Deciding on the project

Facing down the barrel of my final year at university, I am inclined to reflect on what I have learnt, as well as the design work I have created thus far. With this GAM340 module being one of my final chances to add to my personal portfolio before entering the industry, I want to take the chance to bulk out an area in design that I feel could use some more attention. This has led me to decide to focus my project around UI/UX, as my previous work has largely focused on systems design, level design, and narrative design.

As a direct way of presenting information to the player, UI has always fascinated me. It is the subtle art of communication between the game and the player, and its implementation can significantly improve or worsen the experience as a whole. One game that I love but feel has a lacklustre UI system is BioShock (2007). This is disappointing as the world of Rapture feels so immersive and atmospheric, with so many elements working together to create for a believable space. By researching effective UI, and learning how to implement it, I would like to see if I can improve on the original’s interface, to bring it up to the level of the world design.

Learning Adobe XD

With the premise for my solo project decided on, it was time to seek out an application that would allow me to best realise my idea. Upon some research it seemed that the Adobe suite of tools would be my best chance at creating something believable, while also getting experience with some industry-standard UI tools. In particular, Adobe XD seemed an especially powerful application for making mock-ups and prototyping functional UI designs. Looking through Behance, there are a large amount of impressive game UI overhauls made with the tool (see the research section for more detail).

Much of my development time at university has been spent in the Unity engine, with its plethora of menus, tooltips and features. This made for a nice change of pace when, upon opening Adobe XD I was greeted with a minimal, streamlined and intuitive interface (fig. 1).

I found a great crash course tutorial on YouTube (DesignCourse 2021), that gave an overview of the program, and showed use cases for many of its tools. By following along with it, I was able to make a prototype web page for a productivity app, with a landing page, testimonies, and contact details (figs. 2, 3 & 4). This tutorial has been a great introduction to the program and introduced me to important UI design principles such as visual hierarchies, and spatial arrangements. As this project develops, I will continue to research these topics and gain better theoretical understanding of UI design.

Research

My research this week began by looking through Behance for examples of other UI projects. One particularly inspiring one that I found was a UI redesign for the indie hit Valheim (2021), which greatly improves on the core game’s interface (Artem Bulhakov 2021). The resulting images make for a much more minimal, immersive experience (figs. 5, 6 & 7). What’s more, the project was also created in Adobe XD, showing the feasibility of my project idea.

I also watched a GDC talk on the evolution of the UI in the Dead Space (2008) series (Ignacio 2013). It was fascinating to see how the UI team were able to keep so much of the interface diegetic. They also employed the use of skeuomorphs to create UI that gives a ‘retro-futurist’ appearance and that feels broken and unpredictable. A key takeaway from this talk was the importance of matching your UI’s aesthetic to the in-game worlds aesthetic to create a cohesive, believable interface.

References

Artem Bulhakov. 2021. ‘Valheim / UI Redesign’. Behance [online]. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/117175741/Valheim-UI-Redesign [accessed 20 September 2022].

Bioshock . 2007. Irrational Games, 2K Games.

Dead Space. 2008. Visceral Games, Electronic Arts.

DesignCourse. 2021. Learn Adobe XD in 2021 by Example (Crash Course) [YouTube tutorial]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rQ-eTmWah0&t=5172s [accessed 2 September 2022].

IGNACIO, Dino. 2013. Crafting Destruction: The Evolution of the Dead Space User Interface [GDC talk]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXGWJRV1Zoc [accessed 21 September 2022].

Valheim. 2021. Iron Gate Studio, Coffee Stain Studios.

Lecture

Perhaps without previously realising it, I am a big proponent for design by subtraction. Many of the games that I consider to be especially well designed are minimal and elegant, with a highly refined core player experience. This lecture on the addition and subtraction of mechanics has only strengthened this core opinion of mine.

All too often, subtraction occurs towards the end of development, in response to deadline pressures or negative playtesting feedback. In most contexts, it should be our job as designers to make our designs simple and elegant from the outset, so as to realistically scope our projects and ensure that we make the best quality experience possible. This last-minute reshaping can be largely avoided by employing a ‘playcentric’ (Fullerton 2004) approach to development in which playtesters are involved at every stage of the process. By playtesting any mechanical additions or subtractions, developers can ensure that they are on the right track, and pivot as early as possible if they are not.

Looking at case studies such as Ico was beneficial to the understanding of why the phrase ‘less is more’ is so often true when looking at expertly crafted games. While I have not yet played Ico (2001) (though it is high on my to-play list), Shadow of the Colossus (2005) is one of my favourite game experiences. In my opinion, the team’s mastery of simplicity and elegance can be best observed in the ‘open world’ of the title. Standing in stark contrast to modern open world titles, the land that Wander traverses is barren and desolate, clearly taking cues from the sublime painting movement, in which “the sudden transformative view; a sensation that is beyond expression and which impairs the intellectual faculties” (Riding and Llewellyn, undated). Here, the developers stripped back the space that the player moves through to serve purely as a backdrop for quiet, contemplative reflection, all in service of the core player experience of solitude. Such a wide, open game space could easily be filled with distractions and tangential content, but none of it would serve the narrative, or Wander’s motivations, so it was emitted and the game is all the better for it.

GDD work

As we get closer to submission date, I have been making some important additions to the back-end of my game design document this week.

Firstly, I have added a chapter detailing the camera’s functionality and how it will be controlled by the player. There will be two primary modes that the camera moves between: cruise mode, and skate mode. Cruise mode will work similarly to many third-person games, with the camera being positioned over the character’s shoulder, and being able to be controlled by the player using the right stick. Skate camera is slightly different, being entered whenever the player is skating. As tricks are performed with the right stick, the camera in this mode is automated, facing whichever way the player is. It will also pull out, and have a widened field-of-view in order to give the player a greater understanding of their spatial environment. Cameras are one of the most important aspects of a game’s design to get right, so I am glad that I included this in my GDD.

Next, I detailed the UI of the game, including the HUD and menu systems. The HUD was best described using a mock-up diagram, representing the view to the player while in-game. I made sure to detail which elements were permanent (the compass, the stamina bar, etc.) and which were contextual (the disrupt bar, money, combo meter etc.) for better clarity. I am happy with the general layout, employing theories from the Laws of UX (Yablonski 2021) such as The Law of Proximity and Jakob’s Law. I also went over the different menu systems of the game, using flowcharts to visualise how they would be navigated and what could be accessed on each page.

Finally I made a ‘miscellaneous’ chapter documenting areas that, while important, were not extensive enough to require their own chapters. I went over the vital topic of accessibility, underscoring its importance to inclusivity and listing the ways in which Slam City Skates would strive to achieve this. I then wrote a small list of example trophies/achievements that could be obtained when playing through the game. While not essential to the design of the experience, they were enjoyable to write, and help to flesh out the game and make it feel like more of a real product.

Iron designer challenge

Our weekly group challenge saw us being tasked with adding top-down shooter mechanics to The Sims 4 (2014). This proved a challenge but we gave it a go.

We started by looking at some of the core elements of The Sims and trying to find what could transfer over to the new context. One feature we wanted to retain was the ‘indirect’ guidance of the characters. In the games, you tell the NPC’s where to go and what to do, but the outcome is largely derided from outside variables, such as their mood. We felt that this could make for an interesting spin on a top-down shooter, with the inclusion of unexpected, emergent gameplay scenarios. The player would have to maintain their Sim’s mood and well being if they wanted to ensure their survival.

This mode would be accessible from the main game, with the player’s Sim getting drafted to fight at a certain point in their playthrough. If their Sim survived, they would receive a healthy pay-out upon returning to their home.

While this challenge response was slightly comical and certainly not anything that would get greenlit, I am mostly happy with what we were able to come up with. We translated the core features of The Sims into a wildly different game genre and context.

Further reading

This week, I watched a really interesting GDC talk about making and self-publishing a game in twelve months (Viglione 2015). As someone who is particularly interested in the idea of indie development, this lecture had a lot of beneficial information. In particular, the emphasis on social media as a marketing platform was emphasised, with it helping the game developers to gain a dedicated following before release. Coincidentally in line with this week’s lecture, they also talked about the need to be ruthless with your mechanics and cut features that are going to hinder development and incur further cost.

Bibliography

FULLERTON, Tracy. 2004. Game Design Workshop. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Ico. 2001. Team Ico, Sony Computer Entertainment.

RIDING, Christine and Nigel LLEWELLYN. Undated. ‘British Art and the Sublime’. Tate [online Essay]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/christine-riding-and-nigel-llewellyn-british-art-and-the-sublime-r1109418 [accessed 25 November 2021].

Shadow of the Colossus. 2005. Team Ico, Sony Computer Entertainment.

The Sims 4. 2014. Maxis, Electronic Arts.

VIGLIONE, Matthew. 2015. How to Make and Self-Publish a Game in 12 Months [GDC talk]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tbPbMRcMFQ [accessed 25 November 2021].

YABLONSKI, Jon. 2021. ‘Laws of UX’. Laws of UX [online]. Available at: lawsofux.com/ [accessed 24 November 2021].

Lecture

Particularly within the games industry, I find the classification and emergence of genre fascinating. Unlike other mediums where genres appear to be set in stone, games are constantly evolving and new genres emerge seemingly everyday, as evidenced by hybrids such as Metroidvania, Soulslikes, and roguelikes.

The actual process of game genre emergence was interesting to consider. Regardless of if a game is innovative, fills a market gap and is successful, it alone cannot establish a genre. It is through the subsequent ‘clones’ and iterations on the established formula that a genre arises. It is at this point that the founding game is able to achieve the title of ‘mythic originator’. This can be seen in how Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was the first FPS, while games like Doom (1993) iterated on it and actually established the genre.

I was unaware of how useful the definition of a game’s genre is for marketing and sales forecasting. They help developers and publishers understand their target audiences and create formulas that will innovate while still hopefully ensuring success. They also help audiences to make informed purchases of games, based on play preferences. Because of this, thoughtful use of store tags can be a great asset to developers selling their games on digital storefronts, to ensure that your game gets in front of the right customers.

GDD work

This week I have been focusing on a variety of elements of the GDD, making sure it is fleshed out and well conveyed to readers. In particular, I have added a new chapter which breaks down each mechanic at the players disposal. As the traversal system is intended to be deeply engaging and versatile, I wanted to take some time in the document to detail how it works. I listed each ‘verb’ that the player can enact (cruising, drifting, grinding, etc.) and went on to detail how, and when they would be used, as well as any related mechanics that can be used in conjunction. Initially, I was apprehensive about going in to so much granular detail, but with what we learnt in week two of this module in mind, it is highly beneficial to the whole team if you are as clear and communicative in your design document as possible. In a professional context, this would hopefully prevent any confusion for team members and make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding the game’s design.

Individual challenge

Appropriate to the theme of unfamiliar genres, our individual challenge this week tasked us with writing about one of our least favourite genres. We were to describe what we did not like about the genre, and suggest any improvements to the formula that might cater more to our preferences.

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Hunting games are a difficult genre for me. As an animal lover, I feel morally objected to the realistic simulation of shooting them as a primary gameplay mechanic. However, I do enjoy the feeling that they aim to give – being out in the wilderness on your own using nothing but the equipment you brought and environmental clues to guide you.

For me, the prefect ‘hunting’ game would retain the core pillars and experiences of traditional style titles, but in a different context. Perhaps on an alien planet, having to track and capture hostile aliens. Or maybe being in a distant future wasteland, tracking and shutting down rogue AI through precarious environments. 

However it is not just aesthetic qualities that I would change to better tune these games to my taste; I would also look to adding more chances for emergent gameplay and stories. Some ideas I have for this include:

• You are predator and prey. While you are out hunting your target, there is something also tracking you. This would add an element of survival horror and alleviate potential boredom from long tracking sessions. Be careful to cover your tracks and fight back if the need emerges.
• Environmental hazards. Rockfalls, unstable ground, lighting storms etc. These would add a layer of unpredictability to the game space with it being shaped by random events.
• Looting and foraging. Use objects picked up and foraged in the environment to craft new tools and lures. This would add some nice micro-goals as well as risk vs. reward – do you enter a dangerous area to forage for powerful bait at the risk of being attacked by a predator?
• Story elements. A campaign mode in which each hunting space and target fits into an overarching storyline.

There are lots of ways that I would personally tweak and improve hunting games to match my preferences. However, I am aware that many of my additions stray away from the simulator aspects that make the game genre so appealing to audiences in the first place. Perhaps these additions could help to fill a gap in the market for people who like the gameplay structure of a hunting game, without the simulated moral implications.

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This task helped me to consider what it is about particular genres that I dislike. It made me spend time asking which mechanics were inherent to a genre and which weren’t. Which mechanics could be removed or altered and still retain the genre’s identity and which would completely change the genre in their absence?

Iron designer challenge

Our weekly team challenge tasked us with making a popular game with no card elements into a collectable card game. Our team got assigned the seemingly insurmountable task of doing so with Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017). Ironically this process seemed more difficult than the game itself, but we gave it a good attempt.

We started by outlining what the core pillars of the game are, so that we could best distill it into a card game, while still retaining its core essence. We unanimously decided that frustration was the core tenet that we had to retain. This meant that statistically, dice rolls would never be skewed in your favour, and getting over the proverbial mountain would be an unlikely outcome.

Each time that a player attempts progress, they roll a die to determine their success. Focus points can be spent to play action cards, which attempt to level the odds more in your favour, for instance adding to your roll.

The mountain itself is where we incorporated the collectable elements of the game. Players would be building the mountain as they go, placing cards to form its structure. These would have different themes to encourage collection as players may be driven to collect a whole set. Themes ranged from medieval to space.

What started as a big headache eventually became a fun exercise in distillation and translation. Our whole team got involved with the process, coming up with inventive ways to break the game down into its core systems and apply that to a card game context. I think that the finished concept – while not perfect – is a solid attempt at this.

Further reading

As he was once again referenced in this week’s lecture, I decided to watch GMTK’s video on genre emergence and classification (2017). It was very insightful and I found much overlap with the ideas found in Nick’s lecture. I particularly resonated with the posited question of whether genre helps or hinders game innovation. It is plausible that the existence of genre conventions limits games from truly innovating and breaking new ground as often as they could. Because of this, I think it is crucial to see genre features as starting points to ideating, rather than rigid absolutes.

Following on from the iron designer challenge, I was still thinking about the process of translating games into different genres. I did some research on industry examples of this and came across a fascinating GDC talk about from Antoine Routon (2016). In it, he described their design process behind Lara Croft GO (2015), detailing how they retained the core feeling of the Tomb Raider franchise in a mobile strategy game. Similarly to our group task, their team started with distillation, eventually landing on what they called “the essence of adventure” (Routon 2016), which then went on to inform every design decision throughout development.

References

Doom. 1993. id Software.

Game Makers Toolkit. 2017. Do We Need a Soulslike Genre? [YouTube essay]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7BWayWu08 [accessed 18 November 2021].

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. 2017. Bennett Foddy.

Lara Croft GO. 2015. Square Enix Montreal, Square Enix.

ROUTON, Antoine. 2016. Distilling A Franchise: The Lara Croft GO Postmortem [GDC talk]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4MzuvliDs [accessed 19 November 2021].

Wolfenstein 3D. 1992. id Software, Apogee Software.

 

Lecture

Targeting demographics is a key aspect of designing games, and as such I am glad to have a weekly lecture dedicated solely to that field of development. As always, I wrote lots of notes to refer back to in the future.

It was sobering to see how every stage of game development, from designers, through to publishers and audiences, is impacted by the targeting of particular audiences. For us designers in particular, we must use what we know about our target audience to make our games from an informed perspective that will satisfy them with a quality product, and therefore achieve sales targets. For these reasons, it is vital that we learn as much as we can about our audiences.

GDD work

While the knowledge gained from this week’s topic was still fresh in my mind, I decided to expand on the ‘market viability’ chapter of my design document. Now that I know how crucial the understanding of a target market is to success, I felt that it needed more discussion.

I started by fleshing out my key selling points as these are elements that can make or break a game concept for publishers. By clearly outlining these unique aspects of the game, I was also able to better understand the niche that my game will be creating in the market. It has been a long time since the era of open world extreme sports titles such as the Skate 3 (2010), and Tony Hawk’s Underground (2003) series and demand in online communities is ever increasing. Slam City Skates aims to recapture that magic, being appealing to old fans while modernising the formula enough to appeal to newer generations. The focus on roller skating rather than skateboarding adds a further unique spin on the idea.

Next, I broke my demographic down to be far more specific. Starting by stating their typical age and platform of choice, I went on to define their player types in reference to Bartle’s taxonomy. Following that, in an attempt to be even more specific, I wrote up some player personas. When used correctly, tools such as this help developers to better understand who exactly it is that they are developing their product for. It is recommended to frequently evaluate your player experience against these personas so that projects are kept on track.

Individual challenge

This week’s individual challenge was deceptively difficult, requiring us to apply the DDR (1998) mat to five new contexts unrelated to dancing. Initially this seemed like an easy task, but once considering the awkward arrangement of the pads and the limit of only four inputs, I quickly got stumped. It wasn’t until I considered gamification of non-gaming tasks that I was able to come up with my ideas.

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1. Fitness Tetris

A regular game of Tetris where the pieces are moved side-to-side with the left and right arrows. They can be rotated with the up and down arrows. This would be great for gamers who are wanting to improve their fitness.

2. Accessibility controller for platformers

A controller which gives players with limited or no movement in their hands and arms the ability to interact with platformers. The left and right buttons would move the character in their corresponding direction, while the up button would make them jump, and the down button would make them attack.

3. Immersive hiking

With an accompanying VR headset, users would be able to go on immersive walks through tranquil, awe-inspiring scenery, using the directional buttons to move. This would be particularly appealing to people in built-up areas or busy workers who don’t have much time to explore nature. It could also be a tool fitted in offices to combat the stress workers may be experiencing.

4. Dance-Dance Recall!

Similar to the Brain Academy games and Bop-It, this would be used to improve memory and concentration skills. A speaker will sound out a sequence of inputs, for instance “Left, left, up, right, down, up”, and the player would then have to recall the inputs and carry them out. Each turn the sequence get more complex and difficult to remember. A high-score system could also be implemented. This could be useful for older people in their 60s/70s who are looking to keep their brain sharp.

5. Dance-Dance Reaction!

Similar to the above, but testing reaction times rather than memory and concentration. Players will wait for a randomised amount of time for the speaker to sound out a single input, after which they have to press the button as quickly as possible. This is repeated a number of times until you are given your average reaction speed. This could be a fun way for people who’s jobs are centered around quick responses (such as driving or the military) to improve their reaction times.

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Hard to be original and identify any niches

Looking through the lens of gamified fitness – fitness tetris.

Iron designer challenge

The group challenge required us to conceptualise an educational MMO aimed at children with no violence.

We started by looking at examples of other social games aimed at children, namely Club Penguin (2005), and Moshi Monsters (2008). It was evident that both titles utilised a cartoon styling with colourful visuals. They were also centred largely around minigames and home decorating. Finally, and most importantly, we noted that they employ a limited form of communication between players, so as to safeguard children. These were all elements we ended up incorporating into our final design.

Our game concept, titled ‘Science Odyssey’, was to be a science-focused educational MMO. Players make expeditions to various habitats in order to retrieve samples and photographs to be taken back to their home base – the lab. This lab can be customised in a large variety of ways, with players being able to choose theming, decorations, and pets.

Quests would be given by a variety of famous scientists from throughout history, each teaching children something about influential players in scientific fields. These quests would see taking part in mini-games that teach players fundamentals of science, e.g. circuit puzzles, test tube combinations, focusing microscopes, etc.

Players can choose to go on expeditions with others and help fellow scientists further their scientific studies. Communication will be made through emotes, with many of these being references to famous scientists (Edison’s lightbulb idea, Newton’s falling apple, etc.)

As children have typically short attention spans, we made effort to make sure that our core loop was very brief. We wanted something new and exciting to happen at least every thirty seconds. This could be a new emote, a puzzle, a social interaction, or obtaining new decorations for your lab.

Further reading

I read through the recommended article on GameIndustry.biz about how to market games (Staff 2020). I found the recommendation of choosing your marketing methods in alignment with your game useful. If the game looks great as a GIF then sharing it to Twitter would be a great idea as it will catch people’s attention and hopefully be shared around quickly. On the other hand, if you are making a niche simulation game, it might be more wise to take the marketing to specialist forums such as a Subreddit, in which you can get much needed exposure to people who are enthusiastic about what you are making. The article also emphasised the importance of targeting to a specific audience and not deviating or spreading your marketing efforts too thinly.

References

Club Penguin. 2005. Rocketsnail Games, Disney Canada Inc.

Dance Dance Revolution. 1998. Konami, Konami.

GamesIndustry Staff. 2020. ‘How to market your video game and find your target audience’. Gamesindustry.biz [online]. Available at: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-03-01-how-to-market-your-game [accessed 13 November 2021].

Moshi Monsters. 2008. Mind Candy, Activision.

Skate 3. 2010. EA Black Box, Electronic Arts.

Tony Hawk’s Underground. 2003. Neversoft, Activision.

Lecture

As I am someone with a heavy interest in story-focused games, and dream to work in the field of narrative design, this week’s lecture covered everything I love about games.

It was helpful to revisit Huizinga’s Magic Circle (Huizinga 1938), a theory we had touched on briefly in our GAM120 theory module last year. That perfect sweet spot where our players enter the hermetic seal of a game and fully suspend their disbelief is what we should always strive for when designing game worlds and stories. Personally, I can think of a number of games – BioShock (2006) comes to mind – where I have become so absorbed in my actions that I stop questioning the legitimacy of the experience. I think that much of this verisimilitude comes from the presence of consistency. In BioShock every gameplay mechanic is contextualised within the world of the game. Nothing stands out as contradictory from the world or Rapture at large; even respawning is explained through the use of ‘Vita-Chambers’ – machines that hold your genetic blueprint and recreate your corporeal form at a cost.

The points covering worldbuilding built nicely on top of what we learnt during GAM140 last year. It was helpful to break down the core components of what makes a well-crafted fictional world, including: immersion, simplicity, identity, idealism, research, passion, scale and connectivity. I can imagine the framework  working in tandem with Mark J. P. Wolf’s idea of world superstructures and infrastructures (Wolf 2012).

GDD work

In line with this week’s topic, I have been focusing on developing the narrative elements surrounding my game concept for the GDD.

I detailed the world of ‘Slam City’ – an oppressed city, sapped of its former glory. Aesthetically, the city will primarily take cues from both New York and Tokyo. I also broke the city up into distinct districts, so as to keep the map fresh and memorable to players.

I have also spent some time considering how the story will be delivered to the player. Similar to other open-world games, I want the main narrative to be conveyed through ‘main missions’, with side content and ‘errands’ being used to flesh out ancillary characters and the city at large. I feel that it is unavoidable that my game will need to rely on some cutscenes to tell its story. However, as the experience is heavily focused on gameplay and flow, I have decided to include a mobile phone for characters to contact the player through. Through this the player will be delivered story beats and exposition while traversing the overworld without having the game wrestle control away from them.

Individual challenge

This week’s individual challenge was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the broad prompt of creating a fleshed out fictional character. While I really wanted to go into fantastical places with my character design and backstory, I decided to keep the premise grounded in reality for an extra challenge. I wanted to see how I could use what we had learnt in this week’s lecture make a ‘regular guy’ compelling to audiences. Below is my attempt at doing such.

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Overview:

Today is the first day of the rest of Seamus Kelly’s life. 

Set up and left to rot in prison by those he used to call family, Seamus spent 15 years in federal prison serving time for a laundry list of crimes committed by his gang, The McCarthy’s. Now his time has come, and finally he is able to re-enter society. Fifteen years is enough time to give anyone pause for reflection, and Seamus has done plenty of that. He’s ready to make something of his life, settle down and maybe even find a wife. But before he gets to that, there’s some unfinished business Seamus has to attend to…

Physical appearance:

Seamus is a 6ft 2″ hulk of a man. Daily courtyard exercises mean that his stature and strength is significantly larger than when he entered prison.

Close cropped red hair and green eyes belie his Irish lineage.

Strengths:

Seamus is physically very strong, able to hold his own well in fist and knife fights.

On the inside, he devoured any book he could get his hands on, even trading his own belongings for more. Due to this, he is deceptively intelligent, with a wealth of knowledge and introspection.

His time running with the McCarthy’s taught him vital street skills such as bribery, intimidation, lockpicking, and hand-to-hand combat.

Weaknesses:

Having been in prison for so long, Seamus is a fish out of water. The world has advanced a lot since he was part of it, and it will take a while for him to adjust again.

The death of his parents took a great mental toll on him, and every day he battles with the trauma inflicted from the event.

His guilt over his former days as a gang member weigh heavily on his conscience. 

Desires:

Seamus wishes for a normal life away from the mafia. He wants what is common to all humans: love, peace, and a family of his own,

Directly conflicting with the above, Seamus is also overcome with an intense desire for revenge against those who wronged him.

Ultimately, it will be up to Seamus to choose what is more important to him: vengeance or peace.

Personal history:

Born in Dublin, 1891 to Irish parents. Fleeing the country due to being out of wedlock and severe lack of work, they emigrated to New York, the land of opportunity. 

When he was nine years old, Seamus’ parents were killed in the cross fire of a hit-and-run by the Italian mafia. Alone and orphaned, Seamus wondered the streets of New York, begging for money and food. This went on until he encountered Finn McCarthy, the leader of a large Irish crime family. Noticing Seamus’ distinct Irish accent and impressed with his clear initiative, Finn adopted Seamus into the McCarthy’s as one of his own.

From then Seamus grew up within the McCarthy’s, and his loyalty never waivered. No job was too far, no hit was too dangerous.

This allegiance persisted for years until the time that Seamus was twenty-four, when, for reasons unknown, the McCarthy’s set him up. Planting all their evidence on him and letting him do the time they were collectively due…

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I am very pleased with how this challenge submission went. Taking into account what we had been taught, I endeavored to make Seamus as flawed and tragic (in the the literary sense) as possible. I also choose to give him desires that audiences would hopefully be able to relate to strongly – revenge and peace. This stemmed from my observation of game narratives tackling either redemption (Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018)), or revenge (The Last of Us: Part Two (2020)), but very rarely weighing up both and asking what the player would rather themselves.

Iron Designer Challenge

Similarly, the Iron Designer Challenge tasked us with creating an original game narrative in teams. This was an exciting task for me, and I felt relatively well prepared, having had some experience working on a story-focused game for my team project last year.

After tossing around some ideas, we eventually landed on an idea I had been formulating over summer for a personal project. It centres around the decidedly dark events of a deadly car crash, with the player character in a coma and reliving the events leading up to it, only to piece together the fact that they were responsible.

This worked out rather well as many of my teammates were interested in designing mechanics that fit with a narrative rather than vice versa, so having this framework to work with helped them do what they felt best equipped to do. Everyone came up with fantastic ideas for the gameplay, including Steven who designed some perspective-based puzzles that subtly messed with the player’s head and contributed to the overall feeling of confusion and rising dread given by the narrative. When I think of my favourite games, the narrative always supports the gameplay and the gameplay always supports the narrative. Both key components uphold one another and this is what I believe makes The Magic Circle accessible to the player.

Further reading

I spent some time this week looking into various theories of narrative. While these were originally created to relate to traditional literary texts, there is much that we can extract and apply to game narratives in terms of structure and pacing.

Freytag’s Pyramid (Freytag c.a. 19th century) features a five-point graph that can be used to visualize dramatic structure within stories. These five points are: Exposition (ending with an inciting incident), Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution/Denouement. Within the context of a game, the Exposition could be seen as the opening moments of gameplay, when players create their characters, run through tutorials, and learn about the game’s world and their place within it. The majority of gameplay for most games could be seen as falling under Rising Action, as the player are working towards their goal, becoming more powerful, and (following the inciting incident) pursuing an adversary of some sort. Any climactic fight or boss battle would reside within the space of Climax, a point at which the conflict hits its peak and is irreversibly addressed by the player. Falling Action and Resolution are two stages where game narratives tend to rush through, often being delegated to a post-fight cutscene (even the aforementioned BioShock is guilty of this). I imagine that by nature it is hard to make these final two stages of the pyramid compelling to players as the are typically devoid of conflict and purely used to resolve narrative threads and reflect on the change characters have undergone. Still, I would be intrigued to see a game attempt to give each stage a proportionate allocation of time.

I also delved back into Mark J.P. Wolf’s fantastic book, Building Imaginary Worlds (2012), to refamiliarise myself with the theories of worldbuilding in light of this week’s lecture. As stated previously, I particularly resonate with his taxonomy of superstructures and infrastructures, as I feel it gives a concrete and accessible method of crafting worlds.

I watched an interesting GDC talk by Kaitlin Tremblay on the marriage between game narrative and mechanics (Tremblay 2020). She brings light to the fact that the ‘verbs’ of a game (what a player is doing through gameplay) inherently inform the narrative and characterisation of a game, regardless of a developer’s intention. By making sure that a game’s verbs fit with a story, designers have a greater chance at avoiding the dreaded ludonarrative dissonance.

References

BioShock. 2006. Irrational Games, 2K Games.

FREYTAG, Gustav. c.a. 19th century. Freytag’s Pyramid [dramatic structure].

HUIZINGA, Johan. 1938. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Netherlands: Random House.

Red Dead Redemption 2. 2018. Rockstar Studios, Rockstar Games.

The Last of Us: Part Two. 2020. Naughty Dog, Sony Computer Entertainment.

TREMBLAY, Kaitlin. 2020. Storytelling with Verbs: Integrating Gameplay with Narrative [GDC talk]. Available at: Storytelling withttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ontNUxSLhb8h [accessed 29 October 2021].

WOLF, Mark J.P. 2012. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. Oxford: Routledge.

Lecture

Balance is one of the most elusive qualities of a game. Often times, it is something that you are only aware of while playing the game and experiencing the overall ‘game-feel’. An aspect might feel balanced in theory, but in practice feels the opposite. Because of this, I feel that playtesting and the iterative process is hugely key to the successful balancing of a game. By having a playcentric approach to development and playtesting changes in a cyclical manner, balancing can be achieved.

Of particular note in this week’s lecture were the different methodologies for balancing a game. It is clear that documentation is key in the process. This allows for a frame of reference from which to make your changes later down the line. For this reason, game design documents are essential, and to this end I am endeavouring to make a clear, coherent GDD for my team’s game for GAM220. When encountering problems it is also key to fully understand them before attempting to solve them. By gaining this critical understanding, we can identify a solution that best fits the problem, without breaking the rest of the game.

GDD work

I have spent some time this week looking at my game concept through the lens of balance. By employing some of the knowledge and techniques learnt this week, I hope to create a well balanced game design that does not contain any ‘dominant strategies’. Elements of my game that I have identified as at risk of being out of balance are: equipment, game economy and levels design. While I won’t be actually producing this game, it important that I make sure these aspects are well thought through and considered so as not to render the game unbalanced.

The statistical boosts that each piece of equipment gives the player will need to be considered holistically, so that each piece is viable for the player. For instance, do I choose a 10% speed boost or 10% faster stamina regeneration? These small dilemmas build up to make a game more engaging and dynamic.

Game economy similarly requires careful balancing as players should neither have more money than they know what to do with or too little money to purchase anything they want. I will need to iterate in order to reward player investment accordingly. Errands that are completed by the player should provide money that is equivalent to their time investment. Otherwise the player would only do the quickest errands for maximum profit.

Level design will likely be the aspect that needs the most iteration and playtesting to perfect. I do not want certain routes or traversal objects to be significantly more effective than others (influence of character upgrades notwithstanding.) Using a bouncepad to launch yourself into grinding on a telephone wire should be just as viable as darting in-between traffic, catching the slipstreams of passing cars.

Individual challenge

This week’s individual challenge tasked us with identifying and discussing a game which features an example of poor balancing. I choose to discuss Skyrim (2011).

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Due to the fact that balance is such an intangible quality, I found this challenge quite hard. It is hard to know whether a proposed solution will improve balance as so much of a game’s balance comes from the ‘feeling’ you get when playing. While I do think that these elements are quite unbalanced when considered in the context of the wider game, I am not fully confident that my proposed solutions would fix them.

Nick had an interesting response to my submission:

While I do agree that eventually any weapon in Skyrim becomes overpowered if levelled enough, I still think that the bow is significantly powerful, especially in the early game. Aside from a few specific circumstances, it is the only weapon which can dispatch enemies without the player needing to enter combat. Because of this it becomes easy for the player to end up specialising in archery, without sufficiently testing the other weapon classes.

I definitely agree that much of the appeal of RPGs comes from the gradual tilting of balance in the player’s favour, until the player is powerful enough to best previously intimidating opponents with great ease. I think that if an opponent levelling system were included in the game, the player experience would be significantly devoid of that satisfying progression.

Iron designer challenge

For this week’s iron designer challenge, we had to rebalance a casual game in order for it to be targeted at a more hardcore audience. Our team chose Club Penguin (2005).

The main element of the game that we focused on were the minigames, as we felt that they were the most demanding of the player. We decided that we could turn the game into a competitive party game that cycles through modified versions of the original minigames, with players being positioned on a leaderboard, and the player who has got the most points from each game winning.

For example, we turned a minigame centered around level-based jetpack flying into a frantic race between players trying to reach the end. Players are able to get pickups that give benefits such as speed boosts or projectiles to throw at other players.

It was a difficult challenge to convert the game into a more demanding and competitive experience, however I think that the concept we landed on has potential to work. It is interesting to see how simple gameplay modifiers can tilt a game’s balance to become more ‘hardcore’, at least in theory.

Further reading

I have been largely continuing my ongoing engagement with the Talis resource list this week.

Following the lecture, I read an insightful article about the importance and difficulties of balancing on Game Developer (formerly Gamasutra). I especially agree with the statement that “a game being ‘in balance “is like a person being ‘in shape’; there’s no strict, defined line at which a game goes from being in balance to out of balance, it’s a gradual continuum,” (Burgun, 2011). Balance is not a one-size-fits-all issue, and approaches should be tailored to each problem.

References

BURGUN, Keith. 2011. ‘Understanding Balance in Video Games’. Game Developer [online]. Available at: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/understanding-balance-in-video-games [accessed 27 November 2021].

Club Penguin. 2005. Rocketsnail Games, Disney Canada Inc.

Skyrim. 2011. Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks.

Lecture

The lecture for this week was about the two main types of skill that games require: twitch and strategic.

As a game is commonly referred to as a series of interesting or meaningful decisions, it was beneficial to go over the types of decision in games, and how they are impacted by skill. The most compelling decisions are never easy – whether they incorporate elements of risk vs. reward, trade offs or dilemmas in which the seemingly lesser of evils must be picked. Blind decisions can also be a powerful tool, as players are unaware of their impact on the game until after their decision has been made.

It seems that the core difference between strategic and skill-based games comes from the speed at which they require you to make these decisions. In stark opposition to strategic games, twitch games rely on rapid, reactionary decision making from the player. These games are constantly throwing problems at the player for them to respond to as quickly as possible. In games like this challenge comes from the speed and accuracy of executing these decisions.

GDD work

When considering my game Slam City Skates, it seems that the primary skill required of the players is twitch skill. Due to the fast movement speed, and implementation of trick combos, the player will need to be making decisions on the fly. They must have quick reactions and make responsive inputs to maintain their combos and flow state for as long as possible.

Being an action-sport game, strategic skill does not fit very well into my concept. If I were to add more strategic decision-making in, I would likely implement it into the game’s story. There would be key moments in the story where the player must make decisions that alter the game state. These could be dilemmas or trade-offs, in which the player has to carefully consider their decisions and how that might impact upon the game. While these narrative-based decisions work well for a lot of titles, I do not feel that it would add anything substantial to my game’s core design, rather having the possibility to detract from the experience.

Individual Challenge

Following on from the topic of this week’s lecture, we were met with the challenge of combining twitch and strategic skills into one game. We had to add twitch skills into a game that is purely strategic. I choose to add twitch mechanics to the classic board game checkers:

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A game of checkers that takes place on a standard board, with standard movement rules.

With one twist.

You only get five seconds to complete each turn.
Within that turn you can move as many of your pieces as you want/can.
Each piece can only move once per turn.

Getting a piece to the other side of the board makes it become a ‘king’.
Every king you have on your team adds an extra second to your playtime each turn.
If you have three kings and the enemy has none, you get eight seconds per turn over their five.

No slow-paced strategies here, pure chaos and reaction times only. Quick analysis of the board and speedy visual processing is key to success.
Thanks to the time-pressure, an opponent may instantly take the opportunity to eliminate your piece, without seeing that doing so will open them up for attack.

Difficulty options:
Easy – 8 seconds per turn
Normal – 5 seconds per turn
Hard – 3 seconds per turn

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In truth, I struggled a lot with this week’s task and I am not overly pleased with the finished concept. I think that there is an inherent awkwardness to adding one gameplay-type to a game that is purely designed around being the polar opposite. In this case, coming up with creative ways to add twitch mechanics to checkers was a big challenge and I feel that simply adding a timer was rather unoriginal. However, I am happy with the modifier of each king adding a second onto your turn time, as it gives another reward for travelling all the way across the board.

Iron designer challenge

This week’s team challenge required us to make either a strategic or twitch base game design based upon a number of options. My team chose to make a strategy game set around the premise of a school reunion.

The player would move around a grid-based board, trying to avoid various people from their high-school days. At the start of each turn they would be signposted as to where each ‘enemy’ is about to move, giving them a chance to reposition and avoid. If the enemy’s turn ends with them occupying any adjacent tiles to the player, then the player’s ‘social battery’ will be drained. If the entire bar gets drained then it’s game over.

We also came up with varying classes for enemy types, based around archetypal school personalities. An enemy’s class effects how it moves, attacks, and how much damage is dealt to the player. This inclusion helped to keep the game concept varied and hopefully add some dynamic gameplay moments.

Further reading

This week’s further research has been largely taken up by my essay module, GAM210. My essay is tackling pedagogy within level design, so I have begun looking into articles related to this field. I have begun reading An Architectural Approach to Level Design by Chris Totten (Totten 2014), which has so far proved to be a very interesting read. In particular, Chapter 4: Teaching Levels Through Communication has been formative in my understanding of the topic, as it discusses various methods of behavioural teaching and how they can influence our understanding of how to design better levels. I agree with Chris’ statement that “learning from other fields is an important part of the ongoing development of game design” (Totten 2014: p. 162). Often, to become a more considerate game designer, it is important to look outside of our industry sphere and into other, more traditional areas, especially when in consideration of player psychology.

References

TOTTEN, Christopher W. 2014. An Architectural Approach to Level Design. Boca Raton: CRC Press. 

Lecture

This week the lecture focused on chance and randomness within a variety of game types. It was interesting to consider the fact that randomness not only adds to replayability, but can also help balance multiplayer games to make win conditions more achievable for all skill levels. Chance also adds an element of variety and excitement that is unfortunately not present in more linear, authored game experiences. It is true that my most exciting moments in Sea of Thieves (2018) have come as a result of the game’s various random emergent systems working in tandem to create memorable gameplay.

The concept of input and output randomness was also something that I hadn’t considered before. Input randomness (procedurally generated levels, randomly drawn cards etc.) seem to be a more preferable implementation of chance than output randomness (hit chances, loot boxes, etc.) I believe that this is because input randomness still allows players agency in how they respond to their random situations, whereas output randomness takes all choice away from the player, leaving them at the mercy of the game’s systems.

GDD work

Taking this information into account I have begun thinking about how chance could be implemented into my GDD game, Slam City Skates. I would like to use randomness to add a level of emergence to the game that would help to make the game more replayable, and for the world to feel alive. This could take the form of random events that occur while exploring the map, such as street skate battles, tagging opportunities, or chases. There could even be a challenge mode in which you have to skate your way through a procedurally generated playspace as quickly as possible.

Individual challenge

The challenge for this week required us to add elements of randomness and chance to tic-tac-toe. At first, it proved a challenge to come up with concepts that dramatically altered how the game is played. By considering the core aim of tic-tac-toe (to create a chain of symbols), I eventually came up with the premise of chaining electricity to power up generators.

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Lecture

The lecture on puzzle design was a great introduction to the fundamental characteristics of a well-made puzzle. Considering mechanics, goals, catches, revelations, assumptions and presentation is of key importance to puzzle design.

If puzzles find their way into my design document for Slam City Skates, I will need to remember that their inclusion should be intended to make the game more fun, and not feel like an after-thought. They should be an obstacle that supports the core of the game.

GDD work

This week marked the beginning of my work on the GDD for Slam City Skates, my hypothetical open world roller-skating game. I began by looking at the exemplar documents provided on the learning space for inspiration. It seemed that they all started out by detailing the high-level design details and concepts. Taking inspiration, I made a couple of slides discussing the concept, and outlining the core pillars of the game’s design. By putting these things at the forefront of the document, I able to make sure readers are on-board with the idea, before going on to elaborate further in. Next, I plan to discuss target demographics.

Individual challenge

The lessons learnt in our puzzle design lecture led into the individual challenge assigned this week. We were tasked with creating a puzzle based around defusing a bomb, using the techniques and principles introduced to us by Nick.

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A grid-based puzzle similar to Minesweeper where you must find and defuse the bombs on a battlefield.

The player must dig in places to uncover the locations of the bombs. They will be told exactly how many bombs must be found in each level.

One catch: if you dig up directly over a bomb, it explodes! At this point the level will reset.

Each level has a unique layout, with buildings shaping the play space. However, the placement of the bombs will be randomised, to avoid exploitation of the mechanics.

The player always starts by digging the center tile.

Once you dig up a tile, the player will able to hear the ticking of a bomb (if there are any on an adjacent tile), letting them know a bomb is in the vicinity. Depending on the intensity of the beep, they will be able to deduce the number of bombs in the adjacent area. This can only be heard when the player is stood on the dug-up tile.

Through careful and decisive digging, the player will be able to pinpoint the location of the bombs in the level, placing markers wherever they think they are. If the player changes their mind, they can pick up and replace their markers at any time.

Once they are done, the player can click to end the level.

If they were correct in their placement an animation of the character extracting and defusing the bombs will play out, the player will be congratulated, and the level will advance.

If they were incorrect, the whole area will blow up, and the level will restart.

Below is an example of an early level with a step-by-step of how someone might complete it:

Key:

White tile – Play space

Black tile – Dug area

Brown tile – Building (non-playable area)

Pink dot – Point at which you can hear a bomb

Red dash – Placed marker

Spin on minesweeper

Feedback for improvement

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I was happy with the idea, as I think it has mechanical simplicity that allows for tactical complexity. It is something I would like to develop further as a personal project, possibly prototyping it when I can. I got some helpful feedback too, with one peer suggesting that I could even add a limited amount of tiles to dig up per level as a further constraint to the player. This is definitely something to consider, if it can be implemented without being too frustrating it would add an extra layer of complexity.

One submission that I found very interesting came from fellow designer Ryan Minty, who interpreted the challenge less literally. He came up with a ‘social diffusion’ game, in which the bomb is actually an escalating argument that has to be settled. I really like this idea and it shows that you can come up with creative solutions to seemingly straightforward tasks.

Iron challenge

This week’s group challenge tasked us with designing a puzzle system based around electricity. Our team decided to make a grid-based connection game similar to The Witness (2016), however ours had a significant twist – it takes place in first-person and real-time.

Titled ‘Groovin Gaffer’, the game would see players trying to connect electrical nodes on a dancefloor to set up for a 70’s disco. There would be environmental hazards thrown in which modify how players engage with the puzzles in novel ways. For instance, some tiles may have water spilt on them and if the player electrifies more than two adjacent nodes then the tile becomes electrified and unable to be stepped on by the player. Other tiles may drop down to form a chasm that the player would be at risk of falling into.

We were really happy with this concept and felt that it had a good amount of modularity, being able to be expanded on and developed further. We came up with some fun puzzle designs that left some people who playtested feeling genuinely stumped.

Further reading

As with each week, I have been engaging with the Talis resource list. This week I started reading The Art of Game Design (Schell, 2008). It is by far the best book on game design I have read. By breaking down design considerations into digestible ‘lenses’ for us to look at our games through, Schell is able to effectively convey the fundamentals and intricacies of design. There is an accompanying website (Schell) that lists all of the lenses featured in the book, which I will consult whenever evaluating my own designs, to ensure that I make the best possible decisions.

I also watched the GMTK video on puzzle design, as it was referenced many times in our lecture. I resonated with Mark’s point on minimalism in puzzle design, where he says that “a good puzzle is pretty minimalist, with almost no extraneous elements” (GMTK, 2018). I think that this is highly important as difficulty should arise from the player figuring out how they arrive at the solution not what that solution is. A minimal presentation provides a minimal barrier between the player and the actual solving of the puzzle.

References

GAME MAKER’S TOOLKIT. 2018. What Makes a Good Puzzle? [YouTube essay]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjC6fa_YBg [accessed 5 October 2021].

SCHELL, Jesse. 2008. The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. Boca Raton : CRC Press

SCHELL, Jesse. ca. 2008. ‘Game Design: A Deck of Lenses’. [online]. Available at: http://deck.artofgamedesign.com/#/?lang=en [accessed 7 October 2021].

The Witness. 2016. Thekla, Inc.

Lecture

During this week’s asynchronous lecture, we explored topics around communicating game design. As a designer, communication is arguably the most important skill to have, even more so than creativity. Whether we are writing up a design document or conversing with members of the team, we need to be able to convey the overall vision effectively.

Many key points of effective design documents were discussed. In particular, I resonated with the principle of brevity. A GDD should, at least initially, cover all elements of the game’s design in a brief, bullet-point format. This is because you do not want to overload the reader with too much information early on – they should be able to get a good idea of the desired product at a glance. Of course, detailed writing is important, but that should be reserved for later on in the document when covering individual disciplines and breaking down mechanics. The last thing you want is for your team to be bored while reading about the game they are making!

This directly extends into my team development module for GAM220, for which we are currently undergoing prototyping. There has already been some confusion over what is required of each prototype. To remedy this, the other designers and I wrote up two ‘one-page design documents’, for the team to refer to at any point during this development phase.

GDD work

For much of this week I have been brainstorming ideas for my game design document to be submitted in assignment one. I had a few promising ideas which I couldn’t choose between, so I decided to make mind maps for each.

 

Eventually I came to the conclusion that the roller-skating game was my favourite. I feel that it has a lot of potential for engaging mechanics. It was also the idea that I felt most excited about. In short, it was a game I would buy and play.

In order to get a better sense of what form the game might take, I did some research into similar games.

Case Study #1 – Jet Set Radio:

The most obvious parallel I could think of to my game idea was Jet Set Radio (2000). The game has a lot of similarities to mine, being based around roller-blading and having an anarchic tone. After watching some gameplay, I made some notes:

• The environment is set up to be as fun and easy to move through as possible. Ramps and grind rails are everywhere.
• Great soundtrack that contributes to getting you into a state of flow during skating.
• I like the incorporation of graffitiing. It lets you make your mark on the city, while also adding to the anti-establishment ideals. Could possibly let players create their own tags?

Case Study #2 – Sunset Overdrive

Next I looked at Sunset Overdrive (2014). While being a post-apocalyptic sandbox game with lots of combat, there is a big emphasis on fun, fluid movement by grinding through the map on rails.

• Grinding on rails is largely encouraged. Not only does it help you get from A to B much faster, it also is essential during combat when large amounts of enemies are on screen. I need to similarly encourage players to move, even if there is no ‘conventional’ combat.
• The game has a good sense of humour. I would like this to be prevalent in my game too, incorporating the humour of 90s Saturday-morning cartoons.
• The HUD is reflective of the game’s punk and comic-book stylisation. My UI should feed into the narrative and style by being reflective of the 90’s cartoon aesthetic.

Individual challenge

For this week’s challenge we were tasked with describing two vastly different games and then reflecting on how we analysed each game. It seemed that I tended to focus in on how mechanics elicit particular emotions, which is unsurprising as emotional response is what drives most of my design decisions within my own projects.

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Sable (2021)

Sable is a lo-fi exploration game about a young woman setting out to find her purpose on an otherworldly planet. Taking cues from games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)  and Journey (2012), the developers at Shedworks have taken care to give a large amount of freedom to the player; once you leave the starting area, you are free to tackle the game in whatever order you choose. There is an upgradeable climbing mechanic, allowing you to scale almost any surface, if you have the stamina for it.