Evaluation 1

EvaluationQuestion 1.) How effective is the media product use, develop combination of your main or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product, Time assassin is the first introduction level to a science fiction video game. It puts you in controls of the highly skilled time agent Twelve. The first level is the introduction level which means it in many ways is like a film or even book. These would be considered the norm for real media products, and to make my game seem real I have tried to match and challenge these conventions.The purpose of an opening is to introduce characters and to get the audience interested in watching the rest of the film or reading the rest of the book. With video games it is similar but also very different. Video games have a variety of mediums, some are simple shooters, others are puzzles, but in my opinion the best are games with a thick story. For this question I will often use the example Quantum Break. This is a recent game that is one of the games I investigated in my research. Quantum Break is a lot like a film, not just with the realisticgraphics but the fact it looks like a movie, only you control the character. It looks like amovie and real media product through having an empty UI. (User Interface is what the audience will see on-screen in front of the game itself for example health bars orinstructions. And the game itself controls what happens quite a lot, you could describe itAs reading a book where you can procrastinate from the main story and explore round the areas, but you must always return to the main story.These real media products use this effect of having a fulfilling and thick story well, and this means that these games are often considered masterpieces and rated very highly. This is something I wanted to emulate in my game, having main story but with areas to explore around it. For this I looked at my game as a timeline. The start being when the character spawns at the first area, after the menu is loaded. (The menu again emulates real media products, because real media products like real games will have a main menu, mine is identical in that respect.) And following the timeline through to the end where the character supposedly dies. It’s important to note that a useful technique I used to hook the character was to have a massive cliff-hanger in only the first mission, and it is explained or lead up to in the missions that follow. This is often used in game of films using flashbacks for example and is something I have again emulated.

Spawn in Arcade, Area is Massive future Street, including teleport shop

Teleport into small, compact warehouse

Time Warp into large empty area,

the moon

The timeline can differentiate, the timeline is the main story which like Quantum Break is like a film and could be consider hooking and interesting, but with my limited knowledge of making a game how did I make an almost open world with area one could explore and learn more about the game? This was done by challenging the convention.When designing my game I had created a dramatic and film like story, but since I could only make the first level I still needed to have the audience want to have the feeling of wanting to play it more, and to want to learn more about the game. In other games such as Quantum Break the story is explained often through conventions like voice or sounds, other characters explaining or through visual elements like text on screen. With my game I had created three May area that the timeline takes you through, and the story told not through a voice on screen and not really through text on screen. For my game I challenged convention and like books where the audience will imagine what’s happening, my game fives you some brief instructions of what to do, and you must explore it to follow those objectives and progress. The three main areas the future street, whichteleports you to the warehouse, with sends you to the moon through a portal allhave brief on screen situations that appear on the UI. Unlike Quantum Breakmy UI is quite clear on the screen. I was but one man who made the game, and therefore improvised a lot with making a game the audience could understand.I designed the UI to have a science fiction graphic user interface, computer levels and data on screen that doesn’t do anything but it decorated the border and makesit seem more like science fiction gam which helps with the idea of genre. The other things that appear on the UI are the buttons that contain the instructors, these are short sentence in the form of mission updates, that appear whenever the user reaches another area, and it takes it to the newest part of the timelines. However since there are no markers on screen arrows for example one might have in a real game, it is up to the audience and player to explore and progress with only the short sentence to help. For example find the teleport shop. This literally make short player explore the street to find the shop. This is like a media product like a film because there are no objective makers in films. One would consider the objectives on screen the form of narrative and I would agree that and the players option of what to do in the game is the narrative of the game, there are no vocal instructions so it makes the game more of man explorer genre.

But again to challenge convention I have added collectable that explain parts of the story, four ‘Floppy discs’ that when the user walks over to them contain a graphic on the UI that contains information of element sin the game. This is exactly like real media products and other games, where it might explain what weapon you have and the back story of the person like the sword was forged in the fires of mount doom for example. These floppy discs contain information on the weapons of the assassin, the assassin armor and some elements that might confuse the player like that rare teleport shops, and portals. This is something that explained, I stated that a teleport shops are now a commercial commodity, everyone teleports everywhere, but still there are hover cars as you see on the deigns of game when you exit the arcade, you se a triggered animation of a hover car.The layout of the UI and the colors help to represent the genre of the game, having the Sci-Fi border, having the instruction on the bottom of the screen so the user can clearly see them and having the colors you’d expect in the figure like glowing blue for energy or several metal. I think it is clear that my game is science fiction genre when you play it. But that is only one of three ancillaries. If you haven’t played the game but are considering it you’d want to read about it. Therefore you’d find gaming magazine that would contain reviews and information about the game/ the cover of a gaming magazine will often have a main picture of the game, on my gaming magazine I had the picture of the warehouse with the portal so it’s clear from the cover Time Assassin has elements of a portal in the game. To make the cover seem realistic I have added side’s stories and barcodes so it does seem like, a legitimate cover. He inside of the gamin magazine cover has two pages that have pictures and background that show elements of the game. The screen shots from the game are what you'd expect in a real gaming magazine, they are explained in the text and will help the reader want to go out and purchase it. The text explains the game; it is a summary of the plot and has a review at the end that makes my game magazine realistically make you as the real audience to want to play my game. Read my gaming magazine and see if you are interested in playing my game afterwards. Note: it’s free.

So after the audience reads the gaming magazine they will want to purchase the game itself. They will go to the shop and the game will catch their attention. For this type of genre, representation and design all combine to attract the attention of the target audience. My gaming cover I felt needed to contain all the elements of the game but also look like a real game you could buy. Therefore I looked ta two current video game producers XBOX ONE and PS4. And I studied their gaming covers. There are areas in the covers I have attempted to copy with my own and therefore try to make my game look realistic. The Xbox One covers will have four screenshots in a particular format, three small ones below a large screen shot, with a short summary of the game on top of the large screenshot. This is something I have replicated in my game cover, with the science fiction screenshot that could represent some areas of my game. The PS4 cover is quite different, it varies a lot, it does not have one specific format unlike Xbox one, therefore I chose to have a game cover like Infamous Second son, where there is one main screenshot at the back often with an out of place design. For my PS4 back cover I used an inverted and black and white over-lay screenshot of the portal, which looks like it has been burnt through the white paper. Inside the black and white stencil version of the portal is the same summary of the game, and above that a subtitle that captures an element of the game in one word, for this is said Eliminate the target. With both covers real games have some graphic of gaming awards in the tops of the covers and on the corners while below they have information of that specification and technical details of the game. As well as an age rating and barcode. Like real media products the age rating is awarded to the game for how much violence or bad language etc. the game has. To make my covers realistic I rated my game and gave an appropriate age rating, this makes the game covers match convention and make it realistic.

Finally to make their game covers, the front cover, which is what the audience will first see, I need to make something that represented the game the shows the design of the game, that that represent the science fiction genre and contains some of the colors. This was no easy task, but I settled for adding a screenshot of the portal, which is a main fact in the game, and like making real media products that will have a main part of the game in the cover, like the design having the main character in the foreground, the main character being said element. Mine being item travel through a portal. But it still did capture that science fiction genre and representation of game. So I researched classic 80’s games, and found that they did it quite well, with their films as well. Therefore I gave the whole cover an 80’s overlay changing the colors so it seemed more science fiction with the 80's twist in the form of purple and retro colors. This was the final area of t game cover that would successful make the player want to buy the game expecting it to be a Sc-Fi game and not be disappointed.There are many ways in which my game challenged the forms in real media products through convention such as genre and representation, I have developed a game, gaming magazine and cover that successfully challenge these forms but also match them to make a realistic game that the audience would really want to play.