Initial Research

Here are the ideas that we talked about in my group last class, but I didn't write here:

• It was suggested to make it more fun would be to have when people don't believe you they "attack" you and you can't go back to the area where they were for awhile or else they will attack you again and your respect will go down.
• Another suggestion some how got to being a sniper that killed political opponents rather than slander them, but that was quickly seen as too harsh after recent events.
• We talked a bit about the madlib thing.  We are not sure if it will help get the message across or not.

Alright here is my initial research of my subject (political slander).  I am trying to focus this initial research on the actual topic and not games like it.  Any good research should start off with comics and cartoons I say so here are a few:

These comics were fun to look up.  I like the political jabs in them.  I would like my game to incorporate these, but I still want the player to be able to come up with their own words in these.  I was thinking maybe I could use some of these as mad libs and take out some of the words and those would be the ones that the user fills in.  I wish there was some way to incorporate the last comic in the game, but its more a visual then what its actually saying and you need two people talking.  Also, I'm not sure about having the real political issues in the slander.  There was a good amount of the comics that I had no idea what they were talking about, and I don't want my game turning out like that.

While doing my research I came upon this article:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/954733/when_political_slander_turns_me_off.html?cat=17

I thought it was interesting because it is almost exactly what my game's agenda.  There are real life people out there doing what the player will be doing in my game and going around slandering the opponent to hide their own secrets.  Even at the local level!  People need to what the person in this article did and find out more about it.  Although the slander turned out to be true, the source was downgraded because of his history.

January 25, 2011 Notes

Research

·         Games that will work for you particular agenda (good match), something that is doable

o   Don’t be afraid to look retro

o   Notes on blog

·         PowerPoint on game

o   5 minutes

·         Reasonable authority on agenda

Video

·         Don’t be afraid of wild ideas

·         Started large groups then split to smaller

·         No person has no the perfect idea

o   Getting ideas off of wild ideas (other people)

·         People who think outside the box

·         Being able to sketch up something quickly on paper

o   Vote

·         Does not matter what you design

·         Hold back criticism

·         Build on ideas of others

·         Enlightened trial and error

·         Fail error and often

·         If you don’t work under time constraints, you would never get anything done

·         Social Science- what people want, what people like

d

D

Game play

This post is about the basic game play of my game.  I have some really bad pictures to go along with it and I hope it helps. (Click on the picture to get a better view)

initial first-person POV

This first picture is of the view the person would see when they first start up the game.  It is just a street-view where there a people just milling about. This environment will hopefully be 3D in the actual game.  At the bottom of the screen is the secret meter and at the top of the screen is the respect meter.  Above each person is a talk button.  The player needs to walk up to one of the people and click the talk button to interact with the person (as the picture below shows).

View after player walks up to person and clicks talk button

Once the player clicks a person the following text box shows up:

Initial interaction with 

This player needs to click on one of these buttons to do the action it says.  If the player chooses slander opponent they will receive this prompt:

Enter madlib

This prompt allows the player to enter an adjective and plural noun (this could be different depending on the insult).

ALTERNATIVE:

alternative madlib

The above picture is an alternative to typing in the madlib. The player must choose one word from each group.  The words are ordered from "less risk" to "risky".  The less risky answers are more believable (the person is more likely to believe the player) while, obviously, the more risky are less believable (but will get your secret meter down more). 

Once the player selects their answer the player "says" it to the person:

saying the insult

If I use the first method of entering the madlib whether the person believes the player or not is random.  If I use the second way it will be based on the risk of the answer and some randomness.

Initial Pitches 1-20-11

(Sorry if you're pitch is not up here, some of them I listened more than type)

Jknappfilm3720

Mountain Dew

-          Mario Kart

-          Different flavors- cars and powers different based on flavor

-          Power ups- random flavor

-          With or without characters

Aliceowens3720

Angry Mac’s

-          Based off of Angry Birds

-          Could go through Mac’s different products

Mojofilm3720

-          Kiva.org

-          Sim

-          Help the people manage the money they get

-          Age of empires- multiple things going on

Nicolashamberlin-film3720

-          Newly graduate student, Glenn Beck gets you

-          Manipulate and distort what is coming out of the news (good for Republicans)

-          Enlighten people

-          Demographic

particlefury

rb3720

-          Escape games (clues, solve puzzles (combinations))

-          Puzzles seem simple with twist (find out what’s different)

-          Escape phone booth (addictinggames)

-          Agenda: think outside the box, don’t take things at face value

Raleighries

RyanBehshad

-          Ice hockey (young-adult ice-hockey leagues)

-          Start out as new player, meet people, make team, join league

-          Owner of team- money, practice, coach

-          Goal: reach professional league

-          Actually play hockey while leading

Bateman3720

-          Critical thinking and rational decision making

-          Mystery element: told a certain character committed a certain crime

-          Go through game, get clues that point away from this person

-          Find out what clues you missed

-          Variety of tools: based on science or pseudoscience

-          Show how some things are more effective than other things

Ikethedestroyer

-          Based on myth or misconception

-          Sandbox

-          Not everything is a myth or misconception

-          Once you click on something box comes up with proof

Theartingstarvist

-          Reading/ science with imagination

Tomclarkfilm3720

-          Whale wars

Mimnaugh3720

-          Sharks (Japanese killing sharks)

-          Like whale wars

-     Miami Shark

Gamedevpace

-          Build houses

-          Math

-          Skills in teaching

Film3720lanemeyer

-          Ethical/non-ethical business practices

-          Time-based/resource management

-          Compare wealth

-          Grow personal wealth

Homework for Jan 20

When I first thought of my interests I really wanted to do a game about Cafe Zupas.  I love their food and I thought it would be fun to make a game for them.  However, during the discussion in class I realized something else that I am really interested/ passionate about (and, I believe, could make a very good game).  This topic is politics with secret agendas/ dirty personal secrets.  I have to admit that I have tried my hand at politics, somewhat.  I am the Democratic Chair of my precinct in my home town.  Although I don't do much now with the position I did get a chance to go to the 2008 Utah Democratic State Convention.  Even though it was absolutely fun there, it seemed like a lot of the candidates I met were insincere or hiding something.  Even now whenever I turn on the news, which sadly isn't that often, there is always a story about politicians taking bribes, committing adultery, and other crazy or unlawful things.  There are so many of these issues you can easily look them up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scandals_in_the_United_States.  It makes me sad that our government is not absolutely honest or at least as honest as they can be.  These scandals and deeds seem to have been going on forever, and it seems no government in the world can control it.  Although I believe this trend will never stop I do believe people should be aware of whats going on to control the flow of scandal.

I would like to make a game that makes people aware of these scandals, realize that politicians will do anything to hide them (including slandering any opponents), and realize that some of the things that politicians claim are true are based on little or no facts.  To get my agenda across I really want it to be in the gameplay, and not have fact blurbs throughout the game. 

There are many things I would like to do with this game.  The basic idea would be that the player would be a politician with a dirty secret or agenda (with first-person point of view).  There will be a meter at the bottom of the screen that keeps track of how much the player's secret is getting out (the longer the meter the more the secret is getting out).  The job of the player is to go to people along the street and slander their opponent.  If the person on the street "believes" the slander of the opponent the player's secret meter goes down.  HOWEVER, if the person doesn't believe them or the player slanders their opponent too much the respect meter (another meter that measures how much respect people and other politicians have for the player) goes down also.  The player get more respect by saying something nice (or somewhat nice) about their opponent or something good they are going to do for the community.  If the secret meter gets too high or the respect meter gets too low then the player loses.  The player wins if they are able to balance everything out until "election day" where they win their election.

Some other things that I think would be fun for this game:

• Different levels (secret meter goes up faster, harder to find/convince people, harder to get respect, etc.)
• Levels will be:
• Mayer (Easiest)
• Governor (Medium)
• President (Hard)
• Have a MadLib aspect to the game
• This could help with promoting the agenda because the player can see that most of these slanders are just made up and based on nothing.
• Input the name of your opponent
• use Madlibs to:
• make up your own secret
• come up with what slanders you are going to tell people
• Have the ability to do more than leg work to get your ideas around
• As time goes on you get more money because of people working on your campaign OR you can ask for money from people you talk to on the street
• With this money you can buy signs, commercials, billboards, etc.
  

Notes for January 18, 2011

Interests and Ideas

John:

Computer Hardware

Cooking

School

Wilson:

1)      Education for kids in science and math

a.       Undereducated

b.      Under challenged (more potential)

c.       Fun math and science can educate and encourage critical thinking

d.      Fun but don’t realize that it’s teaching you something

e.      Ex:  Zork

2)      Gay rights

a.       People are under-/mis-educated about gay people

b.      Discrimination (not really seen as discrimination)

c.       Game could show how hard being a lesbian couple would be

d.      Racial mix

e.      Human rights

3)      Skepticism/ atheism

a.       Rational thinking

b.      Psychological bias’

c.       Science/Logical

d.      Conspiracy theories

Tom:

1)      Child Obesity

a.       Genetic s vs. parenting

b.      Tips on eating schedule

c.       How to deal with emotions

d.      Beating in

e.      Goal (get ready for the prom)

f.        Sims-ish

Russell:

1)      Over Marketing

a.       YouTube, Pandora, Hulu

b.      Products

c.       Blatant product placement

d.      Political signs

e.      Advertisement war (AT&T vs. Verizon, Mac vs. PC)

2)      Journalism

a.       Fear-mongering

b.      Editorialist vs. Journalism

c.       Sensationalism

d.      Scare Tatics

e.      Blurred line between facts & opinions

Jeff:

1)      Mountain Dew

a.       Promote how good it is

2)      Road Rage

Sex education

Kiva

Tom’s Shoes

Language learning- role-playing game (spy game)

Homework

1)      Take an existing mobile-type game and write how you would make it into an alternative genre game

a.       Strong agenda

2)      Take something you feel strongly about.  Try to come up with a game that represents that agenda. (support your opinion.  Why would this game work?)

More stuff I've been working on in Unity

Alright so I wanted to do more in Unity. So the main goal of what I started out with is to learn the new things about Unity 3 and find out more about Character making.  I found a really cool tutorial on making characters.  Unfortunately, you have to do this whole long tutorial in order to get the scripts and everything you need to make the characters.  But it turns out thats alright because the guy doing the tutorial is using Unity 3 so I am learning new things about Unity.

The first thing I learned about is Unity now has a built in 3rd person controller and 1st person controller.  So we no longer have to build everything do control a character.  In the first tutorial I was able to learn more about the GUI interface which confused me a bit last semester.  Now I'm getting down into what exactly it is and what it can do.  I was able to make a simple health bar that looked pretty good.  I wish I would've known about it last semester so I could show Russell because it would have helped his game.

This is a picture of the health bar.  It was hard to get t bigger, but I hope you can see it.

I wish I could put up all the code I did but thats a lot so I'll just put up the important parts:

//This is the magic!  This allows you to make a bar that grows and shrink really fast!

GUI.Box(new Rect(10,10, healthBarLength,20), curHealth + "/" + maxHealth);

The healthBarLenght is updated with this code:

healthBarLength = (Screen.width / 2) * (curHealth / (float) maxHealth);


The next thing I found out about was the Unity tagging system. This will uniquely identify an object based on the tag (allowing you to use the name the same as the prefab).  This would have helped me tremendously last semester with my penguins!


I also learned some debugging tools.  We learned some of this last semester, but this helped because I actually got to use them.  One of the debugging tools was drawing a line between two things in the actual game, which will help a lot.

Stuff I've been working on with Unity

Random Character Generator

I have been working with an example project from Unity that creates random characters.  The thing that I wanted to see was if you could make your own unique character.  Turns out you can!  The character in the center of the above picture is the specific character that I created.  The characters around her are randomly generated.
I also wanted to know if we could manipulate the models, make new textures, and make new animations, and I pretty sure you can because the project file includes all the fbx files.  I was unable to see if everything was in order because I don't have Maya, but I believe it would work.

The above image is the same basic model as before, but with different textures, models for hair, and models for clothing.  It too me forever to realize you could change the models of those features. 

The above video is one of the tutorials I used to help me with this project.

General Notes 1/13/11

Changing the game industry

-          Wii, Kinect

-          Smart phones

-          Interface

-          Development platforms (Steam, XNA (downloadable content))

-          Facebook (Zynga) and MMO

o   Paying money for stuff on games

MMO with alternative genre (get an agenda across)

-          Root to contention

-          Multiple issues

-          Movies do it now (Wall-E, Avatar, Happy Feet)

-          SimCity with Green materials (put in your own creations)

-          Long-term

Do you expect them to return?

-          If not in front of you -> goes to lower priority

-          In general, hard to win

How long do you expect players to play?

-          In general, short playing game

-          Subject matter type thing

How easy should these games be?

Shockvalue

-          Border Patrol (remember it just because of the shock)

Too much text

-          Impatient to read all the text

-          Short game should be intuitive no long instructions

Game Notes from 1/13/11

McDonalds

-          No connection to McD, Jabbing at entire food industry

Pros

-          liked the challenge

Cons

-          had to read tutorial...long reading

-          too hard

Kentucky Fried Chicken

Pros

-          engaging

-          familiarity with Mario

-          not in face

Cons

-          With text got point across

Border Patrol

-          No matter how hard you work you won’t be able to get them all

Pros

-          Getting some of the message across

Cons

-          Not best way to handle immigrants at border

Congo Jones

Pros

-          Art style was good

-          Subliminal messages

Cons

-          Controls too hard

-          Too much text

-          Weak link to Indiana Jones

Wolf Quest

Pros

-          Good customization

-          Good sandbox

-          Education on wolf culture

Cons

-          Battle between wolves/ weak

Airport Security Game

-          Everything was confusing and “hardcore” like it really is at the airport

-          Sympathize with airport security

Questions in discussion

-          How do we accomplish getting game play to players?

-          How long are we expected to play these games?

Killer Flu! Review

http://www.clinical-virology.org/killerflu/killerflu.html
Ah! The flu! No work, no play, nothing except sitting around feeling horrible. Alright, the flu isn't really here, but UK Clinical Virology Network's Killer Flu is. The goal of this game is not to show that the flu is bad, everyone knows that, but to reveal that a “pandemic flu is rare and an unusual strain that is harder to spread.” The method the Network used to get their agenda across is the actual strategy of the game. In the game the player is a flu virus that must infect as many people as it can. It was a great idea of the developer to make the player the thing that is doing the harm, rather than the thing that is being harmed.

As a game Killer Flu is somewhat successful. There is strategy involved in that the player must make someone sick by infecting them with a strain of flu they are not immune to. Then the player must get the infected person to the correct building. All of this must be done in a certain time period while making sure people don't get better before reaching the percentile of population you must infect to win. One problem with the game is that it was really easy to infect people with the regular influenza virus. This does help get the message across that its easier for the regular flu to spread then a pandemic flu, but it made the game somewhat boring. To fix this the creator might want to make the strains of viruses that can infect the person harder to spin in the influenza spinner. Also, the graphics were also somewhat boring. It was hard to tell some of the buildings apart and everything looked similar.

Killer Flu was pretty successful in promoting their agenda. Although there was a large amount of information at the beginning of game in small text I really wanted to read it. It could have been because I hate the flu with a passion and wanted to know more about it, but either way I read through that whole page. I had no idea that a pandemic flu isn't as deadly as it seems. The game tried to give out more information during the game at certain points, but I just wanted to play the game and so usually passed them by. The general idea was put across, though, through the game play. It was in fact very easy to infect people with the ordinary flu because the player can infect anyone on the street and does not have to wait for people to come in contact. It was much harder to keep the bird flu infecting the population. The bird flu only starts out with one person and the player must move that person in order to infect others. However, once that person is moved trying to get everyone infected before they become healthy again is very hard.

    

Congo Jones Review

http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/Games
Deforestation is an issue that has been around for awhile. A game would seem to be the best way to get this issue across. However, The Rainforest Foundation's Congo Jones and the Loggers of Doom falls a little short. To get their agenda across the foundation mainly used messages in the game and graphics. At the start of the game, beautiful graphics of the rainforest and its inhabitants are shown with a fact about the disappearance of rainforest in large bold letters at the top. The problem is introduced on the next slide and shows a corporate logger. Finally, the next three slides asks the user to help the native people map out their land before the loggers arrive. Graphics are used also to show the beauty of the rainforest when the trees are there and the ugliness when they are chopped down. The background of the first level is a barren wasteland where the colorful birds flying overhead once roosted. Finally, the game makers tried to bank on the popularity of the movies of Indiana Jones by using a parody of the adventurer. This makes the player relate the actions they are doing in the game to something good because they are associating them with Indiana Jones (now known as Congo Jones).

Congo Jones and the Loggers of Doom is not a very successful game. I consider myself a pretty avid gamer, but I could not even get through the first part of the first level. Although I spent a lot of time trying to get further, in reality, if this wasn't a class assignment I would have given up long before. The controls were not intuitive. Once you jumped you could still move the monkey left and right making it hard to control exactly where he is going. The logs that were supposed to be the platforms seemed really hard to land on. It took me forever to realize that I could land on the alligators mouth without consequences (this may have been from playing too much Frogger though). Maybe this game got better as it went on, but most gamers would probably move to a different game before they got further in this one. To improve these things the developer should have more long platforms (like the alligators), especially if they are having this be a timed game. The player needs time to think and constantly having them jump is frustrating. Another improvement would be to have the jump be a fixed amount and not be able to move the monkey left and right once in the air. Hopefully, these improvements would allow the player to get further in the game.

As mentioned before it was hard to get very far in this game. This greatly impacted The Rainforest Foundation from accomplishing their agenda of the devastation of deforestation and solutions to the problem. The facts at the beginning of the game were short, to the point, and in large lettering. This made it so I wanted to read them unlike other games where I skipped over the messages because they were long and in small fonts. If the developer of the game had made the game more enjoyable to play I think the message would get across. I, for one, did not know that mapping out the land can help prevent deforestation. It actually made me go look up more on the website and I found out that these maps are used to prove to the government that “these forest peoples exist, and that the forest needs to be protected for their use.” As is, the game is a little bit of a dud. Also, beefing up the heroism of Congo Jones could also help. This could be done by maybe having him swing in on a rope or have a whip and just get the hero factor from the awesomeness of Indiana Jones.

Border Patrol Game Review

 http://www.aztlan.net/racist_anti-mexican_game.htm
 One of the hot button issues in today's world is illegal immigrants, so it is no wonder that a game has been attempted regarding this issue. Border Patrol Game's incentive is to further ideas opposed to Mexicans illegally immigrating into the United States. The main method the creators of this game used to get their agenda across is graphics. At the very beginning, the interface shows these radical views with pictures of what the player will be shooting including Mexican Nationalist, Drug Smuggler, and Breeder. Stereotyping Mexican citizens in a negative way makes it seem like these illegal aliens are just trying to smuggle drugs, fight for Mexico, or just have babies that will increase America's population. These extreme views are a way to make the player think that these immigrants are bad and should be shot.

Once the player enters the game the anti-illegal aliens message is further shown by the graphics. The most prominent image in the game is a sign near the front of the screen reading “Welcome to the United States” and a sign underneath reading “Welfare Office →.” This method is trying to have the player think that all illegal immigrates will just go on welfare and take away Americans hard earned money supporting them. As a player begins to play, the bloody graphics once they shoot the illegal immigrates is once again showing the hatred of these people. Even small children must be killed according to them.

As a game Border Patrol Game is not successful. The only aspect of a game it contains is the fact the player is shooting people and having a score. There is hardly any strategy as most of the aliens move right into your cross-hairs. However, there seems to be some attempt to make the game harder by making the “targets” move faster. This, though, makes it hard to see what exactly is being shot which weakens the agenda behind the game. They could improve this by pulling back the camera and having the “targets” move slower but not in a straight path. There could be obstacles such as barbwire or snakes that the Mexicans must avoid so they are on the screen longer. Also, they could get their agenda across better by having the score based on money or crime rather than how many immigrants are shot. This would promote the need to eliminate the “Breeders” because the children would probably be taken care of by the state. Also, having “Mexican Nationalists” and “Drug Smugglers” would increase crime so that is another reason the game makers don't want them in the United States.

This game is focused on claiming that illegal aliens are welfare cases and druggies. However, the makers of this game may have been extreme in how they represented the game. It is true that illegal households receive more help from food assistance programs than non-illegal households. This accounts for 5.6 percent of federal costs for these programs (Center of Immigration Studies). On the other hand shooting innocent people is probably not the solution. The game did achieve the agenda of being racist and sexist very well though.

Notes for 1/11/11

Political- campaign or agenda

Commercial- product

Government, special interest groups

Producer

-          Make sure things are going in the right direction

-          Decides teams

-          Recommend games based on team

-          Interface of the team

o    Talk with the exec. Producer, marketing, art director, programming director

o   Pitch the game to magazines and so forth

-          **Problem –solver**

o   Rely on leads to help brainstorm and feed information

-          Game testing

o   Listen to feedback and determine if it will help