After Camilla and I joined as a team, we knew that we had to produce a presentation of three unique game concepts to then decide on one to bring into Phase Four.
We both had vastly different research topics to play with. We both wanted to explore the idea of combining both our topics into one, True Crime and Animal Connection, as we believed that it would create a truly unique concept to make into a game. We began by utilising the mindmap techniques learnt this term to produce one mindmap for concepts based on both our ideas, and then a joint one.
I made up the True Crime concepts utilising the feedback from my phase two presentation and my own ideas. The majority of these mindmaps were a collaborative effort, however.
We found producing ideas for the merged concept proved to be difficult. However, concepts produced with these topics proved to be very unique, but time-consuming to think of.
To aid in our decision-making, we decided to do an activity.
Below are my and Camilla’s decisions and the reasons why we both individually chose them.
Even after this analytical task, we were still very stuck on what we wanted to hone in on, as we are so indecisive; therefore, another Google Form to help us decide! We sent this out to people who we think would enjoy games from these topics to make the feedback applicable.
Feedback
Feedback Breakdown
Incel Culture ended up winning with half the majority, with Moral Judgement coming in second.
One person responded and said a really long stance on this concept, which I really agreed with. I think this solidified this as my favourite concept.
The hamster concept won by half, with animal grief coming in second.
The feedback really enjoyed these concepts as they were seemingly less serious topics, which made it plausible for the majority of people to like them.
Personally, I am not very drawn to these concepts.
For the final collaborative concept, Catnip Crimes ended up winning with 50%, with the Crow Detective in second.
The majority of people enjoyed Catnip Crimes as it blends both of our concepts well; however, it may come across as more joke-like than serious.
Personally, I liked the Spiritual Guide the most, so I am a bit bummed out that it didn’t win.
After reviewing our personal views and also feedback from tutors and the Forms, after some deliberation, we finalised on the concept of Incel Culture. We found it to still be rooted in modern-day culture, being able to be a commentary on online culture whilst also having fun aspects to it, all the while still being tasteful and informative.
We also decided on Animal Grief and Catnip Crimes as the other two game concepts for us to explore.
To continue our exploration of these three game concepts, we came together in a meeting to produce a document that would pitch our concepts on a small scale. This would then be further used in our phase four presentation, and then whatever our final choice would be, it would then be used to begin our proposal document. We also included some layout decisions based on Adams’ feedback in Week 7.
From this document, we covered the main core aspects of these concepts and also what we want from our presentation from this.
Here is the full list of what we want to produce for the presentation:
- Incel Culture
- Concept art + prototype
- Could do greyboxing of environments, changing
- Animal Grief
- Concept art or models of one of the characters.
- Orrrr we could code a parkour mechanic with grey-boxing.
- Catnip Crimes
- Low-poly 3D model of kitty/ headshot concept art
- Paper prototype – showing how the dealing would work.
Based on the first look at this, there will be no way to produce all of this in time for our presentation, so we reduced it to still be effective but with less quantity. We ended up with…
- Incel Culture
- Concept art + prototype
- Animal Grief
- Concept art of one of the characters.
- parkour mechanic prototype.
- Catnip Crimes
- MC Kitty headshot concept art
- Paper prototype – showing how the dealing would work.
We split the tasks relatively evenly, with me taking over the paper prototype and the 3D prototype, Camilla taking over the concept art and the web-based prototypes. These will be discussed in Week Nine’s Prep.