My own thoughts on prototyping

Started of this week doing the InsurgentX tutorials to warmup and it's definetly getting me in the right mindset. Especially started to see that classes aren't that complex. It's more the hierarchy that's confusing to me. About 3/4 into the series. 

I've done some webresearch. I found a bunch of links but I notice that I really needed to inventarize my own knowledge because a lot sounds familiar.  So below are my thoughts on prototyping.

What I know

Figured it’s best if I try to inventarize what I know about prototyping myself while doing research.

I’ll start of with what methods that are know to me. Then I’ll talk about the use of prototyping as I know of.

So first of the methods. For gamedevelopment 3 methods are known to me.

1  Paper Prototyping	Using pen and paper the core mechanics are tested quickly
2. Physical Prototyping	Through physical  behaviour and rules game play is acted out. Uses physical ‘dummy’ objects to simulate ingame objects
3. Digital Prototyping	A quick messy digital version is made containing the core features

Each method has it’s advantages and disadvantages  

Paper Prototyping 

Is usely the one designers start off with since it requires the least technical investment. This means the designer can focus on the design itself and avoid distraction by technical bugs.

This approach is limited though. While it’s very usefull to test quick game rules the rules are changed to test how the game plays. This means there is a difference in game rules and can cause differing results from the actual game.

Also because it’s paper the concept get’s throw in a set of boardgame rules. This can cause players to overthink their actions and this may not be what you want for a digital game.

Physical Prototyping
A very free form of prototyping. Players utilize their own body feature which means the only thing that needs to be built are props for the players to use. These often don’t require much work. This method makes heavy use of the players imagination to fill in the gaps though.

Physical and Paper prototyping are usefull at the start to get view of the players decision making.

Videogames are interactive and evolve over time though and often have a lot of things going on at the same time at once. Distilling the game in paper form can mean a lot of manual calculation is required. This disrupts the play experience. The more complex ideas can get dropped pretty quickly due to this. And this might not be fair.

Tools: Blocks, Physical Props, Imagination

Digital prototypes
Since these are ‘simple games’ this form get’s closest to the actual game and is thus most representational for the real game experience. They tend to take longer to make then paper or physical methods though.

The uses of prototyping
Prototyping really means testing to me. Testing is mainly done because there are questions. Prototypes are used to find answers to these questions. So prototyping has 2 main uses in my opion.

1.   To answer  existing questions
2.    To find new questions

Designers can have different type of questions.

What prototypes should consist of
Prototypes should focus on answering the questions the designer has about the concept. This means the designer needs to distill the game to it’s core and find the most fast, effective way to produce different results.

Prototypes should allow for fast tweaking. If option 1 doesn’t work option 2 might and maybe option 3.

What should be forgotten when prototyping:

All unnecessary features that aren't necessary to answer the question. These just take up time and distract. Examples are complicated animation features, particle effects, rendering etc.

To be continued