The beginning of Xb3002 started off the research that my journal looked in to. I researched in to numerous companies recording the historical artifacts of the world in 3d to be added to digital libraries. This is done to maintain the sites long after they have faded due to any number of threats such as war, weather and lack of funds. These companies such a Cyrak tend to be funded by the EU or other large organisations focused on preserving man's history on earth across the globe which is a massively expensive undertaking that requires millions of people to maintain. The works of Cyark and other such companies are a cheaper means of maintaining this information about our history beyond the company and artifacts life which makes it an incredibly important undertaking.
The other element of research that was taken was using virtual reality within education and its effect upon the field of learning. Considering companies such as google are offering educational vr program for students and classrooms for free, to not only make themselves a staple of educational technology it is to also allow for their vr creation kit to be used from an early age for students to create more educational programs via the vr. The virtual reality experience allows for a lot of different learning experiences, travelling to a lot of different places and times which conventional teaching simply cannot do. This along with other things such as gamification can make learning fun and when a learner has fun they often retain more information about the subject they where partaking in, which is really the goal of education.
For the game idea itself I looked at a lot of Manchester history and ways to represent its greatest moments in history, both in significance and in impact on modern society which brought me to the murals. The murals are series of painting my Ford Maddox Brown who rendered Manchester crucial moments in history in to oil painting that where placed in to the town hall to be viewed by the citizens of Manchester. These where the basis of my idea for how the player could explore history, a gallery through time and space that could take the player anywhere in Manchester's history. Going off the murals for important time line events was also useful such as the integration of the Flemish within Manchester's industry, the defense of Manchester and other murals would be the basis for the environments players would explore, expressing narrative via colour was another option for the game I looked at; using the colour to represent the feeling in an environment such as sickly greens and dark blacks within a Victorian era to represent smog.
Puzzles and events where a massive end to engineering the game idea, using puzzles that visually tie to the narrative and have events that would engage the player with information about the area they are in. This is something that I have tried to represent in the doc by citing a conveyor belt within a Victorian factory breaking down and making gears line up to make the belt work again. The event leading to this was the player finding a vase dropping it and smashing the vase the company name on the bottom of the vase, the player looks up to find themselves outside the factory itself. Things like this would leave an impression upon a player and would hopefully let them retain that information.
The final part of the process was forming the doc itself, implementing all the research and forming a visual identity for the game itself which will allow the reader to understand the game I am trying to convey to the reader. I think I have done a reasonable job and all the research is well represented. The visual style of the game could have been represented better but I put this down to not using a tablet or drawing in nearly two years, however I will combat this by keeping my artistic muscles trained in future.
In XB3002 Assignment 1 GAME FUTURES DEFINITION I will produce and develop a creative and forward-thinking game concept into a full game design, in the form of a ‘proof-of concept’ artifact. The Idea of the game is to show the alternatives that are out there for everyday consumers from solar panels and electric cars. The game will show the costs, efficiency in the way that life simulation games show the playable character’s day to day life.
The main focus is showing how the alternatives can be beneficial and also showing the downside (Efficacy) to help show the issues that come along with using alternatives. The aim is to be Eco-friendly as possible and sticking to a fixed amount of money.
The game will target 8+ and older because of the platform which will be on iPads and android tablets so it’s more accessible and it will appeal more to younger people it helps educate a younger audience in school environments. The reason for creating a life simulation type game is to give the player a realistic aspect when using Eco-friendly alternatives and incorporates it into day to day lives through video game play. The game will educate the player about the pro and cons to using alternatives like electric cars, solar panels and other alternatives.
Gameplay
The main goal is to be Eco-friendly as possible and making money go further and having as much money as possible at the end. The player is controlling a group of characters, they can experience between using non-renewable resources like fossil fuels as well as alternatives like solar panels and electric cars side by side. Through game play and progression, they can add solar panels and they can monitor the money and energy use.
Life Simulation Game: The game will be in this format because the whole idea is to create more awareness about fossil fuels and the effects that there having on the environment and the issues it’s causing nature and showing people the other alternatives to using fossil fuels in terms of Money, Energy Consumption and efficiency The gameplay will give the player a more realistic aspect of using eco-friendly alternative in an interactive platform. A way of giving the player experience as well as them learning from the alternatives that is available. The use of resources in the game are measured with the money, energy and efficiency and they all work together with all the other appliances being used in the game.
Isometric Gameplay: The gameplay will view in an isometric angle for the reason of its more controllable and used a lot on life simulation games.
Simple and clean UI Bars that measure money, Energy and Efficiency: The whole gameplay throughout the game will be about keeping an eye on the money, Energy and Efficiency and having the clean and easy to read User Interface will help the player have a more enjoyable experience.
Randomly Generated houses: The house in the game will be randomly generated to give it more of a replay aspect and it gives the player a completely new gameplay experience when played again. Each of the houses will be different sizes so money, Energy and Efficacy will be tested to the limit in a new gameplay experience. The player can choose from a small list of how much they want to use but that will determine the size of the house and add more challenges in the game.
IPad and android tablet: The platform for the game will be played through a touch screen tablet because of the accessibly for 6+ and because of the isometric gameplay it adds more life simulation value to the game.
Using my research from my visually rich research document made for DD3000, I have identified an issue regarding blood donations and have proceeded to create an artefact that either solves or raises awareness of this issue through the use of the video game medium. The main issue I have chosen to focus on is that of the excuses potential donors give for not donating, which are generally based around the fact that they do not know the blood donation process or how vital and needed it really is and continues to be.
Marketing & IP Opportunities
PC and mobile gaming are two of the widest-reaching video gaming markets to date, with almost every household owning a mobile device and/or personal computer. That makes this market the most accessible in terms of releasing games as, particularly on PC, the systems are not controlled by ‘gatekeepers’ which restrict access for developers to release on certain platforms. Developing for PC or mobile also tends to be far less expensive, and the sales are primarily made through digital purchases meaning no cost would have to be spent on creating physical copies.
For these reasons I have decided that PC is the primary platform my chosen game artefact would be developed for, and can utilise a keyboard and mouse or a plugged in controller. Keeping it on PC also give the opportunity for it to be hosted on blood donation websites for ease of access, and keeps it close to its educational source material. Proceeds for the game could also then be donated directly to blood donation organisations, and enable them to fund further research into improving donation techniques or fund the research of artificial blood.
The game is not intended to be graphically or mechanically intensive, and as such be easily converted to a mobile port at a later date so that it can be played on the go. Making it mobile also makes it the most accessible to users and appeals towards its ‘pick-up-and-play’ approach, which is what most casual and mobile gamers want on their devices.
Games Studied
The first game that I researched when coming up with initial influences and inspirations for the game concept idea was that of Sega’s Crazy Taxi. It sounded very similar to the game I had in mind and the core game flow was almost the same with finding a customer and then taking that customer to their destination as quickly as possible, except in my game it was patients. However, after looking into the game more closely, I found that I had perhaps remembered Crazy Taxi more fondly as a game from my childhood. Playing it recently I found it had not held up so well over the years, the U.I on the HUD was too large and obstructed the gameplay a fair bit, and the game felt far too fast-paced in relation to the game I wanted to make. The chaos and speed of the gameplay would not be constructive to the game’s core principles of teaching about blood donation since there is very little a player will learn if their minds are thinking too fast, so information passes quickly from their memory centre. Still, the game still served as a good basis for designing my game upon.
The next game I looked into was Capcom’s Deadrising and Deadrising 2, mainly for the purpose of researching into their use of the user interface (UI). I used Fitt’s Law and how it was possibly applied to Deadrising’s UI, alongside the core principle that the only information on screen should be that which is relevant to the player but kept out of the way of their game play. In Deadrising, the player actually has quite a lot of information displayed on the screen at once, but the UI is kept to the edges of the screen and fades into the game play area. This sort of creates a border for UI to be contained within on the screen, and keeps the key game play area unobscured. The fade of the UI information lets it blend into the background, making it soft and less distracting to the player, and as such doesn’t draw their attention unnecessarily. Not all the UI is on the screen at once as well, as timers appear and disappear as needed for the player’s objectives in the game. I like the style of the timers, and believe they would work well in my own game, and are quite easy to replicate.
Another game I came across to look at was Maximum Override, an early access indie game title released on Steam in January 2016 by Alientrap. I was immediately caught by the style of the game, and believed it to be a perfect example for the art style wanted in my own game concept. It shows how simple block colours and models can still be used effectively to create an environment, which leaves the ability to create more and wider varieties in a shorter amount of time and processing cost. This game became a large influence on newer design decisions for my game concept, particularly the random generation of the map to keep each game different from the last and add replay value, as well as the more cartoon-like and charming art style of the game.
As I was making a game with the intention to teach, I tried to look at existing games with the same educational intention. One of the first places I looked to was BBC Bitesize, which is a child-website of the BBC aimed specifically at revision and education for primary and secondary school students in the UK. I remember being led to this website a lot during those educational years, mainly to reinforce classroom learning and for revision purposes, but it is updated constantly to keep information relevant and up to date. The main reason I looked to this website however was because its sole purpose is to help its visitors learn, so is built to do this in the best way possible and has many years of constant refinement behind it. The website is very interactive and has a lot of games and puzzles involved to apply gamification to learning. It was a good influence on one of my initial ideas, and gave me some good ideas on how to display my information attractively to those I wish to learn from it.
The next game I looked into was a very interesting one. Hiragana Battle: ‘Learn Japanese to Survive!’ is an RPG-maker game by Sleepy Duck Educational Games that was released on Steam in February 2016 and, as it says in the title, it is a game based around teaching its players Japanese. This learning game forces the player to learn Japanese to win its RPG-style battles, through repetition and engaging gameplay. It is designed to teach effectively in this manner, and from the response on steam, it is considered to be quite effective at remaining fun whilst being very intentionally educational. It was very useful to look into to see how people found it effective and engaging.
Design Decisions
Initially I attempted to come up with three different concept ideas on what kind of game to approach this issue with, however one of them instantly stood out as the most appealing and made the choice fairly simple. One of the ideas was based on a narrative experience in which the player plays the role of an individual whose life is changed once they discover they have a debilitating condition that requires frequent blood transfusions to survive. The player would then play through various events in their life and come to understand the troubles these kinds of people face with a constant shortage of donations. The second idea was a bullet-hell game inspired after playing Undertale, in which the player answers multiple choice questions on blood donation, then enters a bullet-hell game depending on the answer they give. If they give a correct answer, the player gets a bullet-hell of the same difficulty as previous, but an incorrect answer makes the bullet-hell harder and they can never get easier again. This is both a test of endurance and knowledge, and engrains blood donation information into the minds of players through repetition.
The design I chose to develop was an isometric sandbox game, in which the player plays as a customised self-proclaimed super hero who traverses the city helped those in need of blood by finding them donors. The player finds an individual in need of help, and listens to the person explain their condition and what they need, so the player can then set out to find them a donor. They can interact with the people walking around on the streets and ask them to help donate, but they will give an excuse as to why not. It is then the player’s job to decide if the person they are speaking to is eligible to donate and they have to convince them to do so. All the while the patient in need is on a timer for the player to find them someone as quickly as possible, and once successful the player then takes the donor to the hospital to save that patient. Rarer blood types are harder to find.
To add a bit of direction for the player, they are informed by a doctor at the hospital of people who are in need and directs the player to them, acting as a sort of operator for the player. The doctor is female and acts as a friendly face for blood donation, and also as the player’s point of information on blood donation.
Initially the game was intended to be based upon the style of Crazy Taxi, but after researching into the game and finding it too chaotic for effectively getting information to the player, I came across Maximum Override and found the style to be a perfect example of how to display this game. Maximum Override is still chaotic, but is for the most part played at the player’s pace, just with the odd timer to hurry them along. I have employed this into my own game, and have adopted the blocky colours of buildings and the randomly generated maps to give the game its own look and improve replay ability. I also chose to make the characters in the game more simplistically stylised than realistic, to add to its own style appeal.
After getting feedback for the name of the player character, I opted to allow the player themselves to name the character to create another level of personalisation on top of the character customisation. One of the suggested names was ‘The Haemogoblin’ and, although I didn’t feel it sounded particularly ‘heroic’, I liked the name and have chosen to make him an antagonist for the superhero protagonist. He has a small impact on the game where he will spawn randomly and spread misinformation about blood donations, and continue to make it harder for the player to convince potential donors to help for as long as he is around. He forces the player to make a decision as to work around him or deal with him, as both further impact the game.
Another feature I later chose to add was a ‘level of violence’ mechanic, to create an extra layer of gameplay for the player. This makes them more accountable for their wanton actions, and appeals to the destructive nature of some players. Whenever the player punches someone, including the ‘Haemogoblin’, causes car accidents, goes through walls or other acts of vandalism and violence, their level of violence meter is added to and they have some of their score detracted. Once the level of violence meter is maxed out, regardless of the game mode, the player’s game ends in ‘failure’. This means the player can go around punching people or breaking things if they wish to, however it is still condoned within the game rules and results in making the game harder for the player and reduces their overall achievable score.
Bibliography
Greenspan, D., Boyd, S.G., Purewar, J. (2014) Video Games and IP: A Global Perspective. Retrieved April 2016 from: http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2014/02/article_0002.html
GameDesigning.org (n.d.) The Current Video Game Designer Job Market. Retrieved April 2016 from: http://www.gamedesigning.org/career/job-market/
Sega. (1999) Crazy Taxi [video game]. Available at: http://store.steampowered.com/app/71230/
Capcom. (2006) Deadrising series [video game series]. Available at: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/93390/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1
Gokturk, M. (n.d.) Fitts’s Law. Retrieved April 2016 from: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of-human-computer-interaction/fitts-s-law
Alientrap. (2016) Maximum Override [video game]. Available at: http://www.alientrap.org/games/maximum-override
BBC. (1998) BBC Bitesize. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education
Sleepy Duck Educational Games. (2016) Hiragana Battle: ‘Learn Japanese to Survive’ [video game]. Available at: http://study-japanese.net/
Fox, T. (2016) Undertale [video game]. Available at: http://undertale.com/
An important part of this game is to create space and opportunity for the parent to communicate information about the PTSD that they are going through to their child. The games mechanics are designed to create these opportunities to talk about PTSD and still keep the child engaged. This is done in several ways throughout the games design.
The way that the players get moved around the board is an important way of showing PTSD and keeping both players engagement. The Child player’s main role is to use some of their movement roll to assist the parent around the board, this is because the parent player is moving forward at a slower rate on average thanks to the Daily Pickups. This helps represent that PTSD makes it difficult to do what the person wants to do, and how difficult it is can vary day to day.
The Cards themselves are named after mindsets or symptoms, these titles can create space to talk about those mindsets when the card is drawn and played. The Parent can role play to add more depth to the cards.
For example: The Parent draws the ‘Exhausted’ Daily Pickup card.
They say something similar to ‘I am feeling over tired today, I will be taking today off’ . With PTSD already been given as the game context, this gives information to the child player about PTSD that is easy to understand. In this case, some days PTSD makes you feel really mentally exhausted and on those days they might not want to do anything.
Both of the tested versions of the game were used and then added a new mechanic which included the base principles of Jenga. This aimed to add a failure state to the game with the players now trying to get to the end goal before the Jenga Tower falls. New cards and a base rule were added which would affect when players would take pieces off the tower. Jenga also provided more room for communication between Parent and Child about PTSD giving a visual way to represent that within the game. It also gave a way to encourage co-operation between the players which can also be linked to them working together against PTSD.
Due to the nature of PTSD Jenga would be an add-on to the game not part of the base game this is because it can create overly stressful situations that many players who have PTSD might not enjoy. This game aims to help people with PTSD and not create more problems so having Jenga as required part of the game could create issues. Because of this a separate part of the game would be put available to players who wanted to play the Jenga version of the game however the base version would still be playable without it.
The additional rules.
When the parent player draws a daily pickup, one player of there choice removes a piece from the Jenga tower and places it on top.
The game uses 2 decks of cards, one is for ‘Daily pickups’ and the other are ‘Board Pickups’. The daily pickup cards are the main adversary for the players and create the biggest challenge. Both decks of cards are designed to help represent PTSD in day to day life, and the challenges that come with it. The Daily pickups are used to represent the base challenges of PTSD whereas the board pickup cards are used to represent general occurrences in day to day life.
The Daily pickups are Red in colour and the Board pickups are Blue. Daily pickups must be used straight away and board pickups can be used whenever unless stated otherwise on the card.
The cards were balanced by using categories, and any of the cards that fell into those categories were changed or removed completely.
Too progressive: This means that the card assisted the players too much in a way that made the game much shorter or less challenging.
Too challenging: These cards made the game severely more challenging and less fun.
Noninteractive / not interesting: The card didn’t effect the game enough or was not received well by players due to it not being interesting.
Too complex: The text and rules were difficult to understand and slowed play down.
The average game time was shorter than was aimed due to players rarely landing on the pick ups.
The game being linear in design needed external challenge that the current pick ups did not provide.
Version 2.0:
Clearer defined player paths to stop confusion when going around the corners of the board.
Daily Pickup and Board pickup were switched to allow changes in difficulty by adding more pickup spaces
An increase in pick up spots as the game progresses, to help symbolise PTSD’s possible build in difficulties. This change also added difficulty which encouraged more communication between players when it came to the child player using some of their movement roll to assist the parent player.
Average play time increased.
A single path means there is only one route for the players to navigate around the board. This style board was designed with the intent of reducing the game's initial complexity. With the game being aimed at someone with PTSD and a child, having the game being easy to understand and explain is very important. Having multiple branching paths can add extra layers of complexity that possibly are not needed. It was also easier to measure and receive feedback in certain important areas like game length and the spaces between pickups. The linear board path allowed faster iterative testing than having multiple 20 past due to the fact that it was easier to do feedback on.
Game board with multiple branching paths
Version 1.0
Base template to test base game length.
No Pickups just to gauge the regular board size without them
Version 2.0
Player Paths became separate and more branching paths were added.
Zones that change if a player can use a ‘Pickup’ there or not.
Coloured pathways to help indicate which player can go where and alleviate player confusion.
Added and tested Pickup locations.
Multiple pathways created interesting and more dynamic gameplay but took a lot more iteration and playtesting for it to feel right. Unlike using a single pathway this version is a lot more challenging at first glance but was also deemed more interesting than the linear paths.
After play testing it was clear that due to the lack of choice in the single path board that the other game mechanics would have to become more interesting, to balance the fact that the board by itself was not providing player choice. Having to increase the amount of cards and difficulty of the game made it also very difficult to balance against the fact that it also wanted to be not overly complex and stress heavy. The game does aim to be played multiple times and a linear pathway based board does create issues in replayability. This was the biggest drawback to using a linear pathways and because of this multiple pathways was decided to be the main board moving forward in production.
The game was playtested with specific goals in mind and the playtesting groups I used aimed to give the best feedback within these areas.
Easy to understand the rules and be able quickly set up the game.
The game should be played under an hour, but have plenty of room for conversation.
The game should be balanced and feel fair.
The playtesting group consisted of adults who have children because the game is aimed at parents with PTSD. This group helped test the games ability to be easily understood by anybody, not just those with previous game experience. This also made sure that the core mechanic base was strong and simple enough to be built upon.
The playtesters gave strong insight into playing games with young children and pitfalls that can happen. For example balancing excitement and interest is important ,if the game is to exciting the child can get lost within that excitement and lose all interest in the game, if the game is too boring they will also lose interest quickly. To avoid both of these design traps, the child character is given an important role to play within the game to retain interest, but the game itself is as interesting as the parent wants to make it. This is done by the parent being given room to talk about PTSD and give as much metaphorical power to the game rules as they chose.
For example:
The child player using their roll to help the parent player can metaphorically be the ‘child supporting the parent through PTSD’, or it can just be a game rule.
Game spaces like these are left for the parent player to apply excitement, power or explanation of their choice. This allows the parent player to ‘balance the excitement’ depending on how excitable there child is, or what in reference to PTSD they want to talk about, this is all in the parent's control.
Constraint based playtesting
Constraints were placed upon the testing sessions later in development, to help get the best feedback per session. These would aim towards testing the overall game balance and how it felt to play. The rigorous play-testing under different constraints were aimed to emulate how the game feels in situations that would happen due to variance or player choice. This allowed immediate player feedback within those areas without waiting for them to naturally occur which would of taken more time. This also allowed faster development and iteration towards the board and card design, which are both areas that required a lot of testing time.
Constraints were placed on:
Time allowed per turn to emulate childlike impatience and choice in actions without much thought behind it.
The amount of cards per deck per play session.
How often the players would draw cards from the decks.
Limiting max and minimum rolls to test game length due to roll variance.
The amount of max turns / max time per game, to test possible boredom limits.
What pathways the players would take around the board.
Different beginning spaces per player, to test how the game responds to large gaps in between players on the board.
