Bibliography and Ludography

Bateman, C and Boon, R, (2006), 21st Century game design, Massachusetts, Charles River Media

Eskelinen, M, (2005), Introduction to Ludology and Narratology, [online] Available from http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/anticolonial accessed on 5.12.2009

Fullerton, T and Zimmerman, E, (2008), Game Design Workshop: A playcentric approach to creating innovative games, Burlington, Elsevier

Game Theory, Billson, D, (2010), Building Transmedia Worlds, [internet article] Available from http://gametheoryonline.com/2010/09/29/transmedia-video-game-toys-comics-films-movies-tv/ accessed on 9.11.10  

Jenkins, H, (2006), Convergence culture: where old and new media collide, New York University Press, London

Jenkins, H, (no date), Game design as Narrative Architecture, [online] Available from http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html accessed on 3.12.2009

Murray, J, (2008), Hamlet On the Holodeck, The MIT Press, Massachusetts

Newman, R. (2009), Cinematic game secrets for creative directors and producers, Oxford, Elsevier, Inc

Salen, K and Zimmerman, E, (2004), Rules of Play: Games design fundaments, USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Schell, J, (2008), The Art of Games Design: a book of lenses, Kaufmann Publishers, Burlington

Thomson, J, Berbank- Green, B and Cusworth, N, (2007), The Computer game design course: principles, practices and techniques for the aspiring game designer, London, Thames and Hudson

Video Games Blogger, (2010), Red Faction Movie part of THQ’s trans media strategy, [internet blog] Available from http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2010/04/05/red-faction-movie-part-of-thqs-trans-media-strategy.htm accessed on 10.11.2010

Wesley D/Barczak, G, (2010), Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry: Avoiding the performance trap, Gower Publishing, Surrey

Wolf, M, (2008), The Video Game Explosion: a history from PONG to Playstation and beyond, Greenwood Press, United States of America

Ludography

Altered beast, [1988], Sega, [Arcade, DOS, Amstrad CPC, MSX, NES, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis, PC Engine CD, Commodore 64, Virtual Console, Xbox 360 (XBLA, ZX Spectrum)]

Assassins Creed, [2007], Ubisoft, [PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,
Windows]

Batman: Arkham Asylum, [2009], Rockstaedy Studios, [PlayStation 3,
Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows]

Castlevania, [2010], Konami, [PlayStation 3, Xbox 360]

Enslaved, [2010], Namco, [PlayStation 3, Xbox 360]

Fahrenheit, [2005], Atari, [Xbox/Playstation]

Infamous, [2009], Sony, [Playstation 3]

Myst, [1993], Broderbund, [PC]

Prototype, [2009], Activision, [Playstation/Xbox 360/Windows]

Resident Evil, [1996], Capcom, [Playstation]

Resident Evil 5, [2009], Capcom, [Playstation/Xbox 360]

Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions, [2010], Activision, [Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows,[2] PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360]

The Last Express, [1997], Broderbund, [Windows/MAC OS/DOS]

Tron: Evolution, [2010], Disney Interactive Studios, [Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Wii]

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, [2007],  Naughty Dog, [PlayStation 3]


   

Conclusion

While designing my game, I learnt a great deal about chracter design and gameplay. I leaned a lot of new software such as Final Cut and Logic Pro, I hope to use these programmes more for my game designs in the future as I was quite please with what I had produced whiel using them.

My parallel blog on cohesive worlds also fed quite well into my studio work as it helped me to  look more closely at the worlds I was creating.

Overall, I had leant a wide range of technical and creative information in my research and I look forward to using what I have learned in my next brief.

Character flaws

I wanted my game to have characters that players would be able to identify and empathise with, especially the protagonist, as obviously the player would be spending more time with him than anyone else. In order to do this I had to make the character as real as possible.

Thompson (2007) agrees and states “The designer must be aware of any characters significance within the game. NPC’s who are seen briefly do not need much character development and may only need superficial details of their personalities worked out. However, the player character and major NPC’s do need careful consideration” (Thompson 2007:95)

Looking at game characters who worked and felt realistic, I found the best to be characters such as Jack Walters from 'Call of Cthulhu' and Similarly Carla Valenti in the game ‘Fahrenheit’ as she has several character flaws such as she is claustrophobic and predisposed to panic-attacks.

With the above in mind I designed my main character 'Thomas Wylde' to be flawed in the sense that he often has a defeatist attitude and wants to give up early on in the game until he meets another character who gives him a reason to keep fighting. I didn't want any trace of the dark, gritty anti-hero that seems to be populating the current market with characters such as 'Alex Mercer' from Prototype and 'Solid Snake' from the Metal Gear Solid games. Thomas would be idealistic and at times naive, he would try to see the good in people and trust them... which would get him in trouble. I also gave him a physical identifier which was a small wisp of white hair, at his temple.

Fun?

Now that I had the overall concept in place and knew how I wanted my game to look, play and feel, I went back to the question that Fullerton (2008) advises is an integral and probably most important "Is your game fun?" (Fullerton, 2008:312) Fullerton continues to explain that three main ingredients need to be evident to make the game fun, which are Challenge, Play and Story. I had designed the game with practical 'puzzle' element where's the player has to select the correct animal for certain tasks so this dealt with the 'challenge' aspect. I had worked out a simple play mechanic and control system for working through the game and this included exceeding goals and collecting in the missions and the availability of the animal data that the player could upgrade with and I had also looked at Story a great deal to create a rich narrative with characters who I believed had depth.

So it appears that technically speaking, my game would be fun. The only other way to test if the game would be fun would be if I had playtesters but this is impossible for obvious reasons.

Trailer

After reading how digital game trailers can be the deciding factor for a gamer, and how they establish the mood and style of the game I decided to try and make my own. (Wesley/Barczak, 2010)

I began by using After Effects and a lot of tutorials, after a few attempts I created a simple (not for me) title animatic for my trailer...

Title animatic
I began thinking that perhaps I had bitten off more than I could chew with my aim to create a game trailer to use with my game document as I had very little experience with After Effects and it was hard enough to create the above animatic, let alone a full trailer with sound that I would need to edit together as well.

My first problem was creating the audio, I had the voice work that I wanted to use and a sound effect for the transformation that I liked but I still needed a music piece to glue it together. After a lot of searching on Adobe Logic I found two that I liked and so I began the painstaking process of editing the video and audio together so that it would be seamless. I ended up with something far from perfect as there were a few glitches and no animatic of a transformation that I really wanted to show but it was something I liked anyway...

Wylde Trailer

Animatic

I decided I wanted my storyboard be an animatic and set out compiling some sounds for the game, I got a few more voice-actors to help out and patched some sounds together in Logic for what I had in mind.

I wanted to show realism instead of a hand drawn animatic, so I mainly used image manipulations for the scene. They took a lot of work and were probably harder to conceive than it would be a drawing but I wanted the person watching them to feel like they were watching as scene in a real game, or at least as close as I could get to that. Matching the sounds to the exact moments of action in the animatic was far from easy and often would be out of sync when I rendered them out so I had to try several times before the timing worked well enough to be able to seal both the sound and video together in Final Cut.

Eventually I had something that resembled an action sequence...

Storyboarding

Whether right or wrong, I had envisioned quite a few cut-scenes in the game as cinematic 'set-pieces' and as I had already done pre-viz images for screenshots for the game I decided to use a cut scene for my storyboard. (Newman, 2009.)

Following advice from other students, I decided to eliminate the use of quick-time events for the cut-scenes and just show an action sequence. Websites such as http://www.cracked.com/funny-5873-quick-time-events/ show why these 'QTE's' break up the flow of gameplay. For the cut-scene's themselves, personally I think as long as they aren't too long winded I think they can serve the game well and deliver the player from point a to point b in a way which may not have been possible without it's use.

After looking at some references such as this storyboard for an used 'Flash' digital game concept...

I began sketching out my cut scene, using just simple colors to just get the general idea of the scene. I wanted the scene to revolve around a part of the game where the protagonist follows a truck which has kidnapped one of the other people from the project...

On the storyboards, I tried to focus just as much on how the 'camera' would move just as much as on the action in the scene. If I get time I would like to try my hand at realising an animated version of the scene or perhaps doing a short comic book style version.