This week we had a talk from Gareth Wilson who is design director for Sumo Digital. He mainly talked about the difference between working with a brand new IP and working on a licenced IP such as the Lego. He mentions the difficulties of both with a new IP being a risky investment were as a licenced IP can have difficulties working with the licensee or may not succeed were the original did. There are many advantages with working on video game sequels such as an existing fan base. There is also an existing structure meaning that developers can make sequels by just adding new features. This brings the cost of development down and takes a lot of the risks out of development. Bringing down the cost is a huge advantage and over the last few years as seen the rise of the annual video game such as Call Of Duty. The rise of the sequel peaked back in 2011 when a survey revealed that 90% of the most anticipated games were sequels. According to electronic arts “fans don’t actually complain about sequels – editors do” they believe that players enjoy sequels much like the movie industry does (snow 2011). One of the big problems for games is that there is no secondary market as there is with Movies. With a movie you will first get a release at the cinema creating vast revenue there will then be a DVD release where fans of the movie can buy it to watch in private. With video games they will get released at one price point usually around £40 and once the game is bought it will provide no other revenue (Unless DLC is created). This is a problem as well because of the huge pre-owned market which does not put a penny into the developer’s pocket. With these problems developers are less likely to take risks so making a sequel to successful games is a safe bet. What we are currently finding is that a lot of new IP’s are being created for the new generation of gaming consoles such as the PS4 and Xbox one. This is partially down to most games being release at the beginning of a console cycle will sell well which means it can acquire fans for sequels. As stated before the sequels will also cost much less as the base is already there (Wilson 2014).
Overall video games sequels are going to stay around as there are a much lower risks to the developers and publishers. What we are seeing is some of the big publishers now taking risks on newer consoles to cement a new franchise. As long as there is a pre-owned market developers will not be willing to take such big risks
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The next area that needed fixing was the camera shots as these often hanged in once place while the level changed around it. To improve this I focused on tighter shots that looked at really impressive areas such as the front sign on the Market Place building. I also added panning shots while the level changed. Another Idea I had was instead of having one change as the shots were tighter I could replay the change at different speeds in different areas to get the effect that this has happened over many years. The hand-in was not left till the last minute and was handed in early in the morning this was to ensure we did not risk missing the deadline as we nearly did on the last hand-in. The next step was to add particle effects on the collection gems. I wanted to add this effect to make the level look prettier as it was looking fairly dull. It was also to give feedback to the player so that they were aware that the gem was collected without having to pay too much attention.
The next area I looked at was sound and what sorts of sounds I needed in particular areas. One such area was the gem collection this took me a while to pick as I wanted just the right sound. In the end I settled for a crystal being hit sound as this match the visuals on the screen. After I picked all the sound I then had to pick background music for this I picked a free source classical track that I felt once again matches the visual and the theme of the game. This week was the second hand-in for the level design module which means that all hands where on deck to ensure we had a good project that we were happy with. This did mean that the Unity project was shelved for this week so no progress was made. As a team we were not particularly happy with the cinematic so I was in charge of getting this up to a good standard. While the rest of the team worked on the word document as this was worth more than the cinematic. The first area that needed fixing was the particle effects as they were either not working correctly or did not look attractive in the level. I first added smoke for the bomb entering the Market Place this was white smoke as there was no fire. It was also designed to look like dust as the bomb did not explode but cause a lot of damage. The other particle effect was on the shot of the earth. The effect on the earth at the beginning of the week looked like little fires and not explosions. After working on this for a while it finally looked like lots of explosions happening around the world. I got this effect by setting up 3 matinee tracks that could have lots of particle effects plugged in. These tracks were then turned on and off very quickly to get the explosion effect. The next area that needed fixing was the camera shots as these often hanged in once place while the level changed around it. To improve this I focused on tighter shots that looked at really impressive areas such as the front sign on the Market Place building. I also added panning shots while the level changed. Another Idea I had was instead of having one change as the shots were tighter I could replay the change at different speeds in different areas to get the effect that this has happened over many years.
The hand-in was not left till the last minute and was handed in early in the morning this was to ensure we did not risk missing the deadline as we nearly did on the last hand-in. This week I have been working on my personal project while other team members spend some time on the cinematic. The personal project needed time spent on it this week to improve a lot of features and implement obstacles and make the level playable. The first task for this week was implementing the obstacles which included fences, boulders and arrows. The fence was the easiest obstacle as it is just placed into the level with collision physics. This is make the jumps harder and get in players way. The next obstacle was the arrow script this took a while to ensure the arrow flew in the correct direction, with the correct rotation but once this was sorted the player triggers the arrow and then has jump over it. The hardest obstacle was the boulder this was easy to set up as it could just be made active as the play steps into the trigger. The problem with the boulder is that you don’t want it to be too fast so that the player cannot escape but you don’t want it to be too slow as the player will not be underneath as it falls. I spent quite a bit of time ensuring that the boulders and triggers where in the right place. A feature I realised that would help me with the creation of this level and other levels in the Unity game was the ability to create prefabs. Prefabs allow me to create a game object that consists of multiple components then saves that to reuse when needed. This worked particularly well with the obstacles and trigger as I could place a trigger into the scene and then place which ever obstacle I wanted to trigger into the scene. With the prefabs anyone who picks up the project has the ability to put a level together very quickly. At the end of the week I have achieved a lot in terms of making all the game objects into prefabs and making the level extremely easy to set up. I still need to adjust the level it give it the correct level of difficulty.
This week we had a talk from John Healey who has worked on games such as Juiced and Blur. During the talk John touches upon how a project that he had worked on as one of the main designers had been cancelled. He also mentions that this is partially due to the long the development times and rising cost of creating games. Video games have gone from taking around two years to make a few years ago to now taking 2-5 years to create. This means that video game studios now have to sell more games to cover the cost of development. As a new generation of video games is upon us the cost of video games is set to rise even further and put more strain on game studios. This is not all as bad as it seems because companies are coming up with new innovative ways to increase revenue and cover the cost of next generation games. One way a company could take the risk out of a venture is with the release of a pilot episode as suggested by the Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima. He believes that releasing a small portion of game before jumping completely into the project would allow the developers to test the waters (Lambie 2013). Hideo is currently using a similar technique with the new Metal Gear Solid Game with the release of a prequel to the main game which will be released later in the year. This prequel cost £20 around half of what a full game would cost but only has a main story of around two hours. The game has been given extras to increase the game play time but it is clearly not a full game. Another way developers can try to increase revenue is with DLC and more recently a season pass. The season pass business model was first introduced by Rockstar with LA Noir (GiantBomb N.D). This allowed the player to buy all the addition DLC before release at a discounted price. This significantly helps the developer because as time goes on and interest in the game dies off less people more likely to buy DLC for your game. A season pass however gives the player the opportunity to buy all the DLC why they are still heavily invested in the game. This business model is currently used on around thirty nine games and there are no signs of it going away.
In the future new business models will be tested by companies. Crytec recently announced that it will be no longer making packaged games but will be making console quality games for free. This means that they will still spend twenty to thirty million dollars creating a game but will offer in game purchases instead of making the gamer pay first. Over all with the rising cost of creating video games companies will have to come up with new and innovative ways to increase revenue. These include free-to-play and episodic content. We will also see new business models introduced into the industry in the coming years moving games to a more of a service model rather than a one of cost. Lambie, R (2013) “How will game studios beat the rising cost of development” [Onlone] Available at: http://www.denofgeek.com/games/24789/how-will-game-studios-beat-the-rising-cost-of-development [Accessed 29/04/14] Kelly N (2012) “Crytek: All our future games will be free-to-play” [Online] Available at: http://www.videogamer.com/pc/warface/news/crytek_all_our_future_games_will_be_free-to-play.html [Accessed 29/04/14] N.A. (N.D) “DLC Season Pass” [Online] available from: http://www.giantbomb.com/dlc-season-pass/3015-7186/ [Accessed 29/04/14] |
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