When you are involved in preproduction there are three goals that you want to keep in mind

• Showcase clear design progress
• Give team members a sense of ownership for the project
• Prototypes can be used to excite the team and keep them motivated

So what is preproduction? It's basically figuring out what you want to do in the game and how you are going to do it. So you have a design idea, but is it feasible? Okay it might be feasible but how do you make it work? That's what a prototype is for. Prototypes are also used to convince others, like studio executives, that the concept and team are worth the risk of full production. Creating prototypes is a lot cheaper than launching into a full production. Also keep in mind the audience you are going to be showing these prototypes to. In the case of studio execs, as mentioned above, you want to make sure that the prototypes are well poloshed, but don't take time away from other things in order to add polish just for the sake of polish. Speaking of polish, be sure that you consider the danger that polish carries along with it. Polish can convey a false sense of progress and convey to others that you are farther along that you actually are. You'll also be showing prototypes to designers, in which case you want to make sure that it shows that the design of the game is moving forward and holding true to the original vision. An often-overlooked audience is team members. As mentioned earlier you can show prototypes to team members to evoke the "cool" factor. Eric gave the example of a prototype being shown at a team meeting where you could fight with all sorts of creatures and showcased the procedural animation system. The meeting lasted a half hour longer because the team members were psyched and playing the prototype. One of the reasons prototypes are so important is that you can't use words to describe interactivity. You need to be able to actually play around and have a hands-on experience to understand interactive concepts.

Actually building the prototypes involves balancing four seperate aspects, kinesthetics, aesthetics, game mechanics, and technology. Kinesthetics are the physical aspects to the prototype, actually manipulating objects in the game, like a 3D shape builder or a character builder. Aesthetics relates to the visual and aureal aspects of the prototype, like the graphics (polish). Game mechanics refers to how much of the actual game mechanics are reflected in the prototype. Technology points to how much the prototype relates to the actual platform that the game will run on. Some protoypes will feature a different balance that others, for example if you're showing a prototype to a designer it will probably have a lot of gameplay mechanics. Or if you're showing one to an exec it will probably have more aesthetics and technology. The one thing you don't want to do is all four of these. Prototypes are not games, they should each focus on a specific need.

A final note is to make sure you encourage experimentation. Don't keep an iron grip on the team in terms of what they are allowed to go and create prototypes for, but at the same time don't let them waste their time working on things that are meaningless to the project. Experimentation can result in interesting and useful results but it can also distract and derail a team.

Eric Todd	Rest of shots - prototyping in action