Questions my game prototypes might answer:
- What aspects of this prototype are satisfying to interact with?
- We can use this to determine which mechanics of the game to keep in the final iteration. We could use a prototype that mimics the implementation of the final game as closely as possible to get a feeling for what playing the final game will be like. I’m guessing (hoping!) that this will be a very valuable exercise within the prototyping stage.
- Where would this game generally be played? In what social setting?
- An important part of how games are enjoyed is derived from what company they are enjoyed in. For this, a prototype that aims to find what role the game will play in the user’s life would be the most useful, but this prototyping might not be the most influential when it comes to impacting the actual gameplay loop.
- Who are the kinds of people who might enjoy this game?
- It’s crucial to determine the audience of the game so we can tailor the final game to be as appealing to this target demographic as possible, and we could use a prototype that tries to show the look and feel of the final game to test on this target audience. It will be valuable to see the reactions of these people as we test our prototype, and perhaps our initial predictions will not be accurate!
