Do your research!

We all know that creating a game is not a walk in the park and it takes a lot of man hours just to get a prototype that's playable.

But I'm here to talk about something that is rarely talked about here, but is extremely important in game design: doing research.

At face value, it appears like I'm going to talk about researching the subject of your games. This is definitely important and valuable in creating something that's thematic and immersive. If you're creating a game about WWII, you'd want to research different aspects or historical facts so that your game can feel like it could possibly be set in that time frame.

However, this kind of research isn't absolutely required; game designer Sid Meier uses the argument that the player is the star. He says that we all know inherent "truths" (bigger is better, murder is bad, stone is sturdier than wood, etc) and that the focus of the game should really be the fun, not the accuracy. It's a different way of thinking about things.

But what I'm really thinking of in terms of research is researching your market. People are so focused on making their game in their way that they don't understand the ebb and flow of the industry they're getting into. Time is money and there's certainly a good time and a bad time to introduce your game to the world. It's all about focusing your game at the beginning of the process so that you will be able to get the most out of your works.

Let me give an example. If you're going to start a coffee serving business, you have to look at where it's going to be in terms of location. In addition, you have to look at coffee trends...what coffees are customers likely to buy, what coffees or services are you going to bring to the table that makes your place different than other coffee places, and are there other coffee places that can potentially take away from your customer base? There are other questions for sure, but even these questions aren't something that can be answered in one breath. It's serious business. If you're going to put in the time and the effort, do it right.

Why aren't many people doing this in the games industry? People follow trends like it's the next best thing without realizing that the fact that we are game designers means we MUST bring something new to the table.

But how do we normally design? It's (well at least in my experiences with myself, my students, and talking to other game designers) usually we see a game, we like a mechanic, then we try and find an idea that works around that mechanic. Sometimes it's that we like a genre or we get an idea, we find a mechanic (usually a trending one) and we merge the two. It's not bad, but it needs to go deeper. How many other people are getting the same idea and have already published something? How saturated is this game mechanics right now? Is there going to be serious competition with another game of similar theme or mechanic? You NEED to ask these questions or you might be spending time on a game that's a "clone" of another game.

I'm not saying this is the concrete, dead way of doing game research, but doing the research only gives you more direction on where you should be going instead of where everyone else is going.

When I design games, I try and hit that one area of gaming that no one has traveled. It's a very difficult find, but when it you find it, you hold on to that with your life. It's like Southwest Airlines. They are certainly in competition in the airline industry, but their mindset is one of an airbus. By taking away "class" seats, the seats are cheaper, and airline commutes become more feasible. They found that niche in that industry and now they are one of the most successful airlines today.

Don't grind your gears. When you design games...do it right. While the games industry is a great place to be, it's still an INDUSTRY. There's still competition. There's still trends.

People ask me all the time why the games (entertainment really) industry is different than other industries like food, construction, or even medical. I simply say one word: liability. With the industries mentioned above, if things go wrong, people can die or get hurt. That's why there's regulations, safety tests, and license requirements so that people that do those professions will do it right. With the..."entertainment" industry, there's no such thing. If you lose at a game or watch a bad movie or TV show, it's only disappointment and loss of time. There's no real liability with games; no one dies from playing a board of card game. Many people think that brings freedom to game design, but I say it produces many game designers that just don't know what they're doing.

I'm not saying we should introduce testing or licenses in any way, I'm just saying that many so-called-game-designers make games because it has a low barrier of entry and they don't realize what has to be done in order to produce a great game. It's more than an idea and a mechanic that they think that will do the work for them. It's not. It's a total package (even when you're using a publisher), design theory, color theory, game balancing, game testing, marketing, promotion, research, quality control, money management, distribution, manufacturing, etc. It's blood, sweat, and tears. It's sacrifice, traveling, talking to strangers, getting the word out. Kickstarter isn't going to do all the work. It's knowing your industry to make sure your game is truly unique and not following in other people's footsteps (by accident or otherwise). We always read about the success stories...about how one not-so-well-to-do person created something that somehow blew up overnight and now they're sitting pretty. No one really sees the hard work that person did in order to get where they're at; it's almost hidden and it looks so easy.

This industry that we're in. It's difficult. You shouldn't chose this because you have no other choice because the industry will always fail you. You do this because you love games. Period. That alone will pull you through the hard times...the times where you spend hundreds of dollars to go to a convention only to get a handful of people (or no one) trying out your game...the times where the critics blast your game...the times where people just don't "get it"...the times where the game doesn't sell as well as you imagined it...the time where people just walk away from your game. It's hard. It hurts,

You do it cause you love games. And you like creating games. I love making games. I still think up new ways to make games.

But when you do it, do it efficiently by doing your homework.