Level 5.1: Prototyping

Prototyping

Remember, the more times you can iterate on your idea, the better the final game will be. Once you have a basic idea, the next step is to get it in playable form as quickly and cheaply as possible. That will leave you with as much time as possible to playtest and iterate.

As mentioned last time, iteration is the most critical for those parts of your game that have high design risk. For “clone-and-tweak” games where you are mostly lifting gameplay from an existing game, rapid prototyping is less important. This does not mean that “clone” games do not benefit from iteration, but simply that you should use it selectively in those areas where you are innovating. Keep this in mind for today’s challenge.

"Laws" of Prototyping

Remember that the entire purpose of prototyping is to maximize the number of iterative cycles. Corollary: do everything you can to reduce the time required in each iteration. Now, consider that each iterative cycle consists generally of four steps: design, prototyping, playtesting, and evaluation. Of these steps, where can you save time?

You can’t really reduce the time it takes to design the rules of the game, without compromising your goals. You can’t rush creativity.
You can reduce time spent in playtesting by being efficient about scheduling and designing playtests to give maximum information for minimum play time… but there is a natural limit to this, and beyond a certain point you can’t rush through playing the game.
Evaluation doesn’t take very long; you’re making a simple yes/no decision of whether the game is “done” or “good enough” based on playtest results. There is little to be gained by rushing through this further.
So, that leaves reducing the time it takes to create a prototype.

Some things to keep in mind when building a playable prototype:

Build it as fast as possible. Cut corners. Make it as ugly and cheap as you can get away with.
Minimize what you need to build. Only do what is absolutely necessary to evaluate your game. If you’re trying to test out a new combat system, you do not need to build the entire exploration system. If you’re making a card game, hand writing on index cards is faster to make than typing everything into Powerpoint, printing on heavy card stock, and cutting it all out manually. There is a time and place for making nice-looking components, and the early stages of game design is not that time or that place.
Make your prototype easy to change. You will find problems in playtesting, so make it easy to adjust on the fly.

All of these guidelines push designers towards one inevitable direction…