types of ice. The player character along with the patrons of the winter carni-
val will be brightly colored in their cold weather gear in order to set them off
from the environment. The game uses a 3D engine that allows for the
player to easily zoom in and out on the micro or macro events taking place
at the winter carnival, with the technology capable of rendering the entire
carnival at once when necessary.Notice how the sub-focuses are set off by separate headings from the primary focus.
This way, readers of the focus can easily see the primary and most important focus and
how the sub-focuses go into detail about specific parts of the game.
As you are working on your sub-focuses, it is important to always make sure that
they jibe with your primary focus, as well as any other sub-focuses you may have. For
instance, it makes sense that the Visuals sub-focus talks about the game providing a
game-world that is simple to understand visually, since the Audience sub-focus talks
about making the game easy to pick up and get into. If you are already contradicting
yourself in the writing of your focus you are going to have a very hard time writing a
whole design document that makes any sense at all. Keeping all the components of your
focuses supporting each other should not be a problem, however, since properly writ-
ten focuses should be short, concise, and easy to understand.
Using Focus..................................
It is important to realize that your focus statement is not a marketing tool. It is not cre-
ated to sell your game to the executives. It is not written with the hope of printing it on
the back of the box or showing it to the people in charge of purchasing for large retail-
ers. It is first and foremost written as a development tool for your team. Writing a
statement that clearly establishes the goals of your game will be hard enough without
also trying to craft something that will work for the marketing folks. Nevertheless, you
may be able to take your focus and change it into something to get your marketing
department excited about your game. If generating a significant number of sales is one
of the items on your agenda (let us presume it is not your primary motivation for work-
ing in games, for surely there are more profitable careers to pursue), then having the
marketing people get excited about your game when they try to sell it is almost as
important as having the programmers excited during the game’s development. Mar-
keting people will try to sell games they believe in and that they think are cool
concepts, and a modified and adapted version of your focus statement can serve to
quickly explain to them what is so thrilling about your idea. Of course, marketing peo-
ple also love comparative descriptions, such as, “The game’s basicallyBejeweledmeets
Max Payne.” Thus, you may want to come up with some direct comparisons that place
your game within the context of known popular games, games that the marketing spe-
cialists already know how to sell. Of course, you can use the content of your focus to
back up such superficial comparisons and to make the marketing folk understand why
your game is unique and will appeal to gamers. With this knowledge in hand, hopefully
they can make an ad campaign that is an appropriate representation of your game and
not something that you will be embarrassed by when you see it in the magazines.
Chapter 5: Focus 85