War On Terrorism!
The
Making of:
Battle for the Body
BATTLE FOR THE BODY
….An
Overview
The Making of
….Part I
….Part II
….Part III
….Part IV
Picture
Gallery
Game Design Document
PART III (Making
a game that people will want to play)
November, 2004
Needless to say, our thinking as a group of game designers progressed and the next question for consideration was “what games do we like?” (For my thoughts on this topic see my gaming critique). Doing some research in the area of game design has allowed me to put this question into the context of legitimate game design practices. According to the article titled “Game Concept”, one effective way of creating a game concept is to look at other forms of media for ideas. In our situation we began by considering the videogames that we played, why we played them, and what made them effective. By approaching our creative process from this angle we were able to determine what made videogames enjoyable for us, with the intention of then applying this knowledge to the designing of our game. However, in the context of what Rollings & Adams say about designing games for others and not for ourselves, perhaps a more effective approach would have been to ask “what games are popular amongst our target audience, and what makes them popular." By phrasing the question in this manner we would have avoided the limitations of our own minimal experiences in the gaming world. The negative side to this is that by assuming a market-driven approach we would then run the risk of stifling our creativity by relying on what was already popular. I feel at this stage in our game design process the best approach would have been to consider a variety of factors that could help to conceptualize the game. These factors could have included things such as audience, other forms of media, popular trends, and even what gaming console would be most suitable for our game.
Key Concept I Learned: It is important to consider a variety of factors when approaching game design in order to avoid being limited to one mitigating factor.
Application to
Battle for the Body: Our group broadened
our scope of thinking to consider many things that would make our game
effective. Specifically, we discussed audience and decided that our game
would be marketed towards the 10-15 age group but would certainly appeal
to all. We also viewed part of the movie Osmosis Jones to get a sense
of how this particular media form handled the topic of the body fighting
disease. Finally, in terms of popular culture, we discussed the popularity
of ‘gun games’ as a medium so we considered using a variation
of a gun as one possible weapon in our game.
