Good examples of story-centered or at least story-dominant game design are some
of the adventure games created by Infocom and LucasArts. All of the adventure games
from these companies used very standardized play mechanics and technology. The
game designers worked with the company’s proprietary adventure game creation tech-
nology, either the Infocom text-adventure authoring tool or LucasArts’ SCUMM
system. By the time the game designer came onto the project, her process of creation
could start more naturally with creating a story she wanted to tell. Certainly the story
had to be one that was well suited to the adventure game format and that could be
implemented using the existing tool set. And of course, there was a lot of game design
still to do, in terms of coming up with what the player’s actions and choices would be in
that specific story, what puzzles would be encountered, and so forth. Both Infocom’s
and LucasArts’ tools were general purpose enough to allow the designer to create a
wide range of games, with a good amount of variation in terms of storytelling possibili-
ties, even though the core mechanics had to consist of a typing-centered text adventure
in the case of Infocom and a point-and-click graphical adventure for LucasArts. Thus
the game designers’ primary driving motivation in the game’s creation could be telling
a story, with the designing of game mechanics and technology development much less
of a concern. Just as film directors are limited by what they can shoot with a camera and
then project on a 2D screen of a certain size at 24 frames per second, the adventure
game designers at Infocom and LucasArts were limited by the mechanics of the adven-
ture game authoring system they were using. Since the mechanics of the medium were
firmly established well before both the film director and the adventure game designer
began their project, they were freed up to think beyond the nuts and bolts of the audi-
ence or user’s gaming experience.
Working with Limitations...........................
Experienced game designers already understand the limitations placed on the creation
of games by the technology, gameplay, and story. When they take part in brainstorming
sessions, these game designers have a good gut sense of how making certain choices
about the game in question will limit its creation further down the road. For each deci-
sion that is made about the game, many doors are closed. When enough decisions about
the nature of the game have been made, it may be that there is only one type of game
that can possibly accomplish all that the designers want. The stage for making major
decisions is over, and now all that lies ahead are the thousands of smaller implementa-
tion issues.
For four of the games I have completed —Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis,Damage
Incorporated,Centipede 3D, andThe Suffering— I began development from different
starting points. Coincidentally, one game started with story, another with technology,
the third with gameplay, and the final with a combination of setting and gameplay.
Throughout each game’s development I made every effort to remember where the
game was coming from and what it was hoping to accomplish. The origins and objec-
tives limited everything else about the experience, resulting in only one acceptable
game that achieved the goals I had set.
Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea 47