In one of today's main Gamasutra features, ex-PopTop founder Phil Steinmeyer gives readers a look at the concept and visualization process for his new casual PC game,
Bonnie's Bookstore, which is being published by
Bejeweled creator and casual game giant PopCap.
As Steinmeyer notes in his introduction regarding his research methods:
"If you're not in the game development business, you might not realize how much experimentation it takes to arrive at a final product. My recently launched game, Bonnie's Bookstore, started off as a vaguely defined word game, without an overriding graphical concept or story.
Before any of these images were created, I had already settled on the basic game mechanic, after trying and discarding two other word game concepts/mechanics.
Now I had to settle on a theme. I had a list of possible game settings... [and] I submitted these concepts (with additional details) to a panel of 24 people who had volunteered (mainly as a result of my postings on my blog) to provide feedback."
You can now
read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including comments from Steinmeyer on the results of his poll and what happened next (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).
