Which role does rapid prototyping play in the game development process? And what are the dos and don’ts of prototyping when you are pitching game ideas? Our founder Bernard François talked about this and more during his interview with industry veteran Jordan Blackman in the Playmakers Podcast. In this podcast, Jordan raised some very interesting questions, drawing from his own experience in senior game production roles at Zynga and Ubisoft.
Jordan and Bernard take a deep dive into what makes a good prototype. Not just as a tool to test interesting ideas while building a video game, but also to prepare for internal pitches.
They cover why a prototype should not look too polished, but it shouldn’t look bad either. Stylized, functional graphics are the sweet spot. Bernard also explains why a gray box prototype shouldn’t necessarily look gray.
They also clear up the differences between a prototype, a vertical slice and a minimum viable product. This gives a good view on what you can use when and how to go about that.
If you’re interested in a bit of background information about PreviewLabs, Bernard explains how his passion for the early stages of the video game development process, as well as his love for game jams, resulted in him founding PreviewLabs. This love for game jams is shared by the entire PreviewLabs team, by the way, as you can see in this blog post about the 2021 Global Game Jam we published earlier.
You can listen to the full interview here, or via your podcasting platform of choice. Or feel free to reach out to discuss the advantages of rapid prototyping for your projects.