Contents  Introduction  Levels of  Abstraction  Mastering the  System  Personal Growth  Exiting the Maze  Hybrid Focuses  A Fourth Focus  Conclusion  Printable version

Advantages of Understanding Gameplay Focus

The all important question of, "Why does this matter?"

The answer is that once we can understand what gameplay is really made up of, it will become easier to describe it, discuss it and expand upon it.

Understanding how the gameplay works at its base level allows us to make a gameplay version of a storyboard. This can allow us to understand exactly what the player will be thinking of and dealing with at each point in the game and can allow us to mix different kinds of gameplay into games more effectively, and hopefully, this will help us make the games more fun.

Geoff Howland is the owner of Lupine Games as well as being the lead programmer, business manager and handling coordination of development for all projects. He has successfully brought his company from a single person operation to ten people and negotiated two signed games within a year. In addition to developing games he has also been an active member in the game developer community writing a number of articles discussing game design and business issues, as well as being on the Advisory Board for the Independent Games Festival. You can reach him at ghowland@lupinegames.com if you have any comments on his article.