Week4 16.10-20.10

 

Week3 09.10-13.10

 

 

Josh Parks (ILM) - Lecture Theatre, Oct 4th at 12.30

Week2 Reading 02.10-06.10

[30.09.2017] 2 minutes presentation

[28.09.2017] Charater detail

Name：Fiery   

Surname：Unknown

Gender：Male

Nationality：Germany

Ethnicity：Human

Period：Near future (a parallel world in 2050.)

Age：12 

Height：141cm 

Weight：30kg

Hobbies：Mischief, attracting attention

Personality：Hyper active, passionate, bad-tempered

Symbols：Active volcano

Weapons: Improvised Bombs and explosive?

 

Backstory:

Fiery lives in a city which is named Piatou, and it is governed by different factions. The story begins with these factions competing for land and resources after a war has ended. The whole city is divided into different areas with clear frontiers. These areas include: The Government, V.I.P’s and the wealthy are in the first area, followed by the ordinary citizens occupying the second area, and the poor and the refuges from the war are in the last area.

 

Fiery is living in an orphanage in the last area and is very lonely and just wants to be loved and have a family. He is quite mischievous and loves to be the centre of attention .Although his serious side he is extremely talented and is able to build homemade explosives by himself.

 

One day a scientist visited the orphanage and was very interested in Fiery’s talents and invited him to his home laboratory. After that day, Fiery made regular trips to the laboratory where he was taught science over several years. The scientist became a foster father figure but there was no fatherly love just science.

 

The story concludes in Piatou in a new era, Fiery now an adult, has become the new leader of the city government.

Sports

How inclusive are they for differently able-bodied players, do they make assumptions about the player’s body-type or exclude those with certain disabilities?

For many years, the game industry has been advocating play for people with different physical conditions and disabilities to enjoy video games on an equal footing. EA's old football game series FIFA13 made a very good example for this role. A mouse that controlled the whole game made it possible for many people with disabilities and suffering from movement disorders to enjoy the game, and for EA this football game meant that so many disabled people could play the game with just one hand.

Not only that, a high degree of custom key settings, colour settings and high-contrast menu screen gave "FIFA 13" different degrees of bonus and reward, but the real decisive feature is the ability to adjust the AI opponent's reaction speed and overall Game speed.

 

How does the meaning of your games change when they are played competitively or by a speed-runner?

 

Speed Runners are easy-to-find casual games, but its tagged multiplayer racing and athleticism suggest that it`s still a competitive game.

In this game four players or AI are in a map race, once a player is knocked out or left behind the other players continue, but the screen border will become smaller and smaller, which will makes the race faster and faster. Up to a point when there are only 3 or less players left to continue the game. As each map is an infinite loop path, each player has to knock out or lose the other players to be the final winner of this race. Backward heroes will use everything at their disposal in order to run faster or impede others progress. The player with the greatest attitude will dominate the game. The Athletic mode will allow players to the purpose the game in other words to understand it and to allow more practice, and in Game mode you can expand this point. When winning there will be a greater sense of accomplishment, fast-paced game requires players to maintain a high degree of concentration and speed.

Learning Tools

Write a couple of paragraphs on what skills or knowledge these games might teach you, or might be used to demonstrate:

How transferrable are these skills/information?

 

In the competitive game market, the game's set of skills and information are relatively fixed, such as in LOL, each hero's skills, attributes, also the "wild monsters" refresh time, as well as the location of the map's resources are all determined. This is so to take the advantage and to highlight the player's technical and psychological skills as in  the traditional game of  chess, the most determined creates and makes  changes using spontaneous but well thought out tactics.

LOL in the overall strategic positioning is aimed an easy to read, easy to understand, and easy to use features (which also laid the status of its industry). This game after the duel can really focus on individual game technology (the bigger picture, fight on line, etc.). Therefore, even if the transparency of information it has always been a design worthy of its pursuit of a piece, but also occasionally one has to abandon the situation, especially when it comes to the core play. At this time ,some relatively uncertain information has become the focus of this contest. Such as players in the other field of vision in time, who can better grasp the battlefield trends and develop good coping strategies that will be able to account for the initiative.

In the non-competitive adventure game, the uncertainty is part of the fun of the game, so such as in  Final Fantasy, weather damage, skill effects or access to items have a very large random effect which will encourage players to extend the game time because of some of the included items, so players will enjoy it when they`ve played a perfect combo.

 

 

What kind of world-view does your game encourage, how might it make you see things differently?

 

LOL encourages a worldview of magic and technology combined. This is a very broad set of free world views. Almost all players in the game can find their favorite characters and story settings. When players face more freedom of choice, they can choose their own role and achieve a greater enthusiasm for the game, as this is a MOBA game it has a non- game over characteristic.

 

Final Fantasy encourages a fully defined world view, so that the story it presents to the players will give more affinity, so that players will want to see what happens next, which is focused on the story of the games needs.

 

How transparent is the game about the ways it manipulates the player?

 

The impact of transparency is everywhere. In the visual, in the game, in the design, in the arts, as well as the synthesis of these areas are reflected in the product. In LOL, the transparency of play is basically the information availability and deliberate confusion of information linked.

 

Personal skills are a complex blend of skills, but in LOL, which we all agree that the core components, including the use of mechanisms to determine the situation and understanding of the game. Most of these skills are in the different maps, models, and the common between the heroes. Of course, the game also clearly shows parts of the experience in the abandoned skills test, such as multi-unit micro-operation, the use of the stereotypes / templates, as well as notes running account.

 

In Final Fantasy, the information is only revealed the necessary part is able to make the players focus on the experience of the plot and the charm of the characters, and increase the fun of players to explore. The difference is that LOL’s each launch an update, because you want to win, so will be studied in detail, and the final fantasy players do not necessarily go online to see the Raiders, but would like to experience the game on their own.

 

Of course, you can assume that the ambiguous spell particle effects can be tricky for the game, but this contradicts the core idea of the information transparency concept described at the beginning. The game should not deceive the player, but should be the player to deceive the player.

 

Narrative

How would you scare a player with a mechanic in an ordinary everyday context?

I thought about how to create a shock effect for the player. Take Pokémon Go, as an example. Players need to walk around their local environment and capture a Pokémon; this is a very easy day-to-day game, so the players will not be prepared for a scary situation. Then they have to focus on the process of capturing a Pokémon. Suddenly BGM switches to the Lavender Town’s BGM where it is full of supernatural events taking place, and where the real identity of the evil Pokémon is revealed bringing a shock factor to players. The mechanics trigger the events and the conditions are random and without notice, it will only trigger when player is concentrating.

As in many horror games, they always try to focus on the players so that their breathe, gets taken away in shock. But in itself is a just horror game, players will be fully prepared for such events, so the shock effect would be somewhat anticipated. For example, in 'Resident Evil '  zombies became a popular adversary in this game and in the core players’ mind there is  not so much of a terror atmosphere, as it turned out with  a lot more kill and humor, such as Lollipop chainsaw, Plants vs Zombies etc...

 

How would you create a ‘ludic’ joke? Sketch out a concept for an in-game joke involving mechanics, assets or self-referential humour.

When we talk about the ludic joke in games, people will think of the mouse meeting in Dooms, Silent Hill’s alien ending, Diablo’s cows levels, the strange weapons of Monster hunter etc.

In my game design, I want to take the Assassin's Creed series as the background, add a new ending for the game. The story continues, the protagonist wakes up and finds himself in the office but earlier in his dream he was an assassin creed and finally understand what he wants to do. His last mission is to leave his resignation report, and depart the office.

【2016-11-18*】Games as Simulation

Games as Simulation

What are the basic assumptions behind your indi dev video game? What world view does it suggest?

 

In the sketch of my indi dev video game, I want to describe an unreal world for player experiencing my game. There are two kinds of background design in normal games. A kind is based on real world, like Commander and Conquer, Age of Empire etc.. Another kind is unreal fantasy background design, like StarCraft, Heroes of Might and Magic etc.

Players can easily accept the game world design and quickly experience the game core of tactics. But in the other hand, the similar background of them and too much ruled by real world will make the game’s setting same as others, like Deja-vu. Although there is a great world design, it is hard for impressing players. And after playing this game, they can only remember some simple things just like “Mario slave the Princess.” Because the reasons of their fighting are only terrorist organization (Ace Combat), war between countries (Total war) and crime (Delta Force), and all happened in earth.

The unreal background design will cost many time of players into the game world. But the good side is players will like game stories and willing to talk about them. For example, Warcraft, at first the battle story between human and orc is from Warhammer, but they developed their own game world from it. It even made a good base for the famous MMORPG World of Warcraft.

                                                                     

How would you subvert or pastiche a famous strategy/sim game?

 

In 2008, EA's MAXIS Studio published a highly focused sim game named Spore. The game allows players to control a spore, so that it evolved from a single cell to the wisdom of life, and then space exploration. It attracted a lot of attention with its unusual theme. But the simple gameplay also made players feel bored after playing a moment. The sell point is creation and open, but it will not be so especially in game market now.

I will try to change it in some places, include:

1, Add more scientific evolution system, so the natural environment will give players more feedback for evolution limit.

2, Focus on the survival and creation elements, so that players will pay more time in game and more interesting. (Minecraft)

3, more evolutionary and technological choices, we can give up the microorganism period, and start game with choose a base type of animals to evolve. So that players will not waste too much time in the boring of big fish eat small fish.

4, more technology and diplomacy options (Civilization Series)

5, social interactions (The Sims)