In this document you will conduct an inquiry into what video game you might make this year and guide you through the process.

Make a copy of this document.

This will be the main document that you will complete for this unit of work.

Use the following resources to help you fill it out more effectively.

Firstly, you and your teacher need to decide on the milestones of this process. Some approximate timeframes are given. You must complete each stage and meet the agreed milestones of the inquiry in order to pass.

To make a great game, you need to research important parts of game design. Think about what you want to learn—this could be game mechanics, visuals, controls, or accessibility. Come up with questions to guide your research and help you make good design choices. These questions will shape your project, and you can update them as you learn more.

For example:

• What game mechanics make a game fun?

• How can I make the controls easy to use?

• How can I make my game accessible to everyone?

• How do I keep my game challenging but fair?

• How do visuals and sound affect the game experience?

• What’s the best way to get feedback and improve my game?

Video games comprise of a number of elements that are similar throughout many. This slideshow goes through a number of them. In your inquiry you will select one relevant to your part in your Game Development Team.

Look through these slides and complete Task 1 in your document.

Read this excellent article and choose one of the elements relevant to your role in the team or one that particularly interests you. It may also be useful to talk to your teammates so you can investigate different elements and get expertise in different areas.

Some resources to get you started on your Inquiry

User Interface 

Challenge/Decisions

Setting/Theme

Interaction/Controls

Rewards

Audio

Protagonist

For each of your questions, organize what you have learned from your research. If any of your questions are missing some sort of conclusion now would be a good time to do some extra investigation. This should be an iterative process. 

Watch the video by BlackThronProd and as a group start brainstorming some ideas on your document. There are some helpful questions to think about and get your brain going. You are then going to write 3 synopsis for games you could make.

As a group you need to complete the Generating Design Ideas document (You only need one per group). Get out some paper and pencils and when you are done scan this into your document.

From your three concepts you need to gather some feedback. The easiest way to do this is to present your ideas to the class and get them to give immediate feedback. This could be as simple as a show of hands about which design idea is best.

As a group you are going to make a fully fleshed out Game Design Document. There are more complete instructions in the Basic Video Game Design page if you need a refresher from last year.

Only one member of your team needs to make a copy of the GDD and then give access to all the other members. It may be useful to work on the parts of the document most relevant to what you will be working on when you begin development.

You must get feedback on your game design document. One easy way to do this is to swap game design documents with another group and leave comments on their document. After this any changes based on this feedback need to be demonstrated:

1. Anything that is removed should be strikethrough.

2. Anything added should be highlighted or coloured.

During a week of class time under test conditions you will write a quick report on your Game Design. You should answer all the questions with a TEXAS style paragraph. You can refer back to your previous worksheets and brainstorms but can talk as a group about your answers.