Unnamed Anime/Game that I am visioning

For my second Design Methods assignment, I decided to do the first episode of a unnamed anime I had visioned for quite some time.
There are a few things missing from this document due to a word limit of 1500 word. I will resume and fully detail the plot some point in the future, and even maybe write a short novel before deciding on the game itself.
This will be a fairly long read but I feel the need to publish it and receive criticism.
Without further ado, here is the Design Document:

Design method Assignment 2

For this assignment, my brief was to create a 30 minute ‘side quest’ gaming experience, focusing on the narrative arc of the ‘side quest’

Plot

For the actual story section of this assignment, I’ll be splitting it up into three segments; The Beginning, The Encounter and The Conclusion. As the main vision of the game, this will follow just like an episode from an anime.

The Beginning

The game starts out with a scene of the Main Character moving boxes from his room, out into the balcony. Inside, you can see what appear to be a black trench coat and three distinguishable plastic/toy weapons; A Scythe, a Sniper Rifle and a pair of short swords. As the Main Character moves these boxes outside, he looks out over the town as the sun sets above the buildings. As the Main Character moves back into his room, you see Haruka Shimizu in the shadows around the corner, looking at him, before moving away.

The next scene opens with the Main Character waking up from bed and getting dressed to go to University. He goes outside to find that the box of attire missing.

Touching briefly on the game play, it is an open-world game where the Player can roam freely around Sakura Town. For this particular section, the only place they can go is to the University.

From there, a new scene happens.

The Main Character is in the class room, filled with students. He sits down and begins talking to a few of his friends, when the door opens.

Entering is Haruka Shimizu. She walks past the Main character through the many desks, dropping something on the ground as she passes his desk.

The Main character picks up the picture, which is a picture of him and his brother when they were younger. Shocked, the Main character looks back to Haruka, who isn’t paying attention to him at all, and as is about to get up from his seat before the lecturer enters the room and begins his class.

The Main character looks at the picture and a flashback is shown, with him and his brother as young children, play fighting in the backyard. The player takes control of the Main Character as a tutorial level to learn the basics of combat. During this tutorial level, the player is fighting demons in his backyard with his brother. Once the monsters are destroyed, a new scene follows.

After the Tutorial, the Main Character snaps back to present day in shock. He turns his head to look at Haruka, who is absorbed in a book, listening to the lecturer. He turns back, working out how she got a hold of this picture. This thought is interrupted by the Lecturer asking the Main Character a question. He is taken aback by this and answers it incorrectly, prominently making a fool of himself. He decides to not think about this until the end of class.

At the end of the class, the Main Character gets up and gathers his things, after putting on his bag; he turns round to look for Haruka, but finds she has already gone. The Main Character looks around the room for her, but is stopped by one of his fellow classmates where he wanted to go for lunch. He turns to them saying anywhere is fine.

The Encounter

The player now has control over the Main Character, and can go wherever they like. All paths however will lead to a cut scene outside of a Café. As the Main Character and his friends walk past the Café, he sees Haruka inside at a table. The Main Character tells his friends that he’ll catch up with them at University later and walks into the Café. He walks over to Haruka’s table, takes out the picture of him and his brother and puts it on the table in front of her. He asks how she got this picture. She doesn’t say anything which prompts the Main Character to sit down opposite her and ask her again. She looks at him and says: ‘Obsidian Flame; Wielder of the Three’. The Main character is shocked and demands how she knows about that. She answers back saying that she knows everything about the Main Character, and how he used to slay the demons of people’s emotions in the past. The Main Character retorts with his bewilderment that all of that was not real and imaginary. Haruka explains that it was actually real and he is well known for what he has done in the past. She also explains that she will be helping him defend the town of Sakura from these demons. The Main Character says that this is childish and he has no time for games as he needs to get good grades from University.

The Main Character gets up and leaves the Café, leaving Haruka behind.

The player now has control over the Main Character. The player must now go back to the University to finish afternoon class. As the player goes back to the University, they can see that the general area has grown a bit darker than before, and can often see dark figures with faint red eyes moving in the alley ways of streets and under cars.

A scene begins when the Main Character reaches the University. He goes to his desk and sits down, a bit shaken and disturbed at what he has heard. Haruka walks past his desk again without giving him a single look. After this, the Lecturer walks in and begins his teaching. The Main Character has trouble concentrating as his mind is going over what happened earlier that day in the Café. At the end of class, everyone gets up to go back to their accommodations. The Main Character hastily gathers his things and walks quickly out of the class.

The player now has control over the Main Character and the end goal is to get back to his accommodations.

Once the player reaches back to his apartment, a scene starts.

The Main Character is sitting down on his bed, staring at the ground, with many thought running through his mind. It is late evening outside and the sun is just setting over the city buildings. The Main Character’s deep thought is interrupted by a knock on his door. He looks up sharply and asks who is there. Another knock responds, and the Main Character gets up and opens the door. Standing there is Haruka. She asks the Main Character to follow her to the park. He is taken aback by this request, but is unable to answer as she has already left to the park. The Main Character, somewhat angry, follows suit.

The Conclusion

The player now controls the Main Character as he follows Haruka to the park. The sun has now set and street lights turn on as they make their way to the park. When the player gets to the park, a scene starts.

The Main Character finally catches up to Haruka and demands answers. Haruka turns around and points to one of the Cherry Blossom trees. Underneath, is a swarm of shadow demons, amassing together and forming into one entity; a large canine greater shadow demon. The shadow demon looks around and spots Haruka and the Main Character. It howls and charges straight at them. Haruka dodges the charge with ease. The Main Character, however, gets clipped and knocked over while the shadow demon continues in a straight line. Haruka stands over the Main Character and explains that the demon will stop at nothing until he is dead. She extends her hand and tells him that he must defeat it, not only to save his life, but also the lives of the town.

The Main Character hesitates as the demon wheels around for another charge. Time is running out as the demon charges as he touches Haruka’s hand. A blast of blue light engulfs both of them as the Main Character transforms into his combat form: Obsidian Flame; Wielder of the Three, while the demon is blasted back. The scene ends with Haruka handing the Main Character his weapons and trench coat she had taken this morning. The player now has control over the Main Character as the combat starts to slay the demon.

When the player kills the demon the final scene starts.

The Greater Shadow Demon has been slain, the Main Character turns away with heavy breathe. The demon suddenly gets up and lunges at him when it is cut down midair by Haruka in her Combat Form. The Main Character is astonished at this and asks why she didn’t help him with the demon. She explains that she needed to test his strength before starting to leave the park. The Main Character asks what for and she replies that she knows where his brother is. The scene ends with the Main Character completely shocked.

Tweaking The Royal Game of Ur

The Iterative Process

Since there are two boards, I had to choose which one to start iterating. I started playing on both boards and got a feel for both of them. To begin with, I chose to use the board discovered by Finkel, for that ‘sprint to the end’ feel than the other board where there are safe zones at the finish line. This board also greatly compliments the rules translated by Finkel. These rules were adopted for play testing, found in the book “On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur” by Finkel.

Game Rules

• Each Player begins with 7 tokens
• Each player starts on opposite sides of the board.
• Players decide who starts first, with any desired method
• The player who starts rolls four d4 die, each coloured on two tips.
• The player moves a single token forward according to how many coloured tips are rolled
• If a player’s token lands on a “Rosette” square, they get another turn.
• The purpose of the game is for each player to get all of their tokens off the board, following the pathway shown in the diagram below.
• If a player’s token is moved on top of the opponents token, the token that was first on the square is returned to the player.
• A token on a “Rosette” square is safe and cannot be taken.
• If a player cannot move that turn, that turn is lost
• For a piece to leave the board, you need to roll the exact number of space needed to exit. If this is not possible, then that turn if forfit.

To begin with, I decided to add a mechanic to the game by allowing players to stack counters on top of each other. This allowed for faster game play as multiple counters can leave the board at the same time. It also allowed strategy into the game, in the form of which tactic to go for (To rush single counters to the end or build up and amassing forward). This added some dynamic to the game other than just moving a single piece forward at a time. It also added some realism to the game in terms of modern war games, where it feels you are stacking an army of units, rather than single lone soldiers moving out. This gave the feel that the player is playing a role of a General, commanding his troops in a turn base strategy style. With a little a aesthetics to the board and counters, I would be able to theme the game successfully for those types of gamers.

After play testing this new rule, the game quickly became tenser as the pace of the game was much quicker than before. It wasn’t long before a dominant strategy occurred where the pace of the game at the start would sbe extremely slow as both players would stack all their counters into one giant stack and then relying on one dice roll to get all their counters to the end of the board, which the frustration of losing all your counters

It was apparent that the random aspect of a dice roll could be manipulated to increase “funativity” (Noah Falstein, Gamasutra:Natural Funativity, 2004).

To keep inline with my initial idea to appeal more to the modern gamer, I wanted to add a battle mechanic that is more engaging rather than just landing on a piece. I looked into other board games to see what I could come up with that can be interesting whilst easy to implement.

I landed on the game of Risk and how its core battle mechanic allowed for engaging battles with a fairly easy mechanic.

By introducing the battle mechanic to the game, stacks which are smaller than other stacks have a chance of taking out the bigger stack by a few lucky dice rolls. The rule I added was the following:

           

‘When a counter (or stack of counters) landed on an opposing counter (or stack of counters), each player rolls a dice for the first counter on the stack. The player with the lowest dice roll removes their counter from the board. If there is more counters (e.g. two stacks clashing) then the process happens again until only one player is on the space.’

Much like the battle system in Risk, a losing player can still win by a few lucky dice rolls. This addition made the game even more nerve-wracking then before, allowing small victories and losses impact the game entirely.

This aspect not only relates to similar divination methods of previous games but also provided the losing players to keep playing and fighting, without the feeling of total defeat. (Mark LeBlanc, Salen and Zimmerman's The Game Design Reader p438 - p459).

After play testing with this rule in place, I knew that it was a much needed addition to the game; not only did it allow the losing player to snatch back up to the winning square, but also nulls out possible boredom and negativity to the game. Due to the randomness of die rolls, it added a lot of tense effects. This also allowed some strategic methods of play due to the chance of a single counter being able to take out an entire stack of seven tokens.

This is the exact type of reaction I was hoping for when I started iterating the game, by making players think about what tactic to use and how to counter the opposing player which another.

Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary (2012)

Going Cardboard
Running time: 76 minutes.
Director: Lorien Green.

This documentary is about Spiel des Jahres, or 'Game of the Year' award for excellence in board game design which was created in Germany in 1978. This competition contributed in a sudden fluctuation in variety and sophistication of creators and designers alike. In the mid 1900's, America began to see new types of board games quietly being developed and forever evolving in Germany for the past 30 years, thanks to the popular board game The Settlers of Catan.

Designer board gaming is a popular hobby made up of dedicated and enthusiastic individuals. This documentary helps the newcomers become aware of what they have been missing, while letting the experienced hear from real designers which designed some of their most favorite games, and a look behind the scenes at how the board game industry in a designer's eyes run.

New Games Journalism vs Old Games Journalism

Old Games Journalism is the reviewing of game mechanics, graphics and controls. Such reviewing would explore the core game without story or player reactions.

New Games Journalism reviews the games looks and interaction and reaction of the player's point of view. this type of reviewing is more personal reviewing as each information is personal.

My opinion is that you cannot review a game without both types of journalism. Everything matters in a game, it is what connects it and makes the better games flow. Reviewing on only one part of a game does not give it justice at all.

My view is that there needs to be both Old and New Games Journalism to properly review a game, not one or the other. This would mean that reviews and articles would be longer, but they will review all aspects of the game rather than a particular area.

Remediation

Remediation is the incorporation or representation of one medium in another medium.

According to their book Remediation: Understanding New Media by J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin, remediation is a defining characteristic of new digital media because digital media is constantly remediating its predecessors (television, radio, print journalism and other forms of old media).

Remediation can be either Complete or Visible. A film based on a book is remediating the printed story. The film may not provide any reference to the original story or acknowledge that it is an adaptation.
Differently, a medium like a movie clip can be used outside of the film and placed as a new medium like music. This is called Visible remediation because, "he work becomes a mosiac in which we are simultaneously aware of the individual pieces' and their new, inappropriate setting."

Bolter and Grusin, J. D B and R. A G, 2001. Remediation: Understanding New Media. 1st ed. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Games Britannia: Joystick Generation

Benjamin Woolley concludes his three part series in his final episode of Games Britannia episode three: Monopolies and Mergers.

Games Britannia Part Three: Joystick Generation
Presented by Benjamin Woolley.
Duration: 59 minutes.
First broadcast on BBC4 in December 2009 as part of the Game On season.

In this final episode, Woolley talks about digital games. He begins with the arcade game era; the 1980s.

During this, he mentions games like Pacman and Space Invaders which are still played today and have and still are inspiring countless other games. Woolley continues to explore games in the 1990s where alot of female video game characters were created such as Lara Croft. Finally, he finishes off by mentioning internet gaming, which gave birth to Massive Multiplayer Online games, notably the world famous and widely played World of Warcraft.

La Decima Vittima

A rather odd film where in a dystopian future, the world has been desensitized to killing and death. A competition where two people are assigned as either a hunter or a victim. The hunter is shown a picture of the victim's face and is on an active search to kill them. The victim is unaware of the looks of the hunter but is able to kill the hunter when found out. The story is about a woman who needs to win one more game to gain wealth and retire. Her last game becomes complicated as she becomes romantically involved with her victim.

As I have read Battle Royale, it doesn't surprise me that this type of genre is popular. Movies like The Hunger Games that has recently come out supports this idea. I found La Decima Vittima quite interesting, painting a similar but unique dystopian future to those of the two above.