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Games Development Requires All Sorts Of Skills

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Making video-games requires all sorts of people with all sorts of skills, many drawing on the key STEM subjects.

We spoke to Dr Ben Lewis-Evans a games user researcher at Player Research in Brighton and a Video Game Ambassador (VGA), about how physical prototyping methods are crucial to the game design process.

Paper prototyping is any type of testing that enables game designers to try out ideas without fully building the game. As you can see in the video, my kids were inspired to create a game of chess with old Skylanders toys. Their prototype went through various iterations before they challenged me to a game.

We also talked about using tools like Disney Infinity Toy Box mode or Star Craft and Warcraft 3. League of Legends was raised as an example of a modified game that became a full commercial product.

But beyond the electronic game creation aids perhaps the best thing about the paper prototyping approach is its simplicity and low tech accessibility. "The great thing about prototyping is that all you need is a pen and paper."

To find out more about video-game careers visit the Video-Game Ambassadors website.

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Andrew Robertson
Andy Robertson is the editor of AskAboutGames and has written for national press and broadcast about video games and families for over 15 years. He has just published the Taming Gaming book with its Family Video Game Database.