Top 3 Events Chosen For Game Design

First of all, I love games, especially investigate how games work and how the game developers approach to those kind of game design. Despite this fact, I rarely touch the topic of games in any academic purpose in interactive media. So for this opportunity, I want to challenge myself higher level of game design.

 

Game design is not only consider which technologies can be applied, in the process of making it, it covers different levels of learning experience. For example, I can learn to design a game for different platforms, boosting up my creativity and skill in storytelling. Not to mention the fact that game has been one of the influences in the media world and social culture. Therefore it is interesting to study its bigger potential in interactive media field.

 

First and foremost is this competition — BAFTA Young Game Designer. There are 2 main categories for this competition, game making and game concept design. As I am a person who prefer in conceptualize design, I might go for game concept award.

 

Their requires is simple but need to put efforts to prepare. Every competition judges on the threshold of originality, this also has  no exception. Despite of that, design of game play and game details (like character design, storyboard and environment design), are essential. The last requirement is optional, if you want to win for the awards, you have to test your game with others.

 

It sounds like a good deal for game designer, actually this competition only allowed ages from 10 to 18. But look into the bright side, the requirements  are quite suitable for designer who new to game design.

 

The next one is our all time favorite Adobe, it has this competition called ADAA 2016. The reason I choose this competition because the threshold in terms of skill is moderate and suitable for undergraduate design student like me.

 

As you can see the competition requires the participants to use Adobe software to produce the work, so for Adobe user like me is given opportunity to enter the competition that is neither too professional nor too low standard. Just like the previous one, it needs game play details. The different here is it required for demo video and images. The one thing  like here is it doesn’t required finished work and it judged on the concept, so I can spend more time on game concept design rather than focus on technologies.

 

For this game design category, there are 2 segments can be choose — commercial segment and social impact segment. As I more inclined to fictional game play, I might choose for the commercial segment.

The last one is very different from others because IxDA Student Design Challenge doesn’t have category options to choose. I would categorize this as a campaign interactive media design. The criteria is about how interactive media designer solve problems in society with their researches. Like I said before, game design involved storytelling and social impact. Therefore, I would imply my skill of game design in this criteria.

 

This year theme is ‘The Future We Deserve’. The topic is about from clever design hacks to emergent technologies — how designers would transform public services in the cities, suburbs and rural areas for the near future.

The major requirement of this competition is the video presentation on how you think of the theme and how you solve the problem with your design. Therefore there will be a lot of research and findings involved in order to have a concrete idea mapping.

Video Making

I use After Effects CC to make the game trailer because I can the use presets effects to make the job done faster. Plus, AE allows me to edit the video footage and audio.

First I animate the walk cycle of the protagonist – the blind girl. In other to achieve realistic effect, I research on how blind people walk with their white cane. The results is, blind people legs walk the opposite position with the white cane, so they can feel the obstacles ahead of them before they move the next step.

Animate blind girl’s walk cycle

Continue animate the sets, background and platform.

 

The hardest part is to animate the interface for the game because it has to be sync with the music.

Animate the interface.

 

One of the feature of this trailer is I add in a video footage of me demonstrate the game, in order to let the audience understand the game play.

Editing the video footage.

 

This is a music game, so music is the important element in the game. I try to use some sound effects to enhance the hearing experience instead of plain background music.
Every music and sound effect in the game is edited and modified by myself, which I took some of the stock music and sfx online.

Music editing.

After I edit all the sound effects, I put them into the video editing and sync them with the animation.

Input the sound effects and refine overall flow.

Sets Preparing

Before making the video, I prepare the sets for it, these are the important elements that relate to the story and environment setting. Without a single dialogue in the story, each of the element here is to indicate the story flow and shows certain clues to the player, like the arrangement photos are to show the incident happen, the road sign is to tell the player what’s in front them, the bulldozers show how terrible of the living area and such.

Visual Development

The concept of the art style is to merge real world with fantasy sketchy drawings, it is to metaphor the life of blind people is not fairy tale but by standers like us can add some magic to their life by helping them across their problems.

Therefore at first, I draw some elements and platform then I use stock photographs to make a collage background.

The first approach of the art style is seems logical and attractive, but the background is too busy, the player won’t be able to focus on the user interface and the character.

Then I blur out the background and tone down the colour because I feel like the background should be darker as the foreground is much more brighter.

The feedback I got from my lecturer is, the overall looking is too dark and the background is very disturbing because of the unnatural blurriness. I should brighter the background and make the blur be like step by step blurriness level.

I am not sure the blurriness can really give the best looking effect, so I try on modify the background with different texture layering, to see which texture is suite for the foreground.

Unfortunately, none of the texture effects seem working well.

At first, I thought I get the suitable colour tone and texture for the background, but when I look at it long enough, it still seems very distracting and offset.

Then I go back to the first suggestion: try on different layering of blurriness. In fact,it seems much more interesting because it looks miniature world laying on the background. Therefore I go on with art style. To make the foreground more contrast from the background, I add drop shadow to it, so it looks like a play set or a puppet show art, this makes the background much more relevant to the foreground.

Character Design

As the story is talking about the protagonist, a blind girl, goes through journey to find her friend, so I’m designing her like a normal girl with a white cane. The protagonist will be look like a weak and independent lady. I thought of giving her a long hair style but I feel like short hair is more stronger to project her independent personality.

For the second protagonist, which is her friend, I design her as a anonymous character but people can still tell her characteristic, by acknowledge her dressing and hair style. Wavy hair, casual and tight outfits are showing her sexiness. However, through the activities and poses shown on the photo, people can tell she’s an adventurous, mischievous and talented woman.

Protagonist design development

Second Protagonist design development

One of these photos is showing the second protagonist plays piano and this can clearly explain why the blind girl follows the piano sound at the starting point.

 

New Puzzles and Environment Design

After I planned out a new story board, I realise the puzzles and the environment design are not tally with the new story.

Version 1

The version 1 is seems like a fantasy wonderland,because the puzzle design was tackle to the idea of ‘birds fly you to other side’, ‘squirrel helps you to block the attack’ and such. The overlook is very superficial and baffling especially the environment design, it is like nothing to do with the story intro. The outcome I expected is the game can be felt like certain realistic and the player able to spot the problem from observing the environment with their logical thinking, therefore this version 1 needs to be improved.

 I always believe that problem solving with the use of environmental resources is always interesting and motivated because it can be planned and predicted by the logical thinking of the individuals. Realistic puzzle games like this are giving me tension and inspiring me to observe things in different perspective.

Lately I come across with this game called ‘Inside‘, it is one of the most popular puzzle platforming game among indie games. It has stunning art style but this is not the main point that I want to discuss, it is the puzzle and the environment design of this game that I want to learn.

The overlooking of the puzzles are very realistic, example like the player has to scope the area and find the resources at that area to solve the problem. Some dangers in the game are predictable example like player can sense the danger when the wild animals are at the near area, so that the player has to be aware of the surroundings. This builds tension to the player and allowed the player to plan the next step in order to avoid the danger. With this kind of puzzle design, the players can feel like they are smart in certain level. What this game really builds the tension and realism is the death that once the player fail to notice the danger. Player knows the character will die in consequences like drowning, get crush by heavy object, easily get kill by animals and such, because the character is just a normal human boy.

From the study, I take some elements to build a new puzzles and environment for my game:

• The environment design needs to be related to the story intro and been logically to the player.
• The puzzle solving needs to relate to the environment.
• Let the player predict the danger and death in the game.

Version 2

For the version 2, I change the ‘animals’ into construction site which uses trees, trucks and rocks as environmental problem solving. I still use ‘musical notes’ as triggering the trees, trucks and rocks happen something, because I still want the game to be felt like brightly inspiring with subtle ‘fantasy’ instead of 100% realistically heavy like Inside.

New Storyboard

After study some good narrative references, I feel like I should change my first storyboard to make the whole concept logically and much more relate to people.

The first story I proposed is about a lonely blind girl looks for her new little friend who often play with her. Then questions ‘pop’ in my mind, ‘Why would a blind girl risk for her life to find the friend who just met recently?‘, ‘Would the audience be convinced with this character’s irrational behave?‘ and ‘What makes this new friend character so special that changed the blind girl’s fate?‘ It is nothing wrong with the story line but I think it is being long-winded to explain the whole situation. In my opinion, a good story doesn’t need a long explanation and as I am going for a mini game, this kind of story will be a bit bulky for just an intro. Therefore I design another new story line and a storyboard:

A blind girl’s bestie (let’s call her BiBi) was missing during travelling and she is still waiting for BiBi to come back. One day a piano song gloom in her ears which is playing across another hill. The song sounds very familiar to BiBi’s, so she thinks it might be BiBi has come back. She is so excited and nervous at the same time whether is it her or somebody else, but she couldn’t consider too much and decides to check that out. As she is blind, she can’t predict what is going to happen along her journey but she can hear sounds. Therefore the player has to play the correct music notes to guide her and prevent her from harm.

As you can see the storyboard I drew, I am trying to use ‘photos and assets’ as a transition to tell a background story, not with a single word or text in it. Example like the relationship of the blind girl and her bestie, how her bestie is gone and why this is associate with piano music. It is rather simplify than the previous but I feel this latest one is much more making sense in ‘Why she has to risk her life to find her friend’ and clearer story telling.

How To Make A Better Story In Game

I have been practicing in writing stories and drawing manga since I was young however it will always be a challenge to write a story that is brief and without any single dialogue. This is the challenge I want to try on this project. Story telling is the essential element that determine how good is the game and how it can engage the player to play. Therefore I research some references that can be helpful.

I learnt story flow in class before which this keeps remind me the very basic format of a narrative. I am going for emotional story so this format is a good start to develop it.

Before I step deeper in this format, I have to learn the mechanism and concept of an emotional story.

Real Story To Tell

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Humans have emotion therefore people always find related and feel empathy when real life stories are told even in virtual space. Example like The Last Of Us, player gets emotional sensation when the character is fighting for friends and family and player even feel sad when seeing the character suffers from loses. We might not encounter zombies apocalypse like the game is however things like friends and families, diseases, death and being a victim can somehow tickle their heart and get related to. Another fact is the character is a normal human with pistol and melee weapons only, which this makes the player feel nervous and scare when encounter a zombie. What makes zombies really scary is they carry diseases that can’t be cured, and human can die when gets affected, which this brings up the point I mentioned – disease and death.

The Last Of Us screenshot

While The Last Of Us is more onto action and adventure, The Walking Dead is more approach to humanity test kind of game. When players go through several chapters of the game, players will get to know other characters and build connection with them. What really makes the players feel strong emotion is when they get to decide which ‘friend’ they should save or should they kill ‘their friends’ who bitten by zombie. Emotions like anger, when players encounter betrayal friend; sadness, when they can only watch ‘their friend’ being killed; happy, when players get to save ‘their friends’, are all because of how players relate these situation in their reality life.

The Walking Dead screenshot

Relationship With The Character

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Why should I care about the characters?

This question people might ask themselves. If I am playing The Walking Dead, and  I get to know the characters and their stories, then why should I have to save ‘them’ or feel empathy for ‘them’? Why care?

In terms of psychology, scholar researchers found that anything that moves will draw our curiosity in finding out the truth like it is doing things for a reason, that it has got it’s own desires, goals and plans. Even just a block moving around a screen will cause us to create some sort of story. When we see something that appears to move with purpose then we start to impute emotions to it. This is what humans associate with agency and this what makes them feel real.

In order to attract the audiences eye sights, the ‘block’ needs to be designed the appearance, the background story of it, so the audience can keep curiosity on the character they control. Without the background story of the character, audience will lose the interest in playing the game in a short time of period. Example like the main character of The Last Of Us has a sad background story and the character is a human being, we as a human will also feel empathy to that character, especially that character has tragedy story, we feel curiosity on what will happen next for this character.

Conclusion

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From what I learn,

Human character + interesting background story = ultimate realistic narrative element.

Since I want to make a realistic kind of narrative, these information is helpful for me, however I would like add some fantasy element in it like magic spell. The game that is only projected a realistic life of blind person going through the journey, is a bit serious and dry. I want the game sends the message of we as by standers can add a bit of magic in blind people life by helping them, it is message of hope and inspiring. Instead of the narrative, art style also have to bring certain meaning to it so the overall will seem to be connected.

 

Reference:

Ballon, R. (2016) ‘The Emotional and Psychological World of You and Your Characters’. [online] Available at: https://www.writersstore.com/the-emotional-and-psychological-world-of-you-and-your-characters/[Accessed 10 July 2016]

The Guardian (2012) ‘Journey and the art of emotional game design’. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2012/nov/21/journey-emotional-game-design [Accessed 10 July 2016]

Noctua (2016) ‘Why do we care about fictional characters?’. [online] Available at: http://gamersdecrypted.com/why-do-we-care-about-fictional-characters/ [Accessed 10 July 2016]

Panuccio, N. (2016) ‘Writing For Emotional Impact’. [online] Available at: http://emergingwriters.us/writing-for-emotional-impact/ [Accessed 10 Jul 2016]

Game Design – Aesthetic Of Play

For this game design competition, I aim for design a good storytelling of game.What makes a good game is based on how good of the narrative is, in order the player can get connect to the game itself. Before design the narrative, I have to define my genre of the game. In terms of mechanism, I’m making a music related plat-forming game, however, the narrative itself can’t be designed base on the mechanism, it might becomes emotionless. I need to define the core aesthetic of my game, which is the fundamental reason of the player to play the game. Brian Upton, author of The Aesthetic Of Play, brings out his statement of making meaningful play based on human culture, and how meaning emerges from playful engagement. About playful engagement, many game designers think specific of mechanism is lead to specific of aesthetic, and this kind of aesthetic is engaging the players. For example like Portal, the player play as first person view and with guns, then they credit its core aesthetic as first-person shooter (FPS) game, but actually it is more likely an adventure- puzzle game. From this point of view, core aesthetic can be meant as ‘unique selling point’.

Core aesthetic can categorized in many type, one of the type is ‘Narrative’, it is the type that I want to put in to my game design element. Although the genre of the game I’m making is puzzle platforming game, howbeit, this is just a general term to describe the mechanism of my game. Therefore, the ‘unique selling point of my game is narrative, which is Games as drama. The story we are witnessing a particular set of actions that correlates to tell a particular story, mostly human drama that we witness, instead of fantasy world we live through. Music game can be challenging for certain level but not so much in this stage, I will design the interface which is obvious enough for the player to notice it, because I want them focus on the narrative instead of frustrated in challenge the game level.  

Reference

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Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M. & Zubek, R. (2001) ‘MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research’. [online] Available at: http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.p df [Accessed 25 June 2016]

Upton, B. (2015) The Aesthetic Of Play. United States: MIT Press.

YouTube (2012) ‘Aesthetics of Play – Redefining Genres in Gaming – Extra Credits’. Uploaded by Extra Credits. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uepAJ-rqJKA [Accessed 25 June 2016]