About Me
Currently working at 11bit studios where I finished working on Anomaly: Warzone Earth for iPhone.
Before I was working at: mass-creation.com, beastworld.pl, tanadu.com, The Witcher 2,
The Witcher (cancelled console port), teenstar.pl and some more.
I'm and avid runner who love to play and design games.
Too long I have delayed writing this article, but during that time I analyzed the subject even more. Also, some interesting discussions were created because of the study.
In the previous post I tried to make you excited about why should we care about learning how climbing walls are designed.
As a review, why should we care?
1) It’s also a design;
2) This design should create fun experience what comes from using a wall (the system);
3) Fun comes from:
- a) Reaching goals;
- b) Doing something incredible (especially when when we do it for the first time, with time it wears of);
- c) Feeling safe (like “magic circle”);
- d) Process guided by inefficient rules (we could use a lift, we could have some kind of hooks to hook up stones instead of grabbing them with hands);
- e) Making something that is worth for us (even better if its worth for our friends) – we accomplish something;
- f) Climbing wall is some kind of level (you have to design it thinking about reasons, making decisions just like you design a level in game);
- g) Conflict – physical world rules are do everything to make climbing hard to us, but not to hard, because then it would be frustrating experience;
- h) We can win or lose – if we decide to give up before we reach a set goal like: to reach the top!, then we feel, well, like a losers…
- i) Uncertain outcome – especially when we do it first, or we want to climb up somewhere where it feels hard to reach to us, we don’t know if we will make it.
4) What’s more to make good climbing wall is hard enough, so it makes sense to do it in some phases just like we produce a game. Still, when you make a climbing wall it’s easier for you to establish a project cost than to establish a cost of making a game. That’s why it’s good to view it with game dev lens. An author of this article that I’ve analyzed has some good thought-out plan for making a climbing wall. It’s good to look at it and see what can we learn and use in making games.
Climbing Wall Production AND Game Production
I’ll try to show in the table how different phases of climbing walls production could correspond to different phases of game production.
| Climbing Wall Production | Game Production |
|---|---|
| 1) PLANNING PHASE: | 1) PREDISIGN PHASE: |
| 1) First, define the climbing goals (Why do you want that wall?, What type of training would you want using the wall?) | 1) First, define the essential experience that you want to have in our game. This point seems important to me. I read some articles by David Freeman or some chapters in Shell's "The Art of Game Design" that clearly emphasize that. I think this point is missed many times by us, when we are working on some professional game. I think, it's good to try thinking on game starting from the experience we want it to create, but it just feels hard... Still, we should do this! Not from game mechanics, story or aestethics, but from describing the experience that we want to simulate in our game. |
| 2) Find a location (Where will you put the wall?, What are the meauserements of the location, of the site?) | 2) See what's your constraints, boundaries - this game should be 2d? 3d? What type of controller? What screen size? What's the technical capabilities of the platform? How much time can it take to produce? What about experience of your team? Type those constraints somewhere, because you have to stick to them - of course you will fight them, but in a reasonable way... |
| 3) Build a model! (just form the general shape and work on it untill it suits you) | 3) Make prototype of your game - Of course by doing this you'll come up with game rules and well, you will write something like a game concept. You have your game in your mind, but also have a playable prototype. Play it and tune it untill it suits you :) And make that prototype fast - you want to test game mechanis, nothing more... So even better, if you make a digital game, to make a physical prototype like a board game or card game. |
| 4) Build scale model (using measurements from your location, don't cheat, so to bent it irrealisticly) | 4) I think that here, if you work on video game, you make a software prototype from your physical prototype and all that you've learned in the phase before. Otherwise, if you make some other game you probebly would want to simulate and produce game so it would LOOK like almost a finished product. I capitalized: look, because it won't have the whole content, etc. It's just so you can see how tough and how costly this game will be for you to made. |
| 5) Establish the ballpark cost (in general how much $$$ it will cost?) | 5) For me this point is almost impossible to do for video games. I think that doing board game you can calculate the ballpark cost. But about video games - well, I think that at this point you know what, if something, will cause troubles to develope. You can type it somewhere in the risks list. Also, if you have the past experience in developing a whole game, you can assume how much time it will take. By doing this you can at least calculate the cost of runing the office, salaries, so you if you're good, you will know a big part of budget you need for this game. |
| 6) Go or not go decission (you have a money for that? maybe it has to be cheaper? so will you do it? is it good? do you want to change something?) | 6) By doing that analysis (wtf?! to analyze budget and such boring things in predesign? ;)) you can make a Make or not to make decission. Is it doable for you? Is this game sparks the experience you wanted in the first place? You like it? Is it a good play? |
| 7) Plan your work space (do you have the space to assemble the wall?) | 7) I think it's just about organization side. Do you have all the team members at one place? Will you freelance? |
| 8) List and find needed tools (do you have all of them? you have to buy some?) | 8) What tools do you need that you don't have? Like: applications, licenses for them, hardware... About board games, well, you think about physical tools, paint, pieces, etc. |
| 9) Get building permits if you need them. | 9) Just like in builiding climbing wall they are not always needed. But if you want to make a game for a new platform many times you to sign some papers, pay for the license, etc. |
| 2) DESIGN PHASE: | 2) DESIGN PHASE: |
| 1) Transition your model's dimensions to a detailed sketch. Define exact dimensions, angles and shapes. I think it should be like a technical plan. "Label how far each joint or edge is from the last joint or edge." | 1) Write detailed game documentation: rulebook (for a board game), or start the game design doc (for video game). You should define everything you know about your game. Write it as clearly so that some other guy, not you, would make that game from reading this documentation. |
| 2) What type of plywood do you need? How thick it sould be? How long? How many pieces? What joists do you need? | 2) List all of your game content: all of the assets (art, audio, levels). These are all "things" with which you want to populate your virtual world. |
| 3) How will you made a support structure? It's very important, because from the support depends even a life of the user. In this point usually you take an advice from industry specialist. You don't do it yourself. | 3) I think it's about coming up with the ideas how would you realize your content, how would you implement your game mechanics, etc. It's everything about technology here. |
| 4) List all needed to make the climbing wall. Now you can come up with a detailed list of things to buy. You will know the budget very well. | 4) Now you can make a detailed project plan, list all of the tasks, set milestones, etc. Also you can correct your initial budget, because now you will know more. |
| 3) CONSTRUCTION PHASE: | 3) PRODUCTION PHASE: |
| In general, using your tools, and blueprints you have to create a climbing wall ;) | You have to make all of your content, implement game mechanisc, run playtests and correct things and many other things that you have to do in order to make this game. |
| 4) FINISHING PHASE: | 4) POLISHING PHASE: |
| Here you paint and add textures to the climbing wall surface, so it would look nice... Without that maybe it would be useful, but it wouldn't spark the experience you wanted to create, because it would be very rough and... ugly. | I think it's about killing all of those bugs that your playtesters have spotted. In this phase, you should feel that your game is playable, is fun, and just polish it up, so it would be even better. Eventually you just have to release it.. |
| 5) RELEASE! |
In the next part I’ll try to compare reality with this somehow ideal process, so stay tuned 
Your comments are much appreciated!
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English · gamedesign · games connected
