Try to keep your focus from refer ring to other games. You want the focus to describe the essence of your game, and if your focus is, “Voltarr is like Tomb Raider, but set on the whim si cal planet Dongo and fea tur ing many intense laser gun fights,” it is hard for some one look ing at your focus to under stand imme di ately what parts of Tomb Raider you are hop ing to emu late. Take a look at Tomb Raider itself and deter mine what you think its focus may have been. Then take that focus, remove what ever parts are not nec es sary for your game, and add in what ever new ideas your game will incor po rate. Chances are your idea of what was com pel ling about Tomb Raider will be dif fer ent from some one else’s under stand ing. When a mem ber of your team reads, “It’s like Tomb Raider,” she is prob a bly reminded of some dif fer ent aspect of that game’s gameplay than you are. That’s assum ing that she has played Tomb Raider at all. Since the focus is designed to guide your team mem bers as well as your self, it needs to com mu ni cate the same ideas to every one who reads it. Even if the focus is pri mar ily for your own use, the pro cess of
Your game may be sim i lar to another game such as Tomb Raider, but in your focus you want to describe the game on its own terms and avoid mak ing com par i sons to other games.
ana lyz ing Tomb Raider to deter mine what about it you want to rep li cate will help you to better under stand your own game. You need to have a prop erly stream lined focus that can stand on its own, with out demand ing that the per son who is read ing the focus under stand any other par tic u lar games. All the rel e vant infor ma tion that is impor tant to your focus must be con tained within the focus itself, with out out side ref er ences. Often when design ers set out to cre ate “It’s like Game X but with . . . ” games, they tend to lose sight of what made the game they are imi tat ing so com pel -ling in the first place. Then they pro ceed to make their own game top-heavy with tacked-on fea tures that exist only to hide the fact their game is just like Game X.
Removing ref er ences to other games from your focus will help expose the true nature of the pro ject you are under tak ing.
Estab lishing a focus for your pro ject does not need to limit the scope of your game, and is not intended to do so. Your game can still be a mas sively com plex game with an epic sweep. In fact, if appro pri ate, this com plex ity and depth should prob a bly be men tioned in your focus, but you should still be able to describe the game in a few sen tences in order to suc cinctly com mu ni cate what is most impor tant about your under tak ing. Your game can even include mul ti ple styles of gameplay within the same game. Sup pose your goal is to sim u late the life of a pirate. You might want to include an explo ra tion mode for nav i gat ing the seas, a tac ti cal mode for engag ing another ship in bat tle, a sword-fighting mode for fight ing an enemy cap tain one on one, and even a trad ing mode for sell ing off booty. (Indeed, Sid Meier already made this game; it is called Pirates!) But hav ing this mul ti ple game struc ture does not mean that the focus could not still be, “This game re-creates the many dif fer ent fac ets of a pirate’s life through numer ous dif fer ent cam paign modes, all designed to evoke the spirit of being a cut throat. The player is able to explore the nature of being an out law, includ ing the eco nomic and phys i cal risks involved.”
If your game is to have mul ti ple sep a rate modes, your focus should apply to all of the dif fer ent sub-games within your pro ject.
If you are work ing on a pro ject solo or with a small team, you may think it unnec es sary to actu ally write down your focus. After all, if you can just explain it to every one who needs to know, what’s the sense in writ ing it down? I would argue that writ ing it down is key to truly com ing to grips with the nature of the game you are plan ning to develop. There is a world of dif fer ence between an idea that is kick -ing around in your head and one that is writ ten down on paper in front of you.
When it is on paper you can look at it and make sure that what is typed is really the core of your idea, that those sen tences rep re sent every thing that is most impor tant to you about the pro ject. Unlike when you describe the pro ject to some one, on paper you can not say, “Oh, yeah, and there’s this part, and this other aspect over here, and I really mean this when I say that.” If it is not down on the paper, it is not part of the game’s focus. Some one who reads the focus on paper should be able to under stand your vision with out you need ing to explain it. I find that writ ing the
focus down really helps to clar ify and solid ify what the game is attempt ing to achieve.
When I worked on my first game, Odys sey, I had no grand plan to have a focus.
Nor did I sit down and pur pose fully think it out. On the other hand, I seem to remem ber the pri mary goal revolv ing around a story. It was the story of a mad sci -en tist-type char ac ter, a pow er ful sor cerer who per formed exper i m-ents on hap less human oid crea tures. These were not bio log i cal exper i ments, but rather social ones—exper i ments where he would see how these humans would treat each other when under cer tain cir cum stances. Really, he was explor ing the evil side of all sen -tient crea tures. So Odys sey’s focus was to explore the mean and vicious ways dif fer ent groups of peo ple can treat each other in cer tain sit u a tions and to set up sce nar ios where the play ers wit nessed this first-hand and would have a chance to make a real change in their lives. Non-linearity and mul ti ple solu tions were also at the fore front of my mind, so I set out to make sure play ers would be able to pur sue dif fer ent tac tics to solve the prob lems they were pre sented with, with no solu tion being des ig nated as the “right” one. And so I had my focus. With out really think ing of it in terms of a focus or vision, I had deter mined what I wanted to do with the game, and I was able to stick with that for the dura tion of the pro ject. Since I was basi cally devel op ing the pro ject solo, I did not have to com mu ni cate this focus to any one else, and if I had needed to I doubt that I would or could have. Though I knew in my head what I wanted in the game, at the time I could not define my goals in terms some one else could under stand. Now, look ing back, I can come up with the fol low ing:
Though I did not know it at the time of the game’s devel op ment, Odys sey’s focus was cen tered on tell ing a spe cific story.
In Odys sey, the player explores a rich story line about the evil nature of man kind, and sees under what cir cum stances groups will treat each other in mor ally rep re hen si ble ways. This is a sim ple RPG/adven ture game. Though swordandsorcery com bat will be involved, it never over -takes the story line. The story line allows for mul ti ple solu tions and non-linearity when ever pos si ble, with the player able to effect real change among the NPCs he encoun ters in the game.