
How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days (2005) - erickhill
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130848/how_to_prototype_a_game_in_under_7_.php
======
shitloadofbooks
Somewhat related, I designed and created the prototype for my tabletop game
Burger Up[1] in around 2 hours, including an hour with scissors and pencils,
drawing rough sketches of burger ingredients on cardboard (with lots of help
in that area from my partner), the night before a playtest/pitch session with
a publisher.

Once the publisher picked it up, many hours of playtesting and many iterations
followed (although once we cut it back to "what made it fun" it ended up
surprisingly close to the original foundation).

I think that unless you're doing something completely groundbreaking, people
who operate in that space can see the potential in a prototype/MVP and can
visualize what it will look like with improved assets, etc quite easily. If
the core isn't "fun" then you don't have anything (yet).

[1]
[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/186701/burger](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/186701/burger)

~~~
cableshaft
As someone who came from making video games and now I'm working towards
getting my first board game published, I like the prototype process of board
games a lot more. One reason is because it is SOOOO much faster and easier to
prototype a board game than a video game.

Need to try a new mechanic? Tell your players "okay, this time, instead of
doing this we will do this." And five seconds later you're trying a new
mechanic. You don't have to spend hours or days rewiring a bunch of things to
get it to work. Sometimes it just takes a sticker on a card and things get
changed.

Need some components for your game? You don't have to create them, or search
for the right thing in unity asset packs. Open up one of your existing board
games that has cubes or discs or dice or meeples or whatever and you can start
trying your idea out in five minutes.

It's great, and it's hard to go back to the comparatively much slower process
with video games afterwards.

Video games still kick the pants off board games when it comes to ease of
distribution and sales channels for small developers, though.

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wsc981
Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid, The Witness) also has many interesting talks
on indie game development. Here[0] is his talk on prototyping games.

\---

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISutk1mauPM)

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triplesec
Can anyone give some kind of update on how things have changed in the past
decade since this was written, and thoughts about what resources to go to as a
result? That might be really helpful and received with love and gratitude from
readers here.

~~~
erik
This article focuses mostly on design and the principles of rapidly
prototyping a game, and I would say very little has changed in those areas
over the years.

Something that has changed is the available tools for rapid game development.
Ludum Dare is a regularly occurring game jam (next one starts Aug 26), and
their tools page is a good resource:
[http://ludumdare.com/compo/tools/](http://ludumdare.com/compo/tools/)

Somewhat unrelated, but a lot has also changed in the commercial market for
indie games since this was written. On one hand, it has gotten much easier to
commercially distribute indie games. But on the other hand, there is much,
much more competition in this space now.

~~~
bonestamp2
Nice list, thanks for posting it!

Prototyping in unity is not as fast as flash back in the day (for me at this
time anyways). Can anyone compare GameMaker: Studio or another modern product
that is good for fast prototyping?

~~~
erik
GameMaker is usually the go to recommendation for rapid prototyping, and game
development at a higher level of abstraction than Unity.

I've lately been hearing some positive buzz around Godot, particularly for 2D
games. But I also get the impression that there is a learning curve.
[https://godotengine.org/](https://godotengine.org/)

If you want to bring your flash skills into the modern world, Haxe might be
worth looking at: [http://haxe.org/](http://haxe.org/) particularly with a
framework like OpenFL. [http://www.openfl.org/](http://www.openfl.org/)

Here is a good article on the post flash gamedev world:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20150915/252693/Wh...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20150915/252693/Where_have_all_the_Flash_developers_gone.php)

I haven't tried any of the above. But I've heard good things about all of
them.

------
andrewmcwatters
A lot of this simply isn't true, though. For instances, many games' source of
fun comes not just from gameplay mechanics but the richness of its
composition. When you take away the design of assets or the particular sounds
or music that a game is made up of, you have an entirely different game.

Too many people in gamedev are fooled by this concept. If anyone could make
Minecraft and make it just as fun, why don't other voxel-based games ever seem
just as fun?

What's fundamentally the difference between CS, CS:S, and CS:GO? Surely
they're all the same game since the mechanics haven't changed dramatically.

~~~
nostromo
You've missed the word "prototype".

The point isn't to have a perfect game at the end of the period, it's to have
something to validate further time investment.

Take a look at the game Braid from prototype/concept to finished product.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Braid-
art-1.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Braid-art-1.jpg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Braid-
art-2.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Braid-art-2.jpg)

This article is about how to get to something like the first image up and
running. If it's fun, then work on making it look like the second image.

~~~
andrewmcwatters
And you've missed my point entirely. You can have a game that simply _isn't
fun, until the point of it actually being polished._

~~~
tdb7893
Can you give an example? (I don't mean to be snarky but I'm actually curious)

~~~
babuskov
The Stanley Parable? I mean, without the script and voice acting, it would
seem pretty dull.

~~~
falsedan
Wouldn't you prototype the script? Just having a stage direction [SOMETHING
WEIRD HAPPENS] would work in lieu of transforming a 3D environment.

I bet you could protoype The Stanly Parable in a week in Twine/Z-code.

------
logicallee
For some reason I misread this title as "How to Prototype a Game in under 7
seconds" and I was like, FINALLY!! Someone gets the web. I was so ready to
click and spend not just 7 seconds but 30, 60, 90, 120, hell, 20 minutes if
that's what it took.

Imagine my disappointment when it turned into 7 days.

This article is on the right track. But "Rapid is a State of Mind" can be a
state of mind.

I am exaggerating with the 7 seconds - but only a little. People need to go
much farther in the direction that this article, correctly, advocates :)

 _EDIT: the downvoters are on the wrong side of history and I 'm not changing
one word._

~~~
khedoros
> People need to go much farther in the direction that this article,
> correctly, advocates :)

Prove the downvoters wrong, and build some awesome 7-second games. It hasn't
been done...and so you're seeing skepticism. If it takes you an hour to make
something like that, maybe you can have a dozen a day, and maybe 80 per week.
Showing off a few dozen decent game prototypes in a week of work (or even just
one, running in under an hour and popularly judged worthwhile) would be great.

~~~
logicallee
I would say most programmers working today do not so much as open their
programming environment in 7 seconds, that is not the environment that is set
up let alone exposed to outsiders, without signup, through a simple URL.

So I am saying that the direction the article advocates is completely correct,
yet the maxim "Rapid is a State of Mind" can be taken further, we can think in
even more rapid terms. If you can't imagine clicking a URL and immediately
creating a game that has never been made before then you're on the wrong side
of history. I am simply not going to elaborate. (The 7 seconds is a bit of an
exaggeration, as I noted.)

~~~
jeremiep
You definitely should elaborate. Right now what you're saying has absolutely
no substance and only reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

One thing I learned long ago is that people who are cocksure of themselves yet
won't explain anything are almost always the ones on the wrong side of history
yet are completely oblivious to the fact.

~~~
logicallee
okay, I elaborated here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12283627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12283627)

if you really want to, set aside about three minutes, try tinkercad and model
a 3d object that is ready to 3d print and has never existed before, no
installation required, and then come back and tell me how a similar level of
simplicity would never be exposed by anyone anywhere to make it possible for
non-programmers to create and publish a game in a few seconds.

your talk about being cocksure and obliviousness is dangerously close to a
personal attack, so unless you make a constructive reply I think this
conversation is over.

