Different types of Prototypes

There are three types of prototypes; low-fidelity (lo-fi), medium-fidelity (mid-fi) and high-fidelity (hi-fi).

Lo-fi prototypes are simple, and are not rich in details and hence less costly; they are best fitted for the early stages and testing (and killing) new ideas, for example while you are working on implementing the core mechanics, or when you want to explore various narrative related options. This category’s superpower is that it is flexible and quick and gives you a lot of room for maneuver. Lo-fi prototypes main purpose is to test and verify assumptions, that is, weed out bad ideas and big problems with the ideas and see if the proposed solution meets the team’s and users requirements and needs.

Mid-fi prototypes are built upon the lo-fi prototypes and are used when you want to add some details to give people a better sense of how a solution or part of a solution might look-like. We start with this type of prototype once we have solved the major issues of the game, and usually take longer to produce - which is why a prerequisite for them is to have resolved the game’s main issues using lo-fi prototypes. While this type of prototype has more details, it still gives some room to probable changes that may need to be made in the game.

Hi-fi prototypes are rich in detail and complex; they are great for vertical slices of your game, early access or final product ready for shipping, or other more refined target prototypes that are meant to be user-tested. Let’s be real, building something pretty and visually pleasing is probably one of the best sources of motivation in the whole process. So you will probably want to spend time e.g. making a level that is beautiful etc. but trust me, overdoing it early on will cost you a lot. The reason for it is that hi-fi prototypes are complex and rigid, and making changes in them can become exponentially more complicated sometimes. Hi-fi prototypes are used to perform the final tests on the product - for example when we want to see a wide range of dynamics at work simultaneously. So aim for this type of prototype late in the design/development cycle.

Lo-fi prototypes can be anything really - a sketch, a bunch of post-its that are categorized or follow a specific pattern, a recording of a dialogue, or a block-out level in a game engine. Maybe you want to create a new type of weapon for your player character; a lo-fi prototype is what you first use, and instead of a detailed 3D mesh, you start with the basic physics or the behavior of the weapon in your game engine; then you test it and make sure that it is what you want. Once you know that it is working as it should in the context of your game, then you figure out what kind of 3D mesh you want for it and push the prototype towards being hi-fi.

All in all, my recommendation is that to try out various ideas, first try your ideas using very simple tools such as pen and paper, a bunch of post-its or action-figures if you want, and let that type of lo-fi be your first prototype. Play around and see what you learn, then make it a bit better and once you feel comfortable with the core idea, continue with a prototype in a game engine - if your product is a digital game - and little by little make your prototype move towards a mid-fi version and eventually a hi-fi one. In the following chapters I will show you a few ways of prototyping that are primarily used to produce lo-fi prototypes.