Printable Grid Templates for Prototypes

This is the website where you can download and print grid-types of varying shapes and sizes in pdf format for your prototypes.

Check it out right here

Sample Persona

With the alpha/working mechanic deadline behind you, your next major deadline now is the all-important design document. Since you'll all be working on this in the coming weeks, here is a sample persona which you can download to help yourselves out in the target market area of your GDDs.

Click here to snag it.

Game Design Document Template

First of all, I hope everyone's finishing up nicely on your alphas for this week! But looking not too far into the future, we have the deadline coming up for the game design document, and here it is: the template for the GDD.

It's alpha week, so you're likely under some stress with this week's deadline, however, it's not a bad idea to at least browse this in the upcoming days as Matt will be talking about the Design and Production sections of the document in Thursday's lecture.

Good luck all.

NB. For those asking for a copy of last week's Vision Statement/Competitive Analysis/Charter exercise to print out and take a look at for getting yourself started on organizing your GDD, i've linked to it below. This is NOT a deliverble so don't sweat it, it's just available to look at to help you. Download it right here.

When Is A Game Not A Game?

... when it's September 12th.

Very interesting object lesson here and an instructional example of how games can be used for subtle forms of education.

Let's talk about it at the start of next class - please post comments here as to how it is play, how the central mechanic is constructed and how it might be made into a game. I'll single out the best submissions for discussion... this is how those participation grades get made.

Let Me Save You Some Trouble

There is a free online application that you may find quite useful during this term's production. Some of you may already be aware of it, but for those that aren't:

It's called BaseCamp. And you should really, really check out some of its features. As we move into discussions of project planning and scheduling, you'll be glad that you did.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Ok, folks, please comment on this posting. Every team should post here a list of all the things that could go wrong with their development project. Be exhaustive and make sure that you discuss these as a group.

Every problem has a solution - now is the time to figure it out. Please also pose a solution for every problem you list.

Some Light Reading for Next Week

As we're starting to get into our pre-production phase, that means we're going to start talking about the game design document. This article, courtesy of Gamasutra, gives a nice high-level overview of how documentation meets team dynamics. Another article, a little dated perhaps, provides a similar commentary from a different perspective.

Games, Play and Narrative

Really good post on the above that picks up nicely on last week's lecture.

Check out today's Penny Arcade.

Come and talk game design at the GDDG

To all SFU students with an interest in game design:

I may not speak for every student in this course, but I'm sure many have an interest in a career as a video game designer. However, the collective skills needed to make those truly inspiring games we'd love to emulate and surpass may be still beyond our reach...not to mention difficult to fit within our school schedules.

So what if we just discuss game design itself, no development needed?

I'm sure many of those who dream of getting into the game industry have thought of their own ideas for games...well, why not explore those possibilities?

What I am proposing is a discussion group that chats about the design of video games: from target audience to story to game play mechanics to plausibility and back again. We share our ideas, elaborate, confer, and at the end of every session we wrap up the idea, catalogue it and begin a brand new idea next session.

No time needed outside of each session, external activities or work needed.

Just come, talk games, and leave with maybe some fresh ideas or a new perspective on something you're passionate about.

If you are interested, please email me at cchurch@sfu.ca with the subject of GDDG (standing for Game Development Discussion Group [name still under consideration]) with a list of times you would be available to attend sessions. Sessions will likely be an 1 1/2 to 2 hours long.

Thank you, and hope to see you there.

Cody Church

Game Mechanic Presentations Links

Add comments to this post to link to your game mechanic presentations!

Presentations can be either in text summary format, pdf format or ppt format. If you used Keynote, if you could export to pdf or ppt format that would be much appreciated for the PC-handicapped. :)