Introduction

During the last few years, I have discovered that game development in general, and computer programming in particular, is something that I really enjoy working with. In spite of this, I almost never finished any games. I have completed only three games: a Walls game, a PacMan clone and a simple Memory game.

At some time, it occured to me, that game development is very likely the best game available. Depending on your skills, you can make simple games or very complicated ones. You'll never learn all there is to know, but neither do you have to. The challenge lies in always being able to improve your skills, and create something new.

What's this page about?

As you might have guessed, my answer to this is to try to make game development into more of a game. This very page is meant to be a guide, a place for inspiration for you who enjoy game development, want to see the game of your dreams made or study human behaivour.

I have tried to collect as many tips, guidlines and ideas concerning these Game Development Games as possible to inspire you to participate in creating Games in this new way.

It's just TEXT?

Basically, the Game Development Games are nothing but ideas and rules to make Games from. In order for this to work, you create a document containing the Game. One way to do this, is to make a web-page. But creating the Game as a Word document or a text file should work almost as good.

The Briefing

A typical Game Development Game should contain a briefing - a short presentation of the idea of the game to the player/programmer/artist(s). This presentations should make clearify what the game is about, how it should work and what it should look like. Necessary features should also be mentioned here, to state the goals of the Game. An example could be to describe a PacMan game, and say that it is essential that different player should be able to play the ghosts over the Internet.

Additional Ideas

Additional ideas should then be provided. Features like a map editor, big levels, bonus food (for PacMan) etc should be presented as extra features. These, in opposition to the ones mentioned above, should be voluntarily to make (everything is voluntarily really, but to complete the game these aren't necessary). This could be quite dreamy.

The Rules

The most important part, is this last summary of the Game. All the required features are listed to let the player know what has to be done. This could be anything from what features that have to be included (most likely those from the Briefing) to what programming language and platform to use, or even how large the code can be.

Another important thing to mention is wether teamwork is permitted. If it is, perhaps it should be possible to create a "Team" for anyone to join? These teams could be added to the Game page, so that anyone who think about joining may contact the founders of the different teams.

Completing the Task

The last part is information about what to do when the Game is finished. If it is a contest, it should be mailed or sent to the "Game Master". Actually, I think that normally, sending a copy of the completed work to the Game Development Game creator, is the least you can do. So giving an e-mail adress could be a good idea.

If you have any comments about this document, feel free to mail me at melldrin@swipnet.se.

In case you have made a Game Development Game yourself, or wish to do one. Perhaps you would like to join the club and get linked from here? Just send me an E-Mail!