Concept Art

Sections relevant for concept art
World backstory
Artefacts from the world
Characters
Appearance
Items belonging to the particular character
Level design
Related to world backstory; artefacts
Features of the level

Concept (taken from the design document)
Guide the protagonist through the dangerous, political world of Victorian London. The tension between technology and the Church is becoming more volatile than the steam engines driving the Industrial Revolution. Pursued by both sides, pacifist Henry Darker is getting out. Traverse platforms, solve puzzles and escape. Combining slow-paced problem-solving with scenes requiring quick-thinking and a highly-interactive environment, the player guides the protagonist through cobbled streets, stations and dingy sewers to safety.

Example 1 for the character 'The Watchmaker'
Conceptualised here is the eyepiece ('spectacle attachment with manual zoom') that this character wears. As well as an artistic drawing of the piece, a technical diagram of the zoom mechanism has been drawn; in-keeping with the character's technical nature.


Example 2 - Henry Darker
This piece shows the appearance of the protagonist, Henry Darker, and shows some of the contemporary fashion within the game.

Studio 6 | Exploring Playability

Summary
In 'Level Design for Games', Chapter 1, Phil Co describes the process of designing and implementing a game. This process is split up into two categories: preproduction and production. The former involves hiring a team, brainstorming and planning out the game whilst the latter consists largely of implementation, but also revising and building on the original plans and reimplementing in an iterative fashion. Phil Co largely focuses on the team members involved, specifically highlighting the structure and hierarchy of the team, but also gives solid examples of the content that needs to be created.

During the preproduction stage, Phil Co advocates that both a 'high concept' -- a creative description of the concept -- and a more detailed design document are created. For the design document, he suggests using diagrams to model the menu, world and level design.

He also writes about the concept of the 'asset pipeline' which describes "the rules and standards by which all content is created and brought into the game", i.e. the method of importing assets into the game engine.

Although he defines many team leaders and sub-team leaders, Phil Co advocates that each team should work closely with each other and communication is vital.

Similarities
Phil Co's idea of the "high concept" maps directly onto Bethke's initial definition of the game concept; they both set the mood and aim to give an overview of the gameplay style. Both recommend that a detailed list of assets is created for inclusion in the design document. Both also recommend that the shell menus are described in detail.

Differences
Phil Co's text focuses a lot more on the team members involved, whereas Bethke barely mentions it. Instead, Bethke goes into a great deal more detail about the design document and lays his text out into comprehensive sections, also talking a lot more about story. Bethke also focuses more on user-interaction with the game.

Whereas Bethke focuses primarily on the design document, Phil Co provides a wider view of the process of creating a game.

Studio 3 | Use Cases

Threadspace: Hyperbol
Below, the actor is always the player, aside from 'Game Object Interaction', where the actor is the spaceship.


















This shows how the player interacts with the game, i.e. the input.















Here the actor is the spaceship, which interacts with other in-game objects.




Also showing how the player interacts with the game, this time the visual output.



This time the audio output, but also input. The game enables VoIP, hence the player can speak and listen to vocals.

Studio 2 | Reading Week 2

Very few games are profitable
Working out how to generate a profit is not clear, and needs a lot of work. This involves working out sales volumes required, as well as issues including wages and royalties.

The scope of the game must match financial parameters
The game must be limited by how much time and money the developer has. Many projects fail because of a 'disparity between what the expectations for [a] project are and the resources and time allocated to the project."

Overly long game projects are disastrous
Delays and over-hyping in game production can lead to other, faster products overtaking the project.

Preproduction phase is often skipped
Many game projects skip the preproduction phase and go straight to production leading to unrealistic expectations and ending with the project going over-budget.

Studio 2 a | Exploring Games and Identifying Games Concepts 2

Specifics of how different parts of the game are impacted by the concept

Threadspace: Hyperbol
Since Threadspace: Hyperbol features so many different projectiles to select from and fire, we need an intuitive user interface design. We need user interface design and testing. The user-interface needs to be self-explanatory so we need 2D art. For example, in Threadspace: Hyperbol, the player can select projectiles using pictures onscreen, using the number keys (the projectiles are divided into 6 sections, so you press the relevant number key x number of times (e.g., two times for the second in that section) or by setting custom hotkeys. The team members used to achieve this could involve User Interface Designers, 2D Artists and Usability Testers.

A large majority of the game-play depends on the reaction time of the player, so network latency needs to be as low as possible; this could be achieved by making the code as efficient as possible and providing servers geographically close to the players. This would would be the role of a Network Programmer.

The Sims
In The Sims a large majority of the gameplay involves interacting with NPCs (non-playable characters) either directly or indirectly. This requires that the game includes the capacity for AI. This was achieved using a variety of statistics attributed to each NPC and storing inter-relations, such as how attracted they are to each other and how tired, how hungry, etc. This would be implemented by an AI Programmer.

There are also a large amount of 3D graphics involved which need to be attractive and in-scale. This requires work from Concept Artists and 3D Graphics Programmers.

Studio 1 b | Reading Week 1

Extracted from the article by Bethke, 'Why Make Games?', five reasons for making games:

1. To share a dream or concept, i.e. as an expression of the artist.
2. To teach strategy or tactics, as with the Emperor Shun teaching his son.
3. To tell a story, as with Role-Playing Games.
4. For enjoyment, as a learning experience for the designer.
5. To make money.
   

Studio 1 a | Simple Evaluation of Various Game Concepts

Working with Chris Stanton, I first listed four games that we were both familiar with and proceeded to rate them with the prescribed system, as below, with explanations:

1 Outstanding
2 Excellent
3 Good
4 Indifferent
5 Bad

Following this, the games concept was described and evaluated. For clarity, I have organised the document under the headings of each game name.

Threadspace: Hyperbol
Genre: Tactical/Strategy
Concept: The player pilots a single spaceship on a 2D plane with the ability to build and fire a large variety of weapons and deployables, applying curve and adjusting the velocity. Projectiles range from simple direct damage to other ships to deployables which remain stationary and change the course of other projectiles (i.e. gravity and anti-gravity). The majority of gameplay takes place online interacting with other human players.
Rating: 3/5, the game allows for a wide variety of tactics by offering the user a large arsenal of projectiles to use, but fails in that, for new players, this is over-complex and confusing resulting in a steep learning curve.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: RPG
Concept: The player controls a single character from a first-person perspective with the goal of improving the character by defeating computer AI enemies and completing quests. The player is immersed in a fantasy 3D world and left to free roam or work to complete the main storyline set of quests.
Rating: 3/5, immediately immersive through the quality of graphics and 3D environments, Oblivion quickly gets tiring for lack of variation. Gains bonus points for a large variety of third-party mods available for the PC version.

The Sims
Genre: Simulation
Concept: The Sims is based around indirectly and directly controlling a family of AI characters, building up their house, jobs, relationships, friendships and money using an overhead perspective.
Rating: 2/5, at its time of release, The Sims was an innovative game, allowing a lot of free play and a variety of goals it reached a wide audience, however, after some time your characters reach the peak of their job roles and your house is grossly huge with all the accessories bought and it becomes repetitive.

Soul Caliber
Genre: Action/Beat 'em Up
Concept: Using a 3D dynamic, rotating view and glorifying violence, Soul Caliber puts the user in control of a character with the soul objective (hoho) of defeating the opponent in a quick match by depleting all of their hit-points. The user presses various button combinations and the character will slash, kick and perform throwing combos. The gameplay is designed to be very casual, games lasting only a few minutes. There are multiplayer options to compete with your friends.
Rating: 2/5, the game is easy to pick up and start playing -- you press a button and your character will attack. With fast-paced gameplay and multiplayer ability, it can be fun to compete with your friends, however, the singleplayer quickly gets repetitive because of a lack of variety in gameplay.