Game design brief

A game design brief is a written document developed in concert by a game designer and a game business or financial agent (that represents the funding or owning organization's interest in a game's implementation and distribution). A game design involves the linking of multiple forms of knowledge and knowledge content to create a working and well integrated game.
The brief is an agreement between the designer and the business agent, and includes design specifications, and the agent's authority in monitoring the development of the game, It is a guide to research for describing the current status of the game, and describes requirements of the game design, documents the proposed conceptual and instrumental design, and elaborates on the games context for use.
Design stages
The design brief attends to a number of organizing questions in the process of proceeding through a conceptual stage, a technical design, and an operational design:
1. Who is the agent?
2. Who is the problem owner?
3. What are the purposes of the game?
4. Which issue(s) should the game address?
5. Which is the target group of players/users?
6. What will be the context of use?
Conceptual Design
The conceptual design links “form”, “content”, and “function” (intended purpose) of a game. The conceptual design describes the issue which the game will deal with, and the related key constructs. In general these constructs apply (soft) systems methodology, taking the form of a scenario (conceptual system, cognitive map, or narrative), or flow chart that interconnects actors into a system of interactions, links components in a dynamic process (including the choice of a proper time horizon), and connects components (subsystems) to actors. Usually those components model the system of resources of the game. The conceptual design addresses the selection of a suitable type of game from the many classifications of games. For example, the theme and the goal define whether the game should be competitive: zero-sum or non-zero-sum, or cooperative: goal seeking or non-goal seeking, or whether it will offer the players common or distributed access. The conceptual design also deals with how the players are organized: individually (single actor), and/or by group (aggregate actor). The designer should also take into account the language competency and sensory-motor skills of the players.
At the conceptual level, games employ symbolism that characterize the relevant qualities of the related reference systems. The field of gaming draws upon a great variety of paraphernalia. Physical game materials may resemble the meaning of components of the reference system; they may also convey symbolic meaning that only has relevance within the magic circle of the game, and no equivalent meaning beyond a game. In game manuals those meanings need to be explained, so that players can assume their game roles and play the game. For digital games, the paraphernalia present through (affective) multi-modal interfaces sensory objects (visual, audio, tactile aids), as well as multi-modal conversation systems in a virtual world that may mirror a real reference system or an imaginary world (pure fantasy).
The paraphernalia represent the components of the game. On a digital game design conceptual level, designers attend to a variety of digital video, audio and multimedia technology and software for different operating systems. Programming language are meta-artifacts for designing artifacts: particular games.
Instrumental or technical design
The instrumental or technical design focuses on the mechanics of the game, on the building the game architecture, loading that frame with information and data, tuning (calibrating) and testing the artifact. It covers game phases, steps of play, sequencing and interconnection of events and actions in relation to the game resources, which are illustrated through their media of representation. In gaming the mechanics may apply to physical game boards, paper and pencils, cards, flow charts, computer interfaces, mathematical models, software systems, and/or web-based multimedia configurations.
Various disciplines use different media of representation. Mathematics uses formal models and computations, gross anatomy in medical sciences applies analogue and digital atlases, biology uses rats and monkeys, microbiology applies biochemical models, geography uses atlases and scale models, and so on. Multi-agent based models may use avatars.
Operational environment design
The design of the operational environment includes the framing of the context of use for the intended audience, including manuals, duration and cost of play, facilities needed, and so on. It covers the transfer, implementation, and training of personnel involved in the use, as well as the design of assessment procedures. Games are being used for education and training purposes, for enhancing policy development and decision making in a great variety of socio-economic and political settings, for conflict resolution, future planning, interactive story telling, entertainment and so on. For these purposes game operators’ and players’ manuals, and, in case of computer games, maintenance manuals should be prepared. The design of the operational environment should explicitly pay attention to the development of evaluation procedures to assess the effectiveness of games.
Well designed operational environments of games presupposes well qualified game facilitators are involved in the briefing, running and monitoring the game design process, debriefing, and connecting the game's experiences to the goals of the game. The design stages are linked through an iterative design process, not by a linear sequence of steps.
Game designer’s tasks and competency
The actors, while playing by the rules, interact with the resources (paraphernalia) of the game. They change the state of those resources in time and space. For example, every move by one of the players in the game of chess, or checkers, for example, changes the state space. The evolving state transitions of the resources - in relation to the evolving system of interactions among the players amount to the game dynamics. Even in case of simple games, dynamics can grow rapidly beyond the comprehension of the individual players.
With for example, chess, Go , and Monopoly, the players have direct physical access to the pieces and boards. Designers of such games do not need to elaborately describe in detail all the actions of the players. For online or digital computer games, such as a massively multiplayer online game, the state space can be a complicated experience that is difficult to trace or describe: the designer has to specify explicitly the action space of the players, describing in detail activities such as, racing, shooting, commanding, trading, connecting, escaping, jumping, hiding, finding, and so on. In computer-assisted, computer-supported, and digital games, in between the actors and the resources, multimodal interfaces are designed handling the interactions with the game resources, and provide feedback about the evolving game space. Designers shape virtual worlds through these interfaces.
Many game design methods have been developed and practiced. Different skills and abilities are needed to integrate multiple aspects of reality in one coherently operating artifact. The design of physical games is distinct from their digital analogues, particularly with respect to the instrumental style of reasoning. In addition to being knowledgeable about the reference system involved, digital game designers need to manage their projects through coupling visual and audio arts, multimedia technology and software for various operating systems, software engineering, human-computer interaction (HCI) design, with writing narratives and scenarios.
For example, business game design requires expertise in knowledge domains such as, business organization, business economics, finance, production, marketing, and other functional business areas in addition to technical design expertise. Thus, every professional game design team has to be tuned to the knowledge domains and the worlds of experience of the reference system involved. The resulting financial and organizational constraints in arranging and managing trans-disciplinary design teams, tuned to the occasion, put severe challenges to professional game design. Designers should not ignore the many obstacles related to intellectual property rights and copyrights.
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