemy squares eagerly roam the maze seeking to capture you.
n Couch Potato Baseball is a 3D sports game (baseball) where the player selects his All-Star team and manages the team through a season of play to the World Series by selecting his All-Star team players, assign-ing each game’s line-up, selectassign-ing the pitchers, tradassign-ing players, and bringing up triple A players to play.
The one pager also includes other gaming issues. You need to list your game’s features (cover the basic, standard features as well as special fea-tures that make your concept different or better than the current, competing games), the hardware and software requirements needed (required) and suggested (recommended) to properly play your game, and similar and competing games (their title, publisher, platforms like Win-dows, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Game Cube, or Microsoft’s Xbox, and retail price). You may also include any marketing and sales issues that will help
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sell your concept and get an interest in your game, like a license, antici-pated audience (sex, age ranges of players), and pertinent data (sports game number of players and world-wide audience numbers). After you write the one pager to your liking, show it to avid game players and fans as well as non-players. The one pager is important and should be under-standable to everyone from business people to hardcore gamers.
Example 1
Note that in the following example the name in parentheses is a placeholder.
(Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open (Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open is a 3D, third-per-son wakeboarding sports competition that lets the player(s) (single and multiplayer) compete in seven international venues and choreograph their acrobatic maneuvers through each course’s obstacles and wakes. (Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open will appeal to all extreme sports enthusiasts and features the top women’s wakeboarding champion (Megan Pedersen). Wakeboarding has been featured on ESPN, ESPN2, and OLN, reaching over 70 million households. (Megan Pedersen) has won numerous wakeboarding championships, including the Van Triple Crown of Wakeboarding Championship, the Wakeboarding National Cham-pionship, the World ChamCham-pionship, and the X Games Championship.
Wakeboarding is the fastest-growing water sport in the world, increas-ing over 100 percent in participation over the past three years.
Wakeboarding is a combination of surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and water skiing. A wakeboard looks like a snowboard with a pair of bind-ings attached to it. The wakeboarder carves turns with body leans and by rocking the board.
(Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open has each player competing in one to all seven countries in the circuit. The participating countries will be the U.S.A. (Orlando, Florida); Sydney, Australia; South Africa, Africa; Tokyo, Japan; Paris, France; Venice, Italy; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the single-player mode, the player will practice his maneu-vers and learn new ones. Based on the player’s learned skill level, he will be able to compete for the championships. Players need to master the basic skills before attempting the expert tricks and maneuvers. In the multiplayer mode (via the Internet or network), players will take turns competing in one or more countries for individual championships or the Grand Prix of (Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open Cir-cuit Championship.
The intended audience will be males between the ages of 8 and 20 who enjoy extreme sports. Also, since the presence of famed female
wakeboarder (Megan Pedersen) is featured, an anticipated female audi-ence of those 8 to 17 is projected. The platform for this game will be the
Windows XP as the first release (Windows 2000, 98, Me, and XP compati-ble) with Microsoft’s Xbox, PlayStation 2, and the Nintendo Game Cube to follow. Similar, successful games have been Tony Hawks’ Pro Skater 2 and 3 (IBM Windows CD version is $29.95 and Xbox version is $49.95), MTV Sports Snowboarding, Konami’s 1080 Snowboarding and X Games Pro Boarder, and EA’s Snowboard Super X (PlayStation 2 version is $49.95 and Nintendo Game Cube version is $52.95). Activision plans to release Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder, Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer, and Darin Shapiro’s Pro Wakeboarder.
(Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open is a 3D behind the wakeboarder POV where the player controls the boarder’s lateral movement, speed, or forward movement (by signaling to the virtual motorboat), acrobatic maneuvers, and obstacle jumps (the slider, a kicker, and a jump ramp). The game will contain realistic physics, animation, and sound effects. Commentators, including (Megan Pedersen), will describe and evaluate the wakeboarder’s performance. After each performance or routine, the player can use the video replay feature to observe and improve his tricks. Each of the seven unique country locations will have an obstacle course that can be modified by the player before the competi-tion begins. Players will be judged based on the 100-point system for their technical difficulty (“execution,” worth 33.3 points), the “in-air” acrobats (“intensity,” worth 33.4 points), and the seamless flow of the routine (“composition,” worth 33.3 points). Like the real world of competition, each wakeboarder has a two-fall limit.
In the single-player mode, the player can practice his tricks on various obstacles and courses. In order to become a Pro Wakeboarder, the player must successfully show an understanding of the beginner, intermediate, and advanced tricks, grabs, spins, and inverts. (Megan Pedersen) will coach and evaluate the player as he progresses from novice to Pro Wakeboarder status. The beginner wakeboarder can learn simple air maneuvers and grabs like the Butterslide 180, the Surf Carve, and the Ollie Blind 180. Then the player can practice the intermediate tricks like the Indy Blind 180, the Scarecrow, and the Back Roll and finally advance to the difficult inverts, spins, and grabs like the Whirlybird, the Elephant, and the Wrapped KGB.
(Megan Pedersen)’s International Wakeboarding Open will be a highly anticipated arrival into the extreme sports gaming world with its
fast-paced, turbo-charged acrobatic maneuvers, realistic sound effects, orchestrated ambient sound track, and commentators describing the wakeboarder’s tricks, as well as having the (Megan Pedersen) name, a dominant female competitor in the world of extreme sports.
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Example 2
Here is another one pager example.
Years ago I met a student studying to become a medical doctor who was addicted to Mortal Kombat. He wanted to design a game where the player would be inside the human body combating real life diseases like cancer.
The cancer cells would invade the body and the player would gather his super force of red and white blood cells, the Chemo Team, and Radiation Sensations, using their martial art techniques to fight and destroy the dis-ease. This game would not only be fun for the fighting genre fans but would also teach people about diseases (what the disease does, where it attacks the human body, symptoms, and what to look for as it progresses) and their treatments (the latest cures, various treatment options, and length of time needed to destroy a disease or put it in remission).
We worked together to expand this concept by including the entire human life (from infant to old age). We called this game Medical Kombat and felt that it would appeal to all ages, especially children 13 to 18 as well as medical students like my co-designer.
Several films have been made on this subject, such as Fantastic Voyage and Osmosis Jones.
Medical Kombat
Medical Kombat is a third-person POV martial arts/first-person shooter that takes place in a real human body from birth to death as the good side combats disease and viruses. The player or players in multiplayer mode, as the good side, will learn all about many diseases and their symptoms and causes, as well as the past and latest medical treatments.
The player will select an age range to play from, such as an infant, young child, or young adult to adulthood. The infant diseases will include jaundice, convulsions, seizures, asthma, hernia, and so on. The young chil-dren diseases will include viruses and ailments like mumps, measles (rubeola and rubella or German measles), chicken pox, polio, allergies, acne, bee stings, hiccups, splinters, epilepsy, broken arms and legs, and so on. Other diseases will include bacterial diseases (like scarlet fever, whooping cough, typhoid fever, diphtheria, gangrene, cholera, conjunctivi-tis, and tuberculosis), viruses (like smallpox, influenza, anthrax,
pneumonia, herpes, hepatitis, trachoma, and yellow fever), fungal diseases (like thrush and athlete’s foot), nutritional diseases (like beriberi, rickets, and scurvy) and parasitic diseases (like malaria and bubonic plague). The adult diseases will include leukemia, cancer (lung, skin, breast, and bone), tumors, gallstones, kidney stones, AIDs, heart problems, diabetes, Alzhei-mer’s, arthritis, osteoporosis, ALS, muscular dystrophy, and emphysema.
Besides the aforementioned good guy teams, there will be vaccine and drug-injected super heroes like penicillin, insulin, and other medications.
Some super heroes can fight an enemy one on one, some spin medicated webs trying to capture and destroy the unsuspecting enemies, and others
shoot medication into the human body, blocking the pathways or locking the enemy inside a region. The super team uses the human body’s blood transit system to travel through arteries away from the heart and veins and back to their headquarters (the heart). The object of each mission is to survive, and the player(s) will have several medical gauges and monitors that will give up-to-date tracking of the patient’s progress.
Medical Kombat has unique cross-genre appeal since it is a martial arts fighting game, an FPS, and an educational game all in one. Parents will appreciate its educational benefit, and the males and females 8 to 16 will be enthusiastic about the realistic and intense fighting and destruction of their enemies. Each year 15,000 to 19,000 high school students apply to medical colleges throughout the U.S.
The platform for this game will be the Windows XP as the first release (Windows 2000, 98, Me, and XP compatible) with Microsoft’s Xbox, PlayStation 2, and the Nintendo Game Cube to follow. Similar fighting games like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sell for $49.95 on the Nintendo Game Cube, PSX 2, and Xbox and $32.95 for the Gameboy Advance. Mortal Combat Deadly Alliance sells for $49.95 on the Nintendo Game Cube, PSX 2, and Xbox and $39.95 for the Gameboy Advance.
Medical Kombat simulates the first war that man ever fought, the first war you have ever fought, and the last war you will someday lose. The players will enjoy the thrill of real-life search and destroy as they battle their way through each mission and learn about life and death in the process.