Daniel Ball
Year 2 Interactive Media and Games Portfolio
Research
Research is a crucial part to any project; in order to successfully hit all areas of research needed, i have divided them into separate categories:
Follow this button to see all of my research surrounding our Audience.
Follow this button to see all of my research surrounding our Genre.
Follow this button to see all of my research surrounding our Theme.
Follow this button to see all of my research surrounding Level Design.
Follow this button to see all of my research i haven't categorised yet.
Audience Research
Within this research project, I have created a survey for our secondary audience to fill out. This survey focuses on the parents of our 7-11 year old female primary audience.
From this research, I have learnt that the parents often monitor their what their children play and deter them if they find that the game is un-approving to their opinions.
In this piece of research i discovered different ways an audience is effected by consumed media.
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Learning from this piece I will only add violence to my game when needed as the lower end of my target audience could be classed as impressionable and therefore think that violence would be acceptable
In this research project i examine various forms of media with a similar target audience to our own project in order to develop my own knowledge of their expectations and wants.
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From this i have learnt that most games stick to having a curved and inviting art-style whilst minimizing any adult content and violence, something that we would want to replicate ourselves to appeal to 7-11 year olds. Examples of these would be that we would be that we would keep a cartoon style and to keep our work to simplistic shapes.
Genre Research
Today I have looked into various Platform games in order to research what i could take and implement into my own game in order to have the "Platform" title.
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From this, I have learnt; mono-directional movement is a massive game-design decision in most Platform games, fast reactive controls are needed in order to keep the player retained and that our own game would be better and more appealing if we added procedurally generated level sets.
In today's research, I hosted a focus group for 10 members of our target audience- 7 to 11 year old females - and asked them to play two platforming games, Crash Bandicoot and Endless Lake. Afterwards i then asked them questions about the games and their genre.
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From this i have learnt that, if our game was to become successful, it would help get our target audience into the platform genre.
Researching into the history of the platforming genre, today i find out what it takes for a game to be qualified to be a platform game.
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Finding out from this research, our game can be classified as a platforming game and is best suited to it's sub-genre of Endless Runner.
Theme Research
In this piece of research, i explored different stereotypes within my game's theme- Fantasy.
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Learning from this research, i will try to balance out cliches in my project; too little may result in confusion from what my theme is, too many and the game becomes boring, predictable and repetitive
In this research project, I investigate into the Fantasy theme further by trying to find relative sub-genres to further identify our game.
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Learning from this, our game is better suited to Folktale Fantasy rather than High Fantasy, like i originally thought. It also reassured myself that we were approaching the Fantasy theme correctly, due to our planned game contained the core features of Fantasy that all of the sub-genres specified having.
In this research, i ask the question whether the idea of "The Hero's Journey" is cliche and use research and opinions to answer.
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From this i have learnt that i need to bee innovative with my ideas and that some cliches are good if you handle them with care and creativity.
Today i researched into Fantasy naming conventions and if/how to apply them within our game.
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This research was very successful and lead to the re-naming of our game and it's characters.
Level Design Research
In this piece, i explore and investigate Ernest Adams beliefs on level design- Ernest Adams being experienced and respected in the gaming industry.
From this research, i have now learnt a set of helpful guidelines to keep in mind when creating and designing levels
Today I researched into an article where Harvey Smith- a renowned games designer/writer- expresses his views and opinions about the subject; believing that the story and level design need to work hand in hand.
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Learning from this i have revisited my level design justification and have explained my decisions more thoroughly, much in the inspiration of Harvey Smith. I have also learnt that the best way to design a level is with your gut instinct and not stick so closely to the pre-determined guidelines if they are not essential.
Flow is a level design theory that studies the player's state of mind whilst playing a game and how enjoyable they find it; with the difficulty of the game scaling with the time/skill set of the player.
From this, I have learnt that, in order to achieve a state of flow, our game needs to gradually increase in difficulty, especially as it is aimed towards a younger audience.