Imagine a game that you have played from beginning to end or one that you have simply loved and played for a long time. Would you be able to write a two-to-five pages short presentation on that game? A presentation that describes why is it fun, how you play it, what it looks like, and for what kind of player it is going to be a great experience?

Now imagine that you've never played that game, that it doesn't even exist yet. Would you still be able to describe it?

That vision is the game you want to make and the presentation is a game concept.

The purpose of the game concept is to describe a game with enough detail to distill and communicate its vision to the reader. To explain what makes it fun, who'll enjoy playing it, and why we should make it a reality.

One of the main responsibilities of every game designer is to make sure that, at every...

There is another reason why a game concept is such an important milestone in starting to create a new game. Once your game genre, audience, and platform are defined, it is possible to take a look at what's out there in the market: your competition. Understanding games similar to the one you will be developing is crucial to the project's success. It is very likely that the developers of those other games have already faced and solved (or maybe not!) many of the problems you will encounter at some point during development.

Communities of players already playing those games might be discussing them in depth online. This is an invaluable resource for you, as you will be able to fix known problems or add features to your game, based on what real players are willing and hoping to play.

We have already explored defining and communicating game ideas to others through the game concept document, now let's pose a more fundamental question. How do we generate the game idea in the first place? How do we get to the point of having something to write down in the concept document?

Before we begin, let's make it clear that the game designer is not the ideas guy. It is not their job to have a constant flow of new game ideas. These can (and should) come from anyone in the company or even from people outside your organization. It's very common in our industry to have publishers commission a game idea to the developers, an owner of an intellectual property (IP) such as Star Wars or The Witcher to seek out licensing, or game studios themselves providing outsourcing services to other developers.

A game idea could be driven by market research...

We have learned some basics about how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to other people, as well as understanding the importance of early prototyping and iterations.

We have discussed how having a game idea is only the tip of the iceberg and how the role of the game designer is to communicate ideas that might come from anyone inside or outside the team.

We clarified the importance of marketing your game from the very beginning and finding the correct audience for what is, above all, a product that has to be sold (even if it's free).

We had a glance at some practical techniques game designers use to develop and create games, which we will explore in more depth in the next chapters.

We also made some paperwork. The time you have put into creating a sample concept document is time well spent, I guarantee you that. Learning game design is about getting hands...