Structure of a game concept document

So, how do you write a game concept? And what do you need before starting?

There is some information that any game concept should always contain, as follows:

• Introduction (sometimes called a hook or elevator pitch)
• Description/game overview
• A list of key features, including its unique selling points (USPs)
• Game genre
• Platform
• Target audience
• Business model

It is clear from this list that your role as a game designer is not about deciding all this. The game idea or hook may come from any other team member, from an external client, from a publisher, or from some lead/director within the company.

The games industry offers a lot of freedom and possibilities; there are companies that make games to make a profit or indie developers that follow their passion and make their games because they have something to say—there are even people working on games in their free time just because they love it.

In the professional world of game development, every game is a commercial software product. This means that, in order to justify the existence of the game, there must be people willing to buy it, play it, and hopefully talk about it. This is why the game concept needs to go beyond a simple description of a game; you have to think about a game concept as a sales tool. Answer questions such as Who is this game for? and Why should people care to play it?

Keep in mind that sometimes people make games just for themselves, to express their art, or to exercise their creativity. These are obvious exceptions to the sale tool concept. Arguably, in these cases, you don’t even need any formal documentation. But even in such cases, writing your document can go a long way.

The audience may vary (and so do the formality and the structure of the document) but the goal stays the same: whoever reads the document must understand and see what the developers want to do and needs to get excited about that...even if it is all for yourself!

The reader might be the publisher to which you are presenting the idea. Presenting really means selling, in this case. But the reader could be the programmer who is going to implement the game or an artist who is going to create all the artwork or graphical assets, or even just a possible player.

All these people will look at the document in a different way, but one thing is for sure: if they get what the document is trying to present, they will get excited about the project and look forward to whatever it is they have an interest in, from giving the money needed for its development to working on it or to just playing it!

Exercise

Try to compare the work you have done in your first exercise with what you have learned in this paragraph. Does your concept include information such as genre, platform, or target audience? Add these details to your concept or write a new one with these new elements in mind.

Read on to understand what we are talking about and why these things are as important as a mere description of the game.

The hook or elevator pitch

You have a couple of sentences, for example—three at a maximum—to describe what your game will be. The introduction has to condense all the information that you will expand on in the rest of the document. This is your first page, and if it doesn’t catch your reader’s attention, nothing else you have to say will.

It’s not only that; by stripping your whole game down to such a fundamental description, you are focusing on what’s really important. It’s like a mantra you will have to follow during development because that’s your promise to your players.

It’s called a hook because the reader wants to know more. Some call it an elevator pitch because it’s what you can say to a stranger in a 30-second elevator ride. A great example comes from a well-known game developer, Rami Ismail. He and his team, Vlambeer, made a game called Ridiculous Fishing, a hit mobile game from 2013.

What is it? In his own words, it’s Fishing with machine guns.

In just four words, this sentence tells a lot about the game, but also makes you wonder how? (and, probably, why?). You’re hooked. You want to know more. Great introduction!

Tip

There are no strict rules on how to put together your introduction. Some games are introduced with a short video, a set of mood boards, or concept art—even a montage from existing videos or cuts from movies. These are all powerful tools that can be used to communicate the game vision. Don’t limit yourself to just words on a page; after all, a picture is worth a thousand words. At the same time, keep in mind your audience—be sure that the person who is going to read your concept can clearly understand your intentions. As your audience changes (from peers to high-level executives), you might need to change things around and adapt your concept.

Description

In a few paragraphs, a page, or a few slides, this is where the game is described. All the main elements should appear in this section, as set out here:

• The core gameplay mechanics
• The narrative
• Mode and setting
• Information about the characters and the game world

The idea is to give the reader a clear picture of how the final experience is going to be. This is also the section with more space for multimedia. Concept artwork can juxtapose text to reinforce it, but also to give directions about the art style.

Sometimes audio and soundtracks will be a defining part of a game concept (just think about musical games), and for games that would require extensive use of audio, such as narrative games with voice acting, including these details early in the concept is as important as defining the core gameplay mechanics.

Note

A common mistake while writing the description is to include too specific information or yield to the temptation of exaggerating. Describing the game combat as driven by a revolutionary artificial intelligence is not a good idea if developing AI is not part of the plan (or the budget). And in case it is, there’s no need to go into the details of how such an AI will work, even though a few words to describe why it’s defined as revolutionary might be required.

Key feature set

This is a list of the features that make your game a great experience for your players. There’s no need to include all the systems you will be designing, but it is expected that a game concept includes all the main ones. This means that a healthy development cycle starts with a fundamental feature set that remains largely unchanged (unless things don’t work out as expected and you find yourself in dire need of a big design pivot).

Some common key features are game modes, multiplayer guild systems, battle systems, playable characters, progression systems, and technical features (such as advanced AI or particular graphics). The list is as long as a designer’s imagination can go, so make sure to include only the ones really relevant to your game.

To look at some practical examples, the App Store gives some very good insights. Most App Store descriptions contain a list of the game’s key features. Hearthstone, for example, markets itself with the following messages:

• JUMP RIGHT IN: Fun introductory missions bring you into the world of Hearthstone’s intuitive gameplay.
• BUILD YOUR DECK: With hundreds of additional cards to win and craft - your collection grows with you.
• HONE YOUR SKILLS: Play in practice matches against computer-controlled heroes of the Warcraft universe. Thrall, Uther, Gul’dan - they’re all here!
• COLLECTION TRAVELS WITH YOU: Your card collection is linked to your Battle.net account - enabling you to switch your play between tablet and desktop with ease.
• AND FIGHT FOR GLORY: When you’re ready, step into the Arena and duel other players for the chance to win awesome prizes!

As you can see, Blizzard did an excellent job of mixing technical and gameplay features, describing them with taglines that make players excited about their trading card game. These messages were obviously written by the marketing team for the finished product, but they are a perfect example of clearly and efficiently communicating the key feature set to the target audience.

Finding your USP

What makes your game different? What is its USP? Finding the USP is a fundamental step in defining your key feature set, especially if your concept is intended for a publisher or an investor.

The USP determines that unique mechanism or take on your genre that is going to make your game stand out from the competition, the reason why players out there would be interested in dedicating their valuable time to your game instead of the many others that they already have or are interested in trying.

To help you understand the idea behind the USP, sometimes also called breakthrough, let’s have a look at some widely popular and successful games. The Assassin’s Creed franchise came out in 2007, and it revolutionized the action-adventure game genre by introducing its famous parkour mechanic. The ability to traverse on the vertical axis by freely climbing buildings was a fresh and innovative feature and helped set the game apart from its competition. The public response was immensely positive, and despite some major flaws in that original game, Assassin’s Creed became one of the biggest game franchises in history.

Another famous example, on a different platform, is Supercell’s Clash Royale. The core gameplay is based on collecting cards and battling with them in an arena with other players. The game is full of fresh takes on different mechanics, but it has one very clear USP: real-time Player versus Player (PvP). When the game came out in mid-2016, very few mobile games were relying on synchronous PvP.

Most titles at the time were either turn-based or real-time versus AI (the other player being controlled by an AI). Clearly, it was a consequence of the technical challenges of creating synchronous PvP games on mobile.

Let’s have a look at another interesting example: FromSoftware’s Elden Ring. It is the last in their Souls-like game catalog. If we look at its features individually, nothing stands out as a unique, never-seen-before game mechanic. The biggest USP for Elden Ring is that is an Open World game, a feature widely available in a plethora of other games.

But for a Souls-like game, Elden Ring is the first that offers an Open World experience, and it was such a unique new element for this type of game that it made it one of the most successful games in modern times!

As in any market, an unexplored area is both a risk and an opportunity. Supercell was successful in pushing the boundaries of mobile multiplayer games toward synchronous PVP and created a billion-dollar game in the process, while Ubisoft and FromSoftware designed games that offered a novel and unique experience, spawning entirely new game sub-genres!

You might think that USP concerns marketing and sales more, rather than game design. Indeed, the two questions Why should I buy your game? and Why should I play your game? have very similar answers. It is the game designer’s responsibility to provide an answer that can satisfy both!

Exercise

Have you clearly defined the USP for your game concept? Try to add it to your document.

Is it unique enough to make the concept stand out from similar games?

Do you know any other examples of game franchises that owe their popularity to a specific USP? Think about a few of them and compare their USPs with yours.

Platform

This refers to the hardware on which the game will be played or a particular distribution platform. Hardware such as PCs, games consoles, mobile devices, and virtual reality (VR) headsets are considered platforms, but also specific environments such as Facebook or iMessage are platforms themselves. Each platform brings a unique set of requirements and opens very different possibilities on both the technical and creative sides.

Choosing the right platform for your game must be one of the earliest decisions. The platform on its own can have an immense influence on the game design, from the target audience and business model to controls, user interface, and performance requirements. Platform choice sets certain expectations for the game you’re making. There’s a good reason why match-three puzzle games are not swarming the console market.

From an audience perspective, a card solitaire game may work well on smartphones but is unlikely to be as popular on consoles. Similarly, but from a hardware angle, a strategy game that relies on precise controls provided by a mouse and keyboard might not translate very well to the console or handheld input methods. There are many unspoken rules to game design, and knowing when to break them is part of the art.

Introducing a complex strategy game to the smartphone market and tackling the challenges offered by the platform head-on might result in a very innovative and interesting product. But remember—such experiments are risky, so make sure you know the rules before you try to break them!

We hope to pass some of this unspoken knowledge to you with this book, but you will have to keep learning by researching and playing games throughout your entire journey as a game designer.

Each platform also has a very tangible impact on how the game will be designed. The most evident example is about input controls: an action game would pose completely different challenges on a mobile device than on a console controller...

Those differences in design are not limited to the platform technology; the way the player expects to interact with games on different platforms is important too. A mobile game would usually be characterized by short sessions where the player is able to complete the whole game loop in just a few minutes, while a PC game could require the same amount of time just to go through a single cutscene.

Audience

There is a huge difference between an educational game for little kids and an 18+-rated zombie shooter.

Defining the audience is part of the initial creative process. Even if it seems a natural consequence of the kind of game you want to make, it is important to spend some time thinking about it and having a clear idea of who is going to play the game.

The kids/adult example is an easy one, but identifying an audience means asking yourself questions such as: Who is interested in this game? Which similar games do they play? What are they expecting from a new game in their favorite genre? What is the common behavior when interacting with a game for your selected audience? How much time do they spend playing? What are the undelivered promises of the competition?

Mere demographics are still an important factor in defining an audience, but in our modern world, amazingly, pretty much everyone plays video games, and there’s no such thing as a young hardcore gamer or an average casual gamer.

These are concepts from the past that are important to leave behind. Everyone is a potential gamer in today’s world, but each and every gamer is interested in very different game experiences. Internet and online communities give game developers an incredible tool to find out about people’s desires and fantasies in terms of what they’d love to play. User research is done by many developers, submitting rough concepts, trailers, or marketing materials of games that don’t yet exist to test and learn from those desires.

Video game audiences are also constantly evolving. There is a great article written by Meg Jayanth (the writer behind 80 Days from inkle) for The Guardian in 2014 titled 52% of gamers are women – but the industry doesn’t know it (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-people-playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-know). Give it a good read! Industry reports available online can also give you a great idea of the different (and, sometimes, unexpected) types of audiences out there.

Tip

When you define your target audience, try to go beyond a generic definition. Define your audience by their interests.

Casual players who have a few spare minutes on their commute are incredibly more accurate than an average casual gamer.

Hardcore players who grew up playing strategy games such as Dune II and Fallout Tactics are not quite the same as hardcore strategy game players.

A more precise target audience definition is extremely helpful because it gives you something to design around already. Just look at the information gleaned from casual players who have a few spare minutes on their commute. You don’t only know that your game is for casual players—you also know that the average game session should last no more than a few minutes and that the game might have some problems working online, as commuting usually means unstable mobile networks.

Age rating systems

You have surely heard about Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) or Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). Age-based rating systems are important in the game industry, and they should be taken into consideration by developers. Knowing beforehand that you are developing a game that is supposed to be PEGI 7, for example, already says a lot about the game design itself.

The same goes for mature-rated games. Sometimes, the very fact that they are mature-rated is part of the concept. In fact, the idea of including an expected age-based rating in the concept might help in creating a game suitable for that age restriction.

There is an everlasting debate about these systems and how they are (or are not) useful to consumers, especially parents choosing a game for their children. As will often be the case in this book, we strongly recommend you explore the topic on your own; but for now, keep in mind that they are not just tools to rate a finished game, but also useful guidelines to keep a project on track so that it’s suitable for a particular audience.

Genre

If you think about movies, since there’s no interactivity involved, the narrative theme is enough to define an entire genre: thrillers, war movies, romantic movies, comedies, and so on.

Since games are an interactive medium, talking about a war game doesn’t really tell us much about it. Therefore, in games, the genre is more informative than the theme and the setting. And so, our genres, such as First-Person Shooter (FPS), are heavily related to the gameplay at hand. An FPS can take place in different settings and explore different themes: from historic to present-day or even sci-fi.

The genre tells the players what kind of game they will be playing, and it’s a very useful way to classify games. There are quite a lot of genres, and each genre might have many sub-genres. Also, smart game designers are constantly redefining genres and pushing the boundaries of what a genre means. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that some genres are universally recognized by both developers and players as standard.

Some examples are FPS, platformers, role-playing games (RPGs), sports games, massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs), strategy games, and simulations. The list goes on and on.

Defining the genre, or having a genre as a starting point for redefining one, is a crucial part of creating a game concept and is certainly the one that will most influence the entire design process.

Exercise

How many genres are you familiar with? Make a list of all the genres you know and then highlight the ones you have never played. Get yourself some games in those genres and familiarize yourself with them. Everyone has their favorite genre, but by becoming a game designer, you can’t afford to ignore the genres you don’t like to play. You are not a mere video gamer anymore!

Business model

The business model (or revenue model) is simply a system by which the game is going to make money. Remember—a game is ultimately a product that needs to be sold, even the most artistic one; surprisingly enough, even the ones that will be given away for free. As we already mentioned, a game concept is not a one-man job by the game designer.

Just as with game design, creating a game concept is collaborative work in which the whole team participates, and there might be also requirements coming from outside. This includes the business model, and the team needs to have a clear idea of how it will work.

You might think that this is something about marketing that doesn’t really concern you, but the business model will have an impact on how the game is designed; therefore, it is absolutely your concern and has to be clear from the beginning.

Note

Some developers think that business models are some kind of virus that infected the game development world in recent years. Those great games are going to sell because they are great, so there’s no need to think about it. Or maybe, that smaller games made by a handful of developers don’t need to waste time on marketing stuff.

Sometimes, indeed, this is true, especially because there are many reasons to make a game that are not just profit!

That said, though, the rest of the time (which is most of the time), games must be sold, and the job of the professional game developer is to make games for a living. So, keep the business model in mind, and design around it from the beginning. Create something so great that players are willing to pay for it, and respect the value they give to your product.

There are three main business models through which a game can generate revenue, as follows:

• Premium: A premium game is paid upfront, and then it can be played virtually forever by the player. It is still the dominant business model for console and PC games. Some examples include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Sims, and The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
• Subscription: Games with subscriptions require the player to pay a monthly fee in order to continue to access the game. The most popular subscription-based games are MMOs such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online.
• Free to Play (F2P): F2P games can be downloaded and played for free and rely entirely on optional microtransactions. Extensive information on this business model can be found later, in Chapter 14, Mastering Games as a Service.

Sounds simple enough, right? As with every aspect of game development, there’s a whole lot under the surface! Each of those three main models can be implemented in a variety of different ways and also intertwined with each other.

Premium games can be given out for free as a demo (only a limited amount of content is available for free) or for a limited amount of time (free weekends are really popular for competitive multiplayer games such as Overwatch). Premium games can also be enriched with further content releases of downloadable content (DLC).

This is new and fresh content (levels, characters, game modes, and so forth) made available later to keep players interested and engaged in a game. Usually, DLC is sold for extra money, but sometimes it might be free (for everyone or just for players who purchased a particular edition of the game). The Total War franchise from Creative Assembly is a fantastic example of premium games, with the addition over time of many DLCs containing new factions, campaigns, game modes, and characters.

A great example of an innovative business model is episodic games, popularized by Telltale Games, with their series of licensed titles such as The Walking Dead and Back to the Future. This is essentially an evolution of the old shareware (demo) or trial model but naturally divided and reinforced by the narrative. Usually, the first episode is given away for free, and the player can decide to purchase each additional episode individually or subscribe and gain access to the entire season.

Supermassive Games is another game developer that excels at this. With their series The Dark Pictures Anthology, they have evolved the episodic game concept even further, moving away from narratively connected episodes of a single story to a framework of different stories that share a general theme (horror) and certain game mechanics (quick time events and branching narrative, for example), but are otherwise disconnected from each other.

F2P games can generate revenues in even more creative and new ways. Offering virtual goods or in-game currencies for real money is just one possibility. F2P games can make money through advertisements (yes—just like TV shows!) and then sell players the ad-free version, or they can ask players to watch an ad to get an in-game reward, or maybe to subscribe to the game to get the same reward without having to watch any ads.

There are many possibilities, but regardless of the business model you chose for your game, one thing must not be forgotten: the business model and the game design are intertwined.

Creating a game and thinking about its business model as the last step before release is a huge mistake. Switching between vastly different business models in the middle of the development process (for example, turning a premium game into an F2P one) is a very dangerous move that can seriously derail the product.

This is why the business model is an essential part of the game concept. As with anything else in it, it sets important guidelines for the entire development.

Exercise

Did your initial concept include something about the target audience, genre, and business model?

Think about it and include these in your concept. Does it change your idea of the game? What are players going to pay for?

There is another reason why a game concept is such an important milestone in starting to create a new game. Once your game genre, audience, and platform are defined, it is possible to take a look at what’s out there in the market: your competition.