Unit 1 Assignment 1

 

Unit 1 - Assignment 1

Game designer – Game designers are responsible for creating the experiences in which players encounter. They are the people behind thinking of mechanics, rules and how the overall gameplay would work. They create the ideas for the experience and leave the rest of the team to create it.

 

Game writer – Game writers are the people responsible for creating the narrative s for games, and the dialogue within them. They work on storylines and how the flow of the game works with the story of the game. Using elements to try and immerse the player into the game’s world.

 

Game tester – Game testers are responsible for taking early builds of upcoming games and playing through them, searching for any bugs or glitches they can report back to the developers/programmers of the game. Testing the quality and functionality of the game.

 

I’m planning to either go into being a game designer, a game writer or a game tester, since these are all aspects of games that I think, I would enjoy doing. I’ll hopefully find some university courses which will then lead into different job opportunities involving 1 of the 3 options above.

An example of a game designer job would be this:

Games Designer - Hybrid Stockholm - Stockholm | GamesIndustry.biz

These being the requirements:

• A passion for games.
• Hands-on experience using Unreal Engine and visual scripting in Blueprints.
• Ability to write and manage design documentation.
• At least 1 shipped title in a design role.
• A collaborative individual who will thrive in an inclusive environment. 

 

These are 2 reviews for different game design jobs and show the pros and cons. The main pros are that there are nice people, a good balance of work life and good communication between everyone. The main cons seem to be people arguing over the salary and if its good or not.

When it comes to hard and soft skills, it can be very dependant on what company you are working with. For example, one job for design I found said I just needed basic knowledge of unreal, along with some proof of prior experience. Though another one which I found required me to have a lot more experience and to have good knowledge of the game that they were already creating, along with more skills I will show here:

Most company’s want a hard worker who is willing to put in a lot of time to make sure things are done right. They don’t want someone who will rush work, but they also want you to be able to follow deadlines well. So it’s a balance of different things.

 

Another example of something I want to do, Games writing or narrative design:

Narrative Designer - Stockholm | GamesIndustry.biz

The requirements being:

Required Qualifications

• Background in creative writing, or previous experience in game narrative design
• Excellent command of spoken and written English
• Comfortable with MS Office and/or Google Suite

Desired Qualifications

Having previously worked in a writing capacity in any industry (games industry, television, films or other media), or in a game narrative design capacity

Ability to manage and handle large amounts of text strings and dialogue.

An understanding of or interest in the scripting of narrative content

Some qualities of a Narrative Designer at Avalanche Studios

Be comfortable giving and receiving feedback, both from narrative designers and from other disciplines.

Capable of seeking and achieving alignment in a situation with conflicting requirements and opinions.

Driven to contribute to improving workflows, knowledge sharing and community, both within the project team and within the cross-project Narrative Design Craft

These reviews are mainly the same as the designer reviews, I think a lot of different jobs within the games industry have issues with pay and balance of work life, as sometimes these deadlines and what cannot be too stressful for some people to handle.

The soft/hard skills that are required for this mainly just come down to having prior experience of narrative writing for games. This does seem to be abit tricky as a lot of the jobs open now for it are “Senior” meaning that they require you to have some junior experience which seems hard to get now.

 

In terms of where I am for this journey, I don’t think I nearly meet the requirements. Maybe I hit some for the games design but not really any for the narrative because I just don’t have the experience that they are looking for. To help with the game design job I need to get myself used to different game engines. For example, I have very little knowledge about C#/C++ so that’s something I need to start practicing. I feel like I already have a good understanding of unreal, I’m good with things such as word and excel, and I believe that I can complete what I need to do even when put under stress to get it in.

 

Industry professionals:

A game I’ve always loved for many different aspects is Hollow knight. I’ve always loved the story, the gameplay and how amazing it looks overall, and I think the team behind it is incredibly impressive, as it was made by just 3 people. The 3 people are Ari Gibson (Who does the animation and environments), William pellen (Who does the enemy and boss game AI) and David Kazi (Who does the technical direction). It’s always been amazing how everything they worked on was able to be divided into 3 sections for 3 people.

Ari had always been into modding different games even before computers had colour. His first ever game he played was Faxanadu for the NES and since then he developed a love for games which made him want to create some of his own.

William grew up playing games like Zelda and loved the mechanics of things such as the wing boots in Zelda 2. He wanted to be able to make this himself and allow for other people to experience the joy he had for the first time.

There is also a 4^th person who works more behind the scenes and does a lot of the coding for the game. His name is Jack vine and is responsible for doing a lot of the coding in many of the different games that they have released, I didn’t know he was apart of the team as 2 different people are on either the team cherry site, or the hollow knight site.

They’ve mainly spent all their time creating Hollow Knight, and for the past 5 years have been working on its sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is set to hopefully release next year. As for how they present themselves on social media they are fairly quiet, giving some brief updates on their blog which is on their website. They do have a twitter account which they post on sometimes to push out the games that they make, but they are just quiet most of the time on social media as it’s not a big development team with a marketing person behind an account. It’s 3-4 people who are creating games for fun.

 

Conclusion and Final thoughts:

Right now, I’m on abit of a split path. I can either decide to go to university and try find something in either games design or narrative design. Or I can try and find a job as a junior in either of those that I just mentioned. I’m leaning towards going to university but am still unsure of which one I will choose. All I know for now is that I need to be constantly working on my skills everyday to try and improve them to industry standard. I need to get better with different engines and understand more things when it comes to designing games and the overall development that takes place when creating them.

For game design I’m going to try and learn things such as C# and look into different careers and reviews as well as diving into games companies to see what makes a good game designer. When I find that I will try and implement what I’ve learnt into myself, and hopefully when I get into university, I can put that to work. The same goes for narrative design excluding the C# and looking more in depth when it comes to the stories of games, and how the game developers managed to come up with it; what steps they took and what inspired them etc.

 

 

 

 

SWOT Analysis:

 

Strengths:

I am passionate about learning more when it comes to games design and I’m creative when thinking of different ideas.

I have a good understanding of how to create environments and import assets when it comes to Unreal 4/5.

I am currently using my own time to look into different parts of games development to try and increase my knowledge.

 

Weaknesses:

Throughout college I’ve tended to leave things till last minute to get them done, or I only complete them when I want to.

I don’t have great knowledge of game engines outside of Unreal, so learning ones like C# could benefit me.

Lacking in experience outside of college when it comes to the game industry, which many are looking for at the moment.

 

Opportunities:

Hopefully going to university will help develop my skills in order for me to get a better job in the future.

Things like AI will help develop the games industry in a new way, so learning how to effectively use AI might prove useful in the future.

Games is growing and esports is becoming larger, means bigger market for game developers and for more games to come out.

 

Threats:

It’s a very competitive market, getting a job in games design will not be easy. There are not a lot of jobs going around for narrative design either.

A lot of the jobs I found were not in the UK, meaning I might have to move country if I find a really good one.

I need to make sure that I know what I’m going into. I don’t want to head into a job about game design and then wish I did narrative.

Skills development:

Game design idea: Game will be based of a rouge-like system intertwined with a zombie apocalypses/survival setting. Think risk of rain 2 meets zombie stuff. Main idea will be that you and a companion of your choosing start in a randomized town and must fend yourself against waves of the undead. There will be many different types of undead and they will get harder to kill and deal more damage as the waves go on. As you fight through the waves, you will be able to loot around the town and grab different items for you and your companion which will make you stronger. After the 5th wave you will fight a "Horde" which is a boss-like wave, including a lot more zombies and ones which are harder to kill. You can then choose the next town you go to and you will keep repeating that loop until you eventually die or successfully clear out all the towns.

For the mechanics of looting, you would be able to move from house to house while fighting the zombies, and during grace periods (between waves there'll be like a 10-15 second break). The loot will work in with a crafting system. So you will find different parts of different rarities, along with the same for blueprints. You can use the blueprints to craft new weapons, new weapon addons, body armor, and body augmentations. The body augmentations will be a later game idea, as you'll find them in the later towns that you save. You can also find specific upgrades for your companion aswell, who will be NPC character you choose at the start of the game. They will provide different things depending on what you choose, it could be anything from shooting zombies around you in a radius to providing buffs to your character or debuffs to the enemy.

Im still unsure if i would want to make the game 2D or 3D, as i think a 2D looking down game could look good for this setting, so you could walk into buildings and they'd go transparent, allowing you to look through them for loot. It'd either be an idea like that or once similar to Risk of rain 2, where the environments are all 3D.

 

Game narrative idea: The idea for the narrative would be built around your main character hiding away since the start of the infection that swept over the towns. They find no reason to need to go outside, and have been spending the last few months creating the perfect companion to accompany them when they eventually go out. Throughout the game you will have what's called a notebook, this will automatically write things down about different enemies and different towns when you've met a certain objective. The notebook entries will play as the main lore of the game. For example, after killing an enemy a certain amount of times, you will unlock the notebook entry for it which might talk about the weaknesses against it and the lore about how it came around. The same would happen for if you save a town a certain amount of times as well, it could tell you were better loot spawns, and will give you some insight on what it used to be like before the apocalypse came around.

An example of a note entry would be something like:

Foxtown -

Used to be a small remote village, had friends who i'd come and visit sometime here. After the infection came out people flocked here, pretty hidden away from the rest of the towns around.

For such a small village its flooded with them now, can barely take 3 steps without getting a horde chasing ya.

I remember from my younger days, i had a friend here who was a mechanic, wonder if he might have anything still in his house, might prove to be useful. Just got to remember where he put the damn key.

Metal scraps - Blacksmiths and mechanics were popular around these parts long ago, we all used to chip in to build things with each other. Towns would compete against others to see who could make the best thing they could think of. We created things to supply to the outer cities, in such an area like this, that was the only real good way we could make money, buy exporting goods out to anywhere we could. At least it means we've got a lot of scrap left, now it seems like it's time to put it to some use. 

Titanium scraps - I remember a few years back, everyone was going crazy for this stuff. More durable than anything you can think of but good luck getting your hands on it. If people had any, they'd probably be hiding it somewhere. The old mine was the place to find it, but with that place being were it all started, i don't think that's an option anymore.