All about game prototyping

In the last article, we talked about Market research for games and how it differs in its techniques from what you would do for a non-gaming application.

Today, we'll take another step in the game industry's business and ask, What now?

Say you've done your research, you've taken your time carefully exploring the market, and crafting your GDD. You've got a clear business plan and are on the right track overall. Now it's time to build something. A vertical slice? No ... a demo? No .... A prototype? YES!

What's a prototype?

Prototyping is having a project that resembles your idea done quickly just to test something. It's not for showcase, it's not for marketing materials, and you should never talk about it outside the office and business partners. In a prototype, you're not working on graphics, you're not working on animations, you're not working on music and sound effects, you're not working on UI.

You're only working on one thing, gameplay and the main hook. Whether you use ready assets, blocky assets, whether you sketch a 2D prototype even if the actual game is intended to be 3D. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that the prototyping process is quick and throwable and this is the first step of recognizing a good game prototype.

You have multiple ideas that you need to test early on, if you spend even a bit of time polishing some aspects like UI animation for example, this is time you're wasting not testing other ideas that could be better.

So the first thing is to test different functionalities and ideas and get a playable version ready as soon as possible to play internally. At this point, the team working on this new project should be updated on the vision of the game. Their input is crucial when playing the prototypes because every member will speak from their field of expertise.

A 3D artist will talk about 3D props and what we can use to make the game look cool, and a tech artist will talk about lighting and visual effects. A programmer will talk about functionalities and gameplay mechanics. Your job is to take their feedback with each playable iteration, filter it based on the BMC (Business model Canvas), and see what fits, what could be explored more, and what should be removed.

For how long should this process repeat though?

Well, it all depends on how you designed your game.

If you go gameplay's first design, you'll need to keep prototyping until you've got a solid exciting game loop that you think is worth showing to early testers in which case you'll need to spend just a little time polishing whatever you have so it's in an "Okay" state to present for 3 to 4 early testers as an "Early prototype version"

If you go with Monetization's first design, you'll need to keep prototyping until you've got a solid user experience that takes the user from the main menu to the game and then to the store wherever it may be. This could be more tedious especially if you're trying to do something new, but it makes the development afterwards straightforward.

If you go with Platform's first design, you'll have to spend extra time creating or utilizing control systems and gameplay mechanics revolved around said platform ... for example, camera control in Nintendo Switch is different that PC which is different than Mobile which is different than Console, and so on.

I recommend focusing on ONE platform only in the prototyping phase. Look at your market research and locate what platform has the bigger target audience, this is the platform you should go for.

But of course, we are business-oriented people, we need solid numbers to test these prototypes. There are multiple KPIs that you can look for early on:

Spending Rate in a Mockup Market

though this is a prototype, and the testers group is small, you can easily monitor how much they spent on acquiring new stuff.

You can include a shop that gives them gameplay advantages and see if they spend in-game currency (That is either rewarded or comes with a new account) to get those advantages. This is especially true for the Monetization first design. One trick is to have two in-game currencies, Gems, and Gold.

Gems can buy gold, but gold can buy everything else. Now include a method to reward them with gems daily. If they're spending their gems, that's a good sign that your prototype is working and they are probably leaning towards paying for Gems later on.

This is not an accurate KPI though, since the prices you put for the gems and the content it offers is the thing that will decide whether your player will convert into a paying customer or not.

Test session Rating system

This is something that you can work on once and reuse in every prototype you do. Have the testers rate their test session (from 1-10, of 5 stars, of 3 stars, whatever it may be) and include a comment about what they liked and what they didn't. Getting they're truest reaction right after they finish their gameplay is the best thing you can do because you're capturing the fresh emotions the game made them feel.

Sometimes people can't word their feelings right, that's why if you repeat the rating for each session, you'll end up with a bunch of data that enables you to produce multiple graphs detailing the user rating journey throughout the prototyping phase.

of course, every game has its requirements and it's a good thing to go to events, or look at GDC talks and see what people say about prototyping. It's a creative process that is handled differently by everyone and there is no one right way. But the more you learn how others do it, the more your method will develop.

Keep on Game Deving ^^