By Shannon Tetley

I'm creating this blog to document my journey learning game design and it will be submitted as part of my assessment for the class IGB-220 taught at the Queensland University of Technology. It's my aim to create an interesting record of my learning and to share what I learn with others in an informal yet professional manner.

Why am I studying game design?

Well, I'm actually studying for a bachelor in IT believe it or not. My major and passion is in computer science and I'm studying minors in mobile/cloud applications and user experience. I'm learning game design for the purpose of gamifying mobile apps but that's just the academic reasoning. I've loved video games from a young age and have dreamed of making them for a living since I was a teenager. I chose to study computer science for job security and only discovered my passion for it after beginning my studies. Studying game design for my user experience minor was a happy accident but due to my interest I have embraced it enthusiastically.

How did I become obsessed with video games?

I became interested in them by watching other people play them from a young age. I've always had an active imagination and a lust for adventure. I enjoyed playing make believe and video games are a natural extension of that for me. There's nothing more fun to me than to be immersed in a fictional world were you can explore and act out fantasies.

I don't remember the first game that I ever payed but I do remember being frustrated when I had to stop playing other peoples games when I had to go home from a friend or families house. Eight year old me was determined to get hold of my own games, so when my parents gave me the option of pocket money or a PlayStation for Christmas I gave up the pocket money 😂.

Army Men: Air Attack developed by The 3DO Company

My first game was Army Men: Air Attack published by 3DO. I loved this game because I got to play with army men that could actually shoot! I loved the light-hearted and comical story of this game but it was all about the action for me. From that point, I collected games over the years and even swapped consoles with friends, including an N64 which introduced me to the world of Nintendo. In Lecture 1; Fundamentals of Game Design (Conroy), we discussed how culture naturally forms around games and play. This resonated with me, given my own experiences, sharing and playing video games with friends. My friends and I have incidentally formed a unique culture of our own which stemmed from our mutual ownership and playing of games throughout our lives.

What kind of gamer am I?

While studying in my first week of game design I came across a concept I found interesting written by Richard A. Bartle (Bateman, Step 4). Professor Bartle talks about the four main types of player, from the point of view of a game designer.

My interpretation of the four gamer types are:

Achiever - That friend who brags about getting 100% in every game they get their hands on.

Explorer - They love to learn the lore of the world and discover all the cool things in the game world.

Socialiser - Plays the game to hang out with friends or to meet new people. Often found hanging out at the grand exchange in their favourite MMO.

Killer - They're those SOBs that hang out on your ship spawn killing you in Sea of Thieves! Yes I'm still salty about that 😠, they didn't even take my loot 😂.

Metroid Prime developed by Retro Studios

I can safely say that I'm an explorer. The first game I ever got truly obsessed with was Metroid Prime developed by Retro Studios. To me, Metroid was about exploring an abandoned and corrupted alien world. I got hooked on finding all the lore walls to piece together the story about why the world was corrupted and to find out what happened to the mysterious Chozo who left behind such beautiful and intriguing ruins.

What do I hope to get out of game design?

My dream is to write backend code for games and to have the skills to turn boring old phone apps into more enjoyable experiences. Even if that dream doesn’t pan-out, this class will be a valuable opportunity to learn design practices which I wouldn’t normally learn in my more technical computer science degree.

Gaming has always been an integral part of my life. I’ve always been subconsciously aware of the culture my friends and I formed and I internally knew what kind of gamer I was – I just never had the vocabulary to describe it. Just one lecture of Fundamentals of Game Design, has prompted me to critically reflect on why my experiences playing games have been positive ones and making these links has shown me how I can tie academia to my game design.

So far, the theoretical concepts I’ve been introduced to have been very insightful and have inspired me to apply these theories to my own game design. I hope this class will continue to open my eyes to the concepts which make good games so enjoyable.

References:

Conroy, David. “Fundamentals of Game Design Lecture 1.” IGB-220 Fundamentals of Game Design, 25/7/2023, Queensland University of Technology, Online. Lecture.

I really enjoyed working with my group over the course of this project. I worked with Aerin Larrazabal, Kellah Mcmenamin, Jack Wightman and we were all able to establish the roles that we would take over the course of the project.

I think that our group's ability to communicate over what we were working on made the assignment not that difficult, however getting to that point was a little difficult as none of us were very good at taking up a leadership role and organising exactly what needed to be done. I ended up taking a sort of leadership role in figuring out who would do what based on our different skill sets. We tried to follow the phases of production listed out in Chapter 13 of the Game Design Workshop book, with the addition of the existing prototype to build off. Our planning for the different elements of the game in pre-production phase was shown on the One Sheet and discussed in Discord calls the way we wanted the game to work. In the Production phase we worked separately but simultaneously to produce different aspects of the game to be combined, e.g I worked on menus and finding sound effects, while Aerin designed different art assets that we could use.

In the future to improve on the process we used, I would strive to document all the changes that were made better, as our group was a bit inconsistent as to what we recorded when we made changes. I would also try and do more playtesting in different phases of development, as most of our playtesting was done around the same point in development.

References:

Working out what each member of the group would do week by week was pretty easy and everyone in the group was pretty easy to communicate with and contact. We each had pretty defined roles within the group and that made it easy to divide up tasks. I took up a sort of leadership role in taking charge of what tasks everyone was doing, and keeping track of progress on tasks. 

We worked on different aspects like adding new sprites for enemies, adding health bars for enemies, and coming up with music, sound effects and different levels. We were also able to plan out what each person was doing in advance which makes checking up each week very easy.

When I was developing my parts of the prototype, I kept in mind what I learned from chapter 11 of the Game Design Workshop book, which talked about keeping in mind the different elements of challenge, play and story, as we wanted to create a difficult but rewarding platformer that had strong thematic story and was a fun balance of the health decay mechanic.

References:

I think that when I was trying to come up with ideas for an elevator pitch I was stuck in the idea that I had to just adapt the assets of the game in a way that would be interesting to me, but I realised that this held me back a lot when I was trying to create ideas, which led to a worse game overall. This project helped me to learn the importance of relying on a team, as they can help you visualise an idea that you may lack the skills to create on your own. Looking at example One sheets and One pages for Assignment 2 helped me to see that I was limiting myself because of my lack of art skills but I think going forward I will be able to rely on my team to think outside the box and create something interesting and fun. 

Another thing that I realised over the course of this workshop is that the games that I create, focused on a cool story/world and a fun and engaging mechanic to improve on basic gameplay wouldn't necessarily appeal to all types of players, and Chapter 4 of the Game Design Workshop helped me to realise that the games that I want to create cater to player types such as the Explorer, the Artist and the Storyteller, and that I want to create engaging worlds for those kinds of players to enjoy.

References:

Week 6: Following this tutorial was probably the hardest of all the tutorials so far, as there were some instructions about the camera following the player, as the size of the assets were actually relatively small, which meant I was confused on some of the steps relating to the camera. I was able to make everything work pretty well, but I struggled to think of how I could make the game interesting with a unique mechanic. I decided to add a variety of different cars as the sheer number of cars you could potentially encounter would add a lot of variety to the very basic concept. 

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