Jeff Vogel on Developing Game Ideas

This brief introduction aside, Jeff Vogel’s first proper blog post revolves around ideas and the not so simple art of turning them into actual products. Also, there’s quite a few paragraphs dedicated to world-building. Here’s an excerpt to give you a general idea for what you’ll find inside:

Designing Our New Game

Our next game will be called Queen’s Wish 2: The Tormentor. It is the sequel to our surprisingly successful game Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror. The plot breakdown, without giving too much, is as follows:

“You are the bored prince of a mighty Empire. One of your client states has been neglected for many years and is on the edge of rebellion. You must go there, investigate the problems, and decide how to fix them and what the fate of this land will be.”

This is going to be a very plot-heavy game with lots of lore, characters, plotlines, and choices to make. Which means I need to do a lot of world-building.

Let’s say that the game takes place in a land called Rokaj, The Ro for short. What do I need to dream up?

My Pyramid of World-Building

Yeah, “Pyramid of World-Building” is a dumb term. Sorry. But the process is sort of like building a pyramid. The general ideas are at the top. The countless specific details that make up the game are the base. To start actually making this game, I need to make up all of these things, from big-picture down to nitty-gritty:

1. The Story. What is the rough storyline taking place in the game? How does it start? What are the chapters/story beats? How can it end? (There are many possible endings.) What is the tone? (Funny? Horror? Political?) How does this fit in with the overall story arc of the trilogy. This is the vaguest “What is this thing about?” question.

2. The Nation. Split the job into smaller pieces. I have a vague nimbus of a story. I need a land where such a story can take place. What is its name? (The Ro. Yay! Progress!) What, vaguely, is its culture like? What is its history? Do they invade people? Do they do science? Are they nice or mean? How does this land generally feel about things?

3. The Provinces. Split the job into even smaller pieces. When I know the nature of the entire environment of the game, I can break the Ro into provinces to fit the story. Each chapter has a land to take place in. But what are these provinces called? What makes them distinct from each other? How are they run? What monsters live there? How do they act? How will they feel about the player? What does the map roughly look like? Most importantly, what is the major problem in this province that the player can fix? (Or make worse.)

4. Inside the Provinces. Split the job into yet smaller pieces. I have chopped The Ro up into manageable pieces. But they are still big pieces, and I need to chop them up bite-size. What are the social and physical units that make up each province? How many cities? What are those like? What are the organizations, cults, religions, criminal bands, governors, Empire outposts, etc?

5. The Individual Locations. Split the job into the SMALLEST pieces. These are the actual locations where the game will take place. Where are the dungeons, and what is in them? Who are the characters in the cities, and what do they want? How many rooms are there? How big are the rooms? How are they furnished? How many copper pieces are in the pot in the corner?

Note that only the last bit of part five is the stuff I deal with in the day to day business of writing the actual game. When I say a box has a rusty dagger in it, there was a long, LONG journey I had to take to get there. Who owns the box? Why do they have a dagger? Were they your friend, or did they try to kill you? And why?

These are all the questions I have to answer to make my stories. I think it’s clear why this process takes months.