Design Land: High Concept - Extra Credits Video Games

Hey Zoey. Oh, thanks for bringing in the mail, bud. Let's see, what do we have today? Junk mail, junk mail. Cat fancy, really? Well, fair enough. Ooh, what's this? Dearest Matthew, my apologies it's been so long since we talked. I've begun another foray into design land and I am deep in the wilds now. This is my own expedition. I am beholden to no one and nothing. So, I've decided to start documenting my findings in hopes that they may be of some use to posterity. If I do not return, tell my story. Wait, oh my gosh, James. Thanks so much to Morning Brew for headline support of this episode. Week one. We are on the high concept cliffs. This is treacherous territory. Many a designer has gotten lost here, wandering for days with no clear direction or path out, overwhelmed by the possibilities, unable to commit to a specific path. So, for future designers about to take on this mighty precipice, here are the guide posts that have helped me along my way. First up, the

guide post of focus. An early question I have to ask on the high concept cliff is, is the high concept of your game a mechanical one or a narrative one? Now, of course, that's not to say your game won't have both or shouldn't execute on both. Great games do, but your initial answer tells us the inception point of your game and where the rest of the design springs from. Because without identifying this, it's easy to get lost in the wasteland between the two. The dreaded gulf of convolution. For instance, trying to describe your six cool playable alien classes and the neat rhythm cooking mini-game meets time travel mechanic that your game is all about most likely is going to leave no one, including you, with a clear idea of what you're actually trying to make. So, pick a focus. When describing your game to people, are you going to tell them about the amazing narrative and then figure out the mechanics that support that or are you going to tell them about a unique cool mechanic that your narrative is going to spring from? Second, the guide post of specificity. It's also important that you focus on one or at least a small number of things when you're trying to craft your high concept. Because of course, in the end your game will be about a lot of things

and have a lot of things in it, but most of them aren't the core of your game. They aren't the high concept. Doing one thing and doing it well is way better in terms of game design than having a million disparate mediocre things in your game. And while I can hear some of you cry out in anguish at the foot of these cliffs, but I like game X and it just has a pile of half-baked stuff to do in it. Usually, when you look at those games, you'll find that that scattering of seemingly random elements are actually there to serve that game's central theme. Kamarocho, for instance, has a pile of things to do in it in order to support the feeling of being in a living city where anything can happen. And Call of Duty has light progression mechanics when compared to an MMO or traditional RPGs in order to support the bite-sized shooter experience, which leads us right back to the guidepost of specificity. What is the one big risk of your game? What's the thing that's going to set it apart? Will you make a tough-as-nails RPG in an age where everyone's making RPGs easier? Are you going to make Groundhog Day into an FPS? How about seeing how many genres you can wrap a rogue-like deck builder in? Just

remember, if you try to do too much too early, your game will crumble as it gets torn in different directions and nothing will turn out well. Instead, focus and deliver on one thing really well and then you'll have time to add more as it starts to take shape. Because if you can avoid overloading yourself at this guidepost, you'll find the third guidepost with ease. The guidepost of brevity. If you can't summarize your game in a sentence, you're most likely lost. And if you can't summarize it in a paragraph, you most certainly are. It can be a mashup of two games. I did hear that Castlevania meets Metroid did work well as a high concept once. It can be a mashup of mechanics, an FPS puzzle game. It can be theme meets mechanic, social interaction ghost hunting experience. It can be truly high concept, horror as psychological landscape, or it could be my name is Hideo Kojima. I kid. Even his stuff is pretty easily summarized in high concept form. Conspiranoia stealth action, horror walking simulator. Then from there, everything else is the details. And you're going to get to those, but when you envision your game, what do all of those pieces that are

rattling around in your head add up to? What do they look like all together in their simplest form? Once you have that, you can append your unique thing, that thing you identified at the guidepost of specificity, the element that sets you apart from the rest of the gaming world, or might need a little more explaining. Horror walking simulator with awkward physics controls, or narratively, horror walking simulator about being a post-apocalyptic UPS guy who carries a baby to hold back demons. You know, standard stuff. This simple description should get whoever you're talking to to ask some more questions, which if it's a publisher, is exactly what you want, which leads us perfectly to the fourth guidepost, the guidepost of clarity. Remember the old adage, test early and often? Well, you can really never test early enough, and you should literally start with the high concept of your game itself. When you tell folks about your high concept, do they get it? And more importantly, do they get excited about it? If not, you might have to go back to the drawing board. And if they have follow-up questions, so long as what they're wondering shows that they fundamentally understand what you're

going for and are psyched to hear more details, you'll know you're on the right path to continue your game's journey. With these four guideposts pointing you in the right directions, I have no doubt you'll be able to traverse the high concept cliffs. And with that, I leave you for now. Good luck and good exploring. Whether you follow in the footsteps of others or blaze your own trail in the wilds of design, I'm sure our paths will cross here someday. Design boldly, James Portnow. Oh my gosh, Zoey, I have so many questions. The first of which being does DesignLand not have envelopes? And how did this bottle fit in a PO box? You know, if the high concept cliffs had decent Wi-Fi, email would have been the perfect delivery method, kind of like how the Morning Brew newsletter just appears in my inbox every morning, you know? Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, there would be practically zero chance of it being eaten by a whale, which in my book is pretty valuable. Oh, what's Morning Brew you ask? Well, it's a super informative free daily newsletter Monday through Sunday that gets you caught up on the most important news stories of the day in business, finance, and tech. Meaning you can get up to speed every morning via a witty,

relevant, and informative summary of the day's important issues. You know, before I started starting my day with Morning Brew, it took me way longer to get my news fix across a bunch of different platforms. But now, in about 5 minutes, I'm caught up on a ton of current stories that I'm interested in before I even finish my first coffee. For example, the other day I got up to speed on an investigation into China possibly dodging tariffs on solar panels that's slowing down the US's clean energy push, how Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness materialized the second biggest box office since the pandemic started, and that the slowdown of venture capital in Silicon Valley is causing merry havoc in startup land. AKA precisely the mix of news I'm interested in reading. Not to mention, Morning Brew is completely free and it takes less than 15 seconds to subscribe. Just click the link in the description below to get Morning Brew in your inbox Monday through Sunday. Then, not only will you be getting a newsletter you're pumped to start your mornings with, but you'll also be supporting us at Extra Credits at the same time without spending a penny, which is always we truly appreciate. Oh, I didn't see you there, Kyle Murgatroyd, Joseph Blain, Dominic

Valenciana, Casey Muscha, Arclight Games, Angelo Valenciana, Alicia Bramble, and Ahmed Ziad Turk. Y'all are the best.