Elie Harrison's Game Art

Thursday, 18 October 2012

POINTS OF 80's RESEARCH

We have decided to have a comedy duo as the main characters. Both are male but one is British the other is American. We feel that this would spice things up a little bit in terms of narrative and story and we could incorporate American elements into a British environment. We are also setting the game in Manchester as besides from the obvious choice London, Manchester is just as interesting and has a high crime rate in the UK at that time. We are still undecided about that year(s) to set the game in. Here are some points of research we need to cover:

UK Crime
UK Police
Ferenzics
Music
Art/Artists
Cartoons
Fads
Styles
Films
Tv
Pulp Fiction
Foods
Transport
Public figures/celebrities
Technology
Education/knowledge
Politics/government
School/Work/Family life/values
Look at how society looked at gays, marriage, race, religion etc.
Look at main religion and % of religions in Britain
Interiors and exteriors
Part times for families, elders and youths
Popular/Main jobs
Look at what influenced Britain from around the world
For our characters look at what they grew up on and into

For the game visually we need to look at different art styles; we could so something realistic or something cartoon-like. We also need to look at comedy duo's for our characters; that will be the strongest part of our game, their characterization and how they interact/react with each other, their environment and the situations they are placed in.

The research into 1983 is so important for this game; we need to make it historically accurate to maximize the players experience and for the game to seem believable. For older players who grew up in the 80's it's extremely important that for them they see and play the game and go "Yes that happened and it was like that. People used to look and dress like that. We used to watch and listen to this and that." because they actually lived in that time period and we have to do it justice.

Here are some links to various bits of research:

Top Hits in 83
80's cartoons

LETS GET STARTED

We have started our first project of year 2 BA4! Our task it to choose one of the following games and reinvent it; take the main aspects of the game and turn create a new game out of it:

Medal of Honor - it's episodic in series, it is historically accurate, realistic, was written by Stephen Spielberg it's cinematic.

The Portopia Serial Murder Case - has puzzles to solve and clues to find, graphic novel quality, narrative/story

FlOw - abstract art based, no need for narrative

Fatal Frame 2 : Crimson Butterfly - survival horror, quirky narrative, an item used as a focal point in the game

Moshi Monsters - cute/appealing, a mashing of current games such as pokemon, neopets, tamogotchi and pets society.

For this project we are working in groups and i am currently working with Ross, Ty and Kai who i haven't worked with before but i like the change! Over some discussion we decided to roughly explore all the games and see what we game we felt more excited/engaged in doing. We settled on doing The Portopia Serial Murder Case. It was released in 1983, designed by Yuji Harii and published by Enix. It is an investigtion adventure first person perspective/narrative game and was sophisticated for its time. We decided to watch or play the game and make notes on it. I watched the game being played on YouTube by 9esferas1. Here are the notes i made:

Multiple choice in decision making
block colours/pixleated quality
Always the option to close the case even if the case hasnt been fully solved = gives power to the player, makes them decide when its over as opposed to being led in a certain direction
Forced to search everywhere, can't see all the evidence/clues when playing
Can go to the Police Station at any time to look at evidence, get new information/clues and to interrogate suspects/get eyewitness accounts
can arrest people for other felonies, not just the main case
casual comedy
there's a massive twist at the end
defined characteristic of suspects
decision-ception = have to make a decision within a decision

After some discussion over the notes we made about the game, we decided to do a British cop 80's comedy themed game where you would play as a comic duo, like Starsky and Hutch. We feel that this idea is potentially avlot of fun from both a narrative and artistic point of view. This idea is something different but it wont be totally alone in the market as there are games out there such as Proffesor Layton, LA Noir and Condemed each with their own theme and period setting. There are also plenty of TV shows, books and films out that people are interested in.

We chose the 80's as it was a colourfull time period (in the good and bad way) and that time period has not been seen in current games, it is an area in the market that has yet to be exposed. We chose to make it a comedy as not only in current games but with other groups in the project, people are doing serious games that are hard hitting and have to have some sort of emotional impact on the player. But life is not all doom and gloom! In fact, comedy is a lot harder to achieve than trauma. It also makes our group stand out, shows we are thinking outside the box and show off our creativity. I used to do A Level Drama and for our final piece we had to write our own script and perform it. We thought that doing something serious and hard hitting would show our selfs off the best as it would involve a lot of emotion etc. But our teacher said that that's what everyone does, that's all the examiners see so do something different, do a comedy! And so we did and it was very well received! And we hope that this work will also be well received that we will stand out from everyone elses work!