Whenever you're creating a game, marketing it correctly is critically important to the game's success, and there are various ways of getting your game's concept out there to the public. Since if nobody knows about the game, what it is or why it even appeals to them, then they're not going to want to buy and play it! The advertising of a game should ideally begin as soon as possible, and whenever you have some sort of marketable material (like character concept sketches or draft level designs), giving you optimal time in bringing in new potential fans. This can assist you in building a following of people who will appreciate regular progress updates as the game developers, and those people in the know following the latest release information will then tell their friends about the game as it gets more impressive closer and closer to its official release date. To quote Forbes journalist (Olenski, 2014): "When it comes to launching a new product, having a solid marketing strategy will not only effectively engage your current customers, but also make an attractive appeal to potential customers.".
As talked about by (Kaye, 2013), there are plenty of ways to market your game, with some methods being more effective than others. A great and free way to give your game some publicity is using social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. You can make a page on some or all of these websites to help advertise and promote your product for free, while also being able to directly contact and communicate with your fans to help forge a closer and more personal connection with them. Plus it's an easy-access platform to release a constant stream of updates and information to your fans.
Next is creating a trailer or posters for your game, which can also be conveniently shared on your social media pages! A trailer or poster are essentially a sneak preview of your product, and can be used to advertise some new features of your game like characters, gameplay mechanics and story elements and show what it's about. Trailers are normally in a video format and are designed to excite people as much as possible for your product, making your fans more likely to want to purchase your game. Whereas posters show very little about the game within a single image, but a good poster keeps a layer of mystery as it shows something promising to entice the player, but the user is required to play the game to find out more. Here's a trailer for the movie Inside Out, a good example of a trailer which exhibits the film's basic premise and what it's about to excite the user, but without spoiling much of the plot for what happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seMwpP0yeu4
The last, and arguably most influential marketing technique for a game is to create a fully playable demo or teaser. This method could take the longest and cost the most amount of money, however people who are able to play a fragment of your game themselves are much more likely to want to purchase the full version if they enjoy it enough. Which is why a demo should (as researched by (Obscure, 2009)) showcase your game in a good light as much as possible (and not include things like filler content or padding to make it longer), since it's essentially a mini version of your game containing as many good things as possible to get people invested. It contains sample pieces of code, art, sound, etc from the main game, and it's also important to not keep all of the game's files in the demo code as somebody could pirate it and see all of the assets before the game even officially releases. And this could easily kill off any hype you tried to create with your advertising campaign as you slowly trickle out information to the public to 'feed the hype' and drip-feed them news to keep your audience invested.
Friday, 25 March 2016
Thursday, 24 March 2016
Development Blog Week 2
This week I spent a lot of time doing my character analysis and other segments of my game (with more detail into both the singleplayer and multiplayer segments). Writing up a full-on gameplay analysis on all 16 playable characters. My various blog posts really helped me think about what mindset would be used when making the game, and really affected various gameplay decisions I made.
First off was my research into flow channel, which assisted me in writing about the storymode of my game and the things that occur, There will be various objectives and missions throughout a single level, and things like a boss may spawn halfway through the match. This keeps the gameplay interesting and helps prevents the player from getting too bored or frustrated with the game even if they play for a few hours at a time. Likewise this needs to carry over into the multiplayer section, and this goes hand-in-hand with character balance (written below). Because every playable character class have their own strengths and weaknesses, playing against a character who keeps easily killing you can be completely infuriating, so to remedy this there's always a certain character who counters them and is a much more favourable match-up in a fight.
Balance was another thing strong in my mind whilst I was writing about all 16 of the game's playable characters. Since the game is an online multiplayer experience, it being a fun and well balanced experience could be crucial to its success. Simply because having one dominant character who's better than the rest could completely break the game, and in an ideal world I want all 16 characters to be viable choices that suit a variety of different people who each prefer different playstyles. So to accomplish this I made every character have their own niche and purpose, with their own individual weaknesses to make people playing as other characters necessary. For example, the long-ranged sniper characters are bad at a close-range fight, the healing characters can't do much damage but excel at keeping the team alive and the small speedy characters hurt quite a bit, at the expense of having low health and being easy to kill.
I also went into great detail about my game's visual style, and my game using this to impact certain emotions (like joy and laughter). I stated in my design document how the game features a cartoony, yet stylised look, using a unique blend of watercolours to create a very iconic visual theme which not only give the game its own identity, it also immerses the player into the game world with these very charming and creative characters/landscapes. This also makes the game much more marketable, as cute and quirky character designs always appeal to children while the goofy, yet more matured water-coloured appearance can still intrigue older viewers.
I also noted how there is a lot of endogenous value to be seen in the game's items, which is a big part in what makes the game so addicting. Since the whole time the player is invested and playing the game, they're constantly making progress and feel like they're not just wasting their time. From earning Bird Bucks to spend on new customisation items and clothes, earning exp to level-up their character and increase their overall player rank, or collecting new abilities for the playable character cast to change-up their playstyle. The player always has something to look forward to and nothing earned ever feels like a complete waste with no purpose, everything all adds together for some sort of reward at the end, which is a huge mechanic to keep the player coming back time and time again wanting more.
First off was my research into flow channel, which assisted me in writing about the storymode of my game and the things that occur, There will be various objectives and missions throughout a single level, and things like a boss may spawn halfway through the match. This keeps the gameplay interesting and helps prevents the player from getting too bored or frustrated with the game even if they play for a few hours at a time. Likewise this needs to carry over into the multiplayer section, and this goes hand-in-hand with character balance (written below). Because every playable character class have their own strengths and weaknesses, playing against a character who keeps easily killing you can be completely infuriating, so to remedy this there's always a certain character who counters them and is a much more favourable match-up in a fight.
Balance was another thing strong in my mind whilst I was writing about all 16 of the game's playable characters. Since the game is an online multiplayer experience, it being a fun and well balanced experience could be crucial to its success. Simply because having one dominant character who's better than the rest could completely break the game, and in an ideal world I want all 16 characters to be viable choices that suit a variety of different people who each prefer different playstyles. So to accomplish this I made every character have their own niche and purpose, with their own individual weaknesses to make people playing as other characters necessary. For example, the long-ranged sniper characters are bad at a close-range fight, the healing characters can't do much damage but excel at keeping the team alive and the small speedy characters hurt quite a bit, at the expense of having low health and being easy to kill.
I also went into great detail about my game's visual style, and my game using this to impact certain emotions (like joy and laughter). I stated in my design document how the game features a cartoony, yet stylised look, using a unique blend of watercolours to create a very iconic visual theme which not only give the game its own identity, it also immerses the player into the game world with these very charming and creative characters/landscapes. This also makes the game much more marketable, as cute and quirky character designs always appeal to children while the goofy, yet more matured water-coloured appearance can still intrigue older viewers.
I also noted how there is a lot of endogenous value to be seen in the game's items, which is a big part in what makes the game so addicting. Since the whole time the player is invested and playing the game, they're constantly making progress and feel like they're not just wasting their time. From earning Bird Bucks to spend on new customisation items and clothes, earning exp to level-up their character and increase their overall player rank, or collecting new abilities for the playable character cast to change-up their playstyle. The player always has something to look forward to and nothing earned ever feels like a complete waste with no purpose, everything all adds together for some sort of reward at the end, which is a huge mechanic to keep the player coming back time and time again wanting more.
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
Development Blog Week 1
This week I began work on the games design document for my own game, using all of the research I've acquired up to now. First I created a cover page and contents page (which automatically updates as content gets added), and I also made great progress towards my document, producing a start towards detailed analysis on my game's hook, synopsis, target audience, controls and target platform. Whereas I also began typing up my gameplay evaluation, player feedback, gameplay and marketing sections, but with these areas not being substantially finished yet.
My various research posts beforehand and project proposal itself have tremendously helped me write up this part of my design document. The proposal was useful for listing out various points for me to include (such as the target audience and platform), which I could then expand upon in much more detail. Likewise, my research into various pre-existing games design documents, as well as good formatting requirements and what they should include was also useful for me this week, considering I've already started setting out a template which I can fill in during the time from now up until the deadline. My research on personality types also helped me write up my section on target audience, as the different Bartle types for example all were considered and will be able to find some sort of enjoyment out of my game idea. Which helps fit with my game's theme of appealing to a wide demographic, if I can appeal to as many people as possible, then more people are going to want to buy and play the game. I also mentioned how the game is a 3rd person-shooter, and since you control different characters from a perspective behind them the game uses an avatar-based interaction model.
Next week I will cover these areas in much more depth using examples of my game design research techniques as a guide for planning a good game.
My various research posts beforehand and project proposal itself have tremendously helped me write up this part of my design document. The proposal was useful for listing out various points for me to include (such as the target audience and platform), which I could then expand upon in much more detail. Likewise, my research into various pre-existing games design documents, as well as good formatting requirements and what they should include was also useful for me this week, considering I've already started setting out a template which I can fill in during the time from now up until the deadline. My research on personality types also helped me write up my section on target audience, as the different Bartle types for example all were considered and will be able to find some sort of enjoyment out of my game idea. Which helps fit with my game's theme of appealing to a wide demographic, if I can appeal to as many people as possible, then more people are going to want to buy and play the game. I also mentioned how the game is a 3rd person-shooter, and since you control different characters from a perspective behind them the game uses an avatar-based interaction model.
Next week I will cover these areas in much more depth using examples of my game design research techniques as a guide for planning a good game.
Sunday, 6 March 2016
What a Games Design Document Should Look Like
Compared to a game proposal (being a very short and concise document used to present a game idea, as talked about by me in an earlier blog post), a games design document is incredibly long and detailed, and it's not unusual for a professional games design document used in the games industry to stretch over 500 pages long! A games design document can be considered as a 'bible' to your game, being developed during a game's pre-production stage (around the design area) before its creation begins. It's actually very important that everything in this document is readable and understandable to every single employee working in your game studio. A few game design documents, like the design document for ‘Multiplayer Pacman’, explain the information about the games in an incredibly technical level down to the game's base hardware platform, even though it's an incredibly simple game about eating dots which is designed to be accessible to a wide range of people (as talked about by (Hackett, 2007), who discussed how a design document should be completed in a meaningful way). The design document needs to reflect on the game's purpose, in this case be understandable for anyone who reads it, even if it’s a new developer whose specialism is 3d modelling that joined the team halfway through development, as they’ll need to get a good idea of what they’re doing. Because of this the document must be readable by anyone who isn't a highly skilled programmer (as it appears in the Pacman document), and while still being very detailed and evaluative, just in a more understandable tone. Otherwise this newly employed 3d modeller will have absolutely no idea on what they're supposed to be doing!
Producing a games design document in some shape or form can be critically important to the creation of every video game, and as researched from a published article by games journalist (Sayenko, 2015), many smaller indie game studios ponder whether or not it's even worth the time to create such a large document with so few members of staff, or whether or not it's worth just jotting down a few notes and ideas instead. This is especially true if a person's creating a game by themselves, if they have it all planned out inside their head, is it worth writing it all out into a physical format anyway? I, along with the source above, feel that it's always a good idea to write down as much information about your game as possible. A smaller team during development could have completely forgotten about a certain feature or mechanic in a game, and re-checking the GDD as a form of reference will constantly give them a strong idea about what sort of end-goal they're working towards throughout all stages of development. Likewise, if there are features which can't be put into the full-game before release for whatever reason, having these ideas written down that you can come back to in years to come could even be applied within a DLC update to your game (with the extra time and money earned from the game's sales), or even implemented into a sequel which improves and expands upon previous concept that maybe didn't initially work well. This is why it's so important to write about every aspect for your game, from an asset list of 3d models being used, a detailed analysis of your characters along with their abilities for balancing purposes, discussion on the incoreration of various games design techniques (like the ones I've researched in my blog) and even a section where you say where you sourced all of your game's assets from, it all comes down to future-proofing your work.
Something that a developer should note when creating a design document is that not everything listed in it is set in stone. Considering the design document is first created before game production even begins, there are naturally going to be elements of the game that come and go throughout the whole development process. The task of games development isn't just a linear pathway from start to finish as you make a game directly by the book, people think of new ideas as they go while also making other subtle changes to suit the situation. This is why there are normally multiple revisions of a games design document, and a 3rd revision could be made halfway through development which includes many new features in the game that weren't planned, while also omitting ideas that never fully came to fruition. That's the joy of games development and designing a document, you're applying your creative ideas to life and having a passion and love for your product is the best midset to have when creating a 50, or 500, page document about your game. To quote (Freeman, 1997) on the matter: "Some of the best parts of many projects were discovered in the heat of last-minute deadline panic. True, the pressures of time and cost budgeting don't allow for perpetual reiteration of concept, but you simply cannot expect a killer game to come out of dry, predictable work. The challenge is to create a design document that will allow your project to tolerate surprise adaptations without losing the integrity of its original direction and scope.".
Producing a games design document in some shape or form can be critically important to the creation of every video game, and as researched from a published article by games journalist (Sayenko, 2015), many smaller indie game studios ponder whether or not it's even worth the time to create such a large document with so few members of staff, or whether or not it's worth just jotting down a few notes and ideas instead. This is especially true if a person's creating a game by themselves, if they have it all planned out inside their head, is it worth writing it all out into a physical format anyway? I, along with the source above, feel that it's always a good idea to write down as much information about your game as possible. A smaller team during development could have completely forgotten about a certain feature or mechanic in a game, and re-checking the GDD as a form of reference will constantly give them a strong idea about what sort of end-goal they're working towards throughout all stages of development. Likewise, if there are features which can't be put into the full-game before release for whatever reason, having these ideas written down that you can come back to in years to come could even be applied within a DLC update to your game (with the extra time and money earned from the game's sales), or even implemented into a sequel which improves and expands upon previous concept that maybe didn't initially work well. This is why it's so important to write about every aspect for your game, from an asset list of 3d models being used, a detailed analysis of your characters along with their abilities for balancing purposes, discussion on the incoreration of various games design techniques (like the ones I've researched in my blog) and even a section where you say where you sourced all of your game's assets from, it all comes down to future-proofing your work.
Something that a developer should note when creating a design document is that not everything listed in it is set in stone. Considering the design document is first created before game production even begins, there are naturally going to be elements of the game that come and go throughout the whole development process. The task of games development isn't just a linear pathway from start to finish as you make a game directly by the book, people think of new ideas as they go while also making other subtle changes to suit the situation. This is why there are normally multiple revisions of a games design document, and a 3rd revision could be made halfway through development which includes many new features in the game that weren't planned, while also omitting ideas that never fully came to fruition. That's the joy of games development and designing a document, you're applying your creative ideas to life and having a passion and love for your product is the best midset to have when creating a 50, or 500, page document about your game. To quote (Freeman, 1997) on the matter: "Some of the best parts of many projects were discovered in the heat of last-minute deadline panic. True, the pressures of time and cost budgeting don't allow for perpetual reiteration of concept, but you simply cannot expect a killer game to come out of dry, predictable work. The challenge is to create a design document that will allow your project to tolerate surprise adaptations without losing the integrity of its original direction and scope.".
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