Chapters 7 & 8
Chapter 7: Prototyping
Chapter 7 discusses methods of Physically Prototyping your games by constructing physical models, either designed professionally or even just using pens and paper that represent your game ideas and testing it using these models.
According to Fullerton (2018, p. 203) "Prototyping is the creation of a working model of your idea that allows you to test its feasibility and make improvements to it", this statement accurately describes the purpose of creating and testing game ideas using these physical models as representations of the games in order to improve the planning and development phase of game structure, and game rules.
Fullerton (2018, p. 203) also tells us that "Physical prototypes are the easiest type of prototype for most game designers to construct on their own", which helps to prove how vital that this form of prototyping is to the development process.
Chapter 8: Digital Prototyping
Closely related to the last chapter, Chapter 8 discusses the importance as well as methods of creating and testing Digital Prototypes.
Within this chapter, Fullerton (2018, p. 241) states that "if your final game will be released on a digital platform, at some point in the development process, you will need to create a digital prototype of your concept" and that "digital prototype extends that design work into a digital form and allows you to test the essence of your game in its intended format.", this all states that while physical prototypes help test the foundations of your games ideas, a digital prototype helps contextualize and test the functionality of your games in the medium that they are intended for.
In Conclusion
After reading this chapter, I have discovered many more efficient methods for designing, prototyping, and testing my games, and this information will help in the future as these methods will better allow me to test the foundations of my games and better prove if these ideas will work and if they need to be reworked.
Reference
Fullerton, T. (2018). Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. AK Peters/CRC Press.
