First day, and Group Name
Inception
Today was the first day making groups and pushing all of our ideas together, considering so far on the course there are now new people that have just entered the University, I wondered upon myself if I should stay with the people I know, or new people. I felt like creating a challenge for myself and go with all new people.
Mainly for two reasons
To gain a fresh new perspective with new individuals that don’t know me well enough so we can all gain better understanding that way. FRESH being the key word
To push my teamwork skills to a new level so everyone can be aligned with the ideas put forward.
Unlike in the previous year, it was one programmer and one designer, the groups have now gotten bigger. Two designers and two programmers, so now there can be a bigger influence on some fresh ideas regardless once we were all paired up. We GOT TO WORK.
We have to design, create, and finally prototype a rich, well thought-out multiplayer experience.
So the ideas came flooding in, what types of ideas did I want to make in terms of the game that involves more than one player, this is something I’ve never taken into account as I find that making single-player experiences can be more interesting mainly because of the narrative behind it, however, this doesn’t mean there can’t be a narrative with games that involve more than 2 people.
Game Concepts
So with the general design concepts these were some ideas I came up with and pitched to my team:
Having a 2 vs 2 player experience, where they will be players that are actively in the environment and have to get from one point to the next and the other 2 player will be spectators influencing that environment. These ‘spectators’ would effect the environment live rather than it being up to voting, everything is done Live and these ‘Spectators’ can pick and choose their moments
Racing game similar to Mario Kart Double Dash, having multiple people being 2 man teams throughout or alternatively. In this case, having a tank as the thing that one person has to shoot the other contestants and other has to finish the race, but they can switch roles during play.
Could be similar to ‘Keep talking and Nobody Explodes’ having voice chat as a main mechanic of the game where player will have cooperation whilst having a different perspective.
I feel the first idea had a more complex idea and something that was more ambitious than the rest, so this is one I pitched to the team, eventually we go to the research and also brainstorm some ideas below:
Next Steps
For now we decided to still get the concept flowing correctly, as the game so far has a few concerns, for example, we already wanted 2 players to be a part of the environment and 2 player influences it, disguising PvE into PvP which means this game would be asymmetric even in the initial design.
The ideas we also schemed up could be the one player focuses on buffs whilst the other focuses on de-buffs. One is an Angel and other is a Devil. So this needs to be refined.