Reading 5

Trends of Payment Within Video Games

Over the past couple of years we've seen a deviation of payment models within video games. 

Games have abandoned expensive large scale expansion packs in favour of micro-transactions. As an example look at one of the most popular game franchises of all time, Call Of Duty (COD). COD used to be feature the aforementioned expansion packs in some of its games such as COD: Black ops, but more recently the franchise has transitioned into the use of micro-transactions and the freemium payment model, most notably in its game COD: Warzone.

 The reason for this is due to the rise in demand for such models. After a wave of Battle Royale games such as PUBG, Apex Legends and most notably Fortnite have set the trend it's been proven that there is massive success and profit to be made in these kinds of games, games that can achieve a mass amount of players by playing to trends and offering itself to players as free of charge before enticing them with relatively cheap content that allows them to stand out and express themselves within the game (be it a cosmetic item / a piece of clothing) , due to this kind of content being near infinite there are near infinite profits to be made. As such, game developers are leaning towards this monetarily superior model of game and are enjoying huge success and profit because of it.

Unity Tutorial 5

Last week in our unity tutorials we made a kind of space invader-esque game using pizza and farm animals, which is great but this week we're looking to improve upon that. So lesson 2.4 focuses on making a couple of improvements, first of all we make the animals spawn completely randomly instead of on command to make the game somewhat challenging. We do this by writing a function in the code to mark the spawn range as random before we throw in some additional code so they spawn on a timer.

Next we needed to fix the problem of projectiles flying through the animals when they connect with eachother. Using colliders and checking the "Is Trigger" button we created an interaction between the animals and the projectiles, in the next step we added code to turn that interaction into the deletion of the animal. Finally we use code to trigger a pop-up game over screen should an animal make it past the player, and with that our space invader/farm animal game is functional.

We also had bit of  challenger to do for this weeks tutorials, this was pretty much to make with the same concept as the one we've been working on, but with a different arrangement, this mainly consisted of reusing what we had just learned but it was cool to see how we can make different looking games using the same mechanics.

"Fetch Game"

Source Unity

Game Vision Statement

My Half Baked Video Game Idea I Came Up With At 4am At Night

So the game I was thinking of making would be a kinda adventure style game,  it would be played in the first person and the emphasis of the game would be more about the environment and soundtrack than any kind of fast paced action, in a similar way to the game "journey".

("Journey" the game)

Source

The game would start the player off in a circular area with an alter in the middle, around this area there are 4 gates, each gate having terrain/mountains visible beyond it. Each of these gates will lead to a different area, with a large open landscape themed around an element. One area will be themed around fire (think volcanoes and lava), one around water (ice mountains), one around air (floating pieces of terrain), and one around earth (forests). Each of these areas will have a collectible at its furthest point, omitting a bright light into the sky that is always visible to the player in order to guide them, the player must traverse the terrain and acquire the collectible, they will then be returned back to the starting position, with the collectible filling the alter 1/4 of the way and prompting the player to enter the remaining areas to repeat the process. When they collect all 4 items the alter activates and teleports them to a world of shadows, for one final journey.

("The 4 Elements")

Source

Obviously this concept is going to rely on beauty and visual impact to connect with the player, to assist in this I thought I would add build-up instrumental music, songs that can get the player invested in the game. I thought a nice touch would be to use a unique song for each area, each one representing the kind of environment the player is traversing.

Potential soundtracks I've identified so far

Air Realm (Epic) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IknGOnwZ1xc

Fire Realm (Fiery and intimidating) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga8yUafqiLM

Water Realm (Chill) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RepXOI13fVI

Earth Realm (????) -

Shadow Realm (Mythical) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3zvVGJrTP8

In terms of story and narrative i'm not sure how heavily they will be featured, currently i'd need a theme of the collectible objects and a reason for the players actions and journey to complete a full storyline but i'm open to the possibility of leaving the story's meaning as ambiguous, which could be the better option but i'll put more thought into that and get back to it.

In regards to production, the game should be easy enough to make, it more than likely wont feature any super advanced features unless I find a way to incorporate them. For the most part the player will be walking, swimming, jumping, collecting collectibles and potentially moving objects to solve puzzles in order to advance. Of course i'll probably need to spend a quarter of my life creating the landscape for each area but i'll cross that bridge when I get there. 

Overall I'm looking forward to expanding on this game, it definitely has potential to flop and be mind blowingly boring but I think that if I get everything just right I can create something enjoyably unique. Anyway, that's my game so far, thanks for reading.

Unity Tutorial 3

For our latest Unity game editor tutorial we were taught step by step how to create a working clock that operates in real time. Thankfully we were given a break from Jimmy Vegas videos for this one, instead we were given a step by step article to help us out.

To make the face of the clock we used variations of shapes such as cubes and cylinders and reshaped and re-positioned them to match the layout of a clock,  we then used C# coding to animate the clocks arms to move in conjunction with the correct time. In assessment I wasn't actually a big fan of this tutorial, yes we were able to learn some C# but only how to use it to do this one specific thing (make the clock move), I don't think this can translate very well into a functional tool we can use to create our final game. As well as this I had some problems with the editing itself, I don't know if the guide was using an out of date version of unity or if the instructions were unclear but I had trouble correctly setting each hour indicators at the correct rotation, plus the option to change the color of them was grayed out and I've no idea why. So ultimately while my clock did end up working it resembled a pancake more so than it did a clock.

(How our final effort should of looked, mine did not look like this at all)

Source: catlikecoding.com

Games MDA

There was a lot of useful information within the material that I researched for this article. The material discussed the aesthetics of video games, particularly it delved into the topic of "fun" in games. It talked about how we derive eight different kinds of fun from different games. These eight types are sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery expression and submission. Finding a game as fun is upon inspection a very loose blanket term, it indicates that we enjoy the game but this could be for so many reasons, this material discussed the reasons why we enjoy them.

It used some examples of games, such as Quake, Final Fantasy and party classic Charades, we like Quake because of its fast paced action (sensation) and its competitive nature between each and every one of its players, but that isn't why we like Charades, we like Charades because of its comradery (fellowship) and its fun nature. There's no solid equation for enjoyment of a video game, instead its a mix and mash of various different aspects. 

Most games contain models, as talked about in the reading material models are a collection of game mechanics, shooters contain fast action gun play while strategy games contain methodical turn based movements. By unifying this information with the aforementioned eight types of fun we can see a link between video games that we haven't seen before, because when stripped to their core these games contain identical fundamentals to others based on their genre alone. This MDA framework helps to break down games and helps people to better understand the relationship between game producer and game consumer.

"Quake Champions"
Source: Polygon.com

Here are some additional readings I did relating to this topic

Why are video games so fun?

A short article by Wesley Yin-Poole on why we find video games so appealing, he goes into detail on the mental aspects, explaining how we into the foreign characteristics we inherit. while playing video games.

Using the MDA Framework as an approach to Game Design

An article by Jenny Carroll discussing the MDA Framework and how it can be utilized in our analysis of video games.

The Game Design Theory Behind Games

An article by "Marco" talking about the core aspects of the MDA framework, which he defines as the bridge between game development and game design.