Fundamentals of Game Design, Third Edition

Chapter 5. Understanding Your Machine

When you first start fleshing out your game concept, you should concentrate on the dream, the player’s role, and the target audience. However, a game concept is not complete without a statement about which machine (or machines) the game runs on. All machines have features and performance characteristics—input and output devices, processor speed, storage space—that define the scope of the game. You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the different types of machines. The differences go far beyond hardware, however. So far as design (rather than programming) is concerned, the most important things you need to know about these machines are related to who buys them and, above all, how they use them. Some ...