Building a Game Direction is often easier said than done.

You don’t know where to start, you stuck yourself on iterating, and you can’t define something concrete and useful to guide you throughout the development. You need a repeatable process that you can learn and use to build a Game Direction whenever you want to explore a new game idea. By properly building a Game Direction, you start new projects in a breeze, you easily assess your game idea feasibility and potential, and you have a tool to empower your decision-making through Pre-Production.

This week, I’ll show you how to create a rock-solid Game Direction from start to finish without getting stuck on endless refinement. If you don’t know what a Game Direction is, you can check out this previous episode.

Every game, from small to big, benefits from having a Game Direction.

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To effectively create a Game Direction, you need to:

• Focus On The Game Direction Document
• Explore Your Game Idea
• Define The Game Pillars
• Evaluate Your Game Idea

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Focus On The Game Direction Document

Don’t focus directly on the Game Direction itself.

In rare cases, it’s possible to define a Game Direction right out of the bat. And if you remember that in the Game Direction, there are no concrete game elements, this becomes obvious.

However, most of the time, you won’t be able to do that since it’s very hard to picture a game experience without something concrete. For this reason, you should leverage the 2 Game Direction components in different ways. The Thematic Structure is your starting point, and the Game Pillars are your end goal.

But what’s in the middle?

The Game Direction Document and a fair dose of iteration.

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The Game Direction Document goes beyond just the Game Direction.

The 2 Game Direction components are what you need to work effectively in Pre-Production. But, as we’ve said in previous episodes, the Game Direction is also an initial game idea evaluation tool.

For this, and the methodological reason above, you need much more than a Thematic Structure and Game Pillars during the Concept Phase.

The Game Direction Document has 4 more elements beyond the pure Game Direction:

• Vision Statement: A statement representing the Target Game Experience in a single sentence.
• Game Overview: An overview of all the major aspects of the game idea (core gameplay, level, narrative, look & mood)
• Uniqueness: A bulleted list of all the aspects that make the game idea unique from what already exists
• Similar Game Comparison: A comparison between the idea you want to design and the other games on the market

These are the elements you need to figure out to properly build your Game Direction.

Ok, so the Game Direction Document is the focus, but what do you actually need to do? There can’t be a “result-guaranteed blueprint” because, at this stage, you’re doing 100% exploratory work.

However, there’s indeed a process you can follow to avoid getting stuck on endless wandering.

Let’s lay out 3 crucial points about it.

Explore Your Game Idea

The one requirement for a Game Direction is a game idea.

Before bothering to define a Game Direction, you need to have a game idea. Ideas can come from anywhere, but to supercharge your creative endeavors and focus on meaningful games, Themeography is your best bet.

Keep in mind that an idea is never just a simple thought in your mind for a cool game. You need to briefly expand that idea by thinking about it (no prototype for now) to “make it a real one” and something you can talk about. Only once you have an expanded idea you can start building a Game Direction to validate it and see if it’s worth it to make a full game out of it.

And like almost everything in Game Development, building a Game Direction takes time.

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The Game Direction is always built through iteration.

But iterate on what?

You need to iterate on your game idea by defining how the game works:

• The core gameplay (the foundation of the game)
• The structure of the game world (from a level design perspective)
• A brief outline of the narrative structure
• Some concept art and references of how the game visually looks along with the target mood

As you can see, these make up the Game Overview section of the Game Direction Document.

Iterating on these aspects means further expanding the game idea without getting lost in secondary elements. Also, make sure to prototype and test everything this time to check the validity of those ideas. This is key because you don’t want to base your Game Direction on not-tested assumptions.

But, at this stage (Concept Phase), your purpose is to build the Game Direction, remember?

So don’t iterate for the sake of it, but focus on stabilizing your Game Pillars.

Define The Game Pillars

Game Pillars will emerge during iteration.

Of course, this will not happen out of magic. It requires you to identify, refine, and finalize the most accurate and evocative Game Pillars possible.

So you’re doing 2 things at once: you iterate on your idea (Game Overview) while defining the hard constraints for your Target Game Experience (Game Pillars). This is a delicate and crucial process for any game since jumping directly into Pre-Production is dangerous (albeit a widespread mistake). You risk moving on with the illusion of your idea working, while in reality, you have no clue! This is why iterating on your Game Overview is essential, and what’s also key is not doing it randomly.

You should not add elements just because they’re cool. The ideas you iterate on should be consistent with your Thematic Structure to make everything meaningful and coherent.

As far as the Thematic Structure, there’s another critical point.

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Keep your eyes open for Themes & Messages refinements.

Like new game ideas and content can emerge from Thematic Structure, the Thematic Structure itself benefits from game iterations. During the process of exploration of your game idea, you can enrich your Theme and Message in many ways.

You could come up with a new concept or a fact related to the Theme, which can be a great source of inspiration. Or you could discover a new and better way to frame the Message. Or else, you may find it helpful to remove some superfluous concepts from the Theme because they are no longer relevant. Always be careful to change too much of the Thematic Structure, otherwise, you'll need to restart the Concept Phase and change Game Direction entirely.

At this stage, many things can be changed, so keep your brain alert to exciting opportunities for improving your game idea.

Once you've defined Game Pillars, you are ready to step into the shoes of your own judge.

Evaluate Your Game Idea

There’s no standard number of iterations.

Like iterating on a feature during Pre-Production, you can’t pinpoint a precise moment to stop. Just keep in mind your conceptual goal for the Concept Phase.

Define as clearly as possible the 2 macro-elements of the Game Direction (Thematic Structure and Game Pillars). The number of iterations to reach this stage doesn’t exist.

It depends on many factors like:

• Game’s size
• Game complexity
• Your analytical and problem-solving skills
• Time available
• Etc.

All of these are hard to measure for anyone, no matter the working experience.

At a concrete level, this “simply” means filling out the Game Direction Document in all its sections.

And when you can proudly say, “I have a Game Direction”…

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… it's time to choose, and the call is always yours.

This moment marks the end of the Concept Phase. Now, you must make a decision about whether or not to go ahead with your game.

Of course, you'll realize way earlier if your idea has severe problems to such an extent that you must drop it or radically change it. Yet, anyway, if you choose to take your game idea into Pre-Production, your working mindset must change. From this point on, you can't change the Game Direction (Game Pillars and Thematic Structure), and you need to focus on iterating the game itself.

If you've done a good job during the Concept Phase, you'll have an easier time in Pre-Production dealing with decision-making and design iteration.

A well-crafted Game Direction is the best tool to navigate the often scary Game Design ocean.

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Key Takeaways:

• The Game Direction Document goes beyond just the Game Direction.
• Game Pillars will emerge during the iteration of your game idea.
• When you have Game Pillars and Thematic Structure, it’s time to make the call on your game idea.