LO4 - Budgeting a new game idea

LO4 - My Responsibilities & Team Roles

My Roles

In our group (Me, Alex, Kayna, Josh and Sammie), we are working on the game Off the Rails which is an iOS / Android game. The roles i have been assigned are:

Gameplay Design

Vehicle Design

Logo Design

Asset Design

Presentation of the final piece

Bits of other things to help the team

Team Roles

Treatment or proposal  for the final game. - Kayna

Competent production schedule for the final game. - Kayna

Gameplay with associated visuals. - Matt

Target audience – Moodboard, description, imaginary entity. - Kayna, Alex, Josh, Sammie

Relevant legal and/or ethical issues – PEGI rating, Copyright, Music etc.- Alex

Platform details and requirements – Justification for selection. - Alex

Examples of levels – Visuals and layouts. - Matt

Plot synopsis and characters. - Alex, Kayne

Financial breakdown of development costs - Sammie, Josh

LO4 - Choose One Game

Boat Bashers

Boat bashers is a closed world arcade game in which 4 players (or x players > 4 play AI's) battle it out in speedboats to bash into each other causing damage until only one remains. Power-ups give in games advantages to help you become the winner! Maps would be relatively big, and power ups can give players an edge over their opponents. Power ups could include: bigger boat, faster boat, boat change and much more. 

The best platform for this game would be the mobile market, with 4 player being over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or on PC with controller/keyboard combination with split screen.

The target audience would be quite large for this type of game, as the only restricting feature of this game would be classed as 'violence' 

The genre it would fit into would be arcade.

Games thats Boat Bashers is similar to do include: Driver: Speedboat Paradise, or Riptide GP2. These games are similar to the concept idea Boat Bashers as they both involve boats and the cartoony physics i wish to pastiche. 

LO4 - Designing a game [MindMap]

L03 - Task 1 | Game Review of Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V Review

Grand Theft Auto: V (or 5) is an open world, action adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on the 17^th September 2013 for older consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Furthering this the games then was re-mastered for next generation consoles such as the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 and re-released on the 18^th November 2013. This introduced many new features such as first person mode, new options in the online mode, and overall enhanced graphics. Finally the game was then brought out on the PC on the 14^th April 2015. To this day GTA V is one of the top selling games ever released, being 4^th on the ‘list of best-selling video games’ page by Wikipedia. This not only outlines the games success, but the quality of the game for such ratings.

(SPOILER WARNING – DO NOT READ UNLESS WISHING TO LEARN WHAT HAPPENS IN THE GAME)

The game has both multiplayer (called GTA Online) and campaign mode, in which you partake as three characters - Michael, Franklin and Trevor – to rob banks, steal aircraft and much more content that action seekers will love. The game uses two original characters, Michael and Trevor in its campaign which allows fans of the enterprise to relate to previous games in the Grand Theft Auto series. From the beginning of the game you play as Trevor, and Michael who are in their young stages of life and assist with the robbing of a bank which goes horribly wrong, leading to close friend Brad dying and the team splitting. After 9 years the player meets Franklin, a young coloured character and soon meets up with Michael after a repossession gone wrong scenario with Michael’s car. This then leads to a small heist with a jewellery shop and causes Trevor (now living as a drug dealer in the `rough` parts of the state) to hear that Michael is not dead, but alive. This causes Trevor to become curious, and leads to the three characters forming an alliance. During this, Michael’s family deserts him, The FIB (federal investigation bureau) catch up with the team and Trevor discovers about the death of Brad, instead of friend Michael.

This leads to the team splitting but eventually regrouping for the planning of their most dangerous plot yet, raiding the Union depository’s gold bullion reserve. The plan is set ahead and is completed successfully, and following this the three head their own ways, ceasing to work together but remaining mutual friends.

(SPOILER END)

The campaign was a brilliant plot with many twists and turns making you feel for all sides and even after the story is complete, players can still spend hours upon hours of purchasing, customising and using cars, guns, aircraft and much more; as well as exploring the state of Los Santos fully and partaking in minigames that live up to solo game’s performance, including golf, tennis, darts, and much more.

This is all without mentioning about the games multiplayers, which unlike the games outstanding campaign, does fall short as some aspects. As expected the games performance and graphics are outstanding, and this transfers to the multiplayer as well. Features like online heists demand teamwork whilst minigames like team death match or last team standing allow players to enjoy the ‘shoot ‘em up’ approach, going against everyone else. If the player doesn’t feel like doing and minigames, they can free roam the open world with everything being customisable, including the player, cars, house, garage and weapons. Players can also meet with friends and do daring stunts, like base jumping off cliffs or skyscrapers; or diving in the ocean.

Contrastingly however, the game’s multiplayer does encounter a few flaws, including the ‘must shoot everyone’ problem which occurs when players feel unsafe around others, an example of which could be placed in the scenario of two players (labelled player one and player two). If player one has the feeling player two wants to hurt player one, then player one may kill player two. This causes player two to become violent to player one which further causes an escalating war. Unfortunately many players feel like this in Grand Theft Auto: Online which in my opinion, has led to players not bonding, or becoming friends.

Regardless the online multiplayer of the game is still very good, and is amazing to say players get all the campaign as well for the $50 (~£37) price tag.

Online multiplayer has also received negative feedback due to micro-transactions being in the game, allowing players with real world money to purchase in game currency via ‘shark cards’. This would allow a player to gain better cars, apartments and guns without the need of earning them. However due to the overall good balance of combat and vehicles in the game, this wasn’t much concern to me as many players found the game to still be incredibly fun even if they weren’t driving an upgraded sports car. What’s more, the game also allows vehicles to spawn in randomly, meaning that players can still fly the expensive planes, drive expensive cars, and sail expensive boats without the need to buy them.

Upon playing the game on the PC, I immediately felt it needed to be played with a controller, as shooter games don’t feel the same without the trigger feel that a controller has. Others may have a different opinion but for this reason I felt that the game was made for console, even though the port for controller usage on the PC has become widely accepted now. The controls on both keyboard and mouse and controller were fast, responsive and smooth as expected, and in game prompts for entering vehicles (press Y to enter) made for an overall better experience. As previously mentioned the trigger for shooting guns felt good as always and vibration sensors made for a more immersive feel. However for new players who have never played a GTA game, getting used to the different button mapping for the game may be difficult (for example on many games the right analogue stick pressed in causes the player to run, however on GTA the sprint button is mapped to A [on a 360 controller]).

For none tech savvy players, the game review ends here. In my opinion the game is a brilliant addition to the GTA series and should be really considered to be bought if you haven’t already, the effort that has gone into the game can be seen when playing and aesthetically, the game is beautiful and mechanics work great. I would personally rate the game 8.8/10 for in game performance and beauty, with the only flaws being as stated earlier about the multiplayer.

For the real geek, let’s get onto benchmarking results and other advanced gameplay features. On a PC running a Nvidia GTX 760 OC 2gb, 8gb Ram and AMD FX-4130 3.8ghz computer; the game runs on high graphics setting at around 45 fps on a 1080p monitor, however with a GTX 770, the game should run on very high with no problems. The game has some artifacting in places, however this is only minor and can be dealt with quite easily by waiting for the terrain to load. The games engine runs quite well with high attention to detail on post rendering effects, and texture quality. On ultra-settings the game could be compared to real life quite significantly, and character animations run smoothly with no major out of place bone movement.

The game’s first person mode also allows for the spectating of interior views of vehicles which are rendered to significantly good detail. The only flaw for the rendering of objects, was the vehicles model structure, which on the DLC vehicles has only a plain carbon texture on the bottom of the vehicles, putting a negative view on Rockstar’s time usage with regards to the modelling of DLC vehicles.

Online mode seems to also be in-effectively coded, taking the user ~3-4 minutes to get into a networked session, compared to other games in the genre, which take only around 30 seconds to get online with friends. However this may be due to the amount of processing needed for the game to load all server-side settings and player co-ordinates, as well as terrain placement and player save data to be loaded successfully.

In conclusion, my review on GTA V with regards to benchmarking results and rendering performance causes the game to drop to a 7.8/10 due to the lack of effort seemingly gone into making the game the spick and span game it is made out to be. This along with slight artifacting can on occasion cause a player to lose a fight, even though networking latency (ping) is overall very good. In my opinion the game is still great to get if playing on a next generation or high end PC, but not so much for budget gaming PC’s or older consoles like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Thank you for reading this review, and hopefully it has pushed potential buyers of the game to a well thought out decision. This review is all the opinion of me, so gameplay may be felt different to different players. Please take this into consideration when thinking about purchasing a game. Thank you.

Starter Task - Second Person

Second person allows the user to experience the game as if it were their own. Using words like ‘You can’ or ‘You can’t’ it provides the user with the feeling that if they own the game, their experiences would feel the same as the reviewers. It also suggests that the review feels more personal than if it wasn’t in second person

‘Forza 5 is gorgeous and smooth as butter, and it’s utterly enchanting handling makes it a joy to drive hard, but this game is more than just a rock solid technical titan for the Xbox one’.

This review would influence me to play the game by using all the games characteristics and quotations from experienced car reviewers/drivers.

L02 - Written Comparison

In reading/viewing reviews in two different media, one aspect which really stood out was the formality of both articles. In the magazine the review seemed to be shortened, leaving what some people would consider important for a game review out. However for what the magazine stated it was written with formal text, very little form of comedy and a ‘stereotypical review’. On the other hand the video review stuck with moderate formality, but also went into a lot more detail than the magazine review, providing more information about the deeper story, graphics and objective of the game.

Genre was portrayed in both media to be a horror game, which although was never stated for certain provided elaborate information on the game horror tone. Once again the magazine did this in a more concise way than the video, which went into more detail about the horror side of the game.

Target audience was never really mentioned in the magazine but through what the magazine stated in a simile (‘…is that awkward person you don’t want to talk to at any any given time’), suggesting that the game is more for the teenage variety. Console information also backs this up by being for the Xbox One, a console with the vast majority being sold to teenagers. The target audience in the video was never really mentioned either, however the video did say ‘Horror fans praised the short, experimental genre’ – suggesting through genre that horror fans will enjoy the game.

The games narrative portrays the same concept in both Medias, although worded differently. The magazine review went more into depth about the well-known character of slender saying ‘whenever slender man appears the screen goes nuts… the longer you succeed in escaping his clutches, the more frequently he’ll show up’. Similarly the online review mentions about the game based on the horror aspect, which becomes more difficult the further you get into the game.

Gameplay is where the magazine review becomes seemingly biased towards the game, not really mentioning the gameplay but masking it with ‘If you like horror and you’ve yet to have the pleasure of Slender Man’s company, his xbox one incarnation is absolutely worth its budget price tag’. This seems to be a ‘Sales tag’ for the game and doesn’t really mention much about the gameplay. The online review heavily contrasts with the magazines stating ‘A vast majority of it boils down to finding a certain number of objects whilst a increasingly dangerous enemy stalks you’. This provides the gameplay in Its literal gameplay objective stating it how it is, rather than covering it up with lines like ‘Is absolutely worth its budget price tag’.

Characters aren’t mentioned much in either review, and the main protagonist isn’t mentioned at all. Although not anonymous the articles seem to define enemy ‘Slender’ rather than yourself. The magazine gives an especially short portfolio of slender stating him to be ‘a lanky dude in a suit’.

Platforms were mentioned in both to be on the Xbox One. Stating it how it is.

Personal recommendation of the writer once again seems to be biased towards buying the game in the magazine article, saying that ‘If you like horror and you’ve yet to have the pleasure of Slender Man’s company, his xbox one incarnation is absolutely worth its budget price tag’. This (same as before) points the user to buying the game rather than mentioning anything wrong with the game. The online reviewer’s opinion more heavily critiqued the game, saying ‘Slender the arrival manages to deliver some truly impressive scares, although you’ll have to wade through the muck of repetitive tasks and unfair enemies in order to experience them. I preferred the original free version of the game…’.