In this blog post we wanted to look at how we came up with The Ranger Unit high concept and our
initial vision for it. Game ideas can come about in numerous ways; brainstorming,
publisher brief, contemplation, flash of genius etc and often depend on whether
you’re working on your own ideas, as part of a team or for someone else. In the
case of The Ranger Unit, the flow was somewhat as follows: -
BRIEF: Having always wanted to work on our own FPS and having discussed various other ideas
we decided the time was right to give it a go.
R&D: We talked about various games we love and replayed some of them, like Delta Force.
We watched TV shows like The Unit and films like Black Hawk Down. We also read
up on real-life military campaigns, missions and Hostage Rescue teams and
tactics.
REFINEMENT: Over the course of a couple of weeks we started to hone our ideas and we came up
with a list of the following; fps, military, realistic, stealth, dangerous,
hostage rescue, assassination, jungle, desert, squad based, tactical. We now
felt we had a good idea for the feel of the game we wanted to make and just as
importantly, what we did not want to do i.e. no bullet sponges, no stupid enemies
etc.
TITLE: We also started to throw around various names until we found one we agreed on and whose
domain etc were available. We also gave The Ranger Unit an identity, namely,
they are an elite squad that tackles the most dangerous missions, anywhere in
the world.
LOGO: We aren’t artists but we came up with a quick mock-up to help make The Ranger Unit seem
more real and to focus our visions further. We also gave ourselves call signs;
Snake Doctor and Hammer Head.
HIGH CONCEPT: The high concept should be a one line description that sums up the title, in this
case - A realistic feeling, tactical, squad based FPS.
GAME CONCEPT DOC: We will cover this in more detail in the next Blog post.
Disclaimer – As we move forward with the blog we will start to get into the Design
Documentation stage. The aim of our Blog is to give anyone who’s interested an
insight into how we do it, not necessarily the way to do it.
While most design docs share common themes there is no definitive approach,
after all every game is different. The key thing is to go through the process
of thinking about how your game will turn out and defining the key elements and
mechanics. The easiest way to do this is by playing it in your head. By doing
this you can start to build up a feel for how you want the game to look, feel
and play. Whether you write a 70 page design Doc or just jot down a few key
points, the process of committing these key elements to paper is what’s key and
you can refer back to them whenever you need. Experience has told us that more
good things happen when you plan and more bad things are likely to happen when
you don’t. With all that said, be prepared to be flexible, the final game may
look very different to that fist vision in your mind but that’s fine, after
all, rules are there to be broken sometimes. Until, next weekend, if anyone has
any questions, please get in touch via the Comments section, if you can’t see
it then just click on the title of this blog entry.
Over and out.
