What do you do when you are at an impasse in the design phase?

Question

I own a small web dev shop, and in our down time, I plan on having my guys work on a game (I will be paying them anyway, right?). A few buddies and I started talking about this game, and have been going through the motions of talking/designing it out.

Only problem we are at an impasse, and can't seem to get passed it. The vote is at 50/50%. Compromising hasn't worked.

I have though about just making an executive decision since I am funding the development/design of the game, but I don't want to lose my friends support for the game, and their other opinions.

I don't know what to do.

Answer 1

Building games by committee is a bad idea, you end up with all the ideas watered down or not implemented correctly.

From the beginning you should have put yourself in the "Lead Designer" position, but now I think it could be a bit late for that.

You should start by having them work on some different 1 or 2 day prototypes to get some of the base gameplay down and then go from there. A lot of ideas that sound bad or too complicated on paper are actually really fun.

Have each group break off and make a small prototype to test the ideas. Then you have something tangeable to compare, instead of most likely poorly communicated ideas.

Answer 2

Really depends on how central this issue is to the gameplay and how quickly you can get the two options up and running.

Big Central Issue

If you are talking something central, like half the team wants to make an FPS and the other half an RTS then there are no easy solutions. Look at the space you are going to be releasing the game in (web/phone/...) and go with the one that's more commercially viable if you plan on selling it.

Easy to prototype issue

If the problem is small and can be easily prototyped you can at least try both versions out. Unfortunately if there isn't a very clear winner in the prototyping it will suffer from confirmation bias and both sides will still think their side is right.

Avoiding in the future

You need to get out of the design by committee mindset, as mentioned by AttackingHobo, it's not conducive to making quick or coherent decisions. Unfortunately if no one of the team has experience making games it can be difficult to get everyone to follow one person since everyone thinks they can be a designer.

While you are learning the game development process I would suggest looking at other games similar to what you want to make for a lot of solutions. While you don't want to just make a carbon copy of an existing title you only need 1 solid new feature to differentiate your game. Outside of that core feature just copy what the market leader for your genre is doing. You'll learn a lot about what they are doing right and it's easy to justify a design decision by pointing at a successful title and saying we are doing it just like that.

Answer 3

Game design is an empirical science. Not even the world's best designers can design in their head. Slap together a prototype and try it out. In about five minutes of playing the game, you'll be able to tell if the idea works or not.