ander-chey

[ander-chey]

Game Design Seventh Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

This Unit was the second half of our group project, entitled ‘Production’ and it was full-on intensive game development from here on out. Making our game was not only difficult and time-consuming, it also seemed like absolutely everything that could go wrong went wrong. There were so many bugs and broken code and plenty of problems with task completion as well as absent members, but finally we were able to complete our game and it was fun to actually just play and test it and watch other people enjoy it.

Although the stress of an impending deadline made me want to rip my hair out, it all felt worth it in the end, especially as I looked at our team’s completed game and thought about how much work and effort was put into making it the way it is now.

[ander-chey]

Life Is Strange

I played Life Is Strange and was immediately taken by the visuals of the game to the point where I’m sure I was playing it just to look around the beautiful world I found myself in instead of the actual gameplay (where I abuse my time travel abilities to avoid awkward confrontations and make bad decisions). It’s an interactive episodic, modern adventure game with a twist and throughout the game you make very important choices that will affect what happens as the story unfolds.

                                         Very important choices

The original game, Life is Strange, was developed by the French studio Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix, released in 2015. A prequel to the events of the game, titled Before the Storm’, was released in 2017 and a sequel was announced some time after that. The protagonist of the first game is Maxine “Max” Caulfield, a photography senior who discovers she can manipulate time by rewinding it to a point in the past after having a disturbing vision of a storm tearing apart her town.

Core elements of the franchise are the presentation of authentic and relatable characters and relationships as well as tackling real world issues and complicated subjects (such as loss, grief, depression, bullying and suicide) and raising awareness for these.

The game revolves around Max as she investigates her town, Arcadia Bay, for information on the disappearance of a girl named Rachel Amber while reconnecting with her childhood friend Chloe. Being set in the life of a modern teenager, you get insights into Max's cellphone and her diary, which records your exploration in Arcadia Bay and reveals extra snippets of Max's inner thoughts depending on your choices.

There are three core mechanics - investigating, making decisions based on what you see and find and using your ability to rewind time to change said decisions. There are consequences for every choice you make throughout the story, with some being positive and others being negative and ultimately having an effect on which of the multiple endings you get. That being said, a lot of the choices you make have some sort of negative consequence regardless of the choice you make, especially when it concerns the relationship between Max and someone who is affected by the choice. Max will have to make very important choices throughout the game as the story progresses.

For example, in an early part of the game you can choose to step in to help a student who is being harassed by the security guard on campus or you can stay back and do nothing. If you step in to defend the student she will be grateful that you stepped in, but the security guard (who you see later on in another scene) will react negatively towards your intervention. However, if you do nothing about the situation, your peer will confront you afterwards and express her anger at you for watching.

This is where Max’s ability can be useful - if you make a choice that you later regret, you can rewind time and make a different decision. The choices made will affect Max and the people around her in interesting and various ways and each decision causes a butterfly effect where a choice made early on in the game can snowball out of control and cause problems later on.

The core loop of the game is simple; progress through the story (through investigating and talking to others), make a choice and then choose to either continue the story or choose to rewind time to make a different choice to gain a potential better outcome.

Overall, Life Is Strange was an interesting game with a touching narrative and beautiful artwork and I enjoyed playing it despite my poor decision-making skills and overreliance on the rewind mechanic.

[ander-chey]

Game Design Sixth Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

This unit at AIE was ‘Production Planning’ - we were all placed into groups of eight people on average and each group was comprised of designers, programmers and artists. Assigned to our teams, we were to work together to plan and create a game for our end of year project. Planning was at first difficult for my team since most of us didn’t know anyone outside of our professions and because we all had differing ideas for what to make. We eventually decided that we all liked survival horror games so we should make that our theme and so we began churning out more ideas until we eventually settled on a concrete idea for our game.

Planning the game was much easier than when we started to actually make it. As a team we had rather poor communication skills at first but over time we improved, as did our game. Our first trial was when we had to pitch our game to a panel of teachers and then to an industry panel, which was honestly terrifying but was very useful experience for the future. By the end of this unit I also learned how hard artists and programmers work and was very impressed with all of the skills they have, so I look forward to working with more of them during my time at AIE.

[ander-chey]

Pitching a Game Idea

Public speaking can be stressful. Having to do this to pitch your game idea makes it even more nerve-wracking. One interesting GDC talk, ‘30 Things I Hate About Your Game Pitch’, as well as some personal experience and feedback, have given me some very useful advice into what to do when pitching a game idea.

The first things to think about are two big questions: “Is this game worth making?” and “Can this team make it?” Presenting your game in a way that it’s both interesting and feasible to make is very important; to know your game inside and out as well as having prepared a scope for how much it’s going to cost to make is expected in a pitch.

What is the hook? What makes your game unique from other games? What does the player do in the game and what is the player experience? These are important questions that should be answered in the pitch; talking about the backstories of your world and characters isn’t going to make your game sound interesting.

Tailor-making games to a single person or group is a bad idea. You want to pitch what your creative vision is, not to ask what someone wants in a game. You want to talk about the game that you want to make so don’t ask what someone else wants to see in the game or give them options for what they want to see; a pitch isn’t the place for that and being uncertain about your own game will show poor planning skills and a lack of confidence in your own abilities as a game developer.

Good imagery is also great for a presentation, especially if it showcases your art style - even just one or two images is enough if they show the look and tone of the game. Having a lot of terrible images isn’t helpful as you’re sacrificing quality for quantity.

Game mechanics should only be talked about sparingly as people don’t want to hear about a list of all the mechanics in your game. One or two very important mechanics can be mentioned but they shouldn’t take up too much time in the pitch especially if they’re standard systems. It’s also important to not leave this as throwaway information that will be mentioned much later, especially if you’re using a non-standard system or if the mechanics are core aspects of your game that is important to the gameplay and is a part of your hook.

Etiquette during a pitch is also important. Speaking clearly, making eye contact and being prepared are all a part of public speaking but there are other more subtle habits that contribute to a presentation. Practicing a pitch rather than making something up on the fly is important because people will know if you improvise and it gives a poor impression of your organization skills and level of commitment to pitching your game.

Presenting yourself as someone people would want to work with is also desirable in a pitch. If no-one wants to work with you because you’ve proven yourself to be an awful person, then why would anyone want to publish your game?

When pitching, confidence and consistency is key - speak clearly and concisely and make sure you present your game as something someone would be interested in buying and present yourself as someone who people want to work with to make your game.

30 Things I Hate About Your Game Pitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTtr45y7P0

You Suck At Showcasing Your Game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB8CvsOjDvg

[ander-chey]

Game Design Fifth Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

For the past four weeks at AIE we have been doing something completely different to what we’ve learned so far - testing and quality assurance. Each designer was assigned a game that’s currently in development and we were told to test it.

First we had to learn what testing was and why it was important and then we had to perform tests ourselves in order to find bugs. We also had to round up at least five other people for two rounds of user testing to get their feedback for the games.

This unit was very interesting because it was completely different to everything we’d done so far and it taught us that it’s very important to test games before they can be shipped because there are so many things that can go wrong in a game.

[ander-chey]

An Analysis On Crafting Horror

In my last post mortem blog post about the previous unit at AIE (Narrative Design) I mentioned that we were tasked with creating a sixty-second long “Vertical Slice”, of a narrative-based game of our own design. My first impulse was to create a psychological horror narrative with two major characters, the protagonist and the antagonist. But, after writing several pages about my idea, the characters and the setting and the history of my narrative, I had to take a step back and really think about what would make my game a true horror and how to go about doing so. Just being scary wasn’t enough.

So, I analysed both horror films and video games, and came across plenty of videos on YouTube that would help me define my game as a psychological horror in sixty seconds. While watching these videos, I started to compare horror films and horror games to see what made them different despite being part of the same genre and how they went about crafting a horror work. One glaring difference was the immersion - when watching a horror film, we’re watching it from the character's’ perspective and have to follow the plot of the film at their pace. Video games have an advantage over horror films as it allows for better immersion for the player, as we control the character and are able to go at our own pace; this makes the player feel as if they’re experiencing the horror for themselves.

One of the developers of Amnesia said that “horror games are probably the only genre of games that seek to evoke emotion from the player”. Amnesia broke the established rules of horror games and took the genre off in a new direction. One of the biggest decisions in making this game was the lack of weapons, meaning there were no competitive mechanics - rather than enemies being an obstacle to overcome through combat, they were instead made to be part of the atmosphere and with no way to defeat them, the player was forced to run and hide.

Without combat, there were no distractions for the player and it allowed them to better immerse themselves in the game and so they’re able to notice their surroundings more. It also meant that the player had no way of overcoming the fear presented by the enemies and the atmosphere, which caused feelings of dread and paranoia throughout the game. Added to this is a constant build-up of tension throughout the game which was aided by the sanity system that penalized the player for staying in the dark and made them an easier target for the monsters.

A common issue with horror games, particularly ones with jump scares, is that the player will quickly become used to being scared and eventually figure out how to handle what was once considered unknown and unfamiliar to them.

Amnesia was one of my main inspirations for my narrative-based game, but I also took from other mediums such as films and graphic novels.

One of these films was the 2009 stop motion animation film Coraline, specifically the color palette; the film uses two contrasting color schemes for effect in showing the differences between both the real world and the ‘other world’. The bright, beautiful colors in the other world were used at first to make it look enticing and full of wonder to attract Coraline, much like how in the wild, bright and colorful plants and animals usually mean poisonous; conversely, the muted, dull colors of the real world reflected how boring and monotonous Coraline found it which increased the motivation to visit a far more lively and fun world. The beauty of the other world was just a mask to hide how it was only a simulation to lure the Coraline and other children.

However, as the latter half of the film proved, bright and colourful doesn’t mean it’s safe - in my game, there were four rooms to move through and the latter rooms were more colourful than the first, which I purposefully made to look dull and normal, but they were also the most disturbing and appeared warped to showcase the mentality of the antagonist, whose presence was imprinted in each room with the decor.

Although Coraline isn’t a horror, it is a great representation of visual storytelling, which was a key narrative device we were encouraged to use, and which can be useful for crafting horror.

Another medium which is a great representation of what horror can be is found in the works of Junji Ito, a manga artist who has created a collection of horror works. One of his better-known works is Uzumaki, where a town is plagued by a supernatural curse involving spirals, which are shown obsessively throughout the manga. Junji Ito shows not only the physical effects of horror, but also the psychological effect. Creating a psychological horror can be challenging but also rewarding as instead of showing a character being hurt on the outside by a monster or a killer we can instead show them being torn apart on the inside by affecting their mental and emotional state.

When crafting horror, being scary just isn’t enough; by analyzing all of these horror mediums I was able to get a good sense of what to do and what not to do when it comes to horror games and how I could utilize all that I’ve learned from these examples in my narrative-based game.

Video References:

GDC video that discusses Amnesia and how it evokes emotion and breaks the rules of horror:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBhiE6QZjzY

Analysis of Junji Ito’s works and how it scares us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIIA6QDgl2M

The Art of Coraline:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPeAZiXNJ5A

[ander-chey]

Game Design Fourth Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

For the past couple of weeks at AIE we have been learning about Narrative Design, which has got to be my favourite unit this year. We learned about how to craft a small piece of a game that uses visual storytelling to show narrative; this ‘vertical slice’ as the game was referred to as, would only last about 60 seconds but would show as much of the narrative that we wanted to tell as we could manage in such a short timeframe.

I was very excited for this unit and was not disappointed at all with what I gained from it, which was a lot. I want to learn more about game writing and narrative design in video games and plan to spend as much free time as possible to further research about the subject in the hopes that I can one day have a career in this part of the games industry.

[ander-chey]

American McGee’s Alice Analysis

American McGee's Alice, or simply Alice, is a third-person psychological horror action-adventure game developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on October 6, 2000 for PC and on July 20, 2001 for Mac. A sequel set directly after the events of Alice, titled Alice: Madness Returns was released in June 2011 for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Designed by American McGee, Alice acts as a macabre and twisted unauthorized sequel to Lewis Carroll's novels, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, featuring elements from shooter, platformer and horror game genres to give the story a dark yet fun twist. It boasts an unapologetically gory aesthetic, fully realized with graphics well beyond those of competing games at the time.

Alice revolves around the titular character from Carroll’s beloved books as she struggles with mental illness, survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder after being the only survivor of a house fire that claimed the lives of her family, leaving her in a mental asylum for ten years. Alice’s madness takes the form of Wonderland, which she had visited twice prior, but now is a twisted and grim caricature of what was previously a delightful nonsense-filled escape from reality and has become rotten and macabre in nature.

American McGee doesn’t romanticize mental illness as other works tend to do, here it’s portrayed as horrific and tragic. The journey Alice takes is that of recovery, something she’s unable to do in the real world - being set in the 1900’s, the treatment for Alice’s condition is poor and unhelpful, with others seeking to manipulate her while she’s in her current state for their own personal gain rather than actually trying to help her. For Alice, Wonderland is an escape, and the fantastic areas within the game are corrupted as a direct result of her own faltering grip on reality.

Alice’s controls are like that of a third-person shooter game due to the engine; Alice always faces forward to where the camera is pointed in and there is a ‘target reticle’ in the center of the screen.

Throughout the game, Alice may collect ten weapons to fight with and has to slay enemies in the corrupted Wonderland in order to fight her way to the Queen of Hearts, who is the main antagonist and the source of the corruption other than Alice’s own insanity. There are also four difficulty modes - Easy, Medium, Hard and Nightmare - and the setting of this is impossible to change after selection, so the player must be certain of their choice.

Alice also has two vital statistics, ‘Will’ and ‘Sanity’. Sanity is the red bar located on the left side of the screen and represents Alice’s (mental) health - when she gains damage she loses sanity and when she loses it all she collapses, resulting in ‘game over’. The blue bar located on the right side of the screen is Alice’s ‘Strength of Will’ and is the fuel/ammunition for most weapons other than the Vorpal Blade (the weakest weapon) and the Croquet Mallet, which doesn’t use Will.

Alice may also find ‘Power-Up’ items throughout the game that can change her form and grant her special abilities for a limited amount of time. There is the ‘Grasshopper Tea’ which allows Alice to jump higher and run faster, the ‘Looking Glass’, which turns her invisible so she can bypass enemies or pull sneak attacks on them and lastly there is the ‘Rage Box’ which makes Alice stronger and able to deal more damage.

American McGee's Alice received mostly positive reviews from critics, and the graphics and music were well-praised for its time. Some of the positive reviews were Metacritic's 85/100 review score, GameSpot's 7.3/10, and IGN's 9.4/10. The game was a success and is considered a cult classic. The most common criticisms included clunky, awkward, and slippery controls. Alice has little "weight" to her and if she is attacked by a monster while jumping, it is common for her to be flung off the level and into pits, leading to many deaths. Some players also felt the combat was loose, unsatisfying, frustrating, and tedious at times, despite the different difficulty settings. The game was also criticized for a lack of unlockables and it is very much a "one and done" game. In his playthrough of the game, American McGee criticized some strange design elements:

Alice is supposed to dive into the water to reach the next area, although it merely looks like a puddle

Difficult and hard to navigate platforming areas

A spawn spot which only gives the player a second to react before they die

Letting the player continue the game without getting an important weapon which is technically optional (the Ice Wand)

Fake doors

American McGee's Alice, as a video game, is most notable for its representation and portrayal of mental health issues, and possibly is one of the first (or the first) video game to respectfully portray victims of poor mental health without portraying them in a negative way, such as "psychopathic crazy murderers who want to kill everyone and eat their faces just because they're insane" which are considered harmful stereotypes. American McGee's Alice also does not portray Alice's mental illness as a joke, nor does he needlessly romanticize it, and takes it seriously from start to finish. American McGee's Alice allows players to walk in the shoes and explore the demented mind of a fragile and vulnerable catatonia victim and sufferer, showing that the mentally ill could be intelligent and creative, and that those who suffer from mental illness also have their own mental battles to fight and that it is a long and arduous journey for them. The game also doesn't glamorize mental illness or promote it, instead showing the horrors of dealing with it and the toll it’s taken on Alice’s psyche. Alice is portrayed as lonely, sad, miserable, depressed, damaged, traumatized, tortured, emotionally and mentally unstable and suicidal protagonist. She is constantly haunted by the memories of the fire that claimed the lives of her parents (and her sister mentioned in the sequel), causing her to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt as a result, which can manifest into extreme self-loathing and suicidal tendencies. During the game, Alice reveals she is not afraid of death because she has wished for it at times, and questions the point in living if she is only going to hurt others. It is also implied Alice cut her wrists in an attempt at suicide, as seen in some artworks of the game. Despite this, Alice is also treated with sympathy, dignity, and respect.

American McGee’s Alice was an interesting and fun game to play; the journey through her corrupted world was a thrilling and intense experience which can then be revisited in the sequel. This game offered a modern and unique twist to the age-old novel Alice in Wonderland and has been well-received by critics and fans alike since its’ release.

[ander-chey]

Game Design Third Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

This unit at AIE was focused on programming, which I initially found very difficult due to being inexperienced. Though, after six weeks of making a working game in Unity using scripts that I created, I feel like I have a much better understanding of programming now.

We were tasked with creating a prototype game using Unity and needed to make at least five scripts to make it work - programming these scripts seemed easy at first but proved to be more difficult than I imagined. Since this unit started though, I now feel much more confident when it come to programming and designing games, even if those games are only prototypes.

[ander-chey]

Ōkami Analysis

Released in 2006, Ōkami is an action-adventure game developed by Clover Studios and published by Capcom. Made for the PlayStation 2, Ōkami was heralded as one of the finest games to grace the system and was praised for it’s beautiful artistry, captivating gameplay and interesting cast of characters.

Ōkami was one of the last PlayStation 2 games selected for release prior to the release of the PlayStation 3. Although it suffered from poor sales, Ōkami earned high acclaim from reviewers and earned, among other awards, the title of IGN's 2006 Game of the Year.

It combines Japanese mythology and folklore to tell a story set in Nippon (Japan) in a time where the world was steeped in darkness with monsters roaming the world and causing misery for the people, only for the evil to be lifted by the act of Amaterasu, the Shinto Sun Goddess in the form of the white wolf. As Amaterasu, the player must defeat monsters and perform miracles to banish evil from the land and save humans and animals alike.

Ōkami has the player controlling the main character, Amaterasu, in a woodcut, watercolor style, cel-shaded environment, which looks like an animated Japanese ink-illustration (known as sumi-e) with other styles of art. The gameplay style is a mix of action, platform, and puzzle gaming genres, and has been noted by many reviewers to have many similarities in overall gameplay style to The Legend of Zelda series, an inspiration that director Hideki Kamiya, a self-proclaimed Zelda-fan, has admitted has influenced his general game design.

Side-by-side comparison of the original realistic (left) and the final sumi-e (right) style used in Ōkami

The core loop of Ōkami is to travel to new locations, help people with their problems (which are basically quests that reward the player with advancement to new areas, rewards to add to your inventory and clears evil away in some cases) and defeat any monsters the player encounters (with there being one boss in every area to defeat in order to advance the story).

The main mechanics of the game are:

The movement of the player, by which the player can travel, run around and access new areas

The Celestial Brush - used as a weapon and a tool, this is how Amaterasu uses her abilities, whether it be for combat or affecting the environment. By using the Celestial Brush, the player can fix things that are broken by drawing over the missing space, can make the sun rise by drawing a circle in the sky and can slash enemies and objects by drawing a line through them. The brush, when used, uses up ink bottles, which are displayed on the screen and will refill over time.

The combat system, which is set in a single area cut off from the outside where the player must fight any monsters within to be able to leave the ‘arena’ - whenever a monster suddenly appears, during a boss fight or when Amaterasu walks into a wandering Demon Scroll (which contains monsters the player can fight)

Praise, which is a reward the player gets for good deeds, shown as a point system, with which the player can spend to gain extra health, more ink bottles and other features

Saving the game - throughout every area the player can explore, there are mirrors that allows the player to save their progress.

Ōkami has also inspire a sequel, titled Ōkamiden, which is set nine months after the events of Ōkami and stars the children of many of the characters from the previous game, with the son of Amaterasu, named Chibiterasu, being the protagonist here. It was made for the Nintendo DS and was released in 2010; it was well-received by fans of the original game despite the poor sales of Ōkami.

Personally, Ōkami was a fantastic game to play - it was always stunning to look at and the story was gripping at all times. The references to Japanese mythology and folklore were interesting to see in video game form and I’d like to attempt designing something as visually stunning and captivating as Ōkami one day.

[ander-chey]

Game Design Second Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

This unit at AIE was Level Design Fundamentals and it has been a very interesting and worthwhile experience these past couple of weeks!

Our design class was tasked with designing a level for a game called Mother Duck, where the player character is a ‘mother duck’ (hence the title) and the object of the game is to collect more ducklings than the other player before time runs out. Splitting into groups of four we were to research a location in the city which would become our setting for our levels. This unit tested how we worked in a team and how well we completed the process of creating our level and the objects in it.

The past couple of weeks we were also taught how to use Maya in order to create and model objects and then export them into Unity where we could then incorporate them into other projects; for example making module kits and designing objects (such as weapons). What we learned would also help us create and export objects into our level for the Mother Duck project. Maya was difficult for me to learn at the start, but now after several weeks I feel like I’ve gotten much better at using it.

By working on this project I learned how to work on a game in a team and how time-consuming working on a single level for a video game can be! After this experience I am looking forward to the time where I can work with a team in the game industry in the future.

[ander-chey]

Tetris Analysis

Tetris is a puzzle game created in 1984 by Alexey Pajitnov while he was working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences at a Computer Centre in Moscow; for years afterwards this game would have many publishers, one of the most well-known being Nintendo.

This game is immensely fun because of how simple it is; the constant challenge of quick-thinking to solve the puzzle by piecing together shapes becomes addictive after a while, especially as the difficulty rises. By playing the game over and over again the player is consistently challenging themselves to achieve higher scores and are forced to act fast as with each level the puzzle pieces will start descending faster and faster on the screen.

Tetris was at first popular with Pajitnov’s colleagues but after it was available to play on the PC its popularity exploded and the game spread all over Moscow. From there it became known to other countries where it also became popular and companies fought for the rights to license the game. Computer Gaming World, an American computer game magazine, called the game "deceptively simple and insidiously addictive".

Unsure of how to publish his game, Pajitnov took the opportunity offered by Perestroika and gave the rights to the Soviet government for ten years. By 1989, half a dozen different companies claimed rights to create and distribute the Tetris software for home computers, game consoles and handheld systems. It was decided that none of the companies was legally entitled to produce and arcade version, and signed those rights over to Atari Games, while it signed non-Japanese console and handheld rights over to Nintendo, where it would gain popularity being played on the Gameboy Advance. In 1996, the rights to the game reverted from the Russian state to Pajitnov himself, who previously had made very little money from the game; this is how The Tetris Company was formed.

The core loop of the game is to turn the puzzle pieces as they descend, let them stack as they reach the bottom line and form complete ‘rows’ to destroy them. The higher the level, the faster the pieces will fall, making it more difficult to turn the puzzle pieces before they hit the bottom.

The mechanics of the game include the movement of the puzzle pieces (turning them around or moving them from side to side), the descent of the pieces, the stacking method and the subsequent destruction of the complete rows. The score obtained by destroying the stacked rows and the levels of the game are also core mechanics of Tetris.

Tetris has proved to be extremely popular long after it was first released to the public, influencing the development of many puzzle games such as the mobile game Candy Crush Saga and and the arcade game Stacker, and has received many awards over the years; Computer Gaming World gave Tetris the 1989 Compute! Choice Award for Arcade Game, describing it as "by far, the most addictive game ever". Guinness World Records has recognized the game as being the most ported in the history of video gaming, appearing on in excess of 65 different platforms by 2011.

The game has also been the subject of academic research, mostly by psychologists who have analysed the effects of Tetris. It has been used for research in several fields including the theory of computation, algorithmic theory, and cognitive psychology; according to research from Dr. Richard Haier, prolonged Tetris activity can also lead to more efficient brain activity during play. Moderate play of Tetris (half-an-hour a day for three months) boosts general cognitive functions such as "critical thinking, reasoning, language and processing" and increases cerebral cortex thickness.

Overall, Tetris is a noteworthy game that will always remain as popular as it is addictive and should be considered one of the best games to have been made, both for its’ gameplay and long-term effects in gaming history.

References:

http://www.businessinsider.com/tetris-history-2014-6

https://tetris.com/about-us

[ander-chey]

Game Design First Module: Post Mortem Blog Post

Over the past six weeks I have been a student at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) in the Game Design course. So far, my expectations have been met, and exceeded regarding what we’ve learned.

So far I have learned the basics of how to use Unity, including how to make scenes, map out environments and to create objects, how to analyse games, how to write a Game Design Document, where I was able to plan out my own game down to the smallest detail, how to write up a demake of a game and many other tasks which have greatly improved my writing and speaking skills.

Throughout the next module, I hope to improve my skills at using Unity as well as my public speaking skills so I can do better with designing levels and in-class debates!

[ander-chey]

Narrative Process in Games

The art of storytelling has been a part of human culture for all our lives and has continued to be an intrinsic part of our society since then; in video games this is especially true.

In video games, one of the best parts of the game is the narrative – the story of the world, the characters and the player who takes a role in it. It helps to engage the player and make the game that much more interesting, whether it be simply the plot-line of the game, the setting, the lore or the morally ambiguous situations the player can get themselves into.

Writing a narrative for a game can be challenging and rewarding for both the designer and the player but that’s what makes the game more desirable. A well-written narrative will draw the player into the story so it feels real to them - that they are living out this narrative as they play.

The narrative can also be used to explain what is going on in the world around the player character and can inform them of various on-goings throughout the story and the setting, such as whatever strife is being inflicted on the world or a character’s backstory.

Some games allow the player to make decisions that influence the story and what will eventually happen and the decisions the player makes will affect the morality of their character.

‘Black and white’ morality, or ‘good VS evil’ is the most common morality known but it can go much deeper than that depending on the depth of the story and how it is told in-game - a choice that the player thinks is the right choice, the good choice, might actually not be that later on in the game as they progress, and what they thought was the wrong choice may have actually been the better decision.

There are games where the choices the player can make have a ‘grey and grey’ morality, that is, there is no definite way to decide whether it’s good or bad. A good example of this is in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim where the player has the choice to join the Imperial Legion or The Stormcloaks - neither is the wrong choice yet both sides will insist the other is wrong and they are right. There will be benefits and downsides of whatever the player picks and the narrative will make sure that they will feel guilty about the latter.

The choices made can also influence the reputation of the player with other characters which may aid in influencing later decisions, options and available quests. The reputation can also influence the alignment of the player, whether they’re Neutral, Good, Evil, or anything between the three.

Alignment can affect the narrative in how the player will play the game - whether they choose a side in any quest or campaign or if they decide to remain neutral. These choices may also affect their interactions with NPCs, what rewards and benefits they get from said alignment and their reputation with other players and NPCs.

The characters in the game are also important to the narrative. They help give the story life and their motivations, ambitions and goals are what drives the plot of the game.

The hero, the villain, the sidekicks, the mentors and many other archetypes are present in any game but through the narrative they become three-dimensional and are often shown to have hidden depths that expand on their character beyond their basic characteristics.

The player will often be drawn to the characters because they’re relatable and often share quirks and traits with them. They can also simply be drawn to their unique personality and aesthetics. The characters will be what the players become attached to throughout the narrative, whether they’re cheering for their victory or hoping for their defeat.

Video game narrative is part of what makes the game enjoyable and becomes deeply immersive for the player throughout the game from beginning to end.

References

The two videos listed below were the two videos I picked as references for this topic study:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmnbivUotfk&index=18&list=PL2e4mYbwSTbYD6zfuWTwz2nTfvKOZBWMe

Asking the Hard Questions: Morality in Narrative Design

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POgN1VN3e3k&list=PL2e4mYbwSTbYD6zfuWTwz2nTfvKOZBWMe&index=5

Everything's on Fire and No One Knows What to Do (In Game Writing)

[ander-chey]

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This is my recently-made Tumblr account where I will post about games, concepts, levels and whatnot I have made or am in the process of making as I continue studying at AIE