Frankly, I even made that same mistake at Power of Two, when we prototyped the game idea we had in mind and immediately moved on into pre-production (and yes, later we realized we had to change things to make it more interesting). ItвЂ™s nothing more than an exercise to keep management happy. Neither idea is particularly appealing.Д¬reating a prototype for a game you know youвЂ™ve already committed to is pointless. At this point the choice is canning a project after spending millions of dollars, or patching it up to try to salvage something. In most cases, itвЂ™s just a so-so idea and the team only realizes it when the first level comes together, years later, at around alpha time. If youвЂ™re lucky, or you have an extremely talented game director, the game that comes out of the other end might be fantastic. Maybe theyвЂ™ll create a prototype to show something about the game, or maybe theyвЂ™ll dive straight and start writing a design document and developing technology. The team hashes out a bunch of ideas, and somehow they pick one (or create it by committee). Mistake #1: Going With The First IdeaД®very company IвЂ™ve ever worked at has done this mistake. If you get a chance, find the audio for the presentation, itвЂ™s definitely worth it. It was hugely influential for me, and it made me re-think the way I do prototypes. ItвЂ™s not a level of a game, itвЂ™s not a вЂњvertical sliceвЂќ, and itвЂ™s certainly not an engine for the game.Д¬hris Hecker and Chaim Gingold gave one of the best presentations on the subject of rapid prototyping. The key points there are fast/cheap and specific question. In that case, a more accurate title for this post could have been вЂњPrototyping: I Was Doing It WrongвЂќ.ДЄ good game prototype is something fast/cheap that allows you to answer a specific question about your game. There are probably many different ways of prototyping games correctly, and maybe your way works great for you. YouвЂ™re not alone, I was also doing prototyping wrong until a few years ago.

Prototype save game editor