Video Games and Game Design
Games have obviously been around for less time than cinema. But it’s scope and range of audience has grown exponentially in the past 20 years. As of recently, society has placed games on a higher pedestal of importance in comparison to Hollywood’s films.
Due to the increase in people wishing for more individually stimulating experiences, services such as Netflix have become more popular. Cinema’s are absolutely not failing (not until COVID-19) but they are finding a decrease in the volume of moviegoers since such film and video streaming services have become more widely available and more attractive for the larger audience.
In more recent findings, games have out-earned films by plenty. With a gross global revenue of $159 Billion coming from the game industry, and $100 Billion in the film industry. Now, this money is usually from larger MMO’s and Triple A studio games. But the indie crowd of games is beginning to become more popular with time. Especially with audiences growing a newfound love for games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and the mobile game Among Us. Simple games with little to no actual plot or story have become important to people as there is an influx of people playing games for the sake of playing games for a sense of escapism.
Video games are just as important to me, I have grown up playing all types of games and simulations for the fun of a new world to explore and a new set of characters or NPC’s to enjoy. These are a few of the games that have been most influential for me over my time.
BioShock / BioShock Infinite
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
In the idea phase of this project, I knew I wanted to make a game. What type of game or what story or the way it plays I did not know. I’ve always loved character and creature creation, so for me, this was going to be a good usage of my passion and skills, whilst also developing my level of knowledge of game design, game theory and bringing further insight into media-making for me and my art.
Upon the initial idea stage, I knew that a game would require a lot of extra work compared to a film. Not saying that films aren’t a lot of effort to make, however games have proven time and time again to have a new level of world development and expectations. Games have to be enjoyed separately by a huge audience and have to be taken in at the players pace. Rather than the way a film is digested by the audience at the filmmakers pace.
I looked into the different types of game genres to begin with, listing which of them would be most ‘able’ for a small team on a shoestring budget.
Then looking into the programming options available and their prices. It was brought forward that Blender would be needed for 3D modelling at any stage, it occurred to me that a mix of 3D and 2D art styles could be intriguing.
I knew from the beginning that the art style and concepts would be down to me. I thought about my personal preferences of art in game and what I thought I could try.
At some point, the idea of a visual novel came into play. Now, visual novels have an awful name for themselves, as they are, usually awful. This depends on the creators of the game as visual novels are easy to be low-effort and easy to distribute even if they are horrible. A lot of modern visual novels take the form of a ‘dating simulator’ in which the player plays as a (usually male) main character who converses between multiple girls or women characters and they all fall to their knees at the thought of being able to ‘date’ the main character. They are gross representations of the way that people in general converse and an even worse attempt at showing how women think and act.
The example below is probably the worst one I can think of. It has it all. Terrible, uncharacteristic writing that feels like a 13-year old’s wet dream. Atrocious character art that is borderline depressing...
This will NOT be happening in the event I do make a visual novel.
A visual novel that pretty much parodies this trope of awful male-serving female characters is Doki Doki Literature Club, that is, on first glance, another gross example of women characters being simple objects for the male player’s fantasy. However, upon playinig further into the game. You realise that something is wrong, very wrong. One character ‘Sayori’ is absent from school, presumably ill, the player goes to visit her at home. Only to be visited with the sight of Sayori hung by her neck in her bedroom. It’s horrible and startling. But the game brings a great commentary to the way that mental health should be approached and that it is no joke. The game plays out as a horror after this point and the tables have been turned onto the player. As one of the girls in the plot decides that she ‘Monika’ wishes to have the main character ‘to herself’. She then refers to the player by their name (or at least the name that their PC is called).
The main menu turns into this after Sayori’s death. Which shows a great usage of the game UI and a phobia of glitches called Verzephobia.
Other visual novels that have humble stories and characters can be very successful, such as Ghost Trick, which has visual novel elements with some gameplay attached.
The style of Ghost Trick’s art is extremely bold and cuboid too. For the character portraits they have used big blocks of bright colours and thick outlines. For the ‘models in the game. They were initially 3D models that have then been rotoscoped in a pixel style. It is a gorgeous example of experimentation with game style and it works beautifully in this game as the characters feel full of life and equally stylistic.
