Cómo prototipar un juego por semana

Un grupo de estudiantes, dentro de un proyecto del Entertainment Technology Center de la Universidad Carnegie Mellon, (Experimental Gameplay Project), logró construír alrededor de 50 juegos en un semestre de trabajo, a un promedio de uno por semana. ¿Cómo?

Here's a crazy game idea: Drag trash-talkin' gobs of goo to build a giant tower higher and higher. They squirm and giggle and climb upward over the backs of their brothers, but be careful! A constant battle against gravity, if you build a tower that's too unstable, it will all fall down.

"Tower of Goo" was downloaded over 100,000 times within months of hitting the net, it was dubbed “Internet Game of the Month” in one magazine, it was demoed on G4 and at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC, and it was one of over fifty games we made as a part of the Experimental Gameplay Project at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center.

And like the rest of them, it was made in under a week, by one person.

The project started in Spring 2005 with the goal of discovering and rapidly prototyping as many new forms of gameplay as possible. A team of four grad students, we locked ourselves in a room for a semester with three rules:

1. Each game must be made in less than seven days,
2. Each game must be made by exactly one person,
3. Each game must be based around a common theme i.e. "gravity", "vegetation", "swarms", etc.

As the project progressed, we were amazed and thrilled with the onslaught of web traffic, with the attention from gaming magazines, and with industry professionals and academics all asking the same questions, "How are you making these games so quickly?" and "How can we do it too?"

We lay it all out here. Through the following tips, tricks, and examples, we will discuss the methods that worked and those that didn't. We will show you how to slip into a rapid prototyping state of mind, how to set up an effective team, and where to start if you've thought about making something new, but weren't sure how. We hope these well-tested guidelines come in useful for you and your next project, big or small!

¿Interesado?
Vea las recomendaciones de Gabler, Kucic, Gray, y Shodhan, y el experimiento mismo...