Ok, you have figured out what type of game you are going to build. Let us take a stroll through Documentation and work out what you will need to write up Step 1: Deciding who the game is for. The next most important aspect of designing information architecture is determining who the audience is. Many games do not take into consideration who will be using them. Is your game built for 4 year olds...9 year olds...12 to 18 year olds...girls... boys... all ages and all sexes? Answering this question will help you to decide what choices to take in your game design process. Defining a clear, well-documented definition of your audience, helps you to develop an appropriate user experience and to make decisions that require understanding how users will react to the game. Defining the audience takes less time than defining the goals. Now you are ready for the next step, one of the most fun in the entire IA design process. Step 2: Create Scenarios Visualize the game and its users...then write a scenario to bring the user to life. Create a character for that user, and give him a name, a background, and a task to accomplish on the game. Then write a story about how the character might use the game. Scenarios may seem like a chicken-and-egg problem - if you don't know what is on the game, how can you write a story about it? Well, you already have an idea of what users will be doing on the game, so use your imagination! Being creative here will push your design into places you may not have thought it could go. Creating scenarios isn't that difficult, and it can be a lot of fun (but be warned, it can be time-consuming). Step 3: Comparison and Evaluation Next, you want to generate a set of features and criteria with which to evaluate games. Start with your goals, using them for a set of features in your analysis of other games. As you evaluate games, be sure to note any features or functionality you find interesting. It is helpful to design a grid for this so that you can evaluate effectively. An example of a grid is below.
You are now ready to evaluate other games. This is fairly easy to do, but you must be thorough. Most important, take notes and even grab screen shots of any important areas in other games. Having decided on the type of game you want, considered what audience you are creating for, made up a hypothetical scenario to see if it jogs your imagination and had a look at other games to see what is important within them, it is time to now write up a summary of your results. When you have done that you are ready for the next step.
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