Guest Speaker Richard Fletcher (5/12/2013)

* Today we had a guest speaker, Richard Fletcher who talked to us about monetising games as he has done so with many of his own flash games. Granted, this doesn't have anything to do with our current project, but our lecturer thought it would help in the future.
I notes I made are as follows...

• There are many websites that accept flash based games, therefore try and make deals with them in order to get your games our there.
• Four main types of deal include...
• Exclusive
• Primary
• Non Exclusive/Secondary 
• Entire Rights
• Many other sub conditions also exist including...
• Branding
• Distribution
• Performance Bonus
• Revenue Share
• API Integration
• Game play Adjustments
• As with anything make sure you always read the small print! Otherwise, they could not only own your current work, but also ALL your FUTURE work!
• You may be asked to add API integration into your game which you shouldn't worry about as it is very common to have in games now. After all, companies like to keep track on what their players are doing, thus allowing them to alter and fix things far more easily.
• Advertising in flash games is how you generate revenue. How much you earn depends on your contract and the number of views the ads in your game get.
• Tons of useful websites were also provided on his power point so I should look those up when I get the chance.
• If there is a new technology out then jump at the chance to be one of the first to make a game for it! After all, 'Angry Birds' is huge because it was one of the first touch screen games to come out and luckily was popular.

* Today I also received from Chris the concept designs for some of the enemies in our fire fighting game. I added these to my team's presentation. Each one represents a different type of fire hazard including (in order) boiler, electric, fire and gas.

* Finally, I worked on editing the presentation to make it look more professional. 

*Graeme our lecturer, who will sadly be leaving us soon, said he would gladly answer any questions we have on the industry if we ever emailed him on Facebook. After all, he wants to continue to help us.

Scripting (28/11/2013)

Sadly our guest from Remode was sick this week as well as the lecturer's emergency guest. Thus the rest of the session was spent thinking about our ideas and working out how to present our presentations to the best possible industry standard, ready for the 12th of December when our lecturer also leaves us.

We also decided to go away and come back next week with what we decided to focus on. For example...

• Myself and Amanda: Will design a rough version of the opening cut scene with me focusing on the script.
• Ed and Chris: Will design the objects and enemy types.
• Ryan and Jim: Will go away and research how professional presentations are presented ready to practice in front of the rest of us.  

I then spent the rest of the session coming up with a rough script for the opening cut scene that would include the following real questions.  

• What emergency service do you require?
• What is the number you are dialing from?
• Please stay on the line as we connect you to your nearest fire and rescue service.
• What is on fire?
• What is the address?
• What is the nearest main road?
• What town are you in?
• Don't put the telephone down until we have taken all the details!

With the above in mind I then started to put together a script that can be seen below.
It follows a child seeing a fire in a distance, dialing 999 in the next scene, an operator asking what emergency service they require, the child then responds and is then asked what number they are dialing from. Finally the operator will ask them to stay on the line and that is the end of our example cut scene, though the actually thing will be longer. 

Panel 1:
Child: "Huh? What's that in the distance? ... Oh no! A fire! I better call the fire brigade quick!"

Panel 2:
(Finger can be seen pressing 9, the words 'Press', 'Press', 'Press' appearing in the air to show the audience visually that they are pressing that number).  

Panel 3:
Operator: "Thank you for calling emergency services. Which one do you require today?" 

Panel 4:
Child: "I really need the fire department. A block of flats is on fire! 

Panel 5:
Operator: "Ok, may I ask what number you are dialing from?"

Panel 6:
Child: "Err... ok. I'm calling from my mobile. My number is 0759 0993 9660759 0993 966"

Panel 7:
Operator: "Thank you, you are doing very well. Please stay on the line as we connect you to your nearest fire and rescue service".

* Amanda also emailed us a bunch of notes on Moodle that I will need to look at and then email her back with the script I have so far. Thus we can add it to the cut scene example.

Harvard Referencing:

• Fire Service (Unknown) Dialling 999 or 112 [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.fireservice.co.uk/safety/dialling999 (Accessed: 28/11/2013).

Call

Send SMS

Add to Skype

You'll need Skype CreditFree via Skype

Tweaking our ideas (21/11/2013)

* Having formed three groups based on the three most popular ideas, today we looked over them and decided to tweak them where we could.

Firstly, we got a load of sticky notes, pins and paper and put up on the wall a ton of ideas. I drew three different layouts that the game could look like on paper with the fire fighter and fire monster on separate sticky notes, thus we could use these to visually demonstrate our game idea to our client. The layouts included the intended layout of isometric as well as top down and 3rd person.
I also drew some character sprites as well as some projectiles and potential upgrades.
The rest of the group sorted out where the life, radar, items and water supply would be seen on screen.
We also wrote down enemy types, obstacles and the types of questions we wanted to ask our players.

* Afterwards, I thought that if this idea were chosen, I could include narrative in the form of how the fire bosses were formed e.g. someone fell asleep when using the oven that then caught alight etc.
I don't think the main fire fighter should be characterised as they will have a full uniform on that covers their features, so that the player can better imagine the character to be them, plus it would not be gender specific.
I sopose more narrative could be included in the responses made during the scripted 999 call that will feature in the opening and perhaps the end when the player finally puts out all the fires and saves the day.

* The rest of the group made the following note.

Isometric 2D Top Down, Advanced Sprites

Learning:

• Initial cut scene shows the player what to expect when calling 999
• Between levels – The game teaches fire safety
• Quizzes will be introduced to test a player's knowledge which will be tested in between levels
• Incorrect answers – Comic strip is used to re iterate when the user answers incorrectly

Mechanics:

1.            Get loot from enemies

2.            Stronger hose as levels increase

3.            Axes to chop down doors

4.            Air Tanks increase throughout the levels

5.            Wet blanket Smoke Detector

6.            Fire coats to increase health

Obstacles:

• Holes in the floor
• Furniture
• Gas Pipe
• Plug Sockets

Fire Types:

• Electric – Blankets, Plugs, PC, Games console, Phone chargers, Hair straighteners
• Gas – Boilers, central heating
• Regular – Paper, Clothes, Fabrics
• Wood – Furniture
• Oil – Heaters and Chip pans

Extinguisher types:

• Red
• Yellow
• Blue
• Black

* Overall, today's session was a lot of fun as it felt as if we were in a real work environment coming up with ideas and focusing on how to produce a prototype for our game.

* Next week we should be having a meeting with someone from 'Remode' in order to share our ideas with them and therefore get a better idea on what we should do before presenting our ideas to the client. 

Selecting our final ideas (7/11/2013)

* Today we presented our newest presentations and got the following reviews.

Me, Ryan and Jim's presentation results:

• Everyone really liked the idea and felt that it was both interactive and educational enough for our target audience, thanks to the opening cuteness and quizzes. Despite us saying it would be a relative simple game, our lecturer felt the amount of items you use could make it more difficult to make. Thus we may wish to make it turn based combat so as to give the player more time to decide on the appropriate method of putting out certain fires. 

Jon, Bonnie, Chris, Mike's presentation results:

• Talked about their first person and tower defense game ideas again, this time including more educational values and even difficulty settings. The first one sounded a lot like like their original idea, whereas the second one sounded to me a little too complex and more like several game ideas combined until one, although others seemed to like it.

Adam, Zoe, James and Adrian's presentation results:

• 'Quick thinking saves lives' would consist of multiple game types and would have a comic book motif. Like our game, questions would be asked that would then be related to each mini game e.g. phoning 999 yourself. However, like the last group's tower defense game, I personally felt that it had too many assets thus making it overly complicated, as the lecturer agreed. 

Ed, Chris and Amanda's presentation results:

• Adding to their original idea, the player would interact with scenes at numerous locations in order to play a 2D side scrolling adventure game. It would be either interactive or point and drag as you try and stop hazards, thus making it similar to the first idea of the second group. It would also focus on both young and older audiences so both myself and the lecturer felt those were nice touches. They also included a long list of actual fire hazards so it was good to also see their research. Situations would also vary during the day and night depending on how certain accidents are more likely to happen during those times.

* We then moved onto voting in order to plan which ideas to eventually present to a live panel. From doing so we will figure out how to best present them. Having three votes each the winning ideas were our idea, 'Quick thinking saves lives' and the tower defense game. 

We also had our teams enlarged. Our group now includes Ed, Amanda and Chris. Next we will be thinking about what we say to the panels and decide as a group who will present. 

Creating a new presentation (6/11/2013)

Today I met up with my group and together we produced a new power point presentation for the fire fighting game brief.

Before starting it, I offered an idea that would treat the younger audience with respect by telling a purely narrative driven story. By this I mean the player would play as a character whose house had burnt down. The player character would be of a similar age to our targeted demographic group. The aim of the game would be to 'reflect' back on the house and walk around it, examining things that could cause fires. Thus being both educational and a warning as even the smallest things can be safety hazards.

My group really liked this idea, but felt it would be too story driven and wouldn't include enough game play features to keep a teenager's attention. Thus it would be a good to save the idea for when we might make another fire safety game for an older demographic.  

The presentation itself goes as follows.

Presentations (31/10/2013)

* Today we shared our presentations based on the game ideas we had.

The first group to talk consisted of Jon, Bonnie, Chris and Mike:

• A first person game where you had to stop fire hazards from breaking out as fast as possible. This sounded like a good idea, though it would be a case of whether of not it would be too technical for us to make considering we would have to create all the 3D models ourselves. Especially since our only programmers are completely new to doing so and therefore a 3D game may be too much for them.  
• Tower defense games are doing well in the app market at the moment, therefore they brought up a game idea similar to these where you put out fires.

Our group consisted of myself, Ryan and Jim.

• Our isometric 'Diablo' esk game proved to be very popular as the lecturer felt it would be the most educational thanks to the equipment you use to combat fires. Plus we explained it would be subtle teaching rather like the 'Pokemon' games e.g. water beats fire. Therefore, perhaps foam beats electrical fires etc.
• The 'Bullethell' esk one seemed like a fun concept, but the group felt it would be too difficult for a child and perhaps wouldn't educate them enough.
• Finally the 'Tapper' esk one proved to be unpopular as the lecturer felt it wouldn't be educational enough, as its only the player passing the fire equipment to fire fighters.

The third group consisted of Ed, Chris and Amanda.

• A 2D game where you choose a scene and, after a series of events take place, you have to identity the fire hazards in the scene. It seemed like a nice simple idea.

* We are to read the information put on Facebook on the task and come back next week with a presentation for our refined ideas. This will be useful for our group as we need to make the last two we spoke about more educational. We are also to make our ideas snappier so as to tell others in our pitch what the game ideas are about without each one taking too long e.g. three minutes per idea, not ten.

More Game Ideas (24/10/2013)

Although we didn't meet 'Remode' today, we did discover that our client is in fact the Fire Service who asked 'Remode' to forward a game to them, which we will be responsible for producing.

Therefore, in order for us to think about our game, we were shown another game named 'COG' that was about waste reduction. To make it interesting you played as an alien on a space ship. The player has to go up and down floors in order to remove wasteful thoughts from their crew members minds. The player wins by weakening the alien plant that infected their crew in the first place by managing each crew member's thoughts.

We then got into the groups we were in last week and were asked to put together a presentation of two ideas we have for a game for the Fire Service. Thus, enabling us to short list our favourite ideas to eventually present to our clients. We also made sure to use the Fire Fighters website as reference which is http://www.fireservice.co.uk/

As most of the groups were unsure on the focused age of the game's audience and what content we can include, we watched a short musical animation created by the Australian government named 'Dumb ways to die'. It showed animated characters dying in stupid ways, but kept it bright and cartoonish, in order to get across the message about being careful around train tracks. It also had a song that was catchy and memorable, plus the message was clear enough for a child to understand. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw

Our group came up with a number of ideas including the following.

• A reverse 'Rampage' game where you put a ladder up against burning buildings and climb up them in order to rescue citizens.   
• A top down 'Bullet Hell' like game where you shoot fires out with your hose. 
• A top down 'GTA' type game where you drive around in a fire truck putting out fires. Unlike 'GTA' though you DON'T kill citizens.
• An isometric game like 'Diablo' / 'NES Ghost Busters 2' where go around putting out fires, upgrading to different types of fire fighting equipment to beat certain fires. You would also save citizens and collect faulty fire deterrents in order to collect points and more oxygen for your tanker that starts with 60 seconds. 
• An isometric game like 'Tapper' where you are inside a fire station and have to provide each fire fighter who comes down the fire poles with the equipment they need, but as fast as possible.
• A game like 'Paperboy' where instead of a bicycle you ride a fire truck and shoot out fires with your hose to the side. You have limited water, so you have to make sure to save it, or collect water tanks by stopping at fire hydrants. You also have a time limit however, so the player should conserve their water. 
• An RPG similar to 'Final Fantasy' where you play as a new fire fighter and fight fires (literally) with your team members in turn based combat. You must use the correct equipment however, against each type of fire in order to put it out.  
• A first person shooter like 'DOOM' where you go around shooting out fires with a fire extinguisher.
• A game like 'QWOP', but you are on fire... that's the idea.
• A dating Sim where you date muscular fire men that you also have to take photographs (rather like in 'Pokemon Snap') for their upcoming calender, otherwise the fire station will go out of business! Yea... another weird idea of ours.  

After having good fun coming up with the ideas we each voted for our three favourite ideas which were as follows. Sadly 'QWOP' and the last two silly ones didn't get through.

• The isometric 'Diablo' / 'NES Ghost Busters 2' idea.
• The top down 'GTA' idea.
• The isometric 'Tapper' idea. 

We plan to put together a simple power point presentation for next week as the images on the presentation will help visalise our ideas to the rest of the group. Any more ideas we develop for the three above will be added on the day.

Harvard Referencing: 

• Haslam, C (Unknown) Fire Service. Available at: http://www.fireservice.co.uk/ (Accessed: 24/10/2013).
• Metro Trains (2012) Dumb Ways to Die [Online Video]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw (Accessed: 24/10/2013).

Creating a contract and game ideas (17/10/2013)

This week we discovered our roles in the team brief. Mine will be Narrative and therefore it will be my responsibility to come up with the story, character bios, item descriptions etc.

The group's collective roles are:

• Creative Producer: Jon.
• Narrative: Me and James.
• Art/Design: Bonnie, Adam, Amanda,Chris and Ryan.
• Programming: Zoe and Ed.
• Audio: Jim and James.

We then went through setting up a rough idea for the contract in which we will, as a group have to abide by.

FD Contract:

• Make sure you are on time.
• If you are going to be late then you must contact the producer.  
• Keep to scheduled (negotiated) deadlines. 
• If slipping agree on new deadlines. 
• Maintain prof.attitude. 
• Always bring Graeme baked cakes. :{D
• 3 strike rule:
• 1st strike: Warning.
• 2nd strike: Chat with the producer and Graeme.
• 3rd strike: Final written warning. 
• Final Strike: Sacked!
• Repeated failure to meet deadlines counts as a strike.
• Respectful attitude to all co-workers. 

A printed version of the above will eventually be provided which we will all have to sign and follow.

I must also always make sure to keep my contract up to date and include dates, as every year someone apparently forgets to! 

Since I am a part of narrative, if I come up with any other ideas to go with the narrative I should contact the producer in order to make sure the new idea/s fit with the overall brief.

Next week the client will present a power point about what we will have to do in our group project. Before then, we were split into groups in order to come up with our own ideas which will be presented to the clients. The best idea will be the one we work on for our group project.

Everyone decided to start by writing down two words and then mix them up as we did last year in order to come up with creative ideas.

Our groups six words included: Knob, Kazoo, Punch, Pineapple, Ninja and Cow.

Idea Generated = Pineapple Punch 

A pineapple who also happens to be a ninja is fed up with all the fruit ninjas killing his brethren. 

Controls - Touch based gaming:

Swipe Up – jump 

Swipe Down – slide 

Tap – punch

Game play:

A free to play runner in which the player attempts to reach the end whilst collecting fruit and punching approaching ninjas. All the levels are set on top of different fruit trees which ninjas are trying to cut down. Also, all the music is done on a Kazoo so as to be original.

Players have a certain amount of energy/life that they spend in order to play each level. Players can choose to play each one on either easy, medium or hard difficultly. The harder the difficulty the more likely they may fail but, the more rewards they are also likely to receive and the higher likelihood that golden door knobs will appear. These golden door knobs are used to open secret doors hidden in each level which provide special surprises. 1 out of 10 energy/life recovers every five minutes.

At the end of each level is a boss where you have to tap the screen rapidly in order to beat them up with your fists. By doing so you get more points but, more importantly you can’t fail these, only receive less points. If you do incredibly well, then you can also receive rewards such as a golden door knob.

Achievements/ Trophies exist in the game that you can see on the walls in your tree house in the form of pictures of fruit.

Sensei’s Shop of Wondermoont:

Players can purchase more energy/life, power ups such as a knob doubler (these power ups increase the percentage chance for certain things to appear), golden door knobs and new outfits for their Pineapple such as a sumo outfit, samurai outfit, pirate outfit, etc.

The store itself is owned by your Cow sensei who provides advice and references to 80′s movies including “Wax on, Wax off…”, “You’ll be Back”, “When you hit 88 miles per hour… you're going to see some serious juice”, “It’s not a MOOma!”, “MOOcellent!”.

Each group then shared their ideas which was a lot of fun and acted as practice run for our proper presentations next week. 

Overall, it was a fun session and I really look forward to presenting our ideas next week to our client.

Researching free to play business models (10/10/2013)

This week we were asked to look up 'Free To Play' business models in the form of Facebook games, Apps etc. Also, to find out how they work and if the content included works both as a fun level for the player and a profitable one for the developer.
The following are a few examples of games that follow this business model.

FarmVille: 

One free to play game I got very addicted to in the past, FarmVille has you build your own farm using limited resources and the help of your friends. Thus the addiction comes from making your farm bigger and better thanks to regular free gifts, in-game currency and rewards for doing the smallest things such as planting crops and building fences. Since you can invite your friends to play for rewards and help with the farm, the game already receives new players for every new player who joins. So, imagine if one person joined and then got two more to join, those other two then invite two of their own and slowly the number of players increases exceptionally.
The game however, limits the number of actions the player can make and only earns new turns every couple of minutes, thus players constantly refresh the page and come back to make the most of their turns per day. This is also how the developers earn more money with micro transactions. If the player finds themselves short on turns, or if they fancy purchasing special items, that can not be bought with in-game currency, then the player can spend real money to receive these bonuses.
In fact, the game became so popular on Facebook that Time magazine placed it in 'The Top 50 Worst Inventions' for being one of the most addictive games on Facebook. 

Marvel: Avengers Alliance: 

Another game similar to 'FarmVille', that I got hooked on for a good while was 'Marvel: Avengers Alliance', a game in which you play as an agent of Shield and join up with two of your favorite Marvel superheroes. I remember it being a fun game to play as, not only was it based on my favorite comic book company's superheroes, but it also had a story that involved you fighting Marvels greatest superheroes which kept me coming back in order to complete each chapter. In fact, the gameplay was quite entertaining as it was turn based combat similar to classic RPG's such as 'Final Fantasy'.
Like 'FarmVille', the game has micro transactions in which you can not only buy extra turns, but you can also purchase popular characters. Thus hardcore fans of the characters would end up purchasing them in order to add them to their roster. These characters can then be used in the main game or even the multiplayer matches which players can take part in for the fun of it. Thus players from around the world can find out who would win in a fight between their favorite characters. 
The game proved so popular that it won Best Social Game at the Video Game Awards 2012.

Team Fortress 2:

A mix of great gameplay, humour, character design and balance. 'Team Fortress 2' was originally a game you bought, but is now a free to play first person shooter. What makes this game earn money for its developer however, is the items players can purchase for themselves such as hats. In fact, from playing other select games on Steam players can earn themed hats for their characters to wear, thus convincing old or new fans to play the game again so as to dress their characters in the way they want to. This is a great incentive but, I personally find it sometimes gets in the way of the decent character designs. However, I am a fan of customisation and there are a few decent hats available as seen below, so I don't suppose it's too bad.  

Harvard referencing:

• Reynolds, T (Unknown) Video Game Network [Online image]. Available at: http://people.ucsc.edu/~tlreynol/exhibit/ (Accessed: 10/10/2013).
• Green Shoe (2012) GSA Designs Select Characters for Marvel: Avengers Alliance [Online image]. Available at: http://greenshoeanimation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/gsa-designs-select-characters-for.html (Accessed: 10/10/2013).
• Zynga (Unknown) FarmVille [Online Image]. Available at: http://company.zynga.com/games/farmville (Accessed: 10/10/2013).

First Session (3/10/2013)

For this module, we will be working on a rather exciting and scary sounding team project in which we will need to come up with a game idea for a real life client and then present this to them as a panel for their approval.

Luckily, we don't have to worry about creating a real game but, we are still expected to keep a production diary throughout (especially since most groups forget to do this) and treat the sessions as if we are apart of an actual games' company. Thus, if we fail to meet deadlines set by the client and/or don't show up to sessions then it hinders the entire group's work.
This idea is meant to keep the simulation real and to "bring the industry to us", especially since we could all do with the experience of being a part of a group project.

After discussing the module we then discussed what we wanted to do in the group. I noted that I wanted to write, though I was more than happy to just write characters and the script if someone else wanted to write the story. I was also interested in voice acting as, not only would this be great practice for something I wish to explore in the future, but I doubt anyone else put it down as one of their top picks.

I will find out my role next week along with the brief, fingers crossed!

We were then asked to look up two existing business models in order to figure out the best one for our group project, Waterfall or Agile.

Waterfall:

Waterfall appears to be a model in which once you do go onto the next step there is no going back, hence the name. Therefore, developers may use this business model in order to set themselves deadlines which they can't miss. This can result in a project being rushed but, at least it makes sure the product is released to the public and not in development for a very long time. For example, 'Duke Nukem Forever' was a game that took FIFTEEN years to be released as it kept being passed onto new companies that wanted to restart it from scratch.
An example of the model can be seen below. 

Agile:

Agile, on the other hand, appears to be a model in which you only proceed to the next step after you are happy with the stages before hand. In this way, companies that have the money and time to spend, tend to use this model for their AAA titles. Although this sounds like a better model, this may result in a project taking forever to produce as the creators feel that it has to be perfect, when in reality you probably need to learn that sometimes you have to release what you are making within a reasonable amount of time, otherwise it is never released.
An example of the model can be seen below.  

Harvard Referencing:

• Alam, N, S (2012) Waterfall Model Diagram [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/waterfall-model-diagram.html (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
• Scott, W, A (Unknown) Agile Modeling (AM) Home Page [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.agilemodeling.com/ (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
• Unknown (Unknown) Waterfall model - Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model (Accessed: 3/10/2013).
• Unknown (Unknown) Agile Modeling - Wikipedia. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_Modeling (Accessed: 3/10/2013).