You just hurried together to make a game. You made the design document, and boom. Now your working on making your game. Ironically, you finish it late, who thought? You put as many of your ideas into the game, and truth be told you made it look good. Market day, and all your dreams swell up. BAM, your dreams die because you forgot something apparently. Your game "lacks" something. You think it is because you rushed it, but not entirely. You just forgot to make a few changes in your plans ...
Intended Example
You took some time out and compared older games. Your design document includes layers of your game. Your visual layer is pleasing to most of the mature audience, with blood, gore, and a lot of stunning visual special effects. Your sounds make immersion as people play. They become in grossed in the sounds of battle and war. Your game mechanics flow with ease into one another. These mechanics allow almost infinite game play and unlimited play styles. When you introduced your game into the industry, word of mouth fired an all out barrage on potential buyer wallets. You made bank and now have a crown of 48 carrot gold.
What do these examples show? How can you learn from them? It's obvious some people will say " I need to take time to put my game together." That is not the point of these examples. You must incorporate your target audience into 3 levels of the 3 areas of the game.
Level 1 Conscious - Design a game that is consciously introducing visuals, sounds, and mechanics to the target audience.
Level 2 Subconscious - Design a game that is subconsciously introducing ideas, sounds, visuals, mechanics, and addictions to the target audience.
Level 3 Subconscious Introduction - Design a game that includes a subconscious introduction to the game, allowing players that normally don't favor your game to "grow" into favor with your game.
Visual, Sound, Mechanics
You must choose based on your PR Data for your demographic region. Games of immersion offer cater to one group of individuals or more. Often times they forget to loop a subconscious introduction to the game, and players feel disconnected. Final thoughts on such a process should include major marketing data incorporated into the game.
Why do indies fail? They lack such level of design. Why do commercials fail? They lack a level of design.
