Conceptual & Contextual Statements:

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Conceptual:

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The concept for the project was to create an interactive, educational experience for the player to see what it is like to be lost in the New Zealand bush. The project was designed to throw the players into the deep end and specifically teach them what you should and shouldn’t do in that situation. The value of this project is to keep the people aware of the dangers of being unprepared for situations like this and the game helps show what can happen. The world was created in the Unreal Engine V4 due to personal preference and ability to incorporate that realism that we wanted the game to have.

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The method of creating the outcome for the project was to create a game, in which we can show the player what it could be like in the New Zealand bush unprepared. We created a map based upon the Hanua region from a heightmap in the UE4 engine. This made it look and feel like it was part of the country, due to it being part of the country. The part in which I had worked on specifically was texturing the meshes and making them seem like they were a part of the landscape. An example of this is the rusted iron shed, the wear and tear on it allows for some ‘history’ to be applied to the map.

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The project was to be interactive and playful in nature, this means specifically we had these two words in mind as we created it. The means to us that we had to have a reason for what is inside the game and how they all flowed together while the player progresses. I personally take inspiration from games that give the players a sense of open worlds however guiding the player through the levels with smart placements of objects in the game, to get the players to see what the developers want them to see, items and obstacles for example.

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The concept behind the project is ‘play’. This means, to me, the idea of creating something that has a real world meaning to it however making it interesting and new for the audience. The project we’ve worked on has the real-world challenge of helping raise awareness of being lost in the NZ bush and what to do in that situation; however, this is made ‘playful’ through the medium of a game, which will allow for the audience to interact and realise first-hand what happens instead of being told in a regular fashion. Again, I am an enthusiastic fan of showing people an idea rather than telling them, in the case of the game we created we are showing the target audience what happens to them, through game mechanics such as hypothermia, hunger and thirst that it isn’t a walk in the park when you’re stuck in the bush.

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The game was designed to be played for extended periods of time, however the showcase has limited this. The solution we have for this is to dilute the game in a way in which the mechanics will be all sped up to allow for the player to have a five-minute test and see all the mechanics and the experience. The ideal time would be as long as it takes the player to finish the game, however as stated showcase needs to be sped up so more people can interact with it.

 

 

 

Contextual:

 

The inspiration for this game mostly came from games that exist such as:

• The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim (2011), Bethesda

• Firewatch (2016), Campo Santo

• Assassins Creed III (2012), Ubisoft

• Tomb Raider (2013), Crystal Dynamics

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 (2010), Dice

 

The Elder Scrolls Skyrim had a significant impact on our game in particularly the landscape and how the world is built. “Skyrim” had areas in the game with different environments which we had a look at and attempted to follow. For example, there were frozen swamps that seamlessly led into a vast open mountain range and tundra-like plains. This gave us the idea of starting in a different environment and taking the player through to other styled areas. The player in “Project Kowhai” starts in the forest of New Zealand and makes their way through this environment into a lake, like how a player would travel in “Skyrim” from mountains to plains. The environment in “Skyrim” is complemented by how the textures are painted onto the world’s landscape, the way in which they blend mud and grass textures with weeds and other similar plants shows us how much the developers take the subtle things into consideration. This care inspired us to take the same approach of trying to seamlessly blend textures together, such as the grass into pine needles.

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Another game in which I have personally taken inspiration from was From Software’s series “Dark Souls”. The way in which the levels are made and work together is an art form we tried to imitate and take inspiration from. An example of great level design is one in which a game ties the various levels together seamlessly. This series has been able to create an open world even though it’s segmented. This is done through it’s corridor-like areas where the player walks through narrow areas whilst the area being travelled to is loading in the background. This inspired us to make segments to the game such as a forest, lake and grassland. The level we have made might be an open world technically, but we have always referred to it in segments such as the lake and forest.

 

Now for some other points of research we individually looked at videos and critics and how they look at games. Particularly I looked at how level design is taken into consideration, and how to carry this over into the game we are working on.

The idea of creating a game to teach be a way of making a non-gaming experience into a ‘gamified’ way of engaging the target audience. Video games can be used as a potential means as to shape a person’s behaviour and be directed by the game developer into seeing their point of view (Sebastian Deterding K. O., 2011). This means to us there is a way in which we could possibly teach high school students and more about the NZ bush and how they can properly prepare for these situations, like the game puts the player in to begin with. This means there is a much easier way for a person to learn the dangers without needing to go through the situations themselves.

 

 

References

Bethesda. (2011, 11 11). Bethesda.net. Retrieved from https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/skyrim?

Boyd, R. (11, 10 10). Gamastura. Retrieved from https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobertBoyd/20111010/90386/9_Things_We_can_Learn_about_Game_Design_from_Dark_Souls.php

Santo, C. (2017). Firewatchgame.com. Retrieved from http://www.firewatchgame.com/

Sebastian Deterding, D. D. (n.d.). Retrieved from amazonaws.com: https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30609294/MindTrek_Gamification_PrinterReady_110806_SDE_accepted_LEN_changes_1.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1509166187&Signature=n5CKWKPRS2dVwqv%2BeTev0L22R10%3D&response-content-dispositio

Sebastian Deterding, K. O. (2011, 7 12). http://casanostravogogna.org. Retrieved from http://casanostravogogna.org/sites/default/files/allegati/01-deterding-sicart-nacke-ohara-dixon.pdf

Vella, D. (2015, July). gamestudies. Retrieved from http://gamestudies.org/1501/articles/vella