Greetings! I’ve been an avid gamer for a long time, but at the beginning of this year I got really interested in how video games are created. And because I’m me and love to learn, I enrolled in online classes. First, I completed Will Wright’s Masterclass on game design, followed by the Game Design: Art and Concepts specialization through Cal Arts (hosted on Coursera).
Those classes covered a lot of topics, such as narrative design, character creation, world design, and how games invite people to actively participate in the story rather than being passive observers. The final capstone of the specialization culminated in creating an entire Game Design Document (GDD). A GDD is a bit like a cross between TV show bible and a pitch deck. There’s lots of text and visuals that tell people about the mood, comps, characters, world, and story. But a GDD also includes prototypes, such as user interfaces, descriptions of equipment, and schematic representations of the game’s world and structure.
Like many writers, I have a big, juicy list of story ideas that I haven’t gotten around to writing yet. The basic concept for Gryphonmaker came to me at least 5 years ago, and has been bubbling away on a backest of back burners ever since. But when it came to creating a video game concept, it immediately jumped to the front burner.
My technical skills are still far behind my imagination, but I hope you’ll enjoy a little stroll through what I’ve been able to create so far. For instance, I see this is a realistically rendered, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla style experience, but I’m nowhere near that level yet. Coursera also has classes in Unreal Engine and Unity, which are both powerful tools for game creation, so I’ll be moving on to them next.
Without further ado, I give you…
Whatcha think? Does this seem like a game you’d like to play? Got any tips? (And remember, be kind, I’m new at this!)
Alison Weaverdyck 