A Fresh, Tasty Video Game.

Ingredients

1 Theme

1 Story

1 Presentation

1 Input Device & Controls

1 Customization & Accessibility

Directions

Step 1

Choose and prepare your theme. Take some time to brainstorm. If you’re lost, start with ready-to-eat themes found at your local stores such as action, adventure, role-playing, sports, and battle royale. Don’t be afraid to play mix-match–solving a puzzle in the middle of a heated battle can be incredibly delicious if done right. Spend a few months tuning the precise flavors for your theme and set it aside in a bowl.

Step 2

Choose and prepare your story. Be wild and reach for the edge of your imagination. The best chefs use the craziest of stories–can you believe that an Italian plumber who grows twice in size by eating mushrooms fighting a fire-breathing turtle became a more recognizable character than Mickey Mouse? Once your story is half in shape, take out the bowl containing your theme and start molding the two together. Be creative–anything can work! Have a story about planting the best garden with a battle adventure theme? Make your main character a miniature-sized warrior who needs to fend off armies of bugs to save the land of the flowers. Spend a few months finalizing the details. Once you have your theme and story mixture ready, store it in a bowl and set it aside.

Step 3

Choose and prepare your presentation. Now that you have your theme and story, you need to decide how they should be presented to your player. Let’s suppose that in your bowl, you have an adventure with the story of a dinosaur tearing through the land to defeat an evil witch. On the store shelves, you see two different brands of presentation:

Which one should you buy? Just like how ghost peppers aren’t everyone’s go-to condiment, the first one might be a bit too hot for your baby brother or your gramps. If you want the whole family to gobble down your dish, your presentation should look more like the second one. Place your presentation on a tray and mold it into the appropriate shape. Take a few years to perfect your preparation by using a utensil of your choice to carve out the fine details on the dough such as textures, character models, level design, and music. Pour your theme and story mixture onto the dough. You now have the base of your dish ready to go!

Step 4

Choose and prepare your input device and controls. How your player interacts with your game is crucial for the taste–make sure it’s intuitive and fun! Just like how you don’t appreciate having to pick out bones every two seconds while eating a fish, your player won’t like your game if it’s too difficult to control. For example, if you’re making a shooting game, rather than preparing a traditional video game controller with sticks and buttons, use a life-sized toy gun as the input device. Cooking up a golfing game? Let the player swing the controller like a real golf club! Take a few months to squish and stretch your controls until they provide a new, easy, and exciting way to interact with your game. Take the tray with your dough mixture and carefully insert the controls into the dough.

Step 5

Choose and prepare customization and accessibility features for your game. You already have the core of your dish ready, but some proper decorations would certainly make more people want to grab a bite. Make your player feel like they are represented–an on-screen adventure would feel a lot more thrilling if you’re the hero, wouldn’t it? Chefs in the past have seen great success with this idea. Wii Sports, for example, allowed players to create their own avatar, known as a Mii, with fully customizable facial and body features. Splatoon 3, a recent major title from Nintendo, became the online game with the most diverse player base due to its representation of minority groups. Take a few months to finish your customization options. Air-dry the mixture into a solid and crush it into colorful sprinkles. Decorate the dish base that you stored in a tray.

Step 6

You’re now ready to cook your dish! You’ll be using a special oven consisting of a team of production personnel. First comes the playtesters–they’re here to examine your dough closely to look for imperfections such as glitches, illogical game design, and anything else that hinders the play experience. If the oven lets out a loud beep, it’s likely because the playtesters didn’t like what they saw. Retrieve your tray from the oven to resolve the issues they reported. Once the oven receives a tray they’re content with, the production team takes over to heat up the food. They’ll handle the advertising, branding, shipping, and release of your game. Leave the tray in the oven on high heat for 1-12 months. You’ll know when it’s finished cooking when the game is publicly released.

Step 7

Wait, there’s another step? Well, video games are a special kind of dish. For 1-5 years after the dish is served, continuously keep track of feedback from those who have tried it and improve your dish. Every few months, you should also serve condiments in the form of updates and downloadable content to keep the taste of your dish fresh.

Nutrition Facts