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Better late than never: the architecture game concept. My initial ideas were close to the typical tycoon games, a genre centered around building facilities to be used efficiently by people. But typical tycoon games don’t really focus on architecture, they’re more about management with some construction thrown in. When I think good architecture, I think of beautiful buildings that are a pleasure to live in and around of — two aspects that aren’t much touched in most tycoon games. Moreover, I wanted to do something a bit different, more original.

Instead, the idea is for a game where you play an architect who has to come up with beautiful and functional buildings under the constraints an architect would have. It would be a casual game, perfect for Xbox Live Arcade or the PC. The game will focus on interesting constructions: creating museums, hotels and conference centers — the glamorous side of architecture rather than just creating homes. The Sims does that well enough anyway.

The game is divided in levels. In each you must create the plan for a specific building. You start with having to make a simple house, but eventually have to work on malls, museums and skyscrapers. For each building, you must decide a bunch of elements:

• The size of the building and its parking (if any)
• How much and what kind of decorations you have inside and outside
• The style of the building (futurist, art deco, colonial, etc.)
• The interior layouts (what rooms are where)
• and so on

You have constraints to consider when making the plan. You must care about cost, construction time, risk (some elements could take longer than expected to build), the type of structure you’re building, the tastes of the client and so on. Each level has unique challenges: a client might care more about form than function, a museum might have to be constructed in a very limited space on a crowded Manhattan street, a memorial for a tragedy could have to be in an easily accessible place, etc.

The game is played at a pretty high level. You don’t do precise modeling of the whole building, you just make high level decisions (”I want a art deco building with low quality material for the exterior, but I’ll pay extra for a fancy door”) and the game updates the look of the building automatically. For the interior, you just place pre-built “blocks” for rooms. For example, you could select a large bathroom and select where to put it without having to lay out all the walls and each bathroom stalls like in many tycoon games. The goal is to be able to make a plan in 15 to 30 minutes.

Once you’re happy with your plan, you send it to be built. That’s when you discover the real time and cost for construction (like real constructions, sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned). Once it’s built, people walk in and around the building and you get the evaluation from different categories of people:

• Visitors, who come to use the building but don’t work there.
• Employees, who have to deal with the building on a daily basis.
• Passerbys, who see the building’s exterior but don’t come in.
• The client, who paid for the building to be constructed

You have to balance the needs of each type of people. A beautiful building that cost a lot of money could please the passerbys while displeasing the client who had to foot the bill. A functional but ugly building could please the employees but annoy the visitors. At the end of each level a score is given for each category, and the total sum is compared to a target: if the total score is high enough, you go to the next challenge. If it’s too low, you must try again.

Visually, the game would look like an architect’s sketch while you’re designing the building. While the building would be in 3D, it would be drawn in a hand-drawn look. Once the plan is done, the rendering would become more realistic to show the real-world result.

Evaluating the Concept
A lot of people dream of being architects, but can’t follow that dream. I think this game would really please those people. It puts you in the shoes of an architect who must create a beautiful and functional building under certain constraints. It’s the type of game that does what only games can do: it lets you become what you can’t be in real life.

On the other hand, I’m a bit worried about whether it leaves enough for the player to do. Is creating the building at a higher level like that too abstract? Would complete control the details of the construction be better? But then each level would become very long to play and complexity would be added.

I’m also wondering about how to give good feedback to players: how do you know you’re doing a good job while you’re making the plan? Having the evaluation at the end is more realistic, but it may lack enough information to avoid frustrating players. Maybe you could have advisers giving you tips about whether you’re doing well or not before the final evaluation…

Still, I think this concept could be interesting — at least worth to spend more time thinking about it. It’s the type of game that could reach to older gamers, and the gaming industry really needs to reach out to a wider market.

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