Process

This flow chart outlines my ideal process pipeline. In the following posts I go into more detail, and provide examples of each phase of development. Games require a lot of iteration to get to a point where they being fun AND feel good.

I have honed this process since November 15, 2000. I’ve gotten a lot of help and patience from some amazing people along the way.

Unity is a powerful development tool. To me it seems infinitely more efficient to build wireframes and prototypes in Unity itself. With evergreen live dev services, the game itself becomes a living prototype. Roll with it.

Product Immersion

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Brand Research
If the product is an established IP, I dive headlong into everything I can find about that brand. Watch movies/tv shows, read books, voraciously devour everything I can find. I immerse myself in the product until I am confident that I can weild it’s voice.

If it’s a brand new IP, I spend this time researching the target audience the product is being created for. What do they want? What do they like? What would draw their attention?

Work product might be:

• Mood boards

• Thought experiments

• Deconstruction of competitive titles

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Sample: Clash Royale Loot Chest Schedule Study
As a “min/maxer” (someone who likes to understand the minimum and maximum limits of a game mechanic to get the most out of it) I wanted to understand the timing of all the loot chests in Clash Royale. This breakdown helped me determine that - if a Player was “super on it like clock work” to maximize the loot from the game they would have to log in 12 times a day. It was my hope that this chart could help inspire our game designers to create an interwoven system that would rival Clash Royale’s compelling complexity.

Information Architecture

The Information Architecture to me is the foundation of a scope discussion. You gotta know what you’re making before you can make it.

Keeping the scope under control is everything.

Nothing is free. Features take time, and there is always a budget. Having a break down of all the possible/desired features in a visual format can help communicate just how much work there is to do. This makes for an easier discussion amongst the team’s varied styles of thinking and priorities.

This exercise also helps me connect the dots for the Player. My goal is always to get the Player to feel like a thumb wizard. I strive to mind meld with the network of the product, and guide thumbs through it like mystic warriors. If I do this well, the UI will feel like an extension of your consciousness in the game. It is a Sisyphean challenge that I aim to slay.

Lots of staring at the wall might happen during this phase.

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Sample Below: Ninja Flow Concept
This first draft of an IA/Feature Set included ALL the bells and whistles. We pared down from here, but not enough. The project ran on too long, pivoted too much, and ended up on the trash heap of history. One of the rare projects that got away.

Failure is an opportunity to learn where the dragons lie.

Problem Solving

The more you understand the limitations, the easier it is to work around them.

Video Game development is fun if you enjoy detective work and problem solving. It can throw some unusual challenges at you. Frequently there are technical hurdles to investigate and resolve.

Sample Below: Camera Depths
A schematic to define how we could use multiple cameras/layers to get the desired results.

Sometimes, I tackle researching possibilities to help settle debates within the team.

Sample Below: Should this game be in Portrait or Landscape?
Much debate was happening amongst the team, so I went on a truth seeking mission about the realities facing the project. By the time I hit the 6th question, we had a clear answer. Having big bosses with as much floor space as possible was important enough to the Project Lead to end all debate.

UI Concepts

Armed with a head fresh full of the brand, I set out to create what I call a UI Tileset. This tileset becomes the “skin” of the UI design.

Wireframes

We start with a kick off meeting at a dry erase board where the team builds consensus around the goals and basic vision. Everyone sketches their rough ideas. There is usually a lot of interrupting and apologies during this phase.

It’s good to fight for what you believe in, but it’s even better when you can negotiate to consensus.

In games, I believe that classic gray scale wireframes are insufficient at capturing the reality of designing for the Games UX/UI experience. With games, there are more more bells and whistles, more colors, more complex behaviors, and tighter real estate than conventional ux/ui screen experiences. This is especially true in mobile.

Though, I’ll be honest - it very well may produce better results to go through a proper academic UX process. Thing is, I’ve never worked on a project with budget big enough to actually do a proper academic UX process. (#LifeGoals) I have always worked in an “iterative development” environment, though it doesn’t seem very iterative when you only ever having enough time to do it once.

It is about pragmatic efficiency.

By having a solid visual library (the UI tileset) a wireframe can double as Alpha quality on the first pass. Not only is it more representative of the end product, it can also prove to be a tremendous efficiency boost.

Sample Below: Gumballs Gear System
Two concepts for a complex Gear System. These wireframes are from later in development, when we had 3D assets and a relatively mature UI tile set. It will always break my heart that this system never learned to fly.

Implement

Working in Unity, once the basic functionality of the menu is hooked up to the AI/Logic of the game, I am able to iterate, improve, and sometimes pull off heavy revisions with little to no additional code support.

This is my favorite phase of a project. This is where I love to swim in tightening animations, and pushing pixels to get as close to perfect as humanly possible. *pixel perfect swoon*

Sample Below: Unity Mecanim Documentation
This is the set up for a “Boss Node” in a world map. It is set up to have Active/Inactive states, a triggered event for when the Player unlocks the node, and a triggered event for when the Player earned stars on that node.

Polish

My dream goal is to work on a project that has the ability to schedule a focused polish pass. A block of time before hardening where each feature gets a thoughtful review of how we can plus it up to 11.

Yo, where the menu at?