During this lesson we were tasked with viewing a set of video and informational links on game design and user experience. After viewing these links and videos, there were many key points that appeared repeatedly and many others to take into consideration.
These links and what they showed were
Basic Principles of Game Design
During this video, the basic principle and importance are conveyed to the viewer in an easy to understand manner with many different points being made to show what is intrinsically needed to accurately create a game that would incentivise people to buy the product and play the product in an enjoyable experience.
The largest points made were: that everything in game design must fit the player's intended experience and that there are three main pillers to game design including player, communication and appeal.
This leads to the question, "What is the players role/purpose?" because if the player has no impact on the game or no real purpose it can lead to players feeling indifferent or with no control and becoming bored.
This then leads on to comunicating the purpose, with the examples of using the environment or visual clues to show what the player should be doing or where they should go to comunicate the objective.
Finally, appeal is the most important part of game design and simultaneously the hardest. This is because of the large variety of players having different appeals and likes and appeal can vary massively on different games and different players.
As well these, it is equally important to show/ direct the player's
focus possibly giving the player choices that effect or drive the
narrative. This can also correlate with the use of anticipation, being as
simple as a slowdown effect, allowing people to dodge attacks or when
shooting you can create holes in walls.
The video also explains the importance of progression and environment. For progression, it is stated that fluid progression could be gained through spacing highly action packed and difficult sequences with more laid back and smoother sequences and keeping the change in the situation based on what sequence is in play.
As for the environment, the video explained how level layout and spacing can effect gameplay, with smaller environments being more hectic and dangerous and larger areas being much more scenic allowing the user to experience the graphics. Alongside this, it explained how the players movement through the level is also an important factor, giving insight to adventure game level design.
This video is incredibly helpful as it gives direct guidelines for how to create an effective and interactable user experience, while showing their own opinions on prior games user experiences that could be used as inspiration or research.
Good Game Design is like a magic trick
This video talks about different techniques that game developers use and explaining what they are, why they are used and how they work.
Some of techniques that are given include:
- Rubberbanding (example: Mario Kart) - boosting players in last and making it more dangerous in first, so players that are struggling always have a chance to win.
- Coyote Time (example: Rayman) - having a window of space after falling off a platform to still be able to jump.
- First shot missing (example: Bioshock) - to give a sense of urgency to the fight, give more emphasis on the story rather than battle sequences and to give players that have been 'snuck up' on a fighting chance.
- Damage bounus for new players (example: Gears of War) - there is a damage buff that can be used when reloading that many experiance players can time. However, newer players may not be able to and do not have as much experience in combat, therefore they often get a damage buff towards at the start of the round before fading during the game. This method eventually had lots of backlash!
- Dialogue timers for responses to be given (example: Firewatch) - gives players a set amount of time to respond to conversations, giving more weight to what is said and can influence consequences later in the game.
- The 'last bar of health' has more defence than the previous health bars (example: Assassin's Creed) - the last bar of health repaires itself over a short amount of time, allowing for players to feel as if they have escaped battles by the skin of their teeth, while not being in as much danger as they anticipate.
- Balancing ammo and health drop-rate in relation to player skill/ power (High=low drop rate Low = high drop rate) (example: Bioshock) - gives a constant need/ want for ammo or health as it tailors to how the player is doing within the game world, creating tension as a result.
- Enemies attempting to run from an explosion radius, but will always be hit just as they are leaving (example: Spec Ops: The Line) - gives players the feeling of skill when throwing grenades but also helps to make the player think the AI is smarter than it actually is.
This is helpful because it shows many different hidden techniques that are used throughout the industry and can help me with deciding structures to better immerse players into the game and grab user appeal to motivate players to continue playing.
30 things I hate about your pitch
During this video a man lists many things that publishers dislike during pitches. He explains clearly and effectively what and what not to do during a pitch, while explaining why.
The key points he tried to make included:
- Not going too deep into the backstory and instead center around key mechanics while not going in depth with standard mechanics, such as inventory management. Also to explain what the player actually does, for example explaining why the game would be picked compared to other games in the same market.
- Don't use fundimental pillers of a game as hooks to make people invested in the game, for example pitching that it is a fantasy game as a hook for possible consumers, rather, show what is unique for your game and why.
- Explain what needs to be done to make the game, how long it will take and how much money may it need to complete it. Show how you have planned out your businesses on basic outliners while not mentioning or believing obvious tech risks that wouldn't work, such as having thousands of people working on a single game.
- Rather than showing lots of mediocre art, instead show a small amount of great art. Show what is intended to be a placeholder for future development, but do not show bad writing or dialogue as it can push people away from your product. As well as this, do not create totally finished designs before completing the mechanics.
- Don't pitch a game based around a new tech idea without polishing the details around it or the context and don't pitch a game based specifically on existing games, as it shows that you don't actually have an idea.
- Do research the people you are pitching to, so that you know what platform they publish for and what games they have worked on.
These points are helpful for me because it allows me to see and plan what a good pitch would be, allowing me in the future to create and show my ideas clearly with efficiency.
How to write a game design document
This article/blog post explains how to write a game design document, explaining what is needed in a document, what needs to be stated and how to structure one as well.
it explains how to structure a GDD (game design document) by talking about priorities, key mechanics and general project descriptions. with elememts touching on characters, story, theme, progression, gameplay and goals.
This is helpful to me as it shows me how to make a more clear and precice
game design document once I need one and gives lots of details and examples with explinations as to why you would need similar examples within your design document.
Making the game - indeeDev Documentary
This video shows a documentary, interviewing Indie developers on why they wanted to become a videogame developer and what they do as a Indie developer, while talking about the industry as a whole and popular Indie games in recent years.
This can be helpful as it shows work currently being developed in the field of Indie game design and shows what users tend to gravitate towards in the industry.
Micro design document
This video explains how to make a small game design document and template, going through how to plan and display the document with key information such as: how parts of the game will work/be used, key game mechanics and how the game progresses.
This is useful for me as it shows what are the most important things that should be covered in a game design document and allows me to make a more clear and precise game design document once I need one.
Micro Design document (example)
Another part of my inspiration was a 3D artist named 'Dmitry Parkin' who has worked on many different games, for example: 'Metro Exodus' and creates many different beasts, monsters and undead creatures such as zombies and skeletons.
During the model's creation, we were told to use the 'Sandstone' printing material which needed joints and small parts to be at least "2mm (supported) and 3mm (unsupported)" (cubed) in size and was required to be textured as a model and optionally as a figurine. However, due to the high amount of detail on my model I could use the 'Plastic' printing material which enabled parts to be at least "0.3mm (supported) and 0.6mm (unsupported)" (cubed) in size, allowing for much more detail at the cost of losing the ability to print with textures.
Therefore, because of these restrictions, I needed to re-create many parts of my model after the initial version was finished. I did this because the ribcage and other parts of the model were too thin and needed to be scaled appropriately. Ultimately, my final design differed from my first due to the changes that I made by filling the gaps in both the ribcage and pelvis and the addition of clothing over most of the ribcage.
