BA4: Game Design Document #01

Setting the Project

Okay, so I am back at uni for my second year! Woo! Oh, wait, where did summer go!? Believe it or not I actually did some personal work over summer which I planned to post about as I produced it but lets just say it didn’t go as smooth as I had hoped ;) 

Luckily I learnt quite a lot and now feel more comfortable with Maya (yes, along with the many “fatal errors” and random crashes I experienced!). I will post it up as the term goes on. 

SO! The new project. It really is a good one. We have been given the brief to basically take a video game and fully modernise it for a current generation audience. 

 The objective of this project is to re-imagine an existing Intellectual Property (IP) or franchise to meet the demands of a modern audience. Working in teams, you will create a comprehensive Game Design Wiki based on a selection of games provided for reinvention.

We are to work in groups to produce a design document on our game idea as well as pitch our document in a 10 minute presentation. The games we were able to choose from were: 

 

Medal of Honor

 

 Developed by DreamWorks interactive, published by Electronic Arts. Story created by Steven Spielberg. First released 1999.

First person/Multi player options

Genre - War (WW2), History, documentary elements.

The Portopia Serial Murder Case

 

Designed by Yuji Horii and published by Enix. Sophisticated for its time as a interactive fiction - Influential title that defined the visual novel genre on games.

First released on June 1983

First person perspective/narrative

Genre - Investigation adventure.

 

FlOw

That Game Company -Created by Jenova Chen and Nicolas Clark Debut game of That Game Company precursor to Flower, originally released as a flash game.

Genre - Art, Abstract, Innovative, Immersive, Casual game.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly known in Japan as Zero:Akai Cho and in Europe as Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly

 

PS2 2003 and Directors cut 2004 Xbox 3rd Person/1st person

Genre - Horror/survival

Moshi Monsters 2007 

 

Mind Candy. Clear influences from Pokemon/Tamagotchi/Pet Society - 65 million registered users 150 territories worldwide, amalgamation

Genre - multiplayer online, social, intensive merchandising, transmedia.

I am in a group with Stacey Bone and Olive Viles who I worked with previously for an contextual studies project in year 1. We decided to go for survival horror game Fatal Frame II (Project Zero). 

 

We are really lucky because we all love horror as a genre so the chance to re invent an old survival horror game is going to be great fun for us! We already have a lot of ideas floating around and as far as first drafts go we have the main concept behind our game sorted. 

I will post up our ideas so far tomorrow. I am on the verge of diving into a lot of research for our game idea as well as writing up a trip we made as a group today to Norwich Castle as part of our research and influences. Watch this space!