Computer Games

What we have done this week:
The biggest thing we have accomplished this week is that we wrote 12000 characters for our book chapter including background research, future trends, explanation of concept, story and game play. We are explaining our game design and goals in the game. We worked with the "real time" concept and decided this was something we should use in our concept. For example, in our concept, you have 2,5 hours to catch the evacuation buses. However the game does not have to end if you miss your buss. Our game is using a network of game play with alternate stories and endings. You are free to go wherever you feel like, and the actions you take will influence the story.

Investigation of Stalker game is done, we did not find it useful as a source of inspiration since we found the plot was weird, storytelling was kind of weak and the graphics were not all that great. However, we saved some print screens from the game that we might use to illustrate our concept.

We have E-mailed Daniel Ström from Gurugames with some questions, for example, about his opinion about storytelling, game mechanics, future topics in computer games. We'd like to use his answers as quotes in our upcoming book chapter.

We have been thinking about using a Beatboard or a storyboard instead of cartoons or a movie to illustrate our concept. 

We did a quick investigation on if other games uses "real time" as a major thing in their game design but only came across games belonging to the genre of "real time strategy" games which is not what we were looking for.  


What we will do next:
We still have writing to do for the book chapter. The text as of now is just a draft and there are several things we after discussing it feel like we have to cut down on and add. We still have not found any images to use for the book, however we have made a collection to choose from.
 
We are waiting for a response on the mail to Daniel Ström and we will see if he has any useful answers. This week we will talk to Björn again to bounce ideas, we found that to be really useful last time. 

We also need to make some explanatory graphics to illustrate our concept. 

The biggest concern we have is still to find a way of presenting our concept at the final presentation. We need to look further into options such as using comics. Our concerns about explaining our concept is rising, we have to devote more time on working on this matter. We need to look further into options such as using comics.

We came across a game called ICO which is a game that working without any interface. We found that to be interesting and we will use it as a source of inspiration.