Checklists for Making Awesome Video Games, and for Making Game Development Awesome

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2013

Making video games has always been as much art as science. At times, chained to the oars of a ship chasing the bleeding-edge horizon of technology or constrained by massive budgets to make obsessively risk-averse design decisions, the industry has drifted further out on the “science” side. Perhaps now, with the rise of indie games, it’s drifted more to the “art” side. But it’s always required solid measures of both.

Either way, game development defies easy, repeatable recipes. A formula can take you only so far. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use checklists and benchmarks to guide development – on both the “art” or technology sides.

And this is a particularly good one, from IndieGames.com:

The Essential Checklist for Making an Awesome Video Game, According to FuturLab

Yes, before you ask, yesterday’s post was in part me asking about “finding the toy.” Frayed Knights may have been critically acclaimed and a multiple award-winner (which just amazes and thrills me to no end), but I feel like I’m on a never-ending quest to truly grok RPG design, in an effort to make better and better games.  This article made me sit back and ponder.

But let’s not end with a single list, shall we? On the technology side, it may depend on what technology you are using. As Unity is a very popular choice (for good reason), here is a list of 50 “best practices” (according to one freelance developer). These tips are not applicable for every team or every project, but they are worth taking a look at if you are working in Unity:

50 Tips for Working With Unity (Best Practices)

Even if you don’t follow all or most of these practices, I found it pretty useful to get a feel for the thought processes behind them. Understanding the “why” is so much better than trying to commit 50 practices to memory or process. In particular, I noted two factors at work: One is generalized “best practices” and how they are best implemented via Unity. Another is simply taking advantage of the way Unity likes to do things.

 

 

Filed Under: Design, Links & Tidbits, Production - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



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