2-4 Refine Ideas to Create Game Treatments

Now that your team has brainstormed a set of possible game concepts, your next task to refine and evaluate these to select your team's top 3 game concepts. Then you'll create a game treatment for each of your top 3 game concepts.

A game treatment is a brief written summary of a game concept that includes sample sketches.

In the gaming industry, game treatments are used to get feedback on game concepts, as well as to pitch game concepts to get approval and funding to create them.

The written summary typically includes:

• Possible game title

• Brief description of the game's story (premise, setting, characters, and story). Even if a game doesn't have characters or a story (e.g., a puzzle game, like Tetris), it still has a premise and setting.

• Brief explanation of the game mechanics (objective, conflict or challenge, basic gameplay)

• Brief description of the gameplay progression from start to end. For example, how does the game begin? What happens as the game progresses? How does the game end?

The sample sketches typically show:

• Possible layout of the game world or level

• Possible appearance of characters (if the game has characters)

The game treatment does not include all the details of the game yet — it's a high-level summary of the game concept. Instead, you'll figure out the rest of the details once you're prototyping the game.

In the next assignment, you'll use your game treatments to get outside feedback on your game concepts, in order to help improve them and select the best game concept to prototype.

YOUR TASK

1. As a team, discuss, refine, and evaluate your set of game concepts to select your team's top 3 game concepts. This is the time when you can start to critique, filter out, or revise ideas. Some questions to consider for each game concept include:

   • Does the game seem to match the team's gaming motivations and player experience goal(s)?

   • Does the game seem fun and innovative?

   • Does the game seem feasible (possible) to prototype? (Reminder: your team only needs to build one level of the game)

2. Use this template to create a game treatment for each of the team's top 3 game concepts.

   • The written summary will be brief (title + 3 paragraphs).

   • The sketches are just rough mockups. Black-and-white drawings are fine (though you can use color if helpful).

   • Decide on a plan for each team member to contribute. For example, maybe the Art Lead is responsible for the sketches. Maybe each of the other persons is responsible for writing one game treatment — or maybe someone writes a first draft, and someone else edits it.

   • Be sure the game treatments will be clear to other people, so you can get useful feedback.