Game development is purely design-driven. Ultimately, it is this concept-made-reality design that consumers use to interact with the virtual game world. Game design seems easy, but is actually quite demanding and raises many questions. Will players notice a certain important mission-critical object in a room? What if he doesn’t and can not proceed? The player might get frustrated to the point of giving up on the game, and in the extreme circumstance, swear off the brand due to the bad experience.

With skyrocketing game development costs, it is quite evident that the user’s perceived experience of the game’s design can ultimately make or break a game development company. However, very few development studios can afford to run many usability/playability prototype tests on their game concepts before starting development. All too often, such companies find out right before the launch deadline that their concepts are either dysfunctional or just not fun at all.

To combat this rising trend, Giles Schildt, formerly of Steve Jackson Games, is pushing the concept of paper prototyping in game development as a low-cost alternative to costly computer-based prototyping. Gamasutra recently posted an excellent article on a lecture Schildt gave at Austin Community College about the strengths and opportunities of prototyping in general, and how paper prototyping in specific is a very cost-effective strategy for game designers to employ.

At Usable Products, we've used paper prototyping extensively to test out different variations of user interfaces. Scott Weiss introduced me to the concepts and elegance of paper prototyping, and is quite knowledgable about the subject (as one can gather from reading this article). Paper prototyping is ideal for situations (or even mediums) that have to change on the fly, and is often more efficient than drawing in a program than, say, Microsoft Visio. Also, as Schildt is quick to point out, the flexiblity of paper prototyping allows it to adapt to virtually any situation or ruleset, as well as any medium, very quickly. In such cases where changes happen on the fly (usually during the very early conception stages), pen and paper are often more powerful and elegant than the sophisticated computer machine.

Contributed by Nick Hernandez.