Level 5
The Three Cs, Part 1: Character
ALTHOUGH MUCH OF your game design is always changing, you need to establish three fundamentals early in your preproduction. I call them the “Three Cs”:
- Character
- Camera
- Control
If you change any of the Three Cs during the course of your production, you risk massive problems with your gameplay, which may require extra reworking, and you risk endangering your game. Don’t give me that look. I know this sounds dramatic, but so many game elements hinge on the Three Cs that changing one thing will have a ripple effect throughout your entire game. I have seen teams catastrophically screw up and cancel their games because of their failure to stick to the plans of their Three Cs. Although you learned about writing a character in Level 3, here I use the term in a different context. In this level I talk about the way the character is presented to the player and the activities the player does with that character. The very important rule...