What is this blog about? April 15, 2009
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This blog is my diary from my specialization project at Luleå University of Technology, January 2009 to March 2009. I wrote my daily work, thoughts and presented different methods I used during the project here.
The projects goal was to come up with 100 game concepts and then narrow those down until only one remained to which I wrote a design document. I chose to work with game concepts that could be found on Xbox Live Marketplace, Playstation Store or as Wiiware on Nintendo Wii because I thought that it is a growing part of the industry and I find such titles interesting since from time to time really new concepts turns up such as Flower, Noby Noby Boy or Lost Winds.
The project was done in six phases with the first being where I came up with 100 concepts by using different methods. In the second phase I had to choose the 20 best concepts and then explain them further, give them a bit more details on goals and settings.
In the third phase I threw away ten of the concepts and focused my attention to the top ten concepts for which I created presentations, further explaining my thoughts and goals with them. For the fourth stage I once again chose the better half and worked with those, this time only five concepts remained for which I made some background research, checking if there were any similar titles or settings.
The fifth phase was the longest phase with two weeks of work time and here I had to create prototypes for two concepts. I planned to make the prototypes in Adobe Flash or in Blender but they ended up being done as one paper and pen prototype and one prototype was created using Adventure Game Studio.
The last phase was to write a design document over the best concepts which turned out to be Echo.
I have posted some files for public reading here on the blog. If more documents are wanted, please contact me on: lovdahl [dot] gd [at] gmail [dot] com
The last one March 22, 2009
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The last post probably, I believe I am finished now and will soon post the project to the ftp. It has been a fun and interesting project that have thought me a lot and that I can use in the future. I might continue to work on my ideas in the future since some of them would be really nice games if they got developed.
I would like to thank those who have helped me and supported me in my work. I would like to thank Ted Kjellson for being my mentor and giving a lot of feedback on my ideas. Lisa for accepting the amount of time it has taken for me and all the late evenings that have gone past. WordPress for hosting this blog and all the readers for reading all my posts.
A big thank you and a farewell to you all.
Soon finished March 19, 2009
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I’m really soon done with my final report and with that, this project. I am at the moment organizing files, saving everything into pdf and I have during the afternoon and evening worked on both my extended Post Mortem as well as the document list.
The presentation yesterday went fine, I am not sure people understood my idea and that I am trying to do something new but at least I got a great idea from Dennis that I will implement into the final design and that would raise the game a bit I think.
The others presentations was fun to see as well, many interesting projects and concepts but a lot of them wasn’t what I had expected, I might have thought that our class could do more but I was wrong as it seems now. I might post one last post with some project numbers like amount of pages and words written in total, I like numbers like that because it always makes me feel like I have done a great work. I am probably going to stop working for the day now and get out of bed early tomorrow to finish the project.
I can present some numbers now though; in this blog I have written around 12 500 words, it is over 26 pages in a word document.
Final Presentation March 11, 2009
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I’ve spent the afternoon getting my final presentation in order, it is at the moment oversized to fit the time schedule but it gives me something to work with. Most slides is for the first phase in the project where I used several methods to come up with concepts and which I have described in the presentation. After those it’s pretty much one slide for each phase, sometimes two or three but not much more.
Tomorrow I have plans on continue writing on my design document which I hope I be finished with on Friday. That would give me the weekend working on the final report and all that is into that which is quite much but I think most stuff is already done.
Have a nice evening everybody!
Project Files February 17, 2009
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I just updated the blog with my project files, you can find my project proposal there together with my project plan and other stuff. I also uploaded my Milestone 3 report there. Soon I am going on a meeting with my mentor to pitch my 10 ideas but I post more about it later.
Later!
Milestone 3 report February 16, 2009
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I have spent the day writing on my milestone 3 report that now is finished and sent to AK. I became rather big and detailed but I hope that is okay and I wrote about what I have done in each phase, why I chose my subject and what I plan to do in the future and I ended the report with some thoughts of the project itself. It “accidently” ended on 2550 words which is quite okay for a report. It might be too much but I’ve desribed what I’ve done and how I have done it which is what I wrote in my project plan that I would do. I will spend the rest of the day polishing my presentations and play Mass Effect.
Have a nice afternoon!
Interesting thoughts @ Level7 February 12, 2009
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I just found this blog entry on a swedish game site and its about downloadable games or indie games whatever word you prefer. Indie games is even simplier games then those released on XBLM and PSS. The blog entry is in Swedish but most of you who reads this understands Swedish. I will soon start todays work with making presentations on Eco and Elemental Railroad.
Might come back later with another blog.
Downloadable games as a topic February 10, 2009
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This blogpost is to describe the downloadable game scene that I’m working with since it seems to be a “wierd” thing to work with or atleast to broad.
With downloadable games I mean: games that can be found on Xbox Live Marketplace on a Xbox 360 system, games that can be found on Playstation Store on a Playstation 3 system or games found on Nintendos Wii Shop Channel under Wii Ware titles on the Nintedo Wii.
On the European Xbox Live Marketplace there is today, 10/02 -09, 177 titles to try or buy. I got no exact number on the amount of titles that is to be found on the Playstation Network but on Nintendo Wii there is atleast 30 titles to buy.
Since downloadable games tend to be a little less polished than full price titles they are a little less polished but they can be so much more creative. The budget for a downloadable game is far from what a full priced game cost to develope and that makes it a perfect place to try out new things. It is popular to sell remakes of older games on these types of services but my project isn’t about coming up with old games that I want to see remakes on. My goal is to come up with new games with interesting concepts which could be developed by a smaller team and that does not require a huge budget.
If one check the sale numbers from last years game sale in Sweden, 7 out of 10 are old IPs and only 3 titles are new concepts; Wii Fit, Warhammer Online and Age of Conan and even then 2 out of those 3 are old licences but they are new game concepts atleast. This is since it is hard to try new things without risking the entire economy of the company. Big companies like EA can afford to try stuff now adays and they have done so with Dead Space and Mirrors Edge but many other game studios only develope the really secure games, Activision Blizzard threw away a lot of games last year and chose to develope Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon further. That’s not the world I want to live in and I thereby thing that downloadable games are a great way to try new stuff.
Big companies releases smaller versions of their popular series today, Insomniac Games released Ratchet & Clank Quest for booty last year as a follow up on R&C Tools of Destruction and a prelude to their next R&C game. Sony released a new Wipeout game which was a remake of tracks from the two PSP titles but they remade it into 1080p and they also released a huge demo of Gran Turismo 5 with the extra word Prologue after the 5.
Capcom and Grin who develope Bionic Commando released a remake on the old NES game on both XBLM and PSS and Capcom alone released a new Mega Man on all three systems. But ofcourse their is new concepts released on the systems as well, this week Flower will be released from Thatgamecompany, Braid by Number One, World of Goo by 2D boy and Crash Commando by Epos. Sure they are not all brand new game concepts but they try different stuff and sell it cheap which is the thought of downloadable game services.
Sure it is a broad topic to work with but it gives me a peice of freedom and the opportunity to come up with something extra nice that might not have been done before. Downloadable games can be more than just story line and action, they can be more of a relax type of game if that’s prefered or a puzzle game where you have to really think to solve a puzzle since fullprice games are getting a bit to streamlined for their own best I think.
To sum it up: my project is about coming up with first 100 game concepts that could work as downloadable games, done! Then to pick out 20 of them to describe further, done! To develope power point presentations on 10 of those, on it!
I didn’t count remake titles, sport games or known licences to my 100 list so all titles that are found on my list is new IPs you could say. The 20 games in the second phase are divided into a couple of different genres and on the list of 10 there is six different genres but thats the glory of downloadable games, there is something there for everybody.
And btw, I got my project plan accepted, this is just a response on the rest of the mail I got from AK and also on what I’ve received in every mail from her when getting response on something I sent to her. Sorry AK if you take this in a wrong way, I just had to write it of me.
Peace out!
The list is complete and I might have a mentor February 5, 2009
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I have now finished explaining and organizing my list of 20 game concepts, it ended up on six or seven pages which was needed to explain them all with the questions I posted earlier. Some things in those questions might not have been totaly clear but I could try explaining them.
The objectives are the goal of the game you could say. I used a list with different objectives that was listed in the book Game Design Workshop (1578202221) and there were a total of ten objectives and every one of them explained a certain type of game, if we take a game like Tetris then that would be placed in the alignment type of games since you align blocks with each other. Other objectives were exploration, construction and capture to name a few.
The conflict is the relationship between procedures and rules, creating something to overcome. If there would be a conflict in a, let’s say, first person shooter then the player could walk straight from the start to the finishline without problem. But with a conflict the player needs to find it’s way thru maybe a maze like building and killing enemies.
The boundaries are the playfield of the game, where can the player move and where isn’t he allowed. And then resolve is pretty much playtime of the game.
I have also recieve a mail from one of the mentor candidates that I’ve asked and he spontaneous said yes but would return with an final answer on Friday and I hope he still wants to be my mentor because he is really creative and a really cool person.
The rest of the day I will spend on my project plan and since I’m done with the list of 20 and I need an answer from my mentor I can’t do so much more on the project this week I believe but I might need a little peace and quiet for a while. Before this coarse I spent a whole lot of time working on a over the top presentation for another project so I might enjoy the weekend with a great game and a couple of movies.
Later!
Stuck! January 29, 2009
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I’m stuck at the moment, I can’t come up with anything at the moment. I tried the movie techique but it didn’t really work, I thought I couldn’t find any good stuff to write down in the movies I clicked me thru. I had another idea where I would cross breed different games to get new exciting games but it didn’t work out either. I might give it another try thou but for the moment it feels like it won’t give me anything. I only have 13 ideas left and have planed to be done with them today so that I can have my 20 ideas ready by monday and start the new week with a new goal. Well I shall return to my work now and try and find a bit of inspiration.
