Find Your Focus

In the earliest stages of production, games are these gigantic bundles of ideas mashed together into something that vaguely resembles a complete concept. It starts with the grand, sweeping, basic as hell phrases like “space captain” or “insane diplomat” and somehow, by some insane alchemy, it becomes a tight, cohesive story. One you can show off to other people and have them say, “Oh! I understand that!"

Except it’s not alchemy.

It’s me.

I came aboard Gravtech at a fairly early stage in development. There were a lot of ideas floating around, but much of it wasn’t written down, or it existed in documents that were way too outdated to help. For my first few weeks, I felt a bit like an anthropologist trying to record a culture with a strong oral tradition. It just wasn’t easy to bring someone up to speed on the whole thing.

Credit

A lot of my work has been figuring out what worked about the ideas, what was outdated, what was recent, and how to refine the concepts that already existed. Since then, it’s been a steady refining process, fitting the game’s design and story to narrative structures and programmable functions (or flexing narrative and function to fit the game). And let me tell you what I’ve learned:

It’s all about narrowing your focus.

The most important thing you can do early on is look at your game concept and define what makes it yours. Strip away everything else that is non-essential and look at what you have left. What is the core of your story, your game, your design? What sets it apart from every other new thing out there?

See, there’s this phrase that floats around writing circles: “Every story’s already been told.” And it’s true. You can find analogues for most ideas somewhere in the history of storytelling. Once you realize that, it’s easy to feel discouraged.

But here’s the trick: You don’t have to make something nobody else has ever made before. You just have to tell the story in a way no one else has. And that’s easier than it sounds. Think about what you bring to the table that no one else does. Tell it your way, design it your way, because no one else has quite your perspective or your thoughts.

Take NORA, for instance (what I can tell you, anyway). There have been science fiction games, and there have been character-focused games. There have been psychological thriller games. But nobody else is going to tell our story quite the way we’re telling it.

That’s the heart of design. The thing we keep returning to over and over again when we need to refocus as designers. What are we saying, what are we doing, what are we designing that no one else will?

Once you have that, everything else is just an added bonus, something to decorate the core of your idea. You’ll always know what you’re working towards. And once you’re confident that your unique take shines through every part of your idea, you’ll know that your design is rock-solid.

Just narrow your focus and find your voice.

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By Annie Craton, Design Lead for NORA