Week 11: Game Project Proposal

For the end of Semester One, we had to submit a Game Project Proposal that talks about our game and in what direction its headed in detail.

From the beginning we knew that we wanted to make a storybook-like GPP as it would give people an idea of what our game is about and which direction we are heading towards. All the sections of the GPP were divided into the three of us so that we all have something to contribute towards this document. We decided on using google docs to work on the document together and used different colours as a key to give roles to different people. Another key that we used was to determine whether process is done (green), in progress (Yellow) or not started (red) through different colours

I took the task of working on Mechanics/Gameplay, Functional Specifics, Marketing and Branding, Competitive Analysis and Project Structure. Other than that, I also took on the task to format and design the GPP.

Formatting and Designing

After doing some basic research into different software people use to format books, I found out that Adobe InDesign is the most popular one and is not overwhelmingly complicated for someone who is beginning to learn the software. As I have never used the software before, I had to go through some written and video tutorials on how to get started with InDesign and how I can format it into a book.

After learning the basics and building up an understanding of the software, i proceeded with researching different book styles as we wanted a very specific way of designing and developing this document.

I looked into some fantasy books and some children's book to get an idea of how they are formatted and designed. I noticed that they mostly don't have a very whimsical font style but do includes a lot of pictures and some of them have the font formatted around a picture. This gave me a lot of different ideas on how I can approach this further.

I started off with looking into different font styles and took feedback from Kerris and Abbie. Some of the whimsical and funky fonts that I found were good but seemed inappropriate with what we were going for, they were a little too much so I started looking into more subtle yet elegant fonts and found two from Adobe's website that we all really liked WilliamCaslonText and Priori Acute OT. They suited our style and what we were trying to go for. I kept Priori for just the main headings while WilliamCaslonText was used for all the other text. Another thing I noticed in storybooks that I ended up implementing was Drop Capping (when the size of the first capital letter of the paragraph is increased) and Tabbing the paragraphs.

To give it a fantasy feel, I discussed having borders with Abbie and Kerris and they both liked the idea and designed some borders that I could implement into the design.

The border on the left was put around the page numbers while the one on the right was placed for aesthetic purposes, giving the book a storybook and fantasy feel.

Mechanics and Gameplay

This section included all the mechanics, gameplay and features that we have discussed so far. Alongside that, it also includes illustrations of the HUD and mechanics that Kerris worked on and you can find out more about that on her blog.

Business and Marketing

During my optional module lectures on Business and Marketing, I was introduced to many unique ways of approaching businesses and ideas but the one that stuck to me was HCD (Human centered design)

Human centered design – This way of approaching problem solving is all about focusing on the people that you are delivering your product to and empathizing with the audience and the people that you are working with. Expanding your horizons by brainstorming tons of ideas and slowly focusing down to the ideas that appeal to the people the most. This kind of thinking works perfectly for our business idea as Games design requires a deep understanding of the audience and how people think and react to certain sounds, visuals and emotional scenarios.

“Gamification is the use of game mechanics and experience design to engage users to solve real world problems” (Oberprieler, 2017)

SWOT Analysis

Strengths: Otter Tales Productions is an Indie Games studio that focuses on making unique and fun video game experience for its users. We design games for a number of platforms including, Sony PS4, Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Steam (Windows) and Apple Arcade. The company sells digital copy of the game online which is accessible all around the world. The products released by the company are also focused on real world problems like climate crisis to raise awareness and empathy.

Weaknesses: The studio is operated by a team of three individuals which increases the design and development time of the product. Game release time has to be tied to specific times of year (Summer Sales, Christmas Sales, Black Friday, etc) and miscalculating the distribution date can affect the sales and may lead to a loss.

Opportunities: Being an Indie Games Studio, there are plenty of opportunities to market and interact with our audience. Events like, EGX, Comic-Con, Electronic Entertainment Expo, are some of the most famous gaming events. Expanding our business and audience by introducing online play, becoming a part of an online multiplayer culture.

Threat: Sales depend on the purchasing potential of the console. If the sales of the gaming console go down, it will heavily impact our product sale. The other potential threat would be other studios with similar goal and business ideology.

Pricing: Successful indie games like Hollow knight, Transistor, Celeste, Stardew Valley, etc, range between £9.99-£14.99. Statistically, this is going to be the price range for our products as it lands in the average indie games industry price range and is affordable as compared to the mainstream games that usually have a price range of £34.99-£49.99. People tend to spend money on more games that are cheap than one expensive game.

Funding

Kickstarter: The best way to fund a game project is through social media interactions and Kickstarters. Being open about the design and development phase and interacting with the audience and potential future customers help us build a community of potential buyers who are excited by our product and design. Staying active on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram for development updates, sharing prototypes and posting trailers of the product that we are producing would not only help us connect to our customers, but it will also help in advertising the game. Interacting on social media would not fund the project directly but it will help the studio with incoming consumer traffic that can help with future funding. After building up a reputation on social media by hyping up the product through rapid prototyping and trailers, we will set up a Kickstarter project that can help us fund the project. The Kickstarter project will allow the customer to help us fund our projects while also getting rewarded for it. Various Kickstarter projects work on a reward system (Star Citizen – one of the most successfully funded game project) where the customer will get benefits depending on how much money they spent on our Kickstarter. For our Kickstarter reward system, we would have this reward ladder:

· £5 = personalized thank you message from the developers + access to the game’s personal Discord group chat where customers would become a part of the testing process and have a fun time with our community

· £10 = Free copy of the game when its released + Access to Discord group chat

· £15 = Free copy of the game when its released + Access to Discord group chat + Free game soundtrack

· £30 = Free copy of the game when its released + Free game soundtrack + Free Limited-Edition sticker and poster pack

· £45 = Free copy of the game when its released + Free game soundtrack + Free Limited-Edition sticker and poster pack + Name on the end game credits

Funding is going to be vital for the success of our product as it would allow us to hire more employees, upgrade our equipment, move to a better place and buy better software that will optimize our workflow.

Project Structure

It is important to have a structure of how we will be proceeding with the development process in the next semester so we decided on discussing this as a team and design a structure for semester two. We decided to work in sprints next semester, having specific goals for each week that we would be working on. We also made a pretty tight schedule which would mean that we might be able to finish the game a few weeks before hand in. This was partially done deliberately so that we can all stay focused on designing and developing our game.

The goal for next semester is to stick close to these weekly deadlines, to communicate with each other about all the updates and issues, and to take care of each other as it would be a stressful time, we all would need to just be patient and supportive.

Learning: Next semester, I would be leading the programming and technical art side of the game, and there is so much more to learn. I am excited to learn more about programming and practice 3D modelling. Most of all, I am excited to work on visual effects and particle systems, this is something i enjoy doing so much.

I am also looking forward to learning more about marketing strategies and how to brand our game. We have started working on our social media profiles on twitter and instagram and are planning on building a connection with people by being more active and asking for feedback on different versions of our project.

Book Binding

The last thing we needed to do was to bind all the pages that we had printed and decorate it slightly so it looks whimsical. Adam introduced us to Andy who runs printing workshop and he taught us how to bind the book. It was such an exciting process for me and Abbie as were putting together something that we have passionately worked on for months now. The process was divided into three main sections:

1) Applying glue to the spine of the book 12 times and drying it up with a hair dryer for one minute each time

2) Trimming the cover to accurately to the size of the pages

3) Wrapping the book carefully

A lot of little steps came in between all of these steps but these were the main steps of the process.