With this project, we were fortunate to be told what our teams where and given our briefs the Thursday of the week before the projects were actually scheduled to begin, giving us a good opportunity to get to know one-another and read over our given brief. I have been assigned to Team E ‘Save the Fortress’ as a game designer working under a lead designer. I was delighted to find that my team consisted of group members whom I have seen on the course to be hard working and full of ideas, so I am looking forward to this project and how it turns out.
First meet up:
The brief given is made out to be that of a franchise game, based off of a fictional American TV show called ‘Time Warp’. The Main character, a teenager named Chrono able to jump through time, is fighting an organisation known as ‘Tempora’ and their time-based plans. The game was aimed for a young male teen audience. Our objective was to make a level for this game named ‘Save the Fortress’, in which the player must reach and then defend a ‘fortification’ and a relic within from Tempora’s forces. In the course of the level, we had to introduce the player to using cover effectively in game, shooting multiple targets at once, and on an additional feature that we were to devise ourselves.
Meeting up as a group for the first time, several decisions were made jointly and agreed on by Brendan, our producer. It was agreed that Realism was to be avoided, as many of us have previously found that attempting to achieve realism drags projects out, and we do not really have the time available for such a concept. A cartoon style, we felt, would better suit both the target audience of the piece and allow us to achieve an identical product quality to a realism-based style while avoiding the problems inherent with that approach.
We also decided that we wanted to try to incorporate alternatives to the normal “blood and guts” shooting effects found in most modern games, which would mean weapons that defeated the opposition in ways other than killing, as is commonly found in cartoony games that wish to add a comedic element (such as a gun causing enemies to dance, and one causing them to become chickens, in Insomniac Games’s Ratchet and Clank series). Many concepts were put forward (such as an age-based gun that de-ages or overages the target, and a concept of my own of a weapon that pulled the target out of time, transporting them a special ‘prison’ area, inspired by a similar concept for a “Chrono Prison” considered but dropped from Command and Conquer; Red Alert 2).
As with my previous projects, I recommended that instead of all trying to devise the whole concept together from the start (which I have found delays projects, as each person tries to push their own concepts and different ideas conflict), we separated to devise concepts separately, which could then be discussed in their more complete forms later and a certain one agreed upon, upon which the others can be broken down and incorporated.
Brainstorming work & Background Research:
To begin, I decided to give the brief a more thorough analysis, going through and underlining ‘keywords’ that stated the specifications of the project (aka; features and content that must be included within the final product, such as features, game plot, or the names of items and characters). This gave me a solid idea of, and allowed me to clearly list, the limits I had to stay within for the project (in addition to those decided upon earlier by the producer).
With these now available for quick reference, I began brainstorming concepts for the project based off of some of these keywords (the stage of games design that I particularly enjoy and focus my skills in). However, keeping in mind that in our grouping I was among those at the bottom of the chain of command, with a higher lead designer (Hannah) deciding which ideas were accepted or dropped, I decided to refrain from any full concepts at this time, and instead focus on outlining the different possibilities for each concept to present, so Hannah could then decide on which of them she liked and wanted developed further.
(Cleaned up version of a spider diagram produced during my brainstorming)
The first major area to consider was the concept of the fortress itself. Though many (including myself) automatically assume fortress to mean a large castle or installation, the term can in reality mean a wide variety of possible environments, which we wanted to explore so as to avoid making a cliché, ‘stereotypical’ game. A cave network can easily become a fortress when a group move into it. Or the fortress could be a set of ruins, their days of glory long since over. Over the course of these I came up with several possible environments I could develop into concept sketches later.
One area to which I paid special attention was Chrono himself, who is the main character of the project and would thus require great detail (especially as he is meant to have been from a popular TV show, which would’ve likely given him a deep character background that would need to be shown in our game).
Based on experiences of young teenagers (about 11-16) in real life and in the media, I feel that they are stereotypically very rebellious, slightly big-headed characters, generally rejecting adults attempts to order them or attempts by children to socialise with them; they are on a point between child and adult, fitting into neither group, and are just beginning to taste the freedom of adulthood for the first time, but lack the foresight and feeling of responsibility and obligation that an adult has. I have come to name this period ‘The Phase’ and I was very interested in seeing how our teenager Chrono (whom I assume is within this age group) would be affected by it, and how it would impact on his role in the storyline. If he was working for a group, did he serve them diligently, or was it a very frosty relationship? Does he truly believe in his attempts to stop Tempora or is he acting unwillingly? Many shows for non-adult audiences will consider this story arc at some point; presenting a character with a choice as to whether to conform to their obligations and obey higher authorities or to reject them and act according to their own desires (with conforming usually portrayed as the better of the two options). Though we are trying to avoid stereotyping, this kind of scenario is good for showing what is a vital component of the mental change from child to adult, and it’s a dilemma that the audience could really relate with, which would help them relate to Chrono more and thus get more out of the game.
With this theme in mind, I found an example of such a character can be found in the Capcom title Devil May Cry 4; the character Nero.
Though actually older than our age group (18), I feel his personality in the game (rebellious, petulant, anti-social etc) and his appearance serves as a good reference. I note that his costume contains a lot of denim, a material popular amongst teens and young adults, so I may make discuss this with Hannah and see what she thinks about him wearing jeans or some such.
Finally, I took an opportunity to consider the Tempora organisation as a group, outline who/what they are, and give possible reasons behind their actions. Though Tempora is presented by the brief as a stereotypical evil organisation, I would be interested in introducing an alternative viewpoint to the story, shaping it so that to Chrono’s eyes they are evil, but to themselves they are not so. Perhaps they think they are working towards a greater good, thinking the end justifies the means. Or actually think they are doing good, blinded to the truth of the matter. Perhaps even from the outside they are doing good and it is Chrono that is in fact in the wrong!
I’m also considering how Tempora came about, with my favourite theory inspired by the American/South African science-fiction series Charlie Jade, in which a future government, seeking a perfect world, created Tempora to shape history. Again, I will present these thoughts to Hannah for her views, and I will develop those she likes further.
Camera Concepts:
Finally, I had a few thoughts as to the camera system that would be used ingame, which the specifications demand is a third-person camera. Again, I am considering the DMC4 as a possible reference, as playing it, as I felt the camera system is quite well designed and rarely caused problems in game, though my colleague Harry felt the fixed camera style (the camera stays in preset locations, turning to follow the player, and only moving when necessary) would not suit gameplay, and suggested a more ‘follow-style’ over the shoulder camera (perhaps like the one in Syphon filter or Resident Evil 4 and 5.