After completing the Specialist project and now moving on to the Extended major, I feel it necessary to document the development of my application. There may be those who haven’t seen my older blog or perhaps do not wish too; if you are one of these people then you are in the right place. This part of my blog will briefly document how I, and my application have got to this point; for a more detailed idea of certain issues or aspects either head over to “highlights page”or visit the previous blog.
Right then if you are sitting comfortably I shall try to fill you in on the story so far…
Building up to the specialist project I was very much aware I wanted to make a game for the iPhone, during my second year of the FDA in Interactive Media I was very interested in Augmented Reality. For anyone who is unaware augmented reality is the placing of a live direct or indirect view of computer generated graphics in the physical real world environment. When the third year rolled along I decided to mix the two and make a game for the iPhone that implemented AR. The implementation of the AR would be in the form of a shooting game. Manipulating the camera view I would try to place “zombies” (that’s right a zombie shooting game) over the camera view giving the impression that they were in the room around the user; putting the player literally in the game. As the project progressed many issues arose however none more prominent in my mind than the ability and need for my application to be original, I wanted to take the game away from just shooting and implement a strong narrative vibe.
I decided to have a interactive narrative accompanying the shooting side of my game. I chose to have a choice driven narrative as to implement the aspect of a “choose your own adventure” book. I felt this a great way to make my game unique, what better way than to merge the two gameplay styles. On one hand you have the very new technique of augmented reality shooting and on the other hand you have a classic multi-choice adventure.
However from this point problems arose very quickly, as I learnt more and more on the use of augmented reality and the way in which it worked as a function. It became clear that a zombie shooter wouldn’t be able to encapsulate the level of intensity I wanted the player to feel when playing my game. The issue here was mapping the zombies to the environment around the user, because of the way I would be implementing the zombies into the frame, it would have them walking through objects or even walking on air, it would be incredibly hard to map them to the floor especially considering the amount of zombies I wanted to have on screen at once.
I was stuck, I was unsure how to proceed and worried about the progress of my game.
Then it hit me, why not change the zombies to parasites, that way I could suggest that they were from a another dimension and didn’t play into our understanding of gravity and physics while also keeping the “zombie horror” aspect alive in my game. From this point I went on to present the first prototype of my game at the specialist presentation, it went down well but I realized several things; firstly AR is completely uncontrollable in the way I wanted to represent it. I mean by this that it is impossible to control the real world environment that you are placing graphics in, rather than see this as a problem I attempted to use it to my advantage, in knowing that I couldn’t change this, I just went with it and began to set stories around environments that people could recognize and relate to. A key example here would be the home, everyone can relate to a “home” and in regards to the narrative it makes logical sense a protagonist may hide out in a house in a “zombie apocalypse”.
Basically I wanted environments people could actually see themselves in, I wanted the story to seem real. Escapism is a huge part of gaming and I wanted to enforce it; if the images of parasites themselves are being augmented into the real-world plane, then why not further blur the concept of reality by having the story mimic the environment the player is in. Secondly, in regards to what I realized after the critique is that I had inadvertently made a game for gamers, I had totally missed the concept of a target audience, (one of the most basic principals when designing). I realized that I didn’t just want to make a game for gamers I wanted to make a game for everyone and anyone, keeping the iPhone as a medium in mind; I wanted to make a game anyone could pick up and play.
Which leads me very nicely to where I am at the moment and in fairness where this blog begins, at present I am currently beginning to add humor to my game. I feel in wanting to make a game that has the ability to be able to be played by anyone, it has to be light-hearted and silly, not at the cost of its gameplay but more so in its overall approach.
To follow on from where I go from here head over to the “PANIC: VOLUMES”
"Thats all folks"
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