Image Source: David Mullich

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In building your game, we encourage you to follow the Play-Centric Design process, which focuses on the game-player, is iterative, incremental, and agile. We also encourage you to keep a Game Development Journal as you go through this process.

The user (aka your game-player), is the key to all of these efforts. You are building a game for them and you'll want to focus on them and involve them throughout the game creation effort. To succeed, your efforts should proceed in an iterative effort: take small steps, validate, and adjust as necessary. Along the way, you can adjust your goals for player experience, create and use prototypes, and conduct playtesting sessions.

This Game Design Toolkit contains many pages to guide you through the design and development of your game. Throughout the guide there are activities that you should complete.

Support

Game development is a social experience (Burke & Kafai, 2014, p.702). Communities can help you understand feedback, overcome challenges, and become aware of alternate game creation approaches (regarding story, development, mechanics, etc.).

Get Support! Give Support!

During your game creation efforts, record your community experiences. In your Game Development Journal, record examples of:

1. How you used a community to solve a problem.
2. How you helped someone else from the community solve a problem.

Forming Your Team

Like most teams, to succeed we need many skills, many perspectives, flexibility, and a willingness to work together. Think about playing basketball. There are five players on the team. Each player understands the rules of the game, can run, dribble, and shoot; but some players are more focused on defence or passing, while other players are focused on blocking or scoring. Similar scenarios play out in theatre, movies, music (bands or orchestras), and most creative endeavors.

Everyone on a game development team is focused on producing a good game - a game that appeals to many game-players and provides a positive experience. The video game development team has many roles and everyone can play one or more roles as needed. As shown in the following image, roles support coding, creating art, focusing on music and sounds, game design, testing, writing documentation, story telling, and even helping to keep the team coordinated and collaborating.

Image Source: Andrew Mckay

Ever wonder about people that develop software? Check out these videos:

• Amy Dickens - sound and music
• Mario Ponce - programmer
• Lisa Lang - fashion designer
• Katrina Owen - project manager
• Alicia Carr - programmer and activist

Let's aim to be diverse and inclusive. We want everyone to have a great and fun experience.

Capture Team Roles!

Have each member of your team fill out a row in the Team Roles worksheet. During the project, roles may change, but it is a good idea to start out thinking about how each person is going to contribute. Revisit the worksheet periodically to make sure that everyone has a clear role and a chance to contribute.

Identify Audience and Educational Goals!

For your educational game, discuss and then record your answers in your Game Development Journal:

• What grade are your game players in?
• What topic or part of the curriculum is being targeted?
• What do you know about the topic?

Next Steps

You've completed Getting Started! Proceed to Ideas!

References

Bernard, Z. (2018, April 01). The founder of one of San Francisco's hottest startups reveals how diversity is the key to building a multi-million dollar company. Retrieved April 01, 2018, from http://www.businessinsider.com/weebly-reveals-how-diversity-is-key-to-its-success-2018-3

Burke, Q., & Kafai, Y. B. (2014). Decade of game making for learning: From tools to communities. Handbook of digital games, 689-709.

Fullerton, T., Fron, J., Pearce, C., & Morie, J. (2008). Getting girls into the game: Towards a ‘virtuous cycle’. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New perspectives on gender and gaming, 161-176.

Kafai, Y. B., & Peppler, K. A. (2011). Youth, technology, and DIY: Developing participatory competencies in creative media production. Review of research in education, 35(1), 89-119.

Mullich, D. (2014, June 18). LAFS Game Design 6 - Conceptualization. Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://www.slideshare.net/dmullich/lafs-game-design-6-conceptualization