Sunday, 30 October 2011

Micro-Transactions

I read a article that looks at the questions micro-transactions create like are they creating greedy companies? Is micro-transaction content items that have been held back from the game? and should companies care for the small minority of complaints of micro-transactions when millions still buy them? The article although doesn't pull out any strong evidenced based research it does point out a couple of different areas that effect micro-transactions relating to my research report. There was a interesting point about how EA is seen as a 'greedy' company as they sell content through the use of micro-transactions which can be earnt in the game anyways. To sum this up they are selling you content you already own. This does sound greedy but there are many factors that apply to there side as there are people who don't play enough to get the items they want.

Web link: http://blogcritics.org/gaming/article/microtransactions-in-games/

I watched this video on youtube during my research and thought that its worth mentioning as Guild Wars 2 used micro-transactions rather than using a pay-to-play fee. Games such as world of warcraft use the pay-to-play monthly business model to earn profits but this is directly want Guild Wars doesn't want as they feel that the game itself should have everything in it to begin with. You shouldn't have to pay again for items that should of been in the game. It also talks about how they have created micro-transactions that don't effect the gameplay as again they don't want to people to pay again for something they should get in the game from the start which would hopefully please the audience and keep them playing. It hints at micro-transactions work well creating profit when its only adding personality rather than in game enhancements. The micro-transactions could then be almost a gift in return as they are only buying because they are happy they are not playing to keep up with the game.

Interview originally from g4tv.com with colin johanson.

Video link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xoKixTkm1I

Another video i viewed was an old episode of the Extra Credits series. Extra Credits is a online based video series that look at teaching and reviewing games as art, game structures and the games industry. Created by Daniel Floyd and written by James Portnow, the show has a large gaming audience and has worked well with the independent games industry. I viewed their episode about 'Micro-transactions'. They discussed everything from how it has been used in the industry and how it should be used to achieve a greater effect. The main focus of this episode was teaching what micro-transactions are in games from the first recognised micro-transaction in the games industry and how do you make good use of micro-transactions in games. they mention about Elderscrolls Oblivion , were you could buy a different coat for your horse, although this didn't effect the game, thousands still bought it. Which lead to many companies taking on the concept. They talk about the effect on the industry how they see it as they mention about how its aiming at the consumers that want to spend little money to the ones willing to spend a lot meaning they are getting the most out of there audience. I found one part of the video very rememberable at that was 'People are Content' in player based games. This means that without people you have no content and that means companys need to remember that when it comes down to micro-transactions.

Video Link: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/microtransactions

Other Websites of interest:
http://profy.com/2008/01/22/micro-transactions-as-a-business-model/ : EA’s website pogo and other game profit statistics using micro transactions.
http://digitalbrandmarketing.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/success-stories-for-the-micro-transaction-business-model/ has great info on zyanga
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4207/what_gamers_think_about_.php : histroy: what do people think of micro transactions.
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ea-ceo-consoles-now-only-40-of-games-industry/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment

Thursday, 27 October 2011

Cloud Research

Clouds are created from water droplets and are a mass of liquid hovering in our atmoshere. Although most people already have a good understanding on how clouds work and look like its easy to just you play as a cloud, and people will know what you mean and can guess roughly want it is about. I feel that’s it is important for me understand more about how clouds work and how they affect weather and studying the different types of clouds to help improve my game.

As my game is based around the concept of a cloud saving plants by raining on them and using different weather to protect against enemies that might harm the plant. Learning about different weather created by clouds will help me know what i could use for potential 'attacking/defensive' moves and interactions. It will also keep the concept realistic rather than creating ability’s and moves when there are many different ways clouds affect the weather.

Nephology is the study of clouds in science which is a form of meteorology, people are keep to learn about how various amounts of clouds are formed and they effect they have on weather. There are three forms of clouds were established by Luke Howard. He categorized the forms and appearance. The system was adopted until 1929 by the international Meteorological Commission.

Stratiform: Continuous sheets of layed clouds

Cirriform: Detached and Wispy clouds

Cumuliform: mainly detached and rolled, heaped or rippled.

These were later then put into two classes based on hight of the clouds

Cirrocumulus and Cirrostratus. Clouds that were always at the higher level were giving then name cirrus. Nimbus the most popular known cloud name was given to clouds that created the most amount of rain. Nimbus was then later changed to Nimbostratus to label 'Rain clouds'

‘Nimbo’ is the Latin world for 'Nimbus' Nimbostratus clouds are generally grey and are a formless layer of cloud that spread over large areas. The bottoms of Nimbostratus clouds are usually dark at the base of the cloud due to the rain allowing less light though. Nimbostratus clouds are known to be in the middle section layer of clouds and usually are around 6,500ft in the atmosphere.



http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/images/nimbostratus3_small.jpg

Different Clouds creating weather:

An artical called 'How do clouds affect earth’s climate?' talks of how on sunny days lower level clouds block light which in a small way helps lower the temperature in a similar way you could feel a small change of temperature when stepping in shade.

The article also talks about how high clouds in the atmosphere keep in heat from escaping thus keeping the earth warmer than it should be. These effects change the temperature on a small scale but over the world changes the temperature overall on the world. Relating this to pollution the problem is that clouds are collecting thick amounts of Carbon Dioxide which are thinking the clouds. With high clouds thinking it’s increasing the amount of heat being let out of the planet. This could be used in my game as an ability to control temperature.

Obvious weather created by clouds is rain and hail from large amounts of water-vapor that gets deposited and other weather less related to clouds. With a large mix of hot and cold air tornados are created and clouds form in and around the moving pressure, Tornados are seen as clouds as the pressure forces water vapour down. Again tornados could be used as an attacking or defending method in my concept as they already are known for their power of effecting the landscape.

Thunderstorms and Lightning as well are caused by positive and negative charges from rising water droplets and falling ice crystals. As they clash they create Grauple and ice crystals with the ice crystals then carrying and depositing a positive charge it creates a large need for negative charge, with falling positive charge and rising negative charge the combination creates lighting.

Cloud seeding was something new i have learnt as experiments to change the amount of rain in the clouds, planes carried chemicals such as Silver Iodide and Dry Ice to help the process of the cloud, the idea is to make the chemicals absorb the water vapour to become heavy and fall as water droplets. This would allow areas will low rainfall to use the small clouds that pass by to create rain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbostratus
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/Nimbostratus.htm
http://news.discovery.com/earth/clouds-climate.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Coloration and micro-transactions

I have done some basic research and looking into forms and the base around micro-transactions and i had always thought i could and would include them into my game concept as a way of profiting. There are many different ways of using micro-transactions to profit. It could by by selling items, extra levels or in game abilities or even all them, but you have to remember your audience when creating a payment scheme in your game.

I wasn't sure how i could implement buying items in my game concept because i didn't want to overally effect game play, so to begin with i thought that character customisations might be the way forward because as i am aiming at a young audience as i could create simple overlaying assets that they could buy to make the game more personal to them without effecting gameplay.

During my research on clouds i saw a area on Coloration, this is how clouds form colours and what we see of them. Coloration is when light is reflected from the cloud and depending on how think and dense the cloud is the different colour emerges, its also the colour of the visible spectrum that gets through is seen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3230/2464998493_5d8ffdf20e.jpg

When i first read about this i thought i could implement colours to tell character emotion and different types of attacks for the game character. I then began to think that people have favourite colours and they can be strongly attached to a colour. This lead of to the idea that you could buy character colours for the game. This means that the asset bought is small but also the cost of the time would be really small, i could then also implement character assets such as bats and clothing and also give them the colour option as it relates to clouds.

Teaching Games Art and Design

Today i helped along side another student and Course Leader in teaching A-Level students what its like to study games. Each student signed up for a taster session in what university game art and design. I had to create a presentation to show what my i have done and how i have studied over the last 2 years at the university. I tried to create a power point that expressed what i did before and how i felt, i also included my early work showing my progression of skills on the course. I also included finished work and what i am currently designing for my final project.

The class was to help the students undertake similar work as what we would do on the course. Their task was to create a game design concept for a racing game. They were giving a set of tasks like to brainstorm ideas, drawing out early ideas and explaining reasons for choices. A large element of their task was to create a another way to play a board prototype without having to use dice.
They were able to complete the task well individually, each creating there own playable game prototype with assets and another way of moving without using a dice.

Designing My Game Levels

After looking briefly into Parallax Scrolling mechanics i noticed how by producing a series of of eviroment layers would be more benifital for my work than painting single pieces. I knew that i needed a simple and cartoonly style to fit with my character concepts so i looked at how other games have implemented parallax scrolling and there art style to get ideas of how i could.

Super Mario:


http://sorgatronmedia.com/chachisays/files/2011/07/smb3-2.jpg

Angry Birds:

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2010/09/30/Angry_Birds_update.jpg

Bunny Shooter:


These 3 images i found were the most simple and interesting designs in style and looks, from a players point of view the images how nice styled enivrioments showing both the foreground and simple background creating a 2.5D appearance but as a designers view i can see how they have used different layers to create the effect with a bottom layer/first laying being the floor and base of the environment e.g bunny shooter has grass and mud as its floor layer.

Behind the first layer is the environmental features, in Mario its characteristic hills and mounds, this brings location into the scene with people knowing were abbots they might be with whats in the background. Any over layers behind this is just to help show distance.

I did some simple designs to use as potential environment layers i started by designing some mud bases fore the foreground as my plants would need to grow from the ground the mud designs are shown here:





Sunday, 23 October 2011

Character Design

Today i designed a brief series of characters today using photoshop, i have taken in mind the design of the same trying to make it both simple, cartoon like and bold. To help with the design i looked at some imagery from the web to see how others have designed clouds and other aspects i like that might include.

I firstly looked at cartoon clouds on the web, i already had a pre-visualized idea of what the character might look like shown here:


Using this i then narrowed my search to similar designs in which i found a couple of images that i thought were interesting. These are the images:

http://www.drawingcoach.com/image-files/cartoon_clouds_1.gif

http://www.drawingstep.com/image-files/white-cartoon-cloud.gif

These twp images are thecartoony version of clouds that are simple but yet something that i need to be similar designing to to create my cloud character. While looking at clouds i remembered about the 'Flying Nimbus' in the popular series Dragonball z. This was a animated character of a cloud that would fly characters from location to location but had a slight personality but had no face or features. The cloud was able to move and fly to depict its emotion and was fairly popular on screen during its short time in the series.

Image:


I also spent some time looking at real clouds dispite knowing i wanting a cartoon style, i though if i were to look at real clouds there might be a shape or something i might like about an image or two. here are a couple of images i looked at while designing my character:



http://jameswagner.com/mt_archives/clouds_and_bird.jpg


http://www.carlwozniak.com/clouds/Graphics/New%20Pix/clouds13.jpg

Using these images as reference it helped influence a couple of ideas of characters, this lead to a few designs that i thought might be right for the part of the game. The designs i made:

Friday, 21 October 2011

Game idea concepts

This is a list of early game concepts that i have thought about designing over the course of BA7 and BA8:


Concept (50 Words Max): A game that allows you to play as a cloud and collect points by raining and saving plants. It would involve tactics against multiple enemies. Puzzles could be implemented to help gain more items or abilities. Possible teaching use for the game.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): A massive drought across the UK has left the country worrying about its plants. One small cloud is the only one in the sky. In a search for more clouds he accidentally rains on a small girls flower pot and saves her flower. In return the girl becomes his friend and tells the cloud about the drought and how he can save all the plants and everyone. He takes on the job to save the UK with her teaching him along the way.

Genre:

Platform: IPod, IPad, Mobiles, PC

Focus: Trying make a simple and fun game for kids that could help them learn about science of the weather. I want the game to be easy to pick up and play anywhere and be happy and enjoyable.

USP: Enjoyable Teaching Game

Good Points: Easy to pick up and play. Fun. Jolly and anyone can play.

Bad Points: Might not last long. Only to teaching weather science. May lose audience by adding teaching methods.

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Concept (50 Words Max): Sci Fi Survival In which you are pushed to your limits with jumpy scenes and scary moments. Third or first person survival were you have to escape a strange compound but all is not what it seems as you find others and see weird events.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): You play as a guy/girl who wakes up in a strange room after witnessing a strange crash of the side of a busy road. With missing memories you have to work your way out but not all is as it seems as walls move, Strange noises, Shadows appear regally and you have no idea how to get out. During the escape you can spark memories that were blank. But your not alone, others are there each missing their memory and sum so mentally torn they risk hurting you and any chance of escaping.

After a crash of a large truck into a ditch many people left there cars to help the driver but what they found were tubes carrying aliens. not only that but the driver was an alien in a human skin suit. After taking you to a secret location and locking the viewers away to be skinned some humans escape there rooms and explore the building only to be hunted down again by the aliens before they can find out the truth or get it out to the world.

Genre: Survival, Sci fi, Horror, Mystery, Point and Click, Escape room game.

Platform: Xbox + 3D, PS3, PSP, Wii, WiiU, PC

Focus: Making a game that is scary but a fun challenge to play
USP: Bringing Escape room games to new consoles with a strong narrative and realistic approach.

Good Points: Breaking the mold of sci fi games and challenging personal mentally rather then through the use of skill.

Bad Points: Similar games include: Alan wake, Alone in the Dark, Condemned and Saw.

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Concept (50 Words Max): A arcade game that explores teamwork and defense. A third person shooter in which you play as teenagers fighting off alien mutants using water guns and home made tools.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): Humans discover life in space but when they bring it to earth it escapes and turns one town into a dead zone with all those who get infected turn into alien mutants. a bunch of street kids try to defend there homes when they come across a promising weapon. Water. Now they have the means to fight off the enemy but can they save the day.

Genre: Comic, Sci fi, horror, arcade game.

Platform: Xbox Live Arcade Game, PSN, 3DS, Wii, Wii U

Focus: Creating a fun and creative multiplayer game for kids

USP: Unique story and gameplay.

Good Points: New ideas and game objects. New story, not a big game. Multiply characters and ways to play. Large mixed maps with attack and defense.

Bad Points: Might get repetitive. Cuts out large older audience.

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Concept (50 Words Max): A multi-world game that follows a player as he lives his perfect life until he winds up in the devious life of parallel universe jumping. After finding yourself in a new universe the only way out is joining the chase.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): you play as steven dawn, a family man, a hard worker, a lawsuit giver. After spending lots of time tracking down people and delivering bad news he goes home to a loving wife and kids. Things take a turn when he finds himself in crash with men traveling from demetion to demention stealing and collecting goods to sell back in there own universe.

After being in a crash you rush to help a guy stuck in a car only to find he pulls out a small pad that rips you out of your dimension and into another. in the chaos he manages to get away but were the hell are you. is this real? are you dead?

A flash appears behind you and you see a woman holding the remands of the same pad. she is heavily injured and dieing. She explains that your only way home is in his hands. She hands you a device that will help catch him but can you?

Genre: shooter, adventure, mystery
Platform: xbox, ps3
Focus: enviroment, story
USP: mutliply unqie areas.
Good Points: lots to do and lots of new things to use
Bad Points: lots to do, confusing

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Concept (50 Words Max): You choose to be either a good or bad vampire and this decides the worlds fate. GTA style free roaming but with strong narrative elements and choice making campaign options. Creating a nitty critty vampire world with monster vampires and a realistic world.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): You play as either a man or woman that was bitten by a vampire while traveling late on a subway. As you awake in the hospital you notice your different and at night suffer and terrifying change into a vampire beast. You remember waking up in the front of a podium in which you are knighted by the vampire priest as a ‘strong will’, one born from surviving a full bite. These means a vampire would of tried to suck the life and blood out of the person until death.

10 years later, becoming normal was hard and your past now has alot of blood split. But now a choice has to come as the vampire world starts to crumble with ‘Vampire Hunters’ attacking more and an increase of licans. will you be good and help stop the rise of the vampires and build peace with the licans or butcher anything that opposes the vampire kingdom.

Genre: Horror, third person, mystery. shooter.

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Focus: Good and evil player choices, Strong narrative.

USP: In game change from human to vampire at night.

Good Points:
Bad Points:

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Concept (50 Words Max): play as a robot that has to fight other toys to collect parts to build a car/boat to escape. play through levels in the home, garage and garden.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): a small toy robot was told he would be binned soon. you play as a robot that wants to find his way home, the toy store. Help him fight and collect pieces to build him a escape vehicle.

Genre: Comedy, adventure.
Platform: IPad,Iphone, mobile.
Focus: Interaction.
USP: fun and easy.
Good Points: pick up and play.
Bad Points: simple, mainly for young players.

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Concept (50 Words Max): A RPG racing game that is based around dragon riding, training and breeding. The game revoles around hunting and racing dragons. RPG elements allow a player to roam and explore and hunt.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): As a child you watched your father be the sidekick to a famous dragon racer, during these times dragon racing was new and up and coming as riders were rare. Dragons were also unpredictable, deadly and hard to capture. As the sport took over the world so did gambling, cheating and mobs. Early riders found it hard to compete as younger riders bred the best dragons. As you became a dragon trainer your father lost his job and ended up oweing money to mobs. As your father goes missing his debt becomes yours and you have to pay back the debt and find your father.

Genre: RPG, Fanasty.

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3,PC,Wii,Wii U
Focus: Creating a real mix of game play and person preference to play.
USP: Dragon Riding and customizing AI components.
Good Points: New concept, and allows people to play how they want. mixes different game play.
Bad Points: lots of different parts to the game may be confusing and troublesome.
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Concept (50 Words Max: You play as a robotic diving sub that looks for treasure undersea, unabled humans cant travel that far down so its your job to survive the deep dark depths of the sea. collect, explore and discover.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): As Gold and other presous metals are extremely vauable humans built smart small subs to travel deeper than thought possible in the ocean. Smart and alone you have to do there bidding and find there metals, discover new fish and creatures and survive the dark bottom. The more you do the more love and respect u are giving with more upgrades, better equipment.

Genre: Third Person, First person, adventure, mystery, puzzle.
Platform: xbox arcade, playstation network, PC, Steam, IPad.
Focus: creating a new exciting visual experience.
USP: Not many underwater games. exploration and learning.
Good Points:
Bad Points:

________________________________________________________________________

Concept (50 Words Max): A first or third person shooter that is based in world that is terrified of a disease that seriously hurt humanity. As some are amune they created save citys blocking out the illness, the less unfortunate suffer in a world were drugs keep you alive. There are those who carry the illness and wear it with pride. As they painfully live they choose to fight against those who will not help them.

Story/Narrative (250 Words Max): The earth suddenly came under the attack of a new disease that quickly spread over the world slowly and painfully killing millions. Some were not effected and soon came together to protect themselves as some could also live with disease as carriers. Those who stayed ill and didn't die carry the illness on them for all time and will infect anyone they touch even the immune. This created segregation with 3 types of people living in a torn world of disease and hatred. Those who lived re-build there cities from the outside world. Some who didn't get ill but were capable of contracting created drugs and masks to they could live. The drugs were expensive and didn't stop the illness just blocked them from invading the system for a limited amount of time. They live outside cities covered away trying there hardest to live. The infected live in the wastelands of what was old cities and towns. These people live to get back at the ones who will kill them on sight. This is only the start with gang wars and corruption and unexplained events trigger you the player to start exploring why.

Genre: Action, adventure, shooter, mild horror.
Platform: Xbox 360, PC, Playstation,
Focus: Creating a game will make the players think of choices and safety.
USP: Story and survival gameplay.

Thursday, 20 October 2011

Parallax Scrolling

Parallax Scrolling is a digital method of creating 2.5D graphics. The method is most popular in video games and one of the first uses appeared in 1982 in the arcade game Moon Patrol. The game was of a small moon buggy that traveled the surface, parallax scrolling takes place as the background lays move slower than the foreground creating the feeling that what is at the front is moving a large distance and that the background layers are further away than what they are. What you can see in Moon Patrol is the Buggy moving over fast bottom layer of floor. The next layer starts as mountains that move slower than the foreground. Behind that is then a layer of mountains that move even slower, the last layer is the still background image that usually is the sky but for the game is black to represent space.

Video Link to Moon Patrol Game play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBOKWCpwGfM



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-scrolling_video_game

BA7

BA7 is the first project of BA Games Art and Design, the goal of this year is to prepare myself ready into going into the world of the games industry or creating a good profile to get into higher education. This year i have chosen to work on my own game design focusing on building a good foundation so that i could potentially become a Game Designer in the future.

Starting BA7 we have prepared a learning agreement to tell the university our plan for the year and to give ourselves our own goals and projects. The idea is to be able to set our own goals and tasks to understand project management and time keeping as this is a important part of the games industry. We have had to make clear choices and explain reasons for choosing what we are personally going to do.

This is my Learning Agreement Draft that defines what i will be aiming to do for BA7 and BA8:

Proposal: What do you intend to do?
I intend to improve on myself as a gameʼs designer and learn what I need to know ready for to go into the Games Industry. This yearʼs project will be split into two game design documents for a potential 2.5D video game preferably for the Apple App Store. My Research Report will be looking at how the industry has changed using Micro Transactions as a means of generating profit.
My strength lies in fundamental design work and looking at how concepts can convey the game mechanics and visual identity of the game. I will be looking at my work with a critical eye and ensuring that my game concept will go through many stages clearing the concept of unnecessary ideas and refining the idea into a fully designed game. I want to become a Games Designer in the games industry, this means I will need to be able to produce strong game documents and evidenced concepts, research and play tests.

While researching I will be keeping a research blog which will be updated on a weekly bases. It will contain all relevant research and materials I have found as well as reflecting on project. My research report title is ʻHow have ʻʼMicro-Transactionsʼ changed the nature of gamesʼ profit and income, with specific reference to Facebook games?ʼ. As a extended essay, the research report will focus on how game companies have taken on board micro-transactions in many different ways to help improve on the amount of money they earn per game. My information will come from a mix of primary, secondary and tertiary research, I will be using the library as a main source of research as well as internet resources. Jesse Schell is a starting point for my research, as he has talked at the 2010 D.I.C.E summit about how social games use micro-transactions to earn money rather than pricing the game.

My focus is on the full design of the game, creating a solid game document that shows the process of the game and the game theory. I will be putting a lot of work into the design and feel of the game, looking the art design and drawn concepts. Software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator will be my main equipment to design 2D designs.
Other games like Angry Birds, Plants Vs Zombies and Cloud all relate to what i want to create and achieve, looking at each game and researching what made them successful and how different mechanics made there game would be useful to see how i could implement highly successful theories into my on concept.

Assessment Work:
The game concept is called ʻNimboʼ a small 2.5d side scroller game. The game is based around weather and creating a nature friendly game that is both amusing and fun to play for a young audience ( 6 years +). The concept is how a playable cloud ʻNimboʼ could save plants using different weather from ʻenemiesʼ to earn its right to be a fully grown cloud.
The first GDD will focus on the research and base concept for the design. It will follow my creative thought process as a game designer. The process may go through many levels like choosing my concept, building the initial idea and focused research around the concept. I will be starting from my early concept ideas and why I thought it was the most promising concept leading on to my first design of the game. This will be looking at todayʼs game market and game cultures to make sure Iʼm adhering to todayʼs emerging practises and showing knowledge of the industry. (L01)

My first research report draft will be consisting of mostly research and research methods, showing clear goals and analysis of information. The aim is to create a clear layout structure of information I have gathered and displaying it in a written format. The area of study is Micro Transactions and how they changed the games industry. (L02)

This first design will look at story concepts and how different stories will affect the outcome of the game, playerʼs connection and audience type. I will be looking at the narrative based theories and other games have used these to create stories. This will help me to choose what will be the best story concept and influence how my story will turn out. (L03)

Based around the concept and audience I will look at possible platforms for my game and what would be the best choice. Platform will be mostly looking around interactive methods, profit and reaching an audience. These are choices that need informed judgements as they can effect the whole outcome of the game from gameplay and interaction to character design and programming.(L05)

I will be designing my initial character and designing simple designs for other areas of the game like assets and enemies to allow a picture of what the game might look like. I will be approaching this by designing 2D concept art. The art will show my current visual ideas of what the game should look like. Development of these characters is important but will be fully analysed and considered during BA8 for the final designs.(L06)

Minimum expected outcomes for BA7:

- A full first draft game concept
- Strong research into Audiences and Platforms
- Minimum 1000 word draft Research Report.
- Research Blog

Following on later during the year I will create my 2nd GDD that will fully flesh out my game concept from the first GDD. The process will be following on what I learnt from the first research GDD. With a strong research GDD base i will be able to create the designs for the game, focusing on game play and mechanics.

Artistic style will have to be determined; this will then effect my designs for characters, levels, and enemies. Each will go under analysis making sure that every design fits the game design, art style and feel of the game as well as how necessary the components and could it be improved or modified to be more efficient. (L07)

Game testing and researching game mechanics will be a crucial element of my BA8 project. Exploring different game mechanics and how they work whilst applying them will be what creates my gameplay, while documenting outcomes and creative choices relating the gameplay and results to the current games market. This will also mean looking at creating gameplay and mechanics for different types of platforms for my game concept, hopefully refining down key elements that can be put across without fundamentally changing the game. (L09)

I will be creating menu designs and flow charts as well as researching Micro Transactions and how i could implement small payments for extra in game items or points. Using the body of research for my research document will help me understand how i could use Micro- transactions to help create more profit if the game was to be made.

An animation of the game rules and how it plays will be a finalised realisation of my work as a whole. Using an animation as well as written game rules would help outsiders such as other members of a game company understand how it will work and what they need to do to make the game and visual images can be easier to learn as it breaks the language barrier. It will bring together all aspects of the game together into one. (L11)

My research report title is ʻHow have ʻʼMicro-Transactionsʼ changed the nature of gamesʼ profit and income, with specific reference to Facebook games?ʼ Micro-transactions have changed how companyʼs sell and produce theyʼre games to earn profit. Today social games are all the range but they all rely on players paying for small in game items or virtual money. With this mechanic there was a boom in the amount of companies creating small based Free-to-play games. There is a large argument over how this has effected the games industry for good and bad and I want to see how this has effected how games companies have used micro-transactions to potentially create profit. (L08)

My blog will show a large amount of research from multiple areas. It will hold everything I have learnt and researched over the allowed time period and communicate my creative thoughts and ideas. The blog will also be a good way of keeping in check to time allowance to areas of design and research. (L10) (L12)

Minimum expected outcomes for BA8:

- A finished fully realised game design
- Storyboarded narrative
- Menu and Navigation designs
- A short animation showing the game rules.
- Strong research blog
- 5000 Extended Essay on ʻHow have ʻʼMicro-Transactionsʼ changed the nature of gamesʼ profit and income, with specific reference to Facebook games?ʼ
- Website
- Show Reel

Resource requirements: Tutorials in Photoshop and Illustrator would help in with improving
my design work. Access to an IPad and a IPhone would be useful for primary research.