Designing: The Game and Its Content

7. Gathering and Crafting: Climbing the Tech Tree, Recipes, Skills, Building Up Infrastructure, and Crafting Gameplay.

Crafting is any act of processing a resource to alter it or combining two resources into something new. The resources upon which crafting is performed are usually gatherables or drops. Gatherables are items the player can...

6. Inventory Systems: Types Of Items and How Each Type Functions Within the Game, How the User Interacts With Storage, Storage Limitations and Expansion As Gameplay.

Almost all pet games have an inventory of some sort. In games where the player is expected to collect many pets they usually have their own inventory system, separate from equippable...

5. Avatar Creation: Human vs. Pet, Clothing Systems, The Avatar's Role(s) Within The Game, Avatar Equipment Slots, Stats, and Abilities.

Probably most of you are familiar with the concept of an avatar as a 2D image which you choose to represent yourself on a forum, IM network, or social networking site. Some games use that kind of avatar,...

4. Player Registration and Account Creation, Data Storage Within The Game

For a singleplayer game it has recently become standard to allow the player to enter their name or name the location they own within the game (ranch/farm/zoo/store/house/estate/tribe/country). This is a simple input and storage of a text string. This name may be used when...

3. Distribution and Monetization: Getting the game to the player and the player's money to you.

Thinking about selling a game before any of it has been programmed may feel like getting ahead of yourself. However, the intended sales method affects the design, and plans for earning and dividing income affect recruitment of other team members. ...