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).