| name | 15-game-product-and-production-brief |
| description | Use when defining a game's player promise, product hypotheses, platform options, production model, vertical-slice evidence, commercial boundaries, or greenlight decision before detailed requirements. |
| metadata | {"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]} |
Game Product and Production Brief
Use When
- A game needs an evidence-bounded concept, prototype plan, platform posture, production scope, or greenlight packet.
Do Not Use When
- Detailed requirements already exist; use
19-game-software-requirements-specification.
- Do not call a pitch, editor prototype, or art sample production-ready.
Required Inputs
| Artefact | Source or provider | Required? | Behaviour when missing |
|---|
| Player evidence, cohorts, concept, platforms, constraints, team and commercial intent | Product, design, research and delivery leads | Yes | Stop greenlight and return a hypothesis/gap register. |
| Learning, wellbeing, rights, fact/fiction, consultation/permission, comparable and technical-risk evidence | Accountable education, culture, rights, research and engineering owners | Conditional | Mark not assessed and prohibit unsupported claims. |
Workflow
- Define cohort-specific player promise, repeated action, intended emotion, session and stopping model, differentiation, exclusions and ethical boundaries.
- Convert creative, learning, technical, visual, commercial, cultural and wellbeing uncertainty into falsifiable hypotheses and prototype thresholds; engagement never proves learning or wellbeing.
- Compare engine, platform and topology options without inventing current implementation facts.
- Separate historical/cultural fact, fiction, inspiration, consultation, permission and rights; research does not grant approval.
- Compare premium, demo/prologue, DLC, subscription, sponsorship, licensing, institutional sales, grants, ethical ads and IAP as hypotheses with assumptions, downside and stop rules. Financial independence is motivation, not a promise.
- Define gates from paper proof through vertical slice, production, release candidate and sustain, including a non-intrusive-ad gate when ads are contemplated.
- Specify staffing lines, content-throughput, localisation, rework, support, platform/payment/tax/rights assumptions, dependencies, contingency and greenlight/pivot/narrow/hold/stop triggers.
- Stop on missing player, learning, rights/culture, device, safety or owner evidence; recover with bounded discovery work.
Outputs
| Artefact | Consumer | Acceptance condition |
|---|
| Game product and production brief | Sponsor, product, design and studio leads | Promise, hypotheses, options, gates, risks and evidence are explicit. |
Evidence Produced
| Evidence | Reviewer | Acceptance condition |
|---|
| Hypothesis, prototype, risk and decision register | Greenlight reviewer | Each decision has evidence, owner, date, confidence and reversal trigger. |
Capability and permission boundaries
Read and search are allowed. Creating the brief requires authority; budget, licences, hires or certification require accountable approval.
Degraded mode
Return the narrowest qualified concept, mark unavailable checks not assessed, and never infer a pass.
Decision Rules
| Choice or condition | Action | Failure or risk avoided |
|---|
| Core action is not understood or enjoyed | Iterate, pivot or stop. | Scaling an unproven loop. |
| Target-device risk is material | Require a representative spike. | Editor-only feasibility. |
| Rights are unresolved | Substitute, obtain permission or remove scope. | Infringement. |
Quality Standards
- Separate facts, hypotheses, estimates and decisions; defer game implementation craft to the software engine and visual/interaction craft to
design-system-skills.
Anti-Patterns
- Pitch treated as validation. Fix: require player evidence.
- Content before loop proof. Fix: validate repeated play.
- Engine chosen by fashion. Fix: compare constraints.
- Platform without hardware. Fix: identify device envelopes.
- Greenlight without stop criteria. Fix: add thresholds and owner.
- Ads treated as a revenue default. Fix: define placement, child/privacy, trust, no-fill and kill-switch hypotheses before greenlight.
References
