Full description of the game idea. Part 1: Concept

Having entered some time ago on a slippery path called “I want to write my game”, I came to the conclusion that this process, despite its long history and a large number of successful examples, is very mysterious for novice developers and gives away a bit of shamanism. I do not in any way claim that there is no information on this topic in the network, but the whole of it is divided into two broad categories:

1. Global philosophical reasoning from the category of "10 reasons why you do not need to become an indie game developer";
2. Narrowly specialized tutorials that solve a specific task: “Rotate the image in% framework_name% to an arbitrary angle using% tool_name%”

The link between these two categories is very vague, and, meanwhile, these are infinitely important stages of choosing an idea, formalizing it, translating it into a plan. It is on this component that I want to stop today.
It should be remembered that a formal description of the project is necessary for negotiations with investors of any type: whether it is an acquaintance from whom you ask for a loan, or Kickstarter, you will in any case be required to make a coherent presentation.
So, if you have already decided that game development is yours, there is an approximate understanding of what the future masterpiece should look like, but you can’t consistently tell all this even to your friend, not to mention the potential team, then welcome to the cat. there is a lot of text. I hope this article will be useful for both young developers and venerable developers who create excellent code, but are not friends with marketing.

0.0 General principles

First of all, I propose to agree on the tasks and principles of formalization.
Key task: Create a document that can fully reflect and convey the essence of the idea without additional comments.
In other words, anyone who reads the final description should unambiguously understand what is at stake, and in the future dialogue with the bearer of the idea, own the full amount of knowledge.
It should be noted here that we limit ourselves to the business logic of the top level, without being immersed in the tools and implementation details - this is the next step.

While working, we will follow the following principles that will help us structure the flow of thoughts and make it smoother:

1. The reader of the future document is not an expert in programming or game development.
2. At the same time, the reader is not an idiot and he has access to Google.
3. The document should be as unambiguous and concise as possible. In order to transfer it to the PowerPoint presentation format, just copy the text on the slides and add pictures to taste.
4. The final document is a basic version of the full description, which can be freely supplemented and expanded without the need to rewrite individual parts or change the structure. In other words, we make a billet, which in the future will be overgrown with technical details and refinements. Very likely, not all of them you want to show the general public before the release.
5. The compiler of the document is already familiar with the articles listed below, and the reader can read at any time.

Wikipedia: Computer game
Wikipedia: Classification of computer games
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0.1. Document structure

Further on, we will go through the main components of the formal description of the idea. In each block I will give a short description of it, links to additional materials and an example based on my personal project. The overall structure will be as follows:

If the community suggests adding something, I’m happy to review it in the comments.

1. Concept

The first section is as the first page of a commercial offer, as the first three slides of the presentation, as a profile picture on Facebook. The importance of this section can not be overemphasized. If you could not interest a person here, then he will not read further. If you have a thought, “Now I’ll quickly fill it up, so that it will be, and I will tell all the most interesting things in the middle!”, Then immediately chase her away, or do nothing at all: a bad start == meaningless work in the future.

1.1. Title

As my experience shows, only 1 out of 10 people think about this before developing. In principle, this is understandable, since at the initial stage the only use of the name is the name of the project in the development environment. But if we are serious about our idea, then the name will play a very important role. The most obvious: the presentation of the project before the investor or team.
A very useful article on choosing the name can be read here and here . The following is of fundamental importance for us:
0. The name must reflect one of the components of the game : the setting, gameplay or other features.
Here you can give examples that, in the absolute, realize this idea: “SpacePuzzle”, “DragonRace”, “Farm Frenzy”, etc. By one name, the future player can guess what he will have to deal with.

1. What does Google display for this title? Next to what we will coexist in the future and what are the chances for us to occupy the first line in search results with this name?
Simple names like "Ants", "WarLand", etc. - a pledge of huge expenses for promotion in search and advertising of other projects.

2. Is the domain that matches the name available? If not, is it acceptable to use the -game suffix?
Using unsuccessful examples from the previous paragraph, we have the following logic: ants.ru -> ants-game.ru, warland.ru -> warland-game.ru
If the ants still did not go anywhere, then the situation with the warland is sadder.

3. How simple is the name pronounced? How will users call the game in an abbreviated version?
Here the logic is simple: if the name is simple, then it will be used easily and with pleasure, if it is too complicated, users will come up with a replacement: CounterStrike -> Contra, WorldOfWarcraft -> WoW, etc.

Example:
I have chosen the name " The AndLand " for my project. Google does not produce anything unambiguous, the domains are free, briefly referred to as TAL or "Anda".

1.2 Genre

The most common problem here is trying to mix genres and promote it as a key difference. Several times I heard “Now we will muddle the mix of StarCraft, MineCraft, some other * Craft and take over the world!” Do not mock the player, forcing him to waste his energy trying to understand what this is before him. Whatever it was, the game genre should be ONE. Of course, you can mix elements of gameplay from neighboring genres, but the key motif should be monotonous. If you go back to the idea of ​​the presentation, then on this slide there should be one word (RTS, RPG, FPS, etc.) and one sentence that can explain or clarify this word. In the links to Wikipedia, which I cited at the very beginning, you can find a description of all genres and a lot of information to clarify.

Example:
In my case, the genre: RTS.
Specification: a multi-user real-time economic strategy.

1.3. Key difference

As a rule, at this point, many give up. Clearly say what your idea is better than all the others - this is not an easy test. Moreover, even if at the moment you managed to form something intelligible, then the Analogs block is still waiting for us, which will subject the next wave of criticism to your idea.
In principle, everything is simple: “How will your game stand out from everyone else in the genre?” In marketing, this is called “Positioning is a simple, clear, definite, advantageous difference from competitors.” The materiel on the subject can be viewed here or in the books of J. Trout. I will give a few examples:
MineCraft is a large open world completely changeable;
StarCraft - classic RTS with perfect balance;
Catch up - simple moving gameplay that does not require additional equipment.

Example:
The tree of technological development in the game is created by the community.
The game lacks the classic tree “Build Building A to get access to the X, Y, Z technologies and Building B”, the gaming community itself constructs the technologies and the direction of their development.

1.4. Platform

This section is currently purely formal, but in the future it will be crucial for the team and investors. For potential members of the team, this is important because it is necessary to assess their skills and development vector: do I want to participate in a project for the web when I wrote code for mobile devices all my life? And for investors, this point is important because you can quickly assess the trends in the development of the platform, see simple risks.
Now it is popular to create projects for almost all platforms at once. If yours is exactly that, then in any case it should be remembered that there is one, maximum - two launch platforms with which everything starts, and for the rest - it is already ported later.
Now the list of platforms varies from classic PC / Mac to gaming consoles and mobile phones, and do not forget about browser games that can be run anywhere else, or only on certain systems. Several important points are fundamentally dependent on the choice of platform:
1. The general range of implementation technologies;
2. Mode of distribution;
3. The rate of obsolescence of the game;
4. The number of potential players.

Example:
The initial launch of the game is planned on Win / Linux / Mac PC with registration and management of the player’s profile via the web platform. In the future, it is possible to release a mobile application with full or limited gameplay.

1.5. The target audience

Another section that puts in a stupor the vast majority of future igrodelov. And the question here is very simple: “For whom is your game? Who will be the core of the community? ”The most common answer is“ for all! ”, And it’s the wrong one. Marketers know that advertising aimed at everyone does not fall on anyone, the same story with products. Of course, there are “consumer goods”, but their list is very small and insignificant in total. Everything else that does not fall into this list, created for a particular group. Mercedes - for successful, Rolleks - for pontovyh, StarCraft - for advanced, Jolly farm - for housewives, MineCraft - for schoolchildren.

Again, do not take the formalized audience literally; we do not limit our players ONLY with this portrait, but we will focus on the main emphasis in promotion and gameplay on them. I think you will not argue that a game for a housewife and an excellent student of mathematics is generally a different game? Although, the student sometimes wants to play something casual. Sufficiently capacious for this reason, the person unsubscribed here .

A good example in this sense is MineCraft. The developer did not explicitly single out his players anywhere, but it is obvious that the core of the target audience is an advanced student. This fact does not negate the creation of MineCraft in MineCraft, imitation of Manhattan , and other serious things. But ask yourself: would a serious scientist be involved in creating a city in a game if by this moment most PC-gamers of school age had not played it?

Example:
The target audience of the project: office workers, senior students and students who have an idea of ​​the basics of economic theory, regardless of gender.

Results of the first section

As I promised, in spite of the abundance of the text, the final result is very modest and easily fit into 3-4 presentation slides. The basic concepts that I have touched on here may seem obvious and unnecessary to many, but this means only one thing: you have not tried to apply them. Those who already have everything ready, look, maybe I forgot something or lied where. And to test the form for describing an idea, I suggest answering a survey.

PS

For the appearance of this post, I would like to say thanks to the user tac . The need to answer his question forced me to put all my thoughts in order.
In the comments, S_A gave a link to a book on the topic: “Marketing of games” - a book by Sergey Galyonkin . By the next part I will read, give feedback.