Meeting with Dayna

Today I had my first meeting with Dayan Galloway my supervisor of the project. The meeting was very hopeful and full of useful information. It was quite an insight into my project and he introduced me to the concept of the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics) framework which is a framework created by Robin Hunicke and 2 other researchers. Robin  Hunicke happens to have been one of the founders of Thatgamecompany the creators of 'Flower' (PS3) and 'Journey' (PS3).

The above is that following MDA structure which helped me get a grasp of what my project was about and how I was going to explain the process of my findings and really set things in stone for me.

To simply explain it:

Mechanics: These are the gameplay mechanics and triggers which the user interacts with within the game to function in the gameplay and to get things going. So the setting for the things that are to take place are the mechanics, and these are created by the Designer.

Dynamics: These are the actions that the user takes to interact within the game, the users influence over the game, their input and the things they do to determine the future events of the game.

Aesthetics: These are the results of what happens after the user interacts within the game. If things go successfully, then this is where the designer communicates his purpose with the user and the user experiences a significant amount of satisfaction and joy from the results that take place.

Bellow it is explained as Rules, Systems and "Fun". It is also explained in further detail.

Also explained within the research paper is the various types of game experience the user can experience. Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression and Submission. Some games can  also incorporate more than one of these aspects within the game.

Dayna was also quite happy with the research that I had done so far and was pleased with the direction that I was going in. I also showed him some of the game concept ideas I had which were very experimental and he suggested that I try and prototype them as soon as possible to see if they work out. Overall, the MDA discovery was a great step forward and I feel a lot more confident in my direction now. 

Pitch Presentation No.1

Summary

The other day, I had my presentation to kick off my project. With nothing really clear at the beginning, it was a session full of a lot of questions and a lot of answers. The presentation went well overall and I was quite pleased with how I presented the floating thoughts within my head at the time.

The feedback received was really helpful, and made me realize that the area that I am working on is of much interest to many people and could really help advance peoples interest within game design and within the creation of a highly effective and innovative experience of this form.

Robin took particular interest in my project and said that it could also be a lifelong research project for me to further develop the academic sphere within games. That did get me quite inspired and pumped up to put as much effort into the project and see how it expands, possibly turning into something useful for yourself and others.

Feedback

Appraisal:

• The presentation was intellectually invigorating.
• There is a clearly defined aim and set of objectives early on.
• Shown a in depth research and game exploration.

Constructive Criticism:

• Although it is a coding project, the art is also very important and it's what you are talented at.
• Be careful not to be trapped by defining your project so early on.
• More evidence of work would be good in order to give me feedback.

Mechanic Development: Corona SDK 2

Continuing to use Corona SDK, I came across an interesting  tutorial which explains the very fundamentals of how to get a running game to work, this helped me a lot in learning what aspects comprise of the very simple concept of an endless runner game, which are actually a lot more complex in application and theory.

Endless Runner Tutorial

The whole process takes roughly 10 hours or so from starting from scratch to actually publishing your app onto the App Store. I don't have the official Corona SDK application so I only created the final game using the tutorial although found it quite difficult at times. One small mistake or misspelling in the code and everything stops running as usual.

Step 1 helps you to get used to Corona and it's functions which you will use through out the tutorial.

Step 2 takes you through the initial procedure of creating a background that moves slowly along with a moving platform with very basic coding.

Step 3 gets you used to using the sprites and setting up the correct position.

Step 4 takes you through how to get the sprite to interact with the game and allows you to be able to fall into the gaps in the floor.

Step 5 is all about adding events into the game which includes changing the running tempo of the game as well as making the platform change height as if goes up and down to increase the difficulty.

Step 6 includes the addition of spiky obstacles and enemies within the game that have a collision barrier which kill your character. These are randomly generated throughout.

Step 7 involves the addition of a Gamer Over menu and added score tracking of your progress throughout the game.

Step 8 brings in a Boss Battle which takes place every 30 seconds or so to again increase the difficulty and allow you to have a feel of what can be done to a game to make it more appealing. 

Step 9 is all about adding the starting game menu of the game, otherwise the game is not so coherent and the user will not get a starting sense of the game. 

Step 10 runs you through the App Store publishing process and all the legal and technical aspects you need to get through before you submit your app. 

Upon following all of these different processes I learn a great deal more about what it really takes to program a game from scratch and learning a new programming language with little programming experience. Creating games is definitely not child play and involves a lot of innovation and creativity which a lot of people lack the time or patience for. I believe that this is the reason why games are such a niche experience and that it really takes effort and perseverance to achieve. Understanding this I really want to set myself up correctly for my final project so that I am realistic about what can actually be achieved. 

Aesthetic Development: Life Drawing No.1

In order to understand the wholesome sense of aesthetics and how they can be perceived by an audience, it is a good to have a general grounding of skills in the presentation of aesthetics. For the past few weeks I have been practicing and developing my drawing skills in order to better understand how I can manipulate the aesthetics within design.

Update No.1

It has now been quite a few weeks in now and I have realised a few things about where this project is going. At first I delved into a lot of research about topics related to my own themes and I have come to realise that I fell into the trap of over researching everything and was getting slightly distracted with everything that was happening, now I that I realise that, I really need to push away from delving into pages and pages of information and trying to be 100% sure. I think in terms of effectiveness of research, it's a lot more important to actually practice things in order to truly understand something.

Most of the weeks that have gone by have been spent programming on Corona SDK, and now I realise that those weeks were well spent, but I really need to start prototyping and getting products out there rather then trying to reach a high level of programming from scratch. I has become quite a hard decision, but I feel that letting go of Corona is the best choice and to stick to using flash more and more, and trying to focus on creating a less polished and practical side of development.

At the start of this project, I had grand dreams of fitting as much as possible into this honours project and doing what no man had ever done before and I really dreamed big, now that the time is speeding by so fast, I realise that a lot of students ambitiously choose to do the same as I have and then soon realise that there is no time to develop in such a way and decide to cut back. So looking back at everything, I will refine my project and polish it as much as possible rather then rely on lofty dreams to carry me away on this endeavor.

Indie Game Quality?

What doe the industry have to say about the quality of a game? 

Game design is widely considered as something very close to engineering. Something which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ideas, problems, hopes or beauty.”

- Konstantinos

“There IS a noticeable lack of games that address more 'sensitive’ topics.” - Cassandra Khaw

“If you make something that's too personal, or something that approaches a controversial topic, you've pretty much damned yourself to a niche audience.” - Danny Cowan 

Aesthetic Impact

What are Aesthetics?

The aesthetics are the subjective element to design, however there is always an area for discern and the view of the output often varies.

Indie Game FEZ which received much credit and acclaim for it's creative use
of pixel art  and innovative gameplay.

The actual aesthetics of a game are not limited to just the graphics, but rather the whole visual experience of the game. Although in this context, I am referring to the visual experience or simply put, the graphics. The sound, story display, interaction and the whole output of what the user experiences are all part of the aesthetic outcome.



Recently, I re-watched 'The Indie Game Movie', the movie really instigated a lot of inspiration in my mind about the concept of designing an aesthetic experience which incorporates some of myself within the game. That it is something more than just a game, but an overall experience which defines who I am and that the audience can connect with that. The video above shows the trailer of the Indie Game Movie, it opens up the movie and delves into the lives of those who create such unique aesthetic experiences for their audience.

Aesthetics in a literal sense also heavily influences a games outcome. This is evident in many titles being released with little aesthetic polish and doing badly in terms of audience rating and sales, whereas a similar game concept with more polished assets does exceedingly well.

Left: WaveSpark, Right: Tiny Wings

As stated by NorthWayGames, a good example of this is within the game 'WaveSpark' made by Nathan McCoy as part of his make a different game every week project.

As it was only a week length game, McCoy could not spend a large amount of time polishing the game. Subsequently, a year later, the top-selling iPhone game 'Tiny Wings' was released selling over 7 million copies using the exact same game mechanic and concept as WaveSpark. This goes to show that strong aesthetics count.

Left: Crush the Castle, Right: Angry Birds 

Another example of this importance is with the two games 'Crush the Castle' and the popular 'Angry Birds'. Angry Birds has been in the App Store top 3 for over a year and gifted Rovio with over 70 million dollars which has grown more since then. Apple choose to feature it on their top 10 list as it is in their own interest to keep it high up there so that people who hear of the game will be interested in buying an apple product just to play the game.

Angry Birds had copied the flash game called Crush The Castle. Crush The Castle had used a very different look, using armored soldiers and canon balls instead of Green Pigs and flying angry birds as projectiles. The amount of polish and the comical cartoon look could reach out to a much wider audience, young and old.

Overall, the aesthetic experience is a very important aspect which creates a game. It is a lot more than just the graphics, but also what those aesthetics represent to the viewer which can really make the difference.

Systemic Significance

What is Systemic Significance?

That is the first part of the question that I hope to answer throughout this project. To start off with, systemic significance is basically what is important within a system. Particularly within games, it is the mechanics which are the systems that run the game.

Even having more than one systemic activity is possible within a game, although it can prove to be dangerous if it over complicates a game and distracts from the main purpose. This is often noted within finance and economics when the systems which are not important take priority as quoted from this blog:

http://www.theraygroupscottsdale.com/blog/?p=16

"At one level, the definition of “systemically important” is fairly simple. A firm is considered systemically important if its failure would have economically significant spillover effects that could destabilize the financial system, with potential negative impact on the real economy. Unfortunately, this definition provides little guidance in practice. A practical definition will enable regulators to distinguish firms that are systemically important from those that are not, the object of which is to allow for differential regulatory treatments. Treating every firm as systemically important would burden both supervisors and the majority of firms, whose failure would not have systemic implications."

Systemic significance within games focuses on game mechanics that the player interacts with. The mechanics or the rules which create an aesthetic effect are the driving forces within gameplay. Once the user acts within the game, a result comes out of that action which if done successfully, it fulfills the user and his/ her expectations of experience.

A good example of this In my opinion, is the creation of Hollywood tie in games such as Pixar, Disney and other blockbuster movies that are transformed into games. A good example of this is the Shrek series of games for console and PC.

Shrek Forever After for X-BOX 360

Shrek Forever after received a rating of 62 via Metacritic and a lower 6.0 via the user rating.

The systemic significance is often the main attraction that causes a games ratings to sour. Although, it is often the case that holiday games are  rushed in  production and they do not end up with polished game mechanics or a well thought out procedure and often lack creativity.

A critic implies: "Repetitive gameplay mechanics, unimpressive presentation, lack of interesting details and overall polish are just some of the flaws to be found. It's an average game in every way and is therefore rewarded with a grade to match."

Gameplay being repetitive is often the main negative critique within a game and can often hinder a games potential. Although keeping the experience fresh and additive is a hard task to achieve  Creating better game mechanics allows the users to have more of a significant experience and interact with the game in a non repetitive way.

Here is an image which simply displays what I am talking about:

This is great example, where 'precision' or extra 'talk' or 'details' are used which distracts from getting to the point of a game. If you just give a user all the details and so many choices, it does not inspire action, although if you get straight to the point and hit the user with what really matter, you are more likely going to be aable to move them.

A lot of tie in movie games try to be very specific with their story line, the 'how to play menu', the script etc etc, and often forget the most important and essential aspects of the game whilst trying to explain and input everything else that is not so essential.

The Creativity of Indie Games

After a lot of research, I stumbled upon the video above which really got me inspired about what my project should be about. I decided that I knew what I really wanted to get out of this honours project and how I would go about doing it. The inspiration came within the video when I watched the part about Game Play and game mechanics, I have always pondered about what captures a games satisfaction and what makes a game fun to play, Zach Gage touches on this topic by talking about systemic significance within games and what it really means to have rules within a game which make it rewarding for a player to continue pursuing.

The image above is of Zach Gage, he is the creator of a very popular Iphone spelling puzzle game called 'Spelltower' which managed to be nominated for the Game City 2012 best game of the year competition. Zach Gage started off as an art student in his career, although as he got older, he realised that his true passion is within games and that was what he wanted to pursue, he is a real inspiration to me as a fellow artist who has a keen interest within video games.