A Letter to Professor Crandley
Dear Professor Crandley,
During this past semester in my video game design class I have produced three games using video game design theory. For example, I started the most recent of my games with a simple google doc brainstorm. After a short while my partner and I had conceived of a game that was based on putting out a fire in a space ship. We continued to develop on this idea until it felt polished and then moved on. We used our brainstorm and tried to make a physical prototype of our game which we then had critiqued for further improvements. During the critique process every group in the class was critiqued by their peers and from critiquing others it gave us insight on other ways to approach our games. Then we began the process of translating our physical prototype to a digital one through sprite art, coding, and many critiques and play tests.
Additionally, we occasionally did “good and bad” game presentations of professional games to examine what qualities make a game sink or swim so that we know which qualities to put into our own game. For my good game presentation I did DigDug because I find that the novelty of the idea is charming. Something about digging underground and trying to crush monsters with rocks or inflate them with a bicycle pump just seemed charming. As for my bad game presentation I did the Call of Duty series and pointed out their rehashing of the same thing over and over.
In our game we were sure to utilize as many game elements as possible. The plot and setting were fairly simple; you were in a deep space spaceship headed to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in search of alien life. All of your fellow astronomical pioneers underwent cryostasis while you remained conscious to make sure every went according to plan. However, do to an unknown cause, a fire spread through the cryostasis cabins and you must put out the fire before anyone is hurt. The game is played through a console, to further add to the spaceship environment. Furthermore, we tried to make the entire game a “choke point” by having constant activity and small areas of movement for each room so that the player had to be on their toes at all times. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game we had no focal points.
Since our group only consisted of two people we had to take part in nearly every game development role. We designed and created art, coded, wrote, and produced our game taking the roles of artists, coders, writers, and producers. However, since we used public domain mp3s for the sounds of our games we did get to delve in the role of game musicians. Of these roles I felt strongest as a coder. This is because of many reasons but mostly because I really enjoy the feeling of solving problems in the code and seeing the game evolve as you add more and more chunks of code.
Finally, we pitch our digital prototype to the rest of the class in the form of an ignite presentations. In our presentation we explained many aspects of the game including the plot, setting, genre, playstyle, and so on. This was to familiarize the audience with our product and make them more confident about it. Once we finished our presentation we would answer questions from the audience to clarify any confusion and also use the presentation as another critique opportunity for future games.
During this past semester in my video game design class I have produced three games using video game design theory. For example, I started the most recent of my games with a simple google doc brainstorm. After a short while my partner and I had conceived of a game that was based on putting out a fire in a space ship. We continued to develop on this idea until it felt polished and then moved on. We used our brainstorm and tried to make a physical prototype of our game which we then had critiqued for further improvements. During the critique process every group in the class was critiqued by their peers and from critiquing others it gave us insight on other ways to approach our games. Then we began the process of translating our physical prototype to a digital one through sprite art, coding, and many critiques and play tests.
Additionally, we occasionally did “good and bad” game presentations of professional games to examine what qualities make a game sink or swim so that we know which qualities to put into our own game. For my good game presentation I did DigDug because I find that the novelty of the idea is charming. Something about digging underground and trying to crush monsters with rocks or inflate them with a bicycle pump just seemed charming. As for my bad game presentation I did the Call of Duty series and pointed out their rehashing of the same thing over and over.
In our game we were sure to utilize as many game elements as possible. The plot and setting were fairly simple; you were in a deep space spaceship headed to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in search of alien life. All of your fellow astronomical pioneers underwent cryostasis while you remained conscious to make sure every went according to plan. However, do to an unknown cause, a fire spread through the cryostasis cabins and you must put out the fire before anyone is hurt. The game is played through a console, to further add to the spaceship environment. Furthermore, we tried to make the entire game a “choke point” by having constant activity and small areas of movement for each room so that the player had to be on their toes at all times. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game we had no focal points.
Since our group only consisted of two people we had to take part in nearly every game development role. We designed and created art, coded, wrote, and produced our game taking the roles of artists, coders, writers, and producers. However, since we used public domain mp3s for the sounds of our games we did get to delve in the role of game musicians. Of these roles I felt strongest as a coder. This is because of many reasons but mostly because I really enjoy the feeling of solving problems in the code and seeing the game evolve as you add more and more chunks of code.
Finally, we pitch our digital prototype to the rest of the class in the form of an ignite presentations. In our presentation we explained many aspects of the game including the plot, setting, genre, playstyle, and so on. This was to familiarize the audience with our product and make them more confident about it. Once we finished our presentation we would answer questions from the audience to clarify any confusion and also use the presentation as another critique opportunity for future games.