So far this week I have had my main idea for my major go straight out the window within a space of a minute of me explaining it to my tutor who raised some very good but equally sodding annoying problems that could happen with the idea. As a result of this pretty big hiccup I have retuned back to the drawing board and have come up with what I believe to be a far better and challenging idea. I will admit after getting my idea constructively shot down, it took me about ten minutes to come up with my new. For reasons at this time I am not going to start talking about this idea of mine until I have properly ironed out all the  potential problems that could arise from doing this idea and before getting the idea cleared by my tutor.

However on a brighter side my new portfolio should be live hopefully by the end of next week.

However I am about to head back down to Bournemouth University to complete the last year of my Interactive Media Production course. At this very moment of time I have come to terms that I will have a huge amount of work to do, some of which is not university work related.

So a brief outlook for the next academic year:

- For the past two months on and off I have been re-designing my portfolio and will be finished by the end of September.

- When returning back down to university me and three other of my friends who are study at Arts University College Bournemouth will be offically kick starting Shark Bait Media, but a lot of planning and redesigning will need to happen first.

- As regards to university, for my graduate project, I will be basing it on the Isle of Mann TT (motorcycle racing). Further details will follow.

- Finally for my dissertation, I will be writing it on Users and their Avatars. Again further details to follow.

So like I said at the start it will be certainly a busy year.

(Tutorial) – as USER makes his/her way to the mystery glint, he will be told about basic game play.

After completing some risky acrobatics to reach the mysterious glint, he/she discovers that it is a beautiful sword and decides to keep it for him/herself. On his/her way out, a huge oak door, which appears to be the only exit, confronts him/her; he/she decides to attempt to pick the lock.

(Tutorial) – USER is taught the lock picking mini game.

The USER is finally granted freedom… But as he/she steps across the threshold of the door, he is confronted by the Queen vampire! The USER immediately bolts, has a quick glance behind him/her and notices that the vampire is in pursuit.

0 – 3

3 – 6

6 – 12

12 – 17

18 – 34

34 and over

Looking at each age group we all came to the verdict that we would aim our game to the 12 – 17 age group. The reason why we choose this age group was mainly for a challenge to see what we could come up with.

After deciding on our target audience, we started to look at what is attracting this particular audience age range in todays society. At the moment we discovered that Stephenie Meyer Twilight series was captivating our target audience. Quickly summerise what Twilight series is about, is a seventeen-year-old Isabella “Bella” Swan, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen.

Now seeing as this has been highly received, we thought this would be a good road to go down the Vampire route, after doing research we came to the conclusion that Vampires haven’t been don’t to an extreme allowing us free rain to an extent on what we would do. Also the reason why we choose to go down this route was because we could draw up similarities to between our audience age group and Vampires. Here are the following examples came up with:

• Eternal damnation: Life as a teen can feel lonely and depressing, creating a kinship with the poor hell-cursed vampire!

• It’s all about change: Becoming a vampire is a painful (and sometimes confusing) time of change. Sound familiar?

• We all fancy a bad boy/girl: Dracula is bad. He’s downright evil. But how many girls had their first crush on him? Similarly, how many Buffy fans found evil vampire Willow sexier than nice normal Willow?

• Eternal life: We’re aware of how short our existence is, in the context of all we’d like to achieve. It’s not surprising then that the thought of eternal life appeals. One could be contentious and say that this is a major reason why religions are so popular too?

• Escapism: Teenagers live under various strictures. Vampires don’t have to abide by any rules, which is liberating!

So finally here is our idea for our game design project

The name of game will be called Blood Streak and will be a side-scrolling platformer. The main aim of the game is to avoid the queen vampire who is in hot pursuit. The queen vampire has the same attributes as a homing missile, and will simply head towards the player while avoiding obstacles.

The USER has to use his long jump and powers given to him by a magical sword to slow the vampire down. Powers include simply making the vampire freeze and super speed for a short amount of time.

Once the USER reaches checkpoints, gameplay will switch to mini games, they include, lock picking, barricade building, and throwing stones at a ceiling to let sunlight through.

Analysing this age group we discovered following that needed to be address if we were going to succeed in making a game for this age group:

• They need to be challenged.

• Make gameplay easy to learn but levels challenging to

master.

• Alienation and a need to prove themselves is a great

motivator for gameplay.

• Give the user as much control as possible – keyboard

setup, level difficulty etc.

So lastly, after careful discussion we came up with these solutions to overcome these problems:

• Make the game challenging. The game is going to be designed in the way that there is little room for mistakes.

• Incorporate side quests into the gameplay (mini games). These will have to be completed in order to progress in the game.

• Prove the USER with user friendly tutorials for them to learn and master the gameplay.

• Construct the game to have a steady progression however have the difficulty aspect of the game to rise towards the end of the level.

• Make the storyline motivate the USER to prove themselves.

• Also allow the USER to have as much control as possible with customization of the character look and style, keyboard controls and User profile on our website (Second Media Artifact)

This also brings me to an opinion that I have drawn up of y experience at my time at university, which is that I believe the lectures should group people together who do good quality work instead of mixing with people who don’t do work with people who do, do good work, which makes them feel under pressure because they are having to catch up the people who can’t be bothered to do the work and at the end of the day the people who don’t do the work end up getting the same results for the people who stick their next out trying to actually get a degree. I know that what I am saying here could be unfair and unjust but you come to uni to work to get a degree and at the same time have a good time with a social life, not doing the latter half of what I have 24/7.

I would just like to point out that this is my own personal opinion and does not reflect anything to do with whom I have been grouped with as I don’t know them well enough to make such an opinion about them, this opinion is only to do with what I have experienced in the past and I am fully aware in the work industry that you make not like who you work with, but at the end of the day you are all there to do a job to the best of your ability.

So what will I be doing over the next 15 weeks, you may ask ? well here is the Bournemouth University 2009 Game Design brief:

THE BRIEF

To produce a game that provides the player with a rich immersive experience; making

good use of both visual, aural and narrative effects.

Restrictions:

• Produce TWO media artifacts that work together harmoniously

• Provide supporting material as evidence of your research and development in the

form of a Game Bible.

ASSESSMENT DETAILS

The work in this unit is assessed by a group production project that is made up of TWO media artifacts and supporting material, a Presentation/Pitch, a Production Analysis & a Peer assessment.

Production Project = 50%

- Pitch / Presentation, Production & supporting material/ Bible

Production Analysis = 30%

Peer Assessment = 20%

You will be required, as a team, to formally pitch your idea on Thursday 10th December 2009. Times will be allocated and room specified closer to that date. Production work to be handed in on CD-Rom as well as uploaded to a University server by 12pm Thurs 25th March 2009 accompanied by supporting material/Game Bible. Production Analysis work and Peer Assessment to be handed in by 12pm Thurs 25th March 2009.

Bournemouth University 2009/2010

By the sounds of this, I will have my work cut out for me and the group. However I have yet to find out in my next lecture who will be in my group.

One interesting problem that arose from doing this project was half through the production period, the brief was annoying changed as the Lectures who had set this brief realised that the project that we are doing was totally buggered from the start, and we only found out about this into our 4th week into production when we couldn’t upload any content, this was due to FTP coding was not properly implemented and also that the content that would be uploaded was to be done by the BA(Hons) Television Production course and now we are 5 days from handing in the project and do I see any content done by the TV Production course, do I bloody hell and I won’t get on to the fact about them supplying the Live feed that is to be incorporated into the website.

So overall I can say that this project out of all the projects I have done at Bournemouth University, this has been by far the least enjoyable, mainly because of the time constraint and having to learn PHP from scratch grrrrrrr.

I have decided I am definitely going to be a Designer after university and stay away from anything that relates to website design.