Top-Down and Bottom-Up Games design

The above image shows the top-down process and the bottom-up process. The process, on its own, handles the two main approaches to games idea generation, and the design process. One side takes a concept, for instance a game where the player is the only human in existence, and has to deal with life in a deserted earth. The opposite side, bottom-up, is where you have a mechanic (or in this case you start off with verbs that you can apply mechanics too) and you create a game around these mechanics. In the previous idea, I could have started with a survival mechanic, and come up with the core idea’s that would feed into that survival game.

It is important to remember that a couple of external factors will skew which specific approach you take, and using only bottom-up or top-down to design a game will not provide you with a solid enough base to make a compelling game. Some of the factors that affect which to take are things such as what the target platform would be, what time frame we have to create the game in, and for the most part the limiting factors around how the game will be made and run. On a system where you have no resource limitations, top down allows for some very vivid and deep games that have a complex list of interlinking mechanics. However, due to the fact that there are these mechanics, the game itself would struggle to run on a lower end machine (or on phones and tablets). On the other hand, if you are making a game for a lower end machine, then it is a much better idea to take a game mechanic that you know would fit the target platform, and potentially could be programmed to work efficiently, and then flesh that out with other game aspects and a “package” that the mechanic can be delivered to the player in.

Applying this to my game idea

There were a couple of things that made it a difficult choice to choose one over the other. The target platform is supposedly going to be android and iOS devices, with PC support as well. That means that bottom-up would be the better process to take. However, due to the fact that the concept is already solidly chosen (space exploration game), I have the first step towards top-down.

Mechanically speaking, it is a better choice to do bottom up, because although we have an IP that we are working too and an idea, we need to focus on how that will fit into the target medium, which could potentially affect the way the game plays. In the verb stage of the pyramid, I chose several game “states” that the player could be in, which can be seen in the next post. These states contained a number of actions which the player would be able to make when they are in that state, as well as defining a base state and how the different states interacted. This meant that I could clearly outline the ideas I had and wanted to implement, and could list them as a system of mechanics. It also better allowed me to look at how these mechanics linked together, and formed a cohesive interlinking system.

For the mechanics, I implemented Ben Cousins theory of Hierarchies, which lists interactions and mechanics based on their parents. For instance, if a player is holding a gun, then they have the ability to shoot it. If shooting it means it runs out of ammo, then the player can reload it. Categorizing the mechanics this way meant that I could also then have a list of the mechanics that I want to implement, ready to work on when it comes to the creation of the game.

Moving forward, the Core aspect of the game was the bit that was easiest. Simply put, because of the nature of a game like this, and the fact that I was working from an existing IP, a lot of the story based aspects and content are already available. I had to make decisions on things like how many ships there would be, what the art style might be, and the different game paths the player could take. But the core centralized idea of the game was going to be based off that of Elite, so I wouldn’t be deviating too far from those ideas.

Next, I looked at the context the game would have within the concept. This sort of links in directly with the concept, because as I have previously mentioned, I already have a core concept that I was working off due to the fact I’m using an existing IP.  The context would be that of a large, sprawling galaxy where the player can earn their keep however they want. The concept would be that the player has a starting ship, and an amount of credits, and they have to increase that number of credits however they want. If other, “side quests” pop up and distract them from that, there would always be the aim of gaining credits and better things as their main goal.

And as already mentioned numerous time, there is the concept, which is the concept of starting out with a ship and a little bit of money, and essentially being told to "Explore and gain more money!".