building alliances: week 5

Presentation & Development

This blog includes:

- Research into my role in the Industry

- Target Audience 

My Role In The Industry 

In our group, we were each assigned roles that different people would take on in  a real games company environment. I was given to role of Lead researcher. This means, that it is my job to assign and divide research work amongst my team members. This could be things such as making moodboards, looking into benchmark games, researching different mechanics, styles and features of games we wanted to use as reference and also things such as gathering research on topics like how microplastics effects wildlife, global warming and water rising levels and even things such as the structure of Nottingham's caves. There are many other things my group will be researching into/have already done too, and we are constantly researching more things as we develop our game and decide we need to gather more information or ideas.

In the Game Industry, gathering research and idea generation is incredibly important for almost all starting points in different areas of the industry. This could be for things such as idea generation for games in general, character designs, asset designs, researching into cultural settings, different locations and even things such as animal species etc. Research is greatly important in many different factors and helps to set down groundwork for almost any creative endeavour.

A more detailed example of this could be for a character design. Usually when creating characters and designs, character concept artists usually have a basic idea of what they will be creating. For example, they may be tasked with creating a knight character from the medieval times. In order to portray this character accurately, gather inspiration and generate different ideas and concepts they must research and gather inspiration. A usual way many artists start with is by creating moodboards and mindmap, as well as looking into different topics such as different types of weapons used, different armour and even materials these things would be made out of. The more in depth research completed will effect the outcome of a character design and could help create something much more detailed and accurate.

When the main research period of this project is complete and my group is set on our ideas and what we will be creating, I will be moving onto helping the others in my group with tasks they will be assigning me. As research mainly encompasses the beginning of a project and helps to set the groundwork and ideas out, When all our main research is complete I will begin to help the others with other tasks they will assign me.

Target Audience

For our game, we had to consider things such as the target audience. We needed to do this to have an understand of the type of content we should and shouldn't include in our game, as well as things like the language used and the style of the gameplay. For example, a game rated for children would not contain foul language and depictions of violence.

- Genre: Horror/Survival. Our game is set in a underwater cave system where the MC must traverse the caves by solving puzzles and avoiding danger to reach a strange signal at the bottom. The game contains things such as dangerous creatures and many survival aspects.

- Pegi 16 - This game would depict forms of violence and blood that may be too much or scary for younger audiences.

- 2D Platformer/Puzzles, This game will have 3D styled puzzles implemented in, as well as 2SD styled platformer gameplay. Puzzles may include opening safes, quick time events and evacuations etc.

Games in the Uk are rated using a system called the PEGI rating.  PEGI ratings are used to determine the content within a piece of media such as a movie or a game and can be used to identify what type of content is contained in them. For example, a PEGI rating of 7 is suitable for younger audiences and wouldn't contain highly detailed gore and swearing, while something rated 18 would contain these topics that may not be suitable for younger audiences.

References:

Anon, Games ratings authority [online]. Org.uk. Available at: https://gamesratingauthority.org.uk/RatingBoard/ratings [Accessed 25 January 2025 d].

Bromley, S., 2023. What does a games user researcher do? [online]. Games User Research. Available at: https://gamesuserresearch.com/what-does-a-games-user-researcher-do/ [Accessed 26 January 2025].

ScreenSkills, Lead games designer [online]. ScreenSkills. Available at: https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/games/design/lead-games-designer/ [Accessed 26 January 2025].